One day came an incident that Marjorie found wonderfully illuminating.
Trafford had a fit of rage. Stung by an unexpected irritation, he forgot
himself, as people say, and swore, and was almost physically violent,
and the curious thing was that so he lit up things for her as no
premeditated attempt of his had ever done.
A copy of the _Scientific Bulletin_ fired the explosion. He sat down at
the breakfast-table with the heaviness of a rather overworked and
worried man, tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it with
his hand, turned to the _Bulletin_, regarded its list of contents with a
start, opened it, read for a minute, and expressed himself with an
extraordinary 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 plate
from him.
"Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and met the blank amazement
of 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 hard
that the breakfast things seemed to jump together--to Marjorie's
infinite amazement. "I can't _stand_ it!" he said.
She waited some moments. "I don't understand," she began. "What has he
done?"
"Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered the crumpled paper and
stood reading. "Fool and thief," he said.
Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt as though she had been
effaced from Trafford's life. "Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the
_Bulletin_ into the corner with quite needless violence. He became aware
of Marjorie again.
"He's doing my work," he said.
And then as if he completed the explanation: "And I've got to be in
Croydon 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 in
books,--every bit of it."
He paused and went on in tones of unendurable wrong. "It isn't as though
he 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 silly
muddled technicalities he's invented already! The solemn mess he's
making of it! And there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get at
him. 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 fretting
entanglements of lecture and article! I never get the time, I can't get
the time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm badgered! And
meanwhile Behrens----!"
"Is he discovering what you want to discover?"
"Behrens! _No!_ He's going through the breaches I made. He's guessing
out what I meant to do. And he's getting it set out all
wrong,--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'll
be 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 your
F.R.S.?" she asked.
"Oh! _that's_ safe enough, and it doesn't matter anyhow. The F.R.S.!
Confound the silly little F.R.S.! As if that mattered. It's seeing all
my great openings--misused. It's seeing all I might be doing. This
brings it all home to me. Don't you understand, Marjorie? Will you
never understand? I'm getting away from all _that!_ I'm being hustled
away by all this work, this silly everyday work to get money. Don't you
see that unless I can have time for thought and research, life is just
darkness to me? I've made myself master of that stuff. I had at any
rate. 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 rave
again." He paused. Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd better
eat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"
She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put things before him, seated
herself at the table. For a little while he ate in silence. Then he
cursed 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 as
though everything had become clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, my
dear! I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you. Always. And it's
come to this!"
"But it's not _your_ fault. I didn't mean that. It's--it's in the nature
of things."
"It's my fault."
"It's not your fault."
"It is."
"Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens I'm not swearing at
you."
"It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating you up. What's the good
of your pretending, Rag. You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meant
to make you happy, I had no thought but to make you happy, to give
myself to you, my body, my brains, everything, to make life beautiful
for 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 you
know, Rag," she said, forcing herself to speak----"Don't you guess? You
don't know half! In that bureau there----In there! It's stuffed with
bills. 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," she
repeated. "More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now. _Now!_"
He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of personal animus, like
one 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 silence
between them. She produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That's
what 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 out
the 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. They
were not even tidily arranged. That seemed to her now an extreme
aggravation of her offence.
"I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked, "as one sends a
worthless cat."
Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for some moments. "You're a
bother, Marjorie," he said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of a
bother. I'd better have those bills."
He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her to
him and kissed her forehead. He did it without passion, without
tenderness, with something like resignation in his manner. She clung to
him 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. I
shall miss that Croydon lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are my
boots?..."