When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back into Trafford's study and
stood on the hearthrug regarding its appointments, with something of the
air of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed a new, appalling
thought. Was Daffy really a better wife than herself? It was dawning
upon Marjorie that she hadn't been doing the right thing by her husband,
and she was as surprised as if it had been suddenly brought home to her
that she was neglecting Margharita. This was her husband's study--and it
showed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine, and everything
about it denied the pretensions of serene sustained work that she had
always made to herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of his
science notes; here were unanswered letters. There, she dare not touch
them, were computations, under a glass paper-weight. What did they
amount to now? On the table under the window were back numbers of the
_Scientific Bulletin_ in a rather untidy pile, and on the footstool by
the arm-chair she had been accustomed to sit at his feet when he stayed
at home to work, and look into the fire, and watch him furtively, and
sometimes give way to an overmastering tenderness and make love to him.
The thought of Magnet, pampered, fenced around, revered in his
industrious tiresome repetitions, variations, dramatizations and so
forth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the British public
accepted as his characteristic offering and rewarded him for so highly,
contrasted vividly with her new realization of Trafford's thankless work
and worried face.
And she loved him, she loved him--_so_. She told herself in the presence
of all these facts, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind that all
she wanted in the world was to make him happy.
It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to this end that she might
commit suicide.
She had already gone some way in the composition of a touching letter of
farewell to him, containing a luminous analysis of her own defects,
before her common-sense swept away this imaginative exercise.
Meanwhile, as if it had been working at her problem all the time that
this exciting farewell epistle had occupied the foreground of her
thoughts, her natural lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion that
she had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarily
regardless of him, she only began to see that, and now she had to take
up the problem of his necessities. Her self-examination now that it had
begun was thorough. She had always told herself before that she had made
a most wonderful and beautiful little home for him. But had she made it
for him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except that he was
glad to have it through her? No doubt it had given him delight and
happiness, it had been a marvellous little casket of love for them, but
how far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation it had imposed upon
him? She had always assumed he was beyond measure grateful to her for
his home, in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking a
knife into herself to ask that, but she was now in a phase heroic enough
for the task--was he? She had always seen herself as the giver of
bounties; greatest bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced pains and
terrors and the shadow of death to give him Margharita. Now with Daffy's
illuminating conversation in her mind, she could turn the light upon a
haunting doubt that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time.
Had he really so greatly wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to get
to the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter of fact wanted
Margharita ten thousand times more than he had done? Hadn't she in
effect imposed Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctive
and delightful home upon him, regardlessly, because these things were
the natural and legitimate developments of herself?
These things were not his ends.
Had she hitherto ever really cared what his ends might be?
A phrase she had heard abundantly enough in current feminist discussion
recurred to her mind, "the economic dependence of women," and now for
the first time it was charged with meaning. She had imposed these things
upon him not because she loved him, but because these things that were
the expansions and consequences of her love for him were only obtainable
through him. A woman gives herself to a man out of love, and remains
clinging parasitically to him out of necessity. Was there no way of
evading that necessity?
For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous social reconstructions.
Suppose the community kept all its women, suppose all property in homes
and furnishings and children vested in them! That was Marjorie's version
of that idea of the Endowment of Womanhood which has been creeping into
contemporary thought during the last two decades. Then every woman would
be a Princess to the man she loved.... He became more definitely
personal. Suppose she herself was rich, then she could play the Princess
to Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered, happy and her lover!
Then, indeed, her gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts and
motives would but crown his unhampered life! She could not go on from
that idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie, from which she was roused
by the clock striking five.
In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home again. She could at least
be so much of a princess as to make his home sweet for his home-coming.
There should be tea in here, where callers did not trouble. She glanced
at an empty copper vase. It ached. There was no light in the room. There
would be just time to dash out into High Street and buy some flowers for
it before he came....