During those few crowded days of unfamiliar living Trafford accumulated
a vast confused mass of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutely
the enormous gulf between his attitudes towards women and those of his
host and Solomonson--and indeed of all the other men. It had never
occurred to him before that there was any other relationship possible
between a modern woman and a modern man but a frank comradeship and
perfect knowledge, helpfulness, and honesty. That had been the continual
implication of his mother's life, and of all that he had respected in
the thought and writing of his time. But not one of these men in their
place--with the possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant but
ambiguous--believed anything of the sort. It necessarily involved in
practice a share of hardship for women, and it seemed fundamental to
them that women should have no hardship. He sought for a word, and hung
between chivalry and orientalism. He inclined towards chivalry. Their
women were lifted a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charm
was their obligation. "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed,"
said Radlett Barns in the course of the discussion of a contemporary
portrait painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious truth. "But she ought
to dress herself," said Barns. "It ought to be herself to the points of
the old lace--chosen and assimilated. It's just through not being that,
that so many rich women are--detestable. Heaps of acquisition.
Caddis-women...."
Trafford ceased to listen, he helped himself to a cigar and pinched its
end and lit it, while his mind went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful woman
should be beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone. He
couldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal it was devastating to
all the purposes of his life.
He rejected the word orientalism; what he was dealing with here was
chivalry. "All this," was indeed, under the thinnest of disguises, the
castle and the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant knights,
who entered the lists not indeed with spear and shield but with
prospectus and ingenious enterprise, who drew cheques instead of swords
for their ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection that
these exquisite and wonderful beings should flower in rich perfection.
All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above the
mire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for them
and returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historical
pearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as his
Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and follow
him, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life.
Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet and
wonderful....
If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned with redoubled force
when Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the night
train to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of the
train, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartment
and the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller
in shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat either
for Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayed
threateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with the
vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard had
twisted himself into a ghastly resemblance to a broken-necked corpse,
and pressed his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the small,
sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty widow woman in the
corner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the
seventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with an
unbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and the
silent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.
For a time until the crack of light overhead had widened again every one
became a dark head-dangling outline....
He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of her
pose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and
his thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting foetid
compartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place.
And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinite
gallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whatever
else she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her very
extravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just one
aspect of that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is timid;
so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How beautiful she had shone at
times in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now she
was back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining sword
thrust back into a rusty old sheath.
Was it fair that she should come back into the sheath because of this
passion of his for a vast inexhaustible research?
He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she would
follow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. And
she too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid of
her. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almost
instinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was his
alone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her nature
fighting against her profoundest resolutions.
He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of married life. How ugly
and selfish it must seem from that point of view.
He perceived for the first time the fundamental incongruity of
Marjorie's position, she was made to shine, elaborately prepared and
trained to shine, desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned and
hidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home. How conspicuously,
how extremely he must be wanting in just that sort of chivalry in which
Lee excelled! Those business men lived for their women to an extent he
had hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....
His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also an
extraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, a
self-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were to
give her--two years, three years perhaps of his life--altogether. Or
even four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at
his old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquished
since their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of a
business alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshness
and penetration to industrial development. Why shouldn't that be tried?
Why not "make money" for a brief strenuous time, and then come back,
when Marjorie's pride and comfort were secure?...
(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)
He wondered how much more remained of this appalling night. It would
have made so little difference if they had taken the day train and
travelled first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class?
Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness and
dignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....
He would have looked at his watch, but to get at it would mean
disturbing the silent young man on his left.
Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missing
coupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to the
facetious as _entente cordiale_, between an Englishman and the conductor
of the train....