The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed Marjorie's feelings and
ideas even more than it had Trafford's. She came back struggling to
recover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they had
walked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory of
that vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of children
that would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcile
her to the inferiority of Margharita's equipment. She had a detestable
craving for a uniform for May. But May was going....
But indeed she was not so sure that May was going.
She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of indefinable
apprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control an
insurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had
now, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of the
Samurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yet
from day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended
things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that second-hand typewriter
she needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of the
new way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would not
leave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtive
solicitude and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem
cheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with
premonitions that grew daily.
There was no need to worry him unduly....
But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered her
courage together suddenly and came down into his study in her
dressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the door
and her heart failed her.
"Rag," she whispered.
"Yes," he said busily from his desk, without looking round.
"I want to speak to you," she answered, and came slowly, and stood
beside him silently.
"Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing a little intricate
pattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether this
was a matter of five pounds or ten.
"I meant so well," she said and caught herself back into silence again.
He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning in her voice, turned
his chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping and
choking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly and
silently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word or
gesture from her he knew his thought was right. "My dear," he whispered.
She turned her face from him. "I meant so well," she sobbed. "My dear! I
meant so well." Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in a
desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her close
to him. "Never mind, dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now was
unconstrained. "I thought--" he began, and left the thing unsaid.
"But your work," she said; "your research?"
"I must give up research," he said.
"Oh, my dearest!"
"I must give up research," he repeated. "I've been seeing it for days.
Clearer and clearer. _This_ dear, just settles things. Even--as we were
coming home in the train--I was making up my mind. At Vevey I was
talking to Solomonson."
"My dear," she whispered, clinging to him.
"I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas--a proposal."
"No," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I've left the thing too long."
He repeated. "I must give up research--for years. I ought to have done
it long before."
"I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to work. I meant to deny
myself...."
"I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should you weep?" It seemed nothing
to him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet
air of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he remembered
was that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that all
her being was now calling out for him and his strength. "I had thought
anyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This merely decides. It
happens to decide. I love you, dear. I put my research at your feet.
Gladly. This is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I do not
care at all--seeing I have you...."
He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat down again, sideways,
upon his chair.
"It isn't you, my dear, or me," he said, "but life that beats us--that
beautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for research or
knowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens of
thousands of years before--before we are free for that. I've got to
fight--as other men fight...."
He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. "But if it
was not you," he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, "if
I did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, our
children are love children! I want to live--to my finger-tips, but if I
didn't love you--oh! love you! then I think now--I'd be glad--I'd be
glad, I think, to cheat life of her victory."
"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to him, and caught at him
and sat herself upon his knees, and put her arms about his head, and
kissed him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair falling upon
his face.
"My dear," she whispered....