He let himself in with his latchkey.
Malcolm, his man, hovered at the foot of the staircase, and came forward
for his hat and gloves and stick.
"Mrs. Trafford in?" asked Trafford.
"She said she would be in by four, sir."
Trafford glanced at his watch and went slowly upstairs.
On the landing there had been a rearrangement of the furniture, and he
paused to survey it. The alterations had been made to accommodate a big
cloisonne jar, that now glowed a wonder of white and tinted whites and
luminous blues upon a dark, deep-shining stand. He noted now the curtain
of the window had been changed from something--surely it had been a
reddish curtain!--to a sharp clear blue with a black border, that
reflected upon and sustained and encouraged the jar tremendously. And
the wall behind--? Yes. Its deep brown was darkened to an absolute black
behind the jar, and shaded up between the lacquer cabinets on either
hand by insensible degrees to the general hue. It was wonderful,
perfectly harmonious, and so subtly planned that it seemed it all might
have grown, as flowers grow....
He entered the drawing-room and surveyed its long and handsome spaces.
Post-impressionism was over and gone; three long pictures by young
Rogerson and one of Redwood's gallant bronzes faced the tall windows
between the white marble fireplaces at either end. There were two lean
jars from India, a young boy's head from Florence, and in a great bowl
in the remotest corner a radiant mass of azaleas....
His mood of wondering at familiar things was still upon him. It came to
him as a thing absurd and incongruous that this should be his home. It
was all wonderfully arranged into one dignified harmony, but he felt now
that at a touch of social earthquake, with a mere momentary lapse
towards disorder, it would degenerate altogether into litter, lie heaped
together confessed the loot it was. He came to a stop opposite one of
the Rogersons, a stiffly self-conscious shop girl in her Sunday clothes,
a not unsuccessful emulation of Nicholson's wonderful Mrs. Stafford of
Paradise Row. Regarded as so much brown and grey and amber-gold, it was
coherent in Marjorie's design, but regarded as a work of art, as a piece
of expression, how madly irrelevant was its humour and implications to
that room and the purposes of that room! Rogerson wasn't perhaps trying
to say much, but at any rate he was trying to say something, and Redwood
too was asserting freedom and adventure, and the thought of that
Florentine of the bust, and the patient, careful Indian potter, and
every maker of all the little casual articles about him, produced an
effect of muffled, stifled assertions. Against this subdued and
disciplined background of muted, inarticulate cries,--cries for beauty,
for delight, for freedom, Marjorie and her world moved and rustled and
chattered and competed--wearing the skins of beasts, the love-plumage of
birds, the woven cocoon cases of little silkworms....
"Preposterous," he whispered.
He went to the window and stared out; turned about and regarded the
gracious variety of that long, well-lit room again, then strolled
thoughtfully upstairs. He reached the door of his study, and a sound of
voices from the schoolroom--it had recently been promoted from the rank
of day nursery to this level--caught his mood. He changed his mind,
crossed the landing, and was welcomed with shouts.
The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita, that child of the dreadful
dawn, was now a sturdy and domineering girl of eight, and she was
attired in a gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin blouse so
tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves, a broad crimson band
doing duty as a stole. She was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot
of the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered,
pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of nearly seven and very
happy now in a white dragoon's helmet and rude but effective brown paper
breastplate and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A small
acolyte in what was in all human probably one of the governess's more
intimate linen garments assisted Becket, while the general congregation
of Canterbury was represented by Edward, aged two, and the governess,
disguised with a Union Jack tied over her head after the well-known
fashion of the middle ages. After the children had welcomed their father
and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned to it with solemn
earnestness, while Trafford surveyed the tragedy. Godwin slew with
admirable gusto, and I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed
half the stately dignity of Margharita.
The scene finished, they went on to the penance of Henry the Second; and
there was a tremendous readjustment of costumes, with much consultation
and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring to the long,
white-painted room, with its gay frieze of ships and gulls and its
rug-variegated cork carpet of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his
wife's quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness of it
all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the writing desks, the little
library of books, the flowers and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks
and bricks and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children learnt
to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen German colour prints
upon the walls. And the children did credit to their casket; they were
not only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward was already a
person of conversation. They were good stuff anyhow....
It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have given up his own
motives and curiosities to afford this airy pleasantness of upbringing
for them, and then came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn
for the sake of another generation have to give up fine occupations for
mean occupations, deep thoughts for shallow? Would the world get them in
turn? Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous
marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms might still prevail? Would the
boys, after this gracious beginning, presently have to swim submerged in
another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk, toil in arduous
self-seeking, observe, respect and manipulate shams, succeed or fail,
and succeeding, beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another
generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations, and so die at
last--as he must die?...
He heard his wife's clear voice in the hall below, and went down to meet
her. She had gone into the drawing-room, and he followed her in and
through the folding doors to the hinder part of the room, where she
stood ready to open a small bureau. She turned at his approach, and
smiled a pleasant, habitual smile....
She was no longer the slim, quick-moving girl who had come out of the
world to him when he crawled from beneath the wreckage of Solomonson's
plane, no longer the half-barbaric young beauty who had been revealed to
him on the staircase of the Vevey villa. She was now a dignified,
self-possessed woman, controlling her house and her life with a skilful,
subtle appreciation of her every point and possibility. She was wearing
now a simple walking dress of brownish fawn colour, and her hat was
touched with a steely blue that made her blue eyes seem handsome and
hard, and toned her hair to a merely warm brown. She had, as it were,
subdued her fine colours into a sheath in order that she might presently
draw them again with more effect.
"Hullo, old man!" she said, "you home?"