He felt he wanted to confirm and establish this new resolution, to go
right away to Labrador for a year. He wanted to tell someone the thing
definitely. He would have gone downstairs again to Marjorie, but she was
submerged and swimming desperately against the voluble rapids of Aunt
Plessington's purpose. It might be an hour before that attack withdrew.
Presently there would be other callers. He decided to have tea with his
mother and talk to her about this new break in the course of his life.
Except that her hair was now grey and her brown eyes by so much contrast
brighter, Mrs. Trafford's appearance had altered very little in the ten
years of her only son's marriage. Whatever fresh realizations of the
inevitably widening separation between parent and child these years had
brought her, she had kept to herself. She had watched her
daughter-in-law sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with perplexity,
always with a jealous resolve to let no shadow of jealousy fall between
them. Marjorie had been sweet and friendly to her, but after the first
outburst of enthusiastic affection, she had neither offered nor invited
confidences. Old Mrs. Trafford had talked of Marjorie to her son
guardedly, and had marked and respected a growing indisposition on his
part to discuss his wife. For a year or so after his marriage she had
ached at times with a sense of nearly intolerable loneliness, and then
the new interests she had found for herself had won their way against
this depression. The new insurrectionary movement of women that had
distinguished those years had attacked her by its emotion and repelled
her by its crudity, and she had resolved, quite in the spirit of the
man who had shaped her life, to make a systematic study of all the
contributory strands that met in this difficult tangle. She tried to
write, but she found that the poetic gift, the gift of the creative and
illuminating phrase which alone justifies writing, was denied to her,
and so she sought to make herself wise, to read and hear, and discuss
and think over these things, and perhaps at last inspire and encourage
writing in others.
Her circle of intimates grew, and she presently remarked with a curious
interest that while she had lost the confidences of her own son and his
wife, she was becoming the confidant of an increasing number of other
people. They came to her, she perceived, because she was receptive and
sympathetic and without a claim upon them or any interest to complicate
the freedoms of their speech with her. They came to her, because she did
not belong to them nor they to her. It is, indeed, the defect of all
formal and established relationship, that it embarrasses speech, and
taints each phase in intercourse with the flavour of diplomacy. One can
be far more easily outspoken to a casual stranger one may never see
again than to that inseparable other, who may misinterpret, who may
disapprove or misunderstand, and who will certainly in the measure of
that discord remember....
It became at last a matter of rejoicing to Mrs. Trafford that the ties
of the old instinctive tenderness between herself and her son, the
memories of pain and tears and the passionate conflict of childhood,
were growing so thin and lax and inconsiderable, that she could even
hope some day to talk to him again--almost as she talked to the young
men and young women who drifted out of the unknown to her and sat in
her little room and sought to express their perplexities and listened to
her advice....
It seemed to her that afternoon the wished-for day had come.
Trafford found her just returned from a walk in Kensington Gardens and
writing a note at her desk under the narrow sunlit window that looked
upon the High Street. "Finish your letter, little mother," he said, and
took possession of the hearthrug.
When she had sealed and addressed her letter, she turned her head and
found him looking at his father's portrait.
"Done?" he asked, becoming aware of her eyes.
She took her letter into the hall and returned to him, closing the door
behind her.
"I'm going away, little mother," he said with an unconvincing
off-handedness. "I'm going to take a holiday."
"Alone?"
"Yes. I want a change. I'm going off somewhere--untrodden ground as near
as one can get it nowadays--Labrador."
Their eyes met for a moment.
"Is it for long?"
"The best part of a year."
"I thought you were going on with your research work again."
"No." He paused. "I'm going to Labrador."
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm going to think."
She found nothing to say for a moment. "It's good," she remarked, "to
think." Then, lest she herself should seem to be thinking too
enormously, she rang the bell to order the tea that was already on its
way.
"It surprises a mother," she said, when the maid had come and gone,
"when her son surprises her."
"You see," he repeated, as though it explained everything, "I want to
think."
Then after a pause she asked some questions about Labrador; wasn't it
very cold, very desert, very dangerous and bitter, and he answered
informingly. How was he going to stay there? He would go up the country
with an expedition, build a hut and remain behind. Alone? Yes--thinking.
Her eyes rested on his face for a time. "It will be--lonely," she said
after a pause.
She saw him as a little still speck against immense backgrounds of snowy
wilderness.
The tea-things came before mother and son were back at essentials again.
Then she asked abruptly: "Why are you going away like this?"
"I'm tired of all this business and finance," he said after a pause.
"I thought you would be," she answered as deliberately.
"Yes. I've had enough of things. I want to get clear. And begin again
somehow."
She felt they both hung away from the essential aspect. Either he or she
must approach it. She decided that she would, that it was a less
difficult thing for her than for him.
"And Marjorie?" she asked.
He looked into his mother's eyes very quietly. "You see," he went on
deliberately disregarding her question, "I'm beached. I'm aground. I'm
spoilt now for the old researches--spoilt altogether. And I don't like
this life I'm leading. I detest it. While I was struggling it had a kind
of interest. There was an excitement in piling up the first twenty
thousand. But _now_--! It's empty, it's aimless, it's incessant...."
He paused. She turned to the tea-things, and lit the spirit lamp under
the kettle. It seemed a little difficult to do, and her hand trembled.
When she turned on him again it was with an effort.
"Does Marjorie like the life you are leading?" she asked, and pressed
her lips together tightly.
He spoke with a bitterness in his voice that astonished her. "Oh, _she_
likes it."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded.
"She won't like it without you."
"Oh, that's too much! It's her world. It's what she's done--what she's
made. She can have it; she can keep it. I've played my part and got it
for her. But now--now I'm free to go. I will go. She's got everything
else. I've done my half of the bargain. But my soul's my own. If I want
to go away and think, I will. Not even Marjorie shall stand in the way
of that."
She made no answer to this outburst for a couple of seconds. Then she
threw out, "Why shouldn't Marjorie think, too?"
He considered that for some moments. "She doesn't," he said, as though
the words came from the roots of his being.
"But you two----"
"We don't talk. It's astonishing--how we don't. We don't. We can't. We
try to, and we can't. And she goes her way, and now--I will go mine."
"And leave her?"
He nodded.
"In London?"
"With all the things she cares for."
"Except yourself."
"I'm only a means----"
She turned her quiet face to him. "You know," she said, "that isn't
true."...
"No," she repeated, to his silent contradiction.
"I've watched her," she went on. "You're _not_ a means. I'd have spoken
long ago if I had thought that. Haven't I watched? Haven't I lain awake
through long nights thinking about her and you, thinking over every
casual mood, every little sign--longing to help--helpless." ... She
struggled with herself, for she was weeping. "_It has come to this_,"
she said in a whisper, and choked back a flood of tears.
Trafford stood motionless, watching her. She became active. She moved
round the table. She looked at the kettle, moved the cups needlessly,
made tea, and stood waiting for a moment before she poured it out. "It's
so hard to talk to you," she said, "and about all this.... I care so
much. For her. And for you.... Words don't come, dear.... One says
stupid things."
She poured out the tea, and left the cups steaming, and came and stood
before him.
"You see," she said, "you're ill. You aren't just. You've come to an
end. You don't know where you are and what you want to do. Neither does
she, my dear. She's as aimless as you--and less able to help it. Ever so
much less able."
"But she doesn't show it. She goes on. She wants things and wants
things----"
"And you want to go away. It's the same thing. It's exactly the same
thing. It's dissatisfaction. Life leaves you empty and craving--leaves
you with nothing to do but little immediate things that turn to dust as
you do them. It's her trouble, just as it's your trouble."
"But she doesn't show it."
"Women don't. Not so much. Perhaps even she doesn't know it. Half the
women in our world don't know--and for a woman it's so much easier to go
on--so many little things."...
Trafford tried to grasp the intention of this. "Mother," he said, "I
mean to go away."
"But think of her!"
"I've thought. Now I've got to think of myself."
"You can't--without her."
"I will. It's what I'm resolved to do."
"Go right away?"
"Right away."
"And think?"
He nodded.
"Find out--what it all means, my boy?"
"Yes. So far as I'm concerned."
"And then----?"
"Come back, I suppose. I haven't thought."
"To her?"
He didn't answer. She went and stood beside him, leaning upon the
mantel. "Godwin," she said, "she'd only be further behind.... You've got
to take her with you."
He stood still and silent.
"You've got to think things out with her. If you don't----"
"I can't."
"Then you ought to go away with her----" She stopped.
"For good?" he asked.
"Yes."
They were both silent for a space. Then Mrs. Trafford gave her mind to
the tea that was cooling in the cups, and added milk and sugar. She
spoke again with the table between them.
"I've thought so much of these things," she said with the milk-jug in
her hand. "It's not only you two, but others. And all the movement about
us.... Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because
women have become human beings. Only----You know, Godwin, all these
things are so difficult to express. Woman's come out of being a slave,
and yet she isn't an equal.... We've had a sort of sham emancipation,
and we haven't yet come to the real one."
She put down the milk-jug on the tray with an air of grave deliberation.
"If you go away from her and make the most wonderful discoveries about
life and yourself, it's no good--unless she makes them too. It's no good
at all.... You can't live without her in the end, any more than she can
live without you. You may think you can, but I've watched you. You don't
want to go away from her, you want to go away from the world that's got
hold of her, from the dresses and parties and the competition and all
this complicated flatness we have to live in.... It wouldn't worry you a
bit, if it hadn't got hold of her. You don't want to get out of it for
your own sake. You _are_ out of it. You are as much out of it as any one
can be. Only she holds you in it, because she isn't out of it. Your
going away will do nothing. She'll still be in it--and still have her
hold on you.... You've got to take her away. Or else--if you go away--in
the end it will be just like a ship, Godwin, coming back to its
moorings."
She watched his thoughtful face for some moments, then arrested herself
just in time in the act of putting a second portion of sugar into each
of the cups. She handed her son his tea, and he took it mechanically.
"You're a wise little mother," he said. "I didn't see things in that
light.... I wonder if you're right."
"I know I am," she said.
"I've thought more and more,--it was Marjorie."
"It's the world."
"Women made the world. All the dress and display and competition."
Mrs. Trafford thought. "Sex made the world. Neither men nor women. But
the world has got hold of the women tighter than it has the men. They're
deeper in." She looked up into his face. "Take her with you," she said,
simply.
"She won't come," said Trafford, after considering it.
Mrs. Trafford reflected. "She'll come--if you make her," she said.
"She'll want to bring two housemaids."
"I don't think you know Marjorie as well as I do."
"But she can't----"
"She can. It's you--you'll want to take two housemaids for her. Even
you.... Men are not fair to women."
Trafford put his untasted tea upon the mantelshelf, and confronted his
mother with a question point blank. "Does Marjorie care for me?" he
asked.
"You're the sun of her world."
"But she goes her way."
"She's clever, she's full of life, full of activities, eager to make and
arrange and order; but there's nothing she is, nothing she makes, that
doesn't centre on you."
"But if she cared, she'd understand!"
"My dear, do _you_ understand?"
He stood musing. "I had everything clear," he said. "I saw my way to
Labrador...."
Her little clock pinged the hour. "Good God!" he said, "I'm to be at
dinner somewhere at seven. We're going to a first night. With the
Bernards, I think. Then I suppose we'll have a supper. Always life is
being slashed to tatters by these things. Always. One thinks in snatches
of fifty minutes. It's dementia...."