Marjorie was surprised to find how easy it was at last to part from her
children and go with Trafford.
"I am not sorry," she said, "not a bit sorry--but I am fearfully afraid.
I shall dream they are ill.... Apart from that, it's strange how you
grip me and they don't...."
In the train to Liverpool she watched Trafford with the queer feeling
which comes to all husbands and wives at times that that other partner
is indeed an undiscovered stranger, just beginning to show perplexing
traits,--full of inconceivable possibilities.
For some reason his tearing her up by the roots in this fashion had
fascinated her imagination. She felt a strange new wonder at him that
had in it just a pleasant faint flavour of fear. Always before she had
felt a curious aversion and contempt for those servile women who are
said to seek a master, to want to be mastered, to be eager even for the
physical subjugations of brute force. Now she could at least understand,
sympathize even with them. Not only Trafford surprised her but herself.
She found she was in an unwonted perplexing series of moods. All her
feelings struck her now as being incorrect as well as unexpected; not
only had life become suddenly full of novelty but she was making novel
responses. She felt that she ought to be resentful and tragically sorry
for her home and children. She felt this departure ought to have the
quality of an immense sacrifice, a desperate and heroic undertaking for
Trafford's sake. Instead she could detect little beyond an adventurous
exhilaration when presently she walked the deck of the steamer that was
to take her to St. John's. She had visited her cabin, seen her luggage
stowed away, and now she surveyed the Mersey and its shipping with a
renewed freshness of mind. She was reminded of the day, now nearly nine
years ago, when she had crossed the sea for the first time--to Italy.
Then, too, Trafford had seemed a being of infinitely wonderful
possibilities.... What were the children doing?--that ought to have been
her preoccupation. She didn't know; she didn't care! Trafford came and
stood beside her, pointed out this and that upon the landing stage, no
longer heavily sullen, but alert, interested, almost gay....
Neither of them could find any way to the great discussion they had set
out upon, in this voyage to St. John's. But there was plenty of time
before them. Plenty of time! They were both the prey of that uneasy
distraction which seems the inevitable quality of a passenger steamship.
They surveyed and criticized their fellow travellers, and prowled up and
down through the long swaying days and the cold dark nights. They slept
uneasily amidst fog-horn hootings and the startling sounds of waves
swirling against the ports. Marjorie had never had a long sea voyage
before; for the first time in her life she saw all the world, through a
succession of days, as a circle of endless blue waters, with the stars
and planets and sun and moon rising sharply from its rim. Until one has
had a voyage no one really understands that old Earth is a watery
globe.... They ran into thirty hours of storm, which subsided, and then
came a slow time among icebergs, and a hooting, dreary passage through
fog. The first three icebergs were marvels, the rest bores; a passing
collier out of her course and pitching heavily, a lonely black and dirty
ship with a manner almost derelict, filled their thoughts for half a
day. Their minds were in a state of tedious inactivity, eager for such
small interests and only capable of such small interests. There was no
hurry to talk, they agreed, no hurry at all, until they were settled
away ahead there among the snows. "There we shall have plenty of time
for everything...."
Came the landfall and then St. John's, and they found themselves side by
side watching the town draw near. The thought of landing and
transference to another ship refreshed them both....
They were going, Trafford said, in search of God, but it was far more
like two children starting out upon a holiday.