He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips of pink and white, perforated, purple stamped and effaced, in a state of extreme astonishment. It was no small factor in his amazement to note how very carelessly some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been written. Several she had not even crossed. The effect of it all was that she'd just spent his money—freely—with an utter disregard of the consequences.
Up to that moment it had never occurred to Trafford that anybody one really cared for, could be anything but punctilious about money. Now here, with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he perceived that Marjorie wasn't.
It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting and startling, that he didn't for two days say a word to her about it. He couldn't think of a word to say. He felt that even to put these facts before her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty and selfishness that he hadn't the courage to make. His work stopped altogether. He struggled hourly with that accusation. Did she realize——? There seemed no escape from his dilemma; either she didn't care or she didn't understand!
His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when he had put all his money at her disposal. She had been surprised, and now he perceived she had also been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could find for her was that she was inexperienced—absolutely inexperienced.
Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh cheques....
He would have to pull himself together, and go into the whole thing—for all its infinite disagreeableness—with her....
But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.
He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory, and after lunching at his club he had come home and gone to his study in order to think out the discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to him as he sat at his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not very," he answered, and she came up to him, kissed his head, and stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder.
"Pass-book?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I've been overrunning."
"No end."
The matter was opened. What would she say?
She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going to overrun some more."
His voice was resentful. "You can't," he said compactly without looking at her. "You've spent—enough."
"There's—things."
"What things?"
Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll have to give a wedding present to Daffy.... I shall want—some more furniture."
Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think you can have it," he said, and then as she remained silent, "Marjorie, do you know how much money I've got?"
"Six thousand."
"I had. But we've spent nearly a thousand pounds. Yes—one thousand pounds—over and above income. We meant to spend four hundred. And now, we've got—hardly anything over five."
"Five thousand," said Marjorie.
"Five thousand."
"And there's your salary."
"Yes, but at this pace——"
"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came about his neck, "dear—there's something——"
She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice struck into him. He turned his head to see her face, rose to his feet staring at her.
This remarkable young woman had become soft and wonderful as April hills across which clouds are sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seen it before; her eyes bright with tears.
"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of money," she said. "I've got something——" Her voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things by thinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be true. It's too good to be true. It makes everything perfect.... We'll have to furnish that little room. I didn't dare to hope it—somehow. I've been so excited and afraid. But we've got to furnish that little room there—that empty little room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh my dear! my dear!"
§ 4
The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled and transfigured by the advent of their child.
For two days of abundant silences he had been preparing a statement of his case for her, he had been full of the danger to his research and all the waste of his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted to tell her just all that his science meant to him, explain how his income and life had all been arranged to leave him, mind and time and energy, free for these commanding investigations. His life was to him the service of knowledge—or futility. He had perceived that she did not understand this in him; that for her, life was a blaze of eagerly sought experiences and gratifications. So far he had thought out things and had them ready for her. But now all this impending discussion vanished out of his world. Their love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage. This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every other consideration.
This manifest probability came to him as if it were an unforeseen marvel. It was as if he had never thought of such a thing before, as though a fact entirely novel in the order of the universe had come into existence. Marjorie became again magical and wonderful for him, but in a manner new and strange, she was grave, solemn, significant. He was filled with a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionate desire to serve her. It seemed impossible to him that only a day or so ago he should have been accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, and searching for excuses and mitigations....
All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie returned, his keen sense of the sweet gallantry of her voice and bearing, his admiration for the swift, falconlike swoop of her decisions, for the grace and poise of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but now it was all charged with his sense of this new joint life germinating at the heart of her slender vigour, spreading throughout her being to change it altogether into womanhood for ever. In this new light his passion for research and all the scheme of his life appeared faded and unworthy, as much egotism as if he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any such aimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and faced him about. It was manifestly a monstrous thing that he should ever have expected Marjorie to become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfish intellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself to a mere bachelor income, and play no part of her own in the movement of the world. He knew better now. Research must fall into its proper place, and for his immediate business he must set to work to supplement his manifestly inadequate resources.
At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined that research must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he privately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, he thought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he was altogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a new problem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discovered himself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obvious possibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science or write. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazed at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point they were complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he interest like X—and here they named a notorious quack—could he draw? He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answered that for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as between professors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," he said, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and all that, but as no one seems able to understand you——" He went to his old fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing The Scientific Review, and through him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he found, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate of four-and-sixpence a mile—counting nothing for the lectures. Afterwards Gwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry. Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity, leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red marked the claims of domestic necessity.