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."