Herbert Wells - Marriage

"Let's make some," said Trafford.

"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without moving; "horrible! Where have you been?"

"I've been working. I got excited by my work. I've been at the laboratory. I've had the best spell of work I've ever had since our marriage."

"But I have been up all night!" she cried with her face and voice softening to tears. "How could you? How could you?"

He was surprised by her weeping. He was still more surprised by the self-abandonment that allowed her to continue. "I've been working," he repeated, and then looked about with a man's helplessness for the tea apparatus. One must have hot water and a teapot and a kettle; he would find those in the kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room, thinking out the further details of tea-making all mixed up with amazement at Marjorie, while she sat wiping her eyes with a crumpled pocket-handkerchief. Presently she followed him down with the rug about her like a shawl, and stood watching him as he lit a fire of wood and paper among the ashes in the kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful," she said, not offering to help.

"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got hold of my work at last."

"But you should have sent——"

"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."

"Forgot?"

"Absolutely."

"Forgot— me! "

"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly puzzled air, "you don't see it as I do."

The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he threw out a suggestion. "We'll have to have a telephone."

"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought of all sorts of things. I almost came round—but I was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."

He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.

"So that if I really want you——" said Marjorie. "Or if I just want to feel you're there."

"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of firewood into the glow; but it was chiefly present in his mind that much of that elaborate experimenting of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by the exasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring for attention. Hitherto the laboratory telephone had been in the habit of disconnecting itself early in the afternoon.

And yet after all it was this instrument, the same twisted wire and little quivering tympanum, that had brought back Marjorie into his life.

And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of mind. His banker had called his attention to the fact that his account was overdrawn to the extent of three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been under that vague sort of impression one always has about one's current account that he was a hundred and fifty or so to the good. His first impression was that those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen gnomes of the pass-book whose lucid figures, neat tickings, and unrelenting additions constituted banks to his imagination, must have made a mistake; his second that some one had tampered with a cheque. His third thought pointed to Marjorie and the easy circumstances of his home. For a fortnight now she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did not understand the change in her, but it sufficed to prevent his taking the thing to her at once and going into it with her as he would have done earlier. Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the presence of its neat columns realized for the first time the meaning of Marjorie's "three hundred pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridge tradesmen for her old debts, she had spent, he discovered, nearly seven hundred and fifty.

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! "

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.