“I’ll run down and telegraph myself, if you like,” said Edwin. “Of course you’ve written to her. She knows—”
“Oh yes!”
Five.
In a minute he was walking rapidly, with his ungainly, slouching stride, down Trafalgar Road, his overcoat flying loose. Another crisis was approaching, he thought. As he came to Duck Square, he met a newspaper boy shouting shrilly and wearing the contents bill of a special edition of the “Signal” as an apron: “Duke of Clarence. More serious bulletin.” The scourge and fear of influenza was upon the town, upon the community, tangible, oppressive, tragic.
In the evening calm of the shabby, gloomy post-office, holding a stubby pencil that was chained by a cable to the wall, he stood over a blank telegraph-form, hesitating how to word the message. Behind the counter an instrument was ticking unheeded, and far within could be discerned the vague bodies of men dealing with parcels. He wrote, “Cannon, 59 Preston Street, Brighton. George’s temperature 104.” Then he paused, and added, “Edwin.” It was sentimental. He ought to have signed Janet’s name. And, if he was determined to make the telegram personal, he might at least have put his surname. He knew it was sentimental, and he loathed sentimentality. But that evening he wanted to be sentimental.
He crossed to the counter, and pushed the form under the wire-netting.
A sleepy girl accepted it, and glanced mechanically at the clock, and then wrote the hour 7:42.
“It won’t be delivered to-night,” she said, looking up, as she counted the words.
“No, I know,” said Edwin.