Their mirth was short-lived, unfortunately. The first advertisement was productive of no result; and the solitary communication received after the appearance of the second was a circular from a typewriting office. The outlook now was as desperate as before the post on The World and his Wife turned up, and their pecuniary position was even worse than then. When they had been at Strawberry Hill a week, too, the warmth of the Walfords' manner towards their son-in-law had perceptibly decreased; and though Kent did not comment on the difference in his conferences with Cynthia, he knew that she was conscious of it by her acquiescing when he asserted that they had been here long enough.
At this stage he would have taken a clerkship gladly if it carried a salary sufficing for their needs; and after they had returned to Leamington Road, and had temporised with the landlord, and sold a wedding present for some taxes, and were living on credit from the tradespeople, he began to debate whether the wisest thing he could do wouldn't be to drown himself and relieve Cynthia's necessities with the money from his life policy.
The idea, which primarily presented itself as an extravagance, came, by reason of the frequency with which it recurred to him, to be revolved quite soberly; he wondered if Cynthia would grieve much, and if, when his boy could understand, she would talk to him of his "papa," or provide him with a stepfather. He did not, in these conjectures as to the post-mortem proceedings, lose sight of The Eye of the Beholder and devoutly he trusted that it would see the light after he was dead, and make so prodigious a stir that the names of the publishers who had refused it were held up to obloquy and scorn.
He was walking through Victoria Street towards the station one afternoon, and mentally lying in his grave while the world wept for him, when he was brought to an abrupt standstill by a greeting. He roused himself to realities with a start, and found that the white-gloved hand that waited to be taken by him belonged to Mrs. Deane-Pitt.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Kent? Are you trying to cut me?"
"I beg your pardon, I didn't see! It's awfully stupid of me; I'm always passing people like that."
"You've returned, then! For good?"
"Oh yes; we live in town, you know—in the suburbs, at least."
"You told me," she smiled. "'Battersea.'"
"So I did. 'Battersea' is Streatham, but that's a detail."