For, consistently with his keeping his three hundred a year (more than two-thirds of which by one means and another he had contrived to save), he did not see that he could have done much more than he had done. Things would have been far worse had he allowed Mr. Wilkinson to oust him. And now he knew that this was the “Novum’s” finish. Whispers had reached him that behind important walls important questions were being asked, and a ponderous and slow-moving Department had approached another Body about certain finportations (Sir Joseph Deedes, Katie’s uncle, knew all about these things). And this and that and the other were going on behind the scenes; and these deep mutterings meant, if they meant anything at all, that it was time Edgar Strong was packing up.
Fruit-farming was the line he fancied; oranges in Florida; and it would not take long to book passages—passages for two——
He had heard the news in the early afternoon, and had straightway sent off an express messenger to the person for whom the second passage was destined. Within an hour this person had run up the stairs, without having met anybody on a landing whom it had been necessary to ask whether Mr. So-and-So, the poster artist, had a studio in the building. Edgar Strong’s occupation as she had entered had made words superfluous. He had been carrying armfuls of papers into the little room behind the office and thrusting them without examination on the fire. The girl had exchanged a few rapid sentences with him, had bolted out again, hailed a taxi, sought a Bank, done some business there on the stroke of four, and had driven thence to a shipping office. Edgar Strong, in Charing Cross Road, had continued to feed his fire. The whole place smelt of burning paper. A mountain of ashes choked the grate and spread out as far as the bed and the iron washstand in the corner.
The girl returned. From under the bed she pulled out a couple of bags. Into these she began to thrust her companion’s clothes. Into a third and smaller bag she crammed her own dressing-gown and slippers, a comb and a couple of whalebone brushes, and other things. She had brought word that the boat sailed the day after to-morrow....
“There’s the telephone—just answer it, will you?” Strong said, casting another bundle on the fire....
“Wyron,” said the girl, returning.
“Never mind those boots; they’re done; and you might get me a safety-razor; shall want it on the ship.... By the way—I think we’d better get married.”
The girl laughed.—“All right,” she said as she crammed a nightdress-case into the little bag....
Amory walked quickly down the East Heath. As she walked she could not help wondering what there had been to make such a fuss about. Indeed she had been making quite a bugbear of the thing she was now doing quite easily. What, after all, would it matter? Would a single one of the people she passed so hurriedly think her case in the least degree special? Had they not, each one of them, their own private and probably very similar affairs? Was there one of them of whom it could be said with certainty that he or she was not, at that very moment, bound on the same errand? She looked at the women. There was nothing to betray them, but it was quite as likely as not. Nor could they tell by looking at her. For that matter, the most resolute would hide it the most. And a person’s life was his own. Nobody would give him another one when he had starved and denied the one he had. There might not be another one. Some people said that there was, and some that there wasn’t. Meetings were held about that too, but so far they hadn’t seemed to advance matters very much....