They parted that night resolved to go to Labrador together, with the
broad outline of their subsequent journey already drawn. Each lay awake
far into the small hours thinking of this purpose and of one another,
with a strange sense of renewed association. Each woke to a morning of
sunshine heavy-eyed. Each found that overnight decision remote and
incredible. It was like something in a book or a play that had moved
them very deeply. They came down to breakfast, and helped themselves
after the wonted fashion of several years, Marjorie with a skilful eye
to the large order of her household; the _Times_ had one or two
characteristic letters which interested them both; there was the usual
picturesque irruption of the children and a distribution of early
strawberries among them. Trafford had two notes in his correspondence
which threw a new light upon the reconstruction of the Norton-Batsford
company in which he was interested; he formed a definite conclusion upon
the situation, and went quite normally to his study and the telephone to
act upon that.
It was only as the morning wore on that it became real to him that he
and Marjorie had decided to leave the world. Then, with the
Norton-Batsford business settled, he sat at his desk and mused. His
apathy passed. His imagination began to present first one picture and
then another of his retreat. He walked along Oxford Street to his Club
thinking--"soon we shall be out of all this." By the time he was at
lunch in his Club, Labrador had become again the magic refuge it had
seemed the day before. After lunch he went to work in the library,
finding out books about Labrador, and looking up the details of the
journey.
But his sense of futility and hopeless oppression had vanished. He
walked along the corridor and down the great staircase, and without a
trace of the despairful hostility of the previous day, passed Blenkins,
talking grey bosh with infinite thoughtfulness. He nodded easily to
Blenkins. He was going out of it all, as a man might do who discovers
after years of weary incarceration that the walls of his cell are made
of thin paper. The time when Blenkins seemed part of a prison-house of
routine and invincible stupidity seemed ten ages ago.
In Pall Mall Trafford remarked Lady Grampians and the Countess of
Claridge, two women of great influence, in a big green car, on the way
no doubt to create or sustain or destroy; and it seemed to him that it
was limitless ages since these poor old dears with their ridiculous hats
and their ridiculous airs, their luncheons and dinners and dirty
aggressive old minds, had sent tidal waves of competitive anxiety into
his home....
He found himself jostling through the shopping crowd on the sunny side
of Regent Street. He felt now that he looked over the swarming,
preoccupied heads at distant things. He and Marjorie were going out of
it all, going clean out of it all. They were going to escape from
society and shopping, and petty engagements and incessant triviality--as
a bird flies up out of weeds.