“‘Who is Lord George Kemp?’ ‘He’s a Blackstable man,’ he replied. I had
little time to think. I determined to be frank. ‘You’re well rid of
her,’ I said. ‘Allgood!’ he cried. I stopped and put my hand on his arm.
‘You must know that she was deceiving you with all your friends. Her
behaviour was a public scandal. My dear Edward, let us face the fact:
your wife was nothing but a common strumpet.’ He snatched his arm away
from me and gave a sort of low roar, like an orang-utan in the forests
of Borneo forcibly deprived of a cocoanut, and before I could stop him
he broke away and fled. I was so startled that I could do nothing but
listen to his cries and his hurrying footsteps.”
“You shouldn’t have let him go,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford. “In the
state he was he might have thrown himself in the Thames.”
“The thought occurred to me, but I noticed that he did not run in the
direction of the river, but plunged into the meaner streets of the
neighbourhood in which we had been walking. And I reflected also that
there is no example in literary history of an author committing suicide
while engaged on the composition of a literary work. Whatever his
tribulations, he is unwilling to leave to posterity an uncompleted
opus.”
I was astounded at what I heard and shocked and dismayed; but I was
worried too because I could not make out why Mrs. Trafford had sent for
me. She knew me much too little to think that the story could be of any
particular interest to me; nor would she have troubled to let me hear it
as a piece of news.
“Poor Edward,” she said. “Of course no one can deny that it is a
blessing in disguise, but I’m afraid he’ll take it very much to heart.
Fortunately he’s done nothing rash.” She turned to me. “As soon as Mr.
Newton told us about it I went round to Limpus Road. Edward was out, but
the maid said he’d only just gone; that means that he must have gone
home between the time he ran away from Allgood and this morning. You’ll
wonder why I asked you to come and see me.”