"'E 'as," said Kipps, irritably, holding firm to disaster.
"She say so?"
"She don't know, of course, but you depend upon it that's it. She told me she knew something was on, and when she found 'im gone and a note lef' for her she knew it was up with 'im. 'E went by the night boat. She wrote that telegram off to me straight away."
Ann surveyed his features with tender, perplexed eyes; she had never seen him so white and drawn before, and her hand rested an inch or so away from his arm. The actual loss was still, as it were, afar from her.
The immediate thing was his enormous distress.
"'Ow do you know----?" she said and stopped. It would irritate him too much.
Kipps' imagination was going headlong.
"Sold up!" he emitted presently, and Ann flinched.
"Going back to work, day after day--I can't stand it, Ann, I can't. And you----"
"It don't do to think of it," said Ann.
Presently he came upon a resolve. "I keep on thinking of it, and thinking of it, and what's to be done and what's to be done. I shan't be any good 'ome s'arfernoon. It keeps on going 'round and 'round in my 'ead, and 'round and 'round. I better go for a walk or something. I'd be no comfort to you, Ann. I should want to 'owl and 'ammer things if I 'ung about 'ome. My fingers is all atwitch. I shall keep on thinking 'ow I might 'ave stopped it and callin' myself a fool."...
He looked at her between pleading and shame. It seemed like deserting her.
Ann regarded him with tear-dimmed eyes.
"You'd better do what's good for you, Artie," she said.... "_I'll_ be best cleaning. It's no use sending off Gwendolen before her month, and the top room wants turning out." She added with a sort of grim humour: "May as well turn it out now while I got it."
"I _better_ go for a walk," said Kipps....
And presently our poor exploded Kipps was marching out to bear his sudden misery. Habit turned him up the road towards his growing house, and then suddenly he perceived his direction--"Oh, Lor'!"--and turned aside and went up the steep way to the hill crest and the Sandling Road, and over the line by that tree-embowered Junction, and athwart the wide fields towards Postling--a little, black, marching figure--and so up the Downs and over the hills, whither he had never gone before....
--2
He came back long after dark, and Ann met him in the passage.
"Where you been, Artie?" she asked, with a strained note in her voice.
"I been walking and walking--trying to tire myself out. All the time I been thinking what shall I do. Trying to fix something up all out of nothing."
"I didn't know you meant to be out all this time."
Kipps was gripped by compunction....
"I can't think what we ought to do," he said, presently.
"You can't do anything much, Artie, not till you hear from Mr. Bean."
"No; I can't do anything much. That's jest it. And all this time I keep feelin' if I don't do something the top of my 'ead'll bust.... Been trying to make up advertisements 'arf the time I been out--'bout finding a place, good salesman and stock-keeper, and good Manchester dresses, window-dressing--Lor'! Fancy that all beginning again!... If you went to stay with Sid a bit--if I sent every penny I got to you--I dunno! I dunno!"
When they had gone to bed there was an elaborate attempt to get to sleep.... In one of their great waking pauses Kipps remarked in a muffled tone: "I didn't mean to frighten you, Ann, being out so late. I kep' on walking and walking, and some'ow it seemed to do me good. I went out to the 'illtop ever so far beyond Stanford, and sat there ever so long, and it seemed to make me better. Just looking over the marsh like, and seeing the sun set."...
"Very likely," said Ann, after a long interval, "it isn't so bad as you think it is, Artie."
"It's bad," said Kipps.
"Very likely, after all, it isn't quite so bad. If there's only a little----"
There came another long silence.
"Ann," said Kipps in the quiet darkness.
"Yes," said Ann.
"Ann," said Kipps, and stopped as though he had hastily shut a door upon speech.
"I kep' thinking," he said, trying again, "I kep' thinking--after all--I been cross to you and a fool about things--about them cards, Ann; but"--his voice shook to pieces--"we _'ave_ been 'appy, Ann ... some'ow ... togever."
And with that he and then she fell into a passion of weeping. They clung very tightly together--closer than they had been since ever the first brightness of their married days turned to the grey of common life again.
All the disaster in the world could not prevent their going to sleep at last with their poor little troubled heads close together on one pillow.
There was nothing more to be done, there was nothing more to be thought; Time might go on with his mischiefs, but for a little while at least they still had one another.
--3
Kipps returned from his second interview with Mr. Bean in a state of strange excitement. He let himself in with his latch-key and slammed the door. "Ann!" he shouted, in an unusual note; "Ann!"
Ann replied distantly.
"Something to tell you," said Kipps; "something noo!"
Ann appeared apprehensive from the kitchen.
"Ann," he said, going before her into the little dining-room, for his news was too dignified for the passage, "very likely, Ann, o' Bean says, we shall 'ave----" He decided to prolong the suspense. "Guess!"
"I can't, Artie."
"Think of a lot of money!"
"A 'undred pounds p'raps?"
He spoke with immense deliberation. "O v e r a f o u s a n d p o u n d s!"
Ann stared and said nothing, only went a shade whiter.
"Over, he said. A'most certainly over."
He shut the dining-room door and came forward hastily, for Ann, it was clear, meant to take this mitigation of their disaster with a complete abandonment of her self-control. She came near flopping; she fell into his arms.