Chapter 30

A WITHDRAWAL.

On Tuesday Lewisham returned from Vigours' at five--at half-past six
he would go on to his science class at Walham Green--and discovered
Mrs. Chaffery and Ethel in tears. He was fagged and rather anxious for
some tea, but the news they had for him drove tea out of his head
altogether.

"He's gone," said Ethel.

"Who's gone? What! Not Chaffery?"

Mrs. Chaffery, with a keen eye to Lewisham's behaviour, nodded
tearfully over an experienced handkerchief.

Lewisham grasped the essentials of the situation forthwith, and
trembled on the brink of an expletive. Ethel handed him a letter.

For a moment Lewisham held this in his hand asking;
questions. Mrs. Chaffery had come upon it in the case of her eight-day
clock when the time to wind it came round. Chaffery, it seemed, had
not been home since Saturday night. The letter was an open one
addressed to Lewisham, a long rambling would-be clever letter, oddly
inferior in style to Chaffery's conversation. It had been written some
hours before Chaffery's last visit his talk then had been perhaps a
sort of codicil.

"The inordinate stupidity of that man Lagune is driving me out of the
country," Lewisham saw. "It has been at last a definite stumbling
block--even a legal stumbling block. I fear. I am off. I skedaddle. I
break ties. I shall miss our long refreshing chats--you had found me
out and I could open my mind. I am sorry to part from Ethel also, but
thank Heaven she has you to look to! And indeed they both have you to
look to, though the 'both' may be a new light to you."

Lewisham growled, went from page 1 to page 3--conscious of their both
looking to him now--even intensely--and discovered Chaffery in a
practical vein.

"There is but little light, and portable property in that house in
Clapham that has escaped my lamentable improvidence, but there are one
or two things--the iron-bound chest, the bureau with a broken hinge,
and the large air pump--distinctly pawnable if only you can contrive
to get them to a pawnshop. You have more Will power than I--I never
could get the confounded things downstairs. That iron-bound box was
originally mine, before I married your mother-in-law, so that I am not
altogether regardless of your welfare and the necessity of giving some
equivalent. Don't judge me too harshly."

Lewisham turned over sharply without finishing that page.

"My life at Clapham," continued the letter, "has irked me for some
time, and to tell you the truth, the spectacle of your vigorous young
happiness--you are having a very good time, you know, fighting the
world--reminded me of the passing years. To be frank in