The Argosy — page 363: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘“*We Fell Out, my Wife and I.” 347 Blundell, whichever it may be!” And I walked out of the room slamming the door after me, and feeling half sorry and half glad that Celia had scorned the olive branch of reconciliation I had held out to her. I now had a fairly plausible grievance—at least I thought I had— and I thrust my arms into my macintosh and took my umbrella out of the stand, with a grim satisfaction in the thought that by going out in weather like this—driven out into it by my wife’s obstinate refusal to make friends—I should probably catch a bad cold. ill the dramatic possibilities of this imaginary cold flittered before my mind’s eye in pleasing succession—chills to the liver—pleurisy— rheumatic fever. ‘* Perhaps she will be sorry then!” I muttered to myself as I shut the hall-door behind me, and walked ostentatiously under the drawing-room windows, whistling as I went, and striving to impart to my features a perfectly unconcerned, amiable expression. I thought I heard a tap at the window, and my name called, but I would not look up, and strode on with as much dignity as I could command. Once out of view of the windows, I paused to consider in which direction I should go to look for the pleurisy and rheumatism which were to bring my erring wife to a sense of her misdoings. I might either go down to the sands, which as far as I could see outlined the coast under the dark overhanging cliffs, or I might follow the main road which passed through the straggling village on into the country beyond. We had come by it the night of our arrival at St. Bridgets, and I had a vague remembrance of somewhat monotonous undulating downs. But just at this moment the relative merits of inland and coast scenery interested me comparatively little. ‘I'll toss up,” I said to myself. ‘‘ Heads the road—tails the sands.” Heads it was, so off I set along thd road. I passed through the village and walked on for some distance, mentally anathematising Matthew Dobson for having decoyed me into such a dead-alive kind of place. Nothing could be more depressingly commonplace than this well-kept road, with its close-cropped downs on each side, and its telegraph poles recurring at regular intervals. But any great wealth of scenery would have been thrown away upon me just then, for all my faculties were employed in a hand-to-hand encounter with the elements. The wind seemed to take a malicious pleasure in trying to tangle me up in my macintosh by driving the flapping tails in between my legs, and by getting under the cape and whirling it over my head and about my ears in a most bewildering fashion. Then, no sooner had I reduced the cape to comparative submission than a stronger gust than before lifted my hat off my head and sent it spinning along the road in front of me. I know no time when a man looks more thoroughly ridiculous EOMRRIC OOO SS (GO) i