Their subsequent correspondence was only the more amorous. The reason
she had fled from the hotel, she explained, was that she could not
endure the night in those stuffy quarters. He consoled himself with the
hope of seeing much of her during the Long Vacation. He did see her once
at her own reception, but this time her husband wandered about the two
rooms. The cosy corner was impossible, and they could only manage to
gasp out a few mutual endearments amid the buzz and movement, and to
arrange a _rendezvous_ for the end of July. When the day came, he
received a heart-broken letter, stating that her husband had borne her
away to Goodwood. In a postscript she informed him that 'Quicksilver was
a sure thing'. Much correspondence passed without another meeting being
effected, and he lent her five pounds to pay a debt of honour incurred
through her husband's 'absurd confidence in Quicksilver'. A week later
this horsey husband of hers brought her on to Brighton for the races
there, and hither John Lefolle flew. But her husband shadowed her, and
he could only lift his hat to her as they passed each other on the
Lawns. Sometimes he saw her sitting pensively on a chair while her lord
and thrasher perused a pink sporting-paper. Such tantalizing proximity
raised their correspondence through the Hove Post Office to fever heat.
Life apart, they felt, was impossible, and, removed from the sobering
influences of his cap and gown, John Lefolle dreamed of throwing
everything to the winds. His literary reputation had opened out a new
career. The Winifred lyrics alone had brought in a tidy sum, and though
he had expended that and more on despatches of flowers and trifles to
her, yet he felt this extravagance would become extinguished under daily
companionship, and the poems provoked by her charms would go far towards
their daily maintenance. Yes, he could throw up the University. He would
rescue her from this bully, this gentleman bruiser. They would live
openly and nobly in the world's eye. A poet was not even expected to be
conventional.
She, on her side, was no less ardent for the great step. She raged
against the world's law, the injustice by which a husband's cruelty was
not sufficient ground for divorce. 'But we finer souls must take the law
into our own hands,' she wrote. 'We must teach society that the ethics
of a barbarous age are unfitted for our century of enlightenment.' But
somehow the actual time and place of the elopement could never get
itself fixed. In September her husband dragged her to Scotland, in
October after the pheasants. When the dramatic day was actually fixed,
Winifred wrote by the next post deferring it for a week. Even the few
actual preliminary meetings they planned for Kensington Gardens or
Hampstead Heath rarely came off. He lived in a whirling atmosphere of
express letters of excuse, and telegrams that transformed the situation
from hour to hour. Not that her passion in any way abated, or her
romantic resolution really altered: it was only that her conception of
time and place and ways and means was dizzily mutable.
But after nigh six months of palpitating negotiations with the adorable
Mrs. Glamorys, the poet, in a moment of dejection, penned the prose
apophthegm, 'It is of no use trying to change a changeable person.'
V
But at last she astonished him by a sketch plan of the elopement, so
detailed, even to band-boxes and the Paris night route _via_ Dieppe,
that no further room for doubt was left in his intoxicated soul, and he
was actually further astonished when, just as he was putting his
hand-bag into the hansom, a telegram was handed to him saying: 'Gone to
Homburg. Letter follows.'
He stood still for a moment on the pavement in utter distraction. What
did it mean? Had she failed him again? Or was it simply that she had
changed the city of refuge from Paris to Homburg? He was about to name
the new station to the cabman, but then, 'letter follows'. Surely that
meant that he was to wait for it. Perplexed and miserable, he stood with
the telegram crumpled up in his fist. What a ridiculous situation! He
had wrought himself up to the point of breaking with the world and his
past, and now--it only remained to satisfy the cabman!
He tossed feverishly all night, seeking to soothe himself, but really
exciting himself the more by a hundred plausible explanations. He was
now strung up to such a pitch of uncertainty that he was astonished for
the third time when the 'letter' did duly 'follow'.
* * * * *
'Dearest,' it ran, 'as I explained in my telegram, my husband became
suddenly ill'--('if she _had_ only put that in the telegram,' he
groaned)--'and was ordered to Homburg. Of course it was impossible to
leave him in this crisis, both for practical and sentimental reasons.
You yourself, darling, would not like me to have aggravated his illness
by my flight just at this moment, and thus possibly have his death on my
conscience.' ('Darling, you are always right,' he said, kissing the
letter.) 'Let us possess our souls in patience a little longer. I need
not tell you how vexatious it will be to find myself nursing him in
Homburg--out of the season even--instead of the prospect to which I had
looked forward with my whole heart and soul. But what can one do? How
true is the French proverb, 'Nothing happens but the unexpected'! Write
to me immediately _Poste Restante_, that I may at least console myself
with your dear words.'
The unexpected did indeed happen. Despite draughts of Elizabeth-brunnen
and promenades on the Kurhaus terrace, the stalwart woman beater
succumbed to his malady. The curt telegram from Winifred gave no
indication of her emotions. He sent a reply-telegram of sympathy with
her trouble. Although he could not pretend to grieve at this sudden
providential solution of their life-problem, still he did sincerely
sympathize with the distress inevitable in connection with a death,
especially on foreign soil.
He was not able to see her till her husband's body had been brought
across the North Sea and committed to the green repose of the old
Hampstead churchyard. He found her pathetically altered--her face wan
and spiritualized, and all in subtle harmony with the exquisite black
gown. In the first interview, he did not dare speak of their love at
all. They discussed the immortality of the soul, and she quoted George
Herbert. But with the weeks the question of their future began to force
its way back to his lips.
'We could not decently marry before six months,' she said, when
definitely confronted with the problem.
'Six months!' he gasped.
'Well, surely you don't want to outrage everybody,' she said, pouting.
At first he was outraged himself. What! She who had been ready to
flutter the world with a fantastic dance was now measuring her
footsteps. But on reflection he saw that Mrs. Glamorys was right once
more. Since Providence had been good enough to rescue them, why should
they fly in its face? A little patience, and a blameless happiness lay
before them. Let him not blind himself to the immense relief he really
felt at being spared social obloquy. After all, a poet could be
unconventional in his _work_--he had no need of the practical outlet
demanded for the less gifted.