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 tantalising 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
handbag 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 Elizabethbrunnen
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
sympathise 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 spiritualised, 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.