_To Gaillard T. Lapsley._
_Dictated._
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
17th June, 1898.
My dear G. T. L.
I am very unhappy and humiliated at not having succeeded in again
putting my hand on you, and the fear that you may possibly have departed
altogether is a fearful aggravation of my misery. Therefore I am verily
stricken--so stricken as to be incapable of holding a pen and to be
reduced to this ugly--by which I mean this thoroughly
beautiful--substitute. If I wait for a pen, God knows when or where I
shall overtake you. Accordingly, in my effort to catch up, I let
Remington shamelessly loose. I lash his sides--I damn his eyes. Be found
by him, my dear man, somehow or somewhere--before the burden of my shame
crushes me to the earth and I sink beneath it into a frequently desired
grave. The worst of it all is that I saw E. Fawcett yesterday and he
told me he really believed you _had_ gone. I hammer away, but I don't in
the least know where to send this. Fawcett gave me a sort of a tip--at
which I think I shall clutch. A day or two after I last saw you I went
out of town till the following Monday, and then, coming back, had but
the Tuesday here, crammed with a frenzy and fury of conflicting duties.
On Wednesday I was obliged to dash away again--to go down to Rye, where
domestic complications of the gravest order held me fast the rest of the
week, or at least till the Saturday, when I rushed up to town only in
time to rush off again and spend, at Cobham, two days with the Godkins,
to whose ensconcement there it had been, for a long time before, one of
the features of a devouring activity that I had responsibly helped to
contribute. But now that I am at home again till, as soon as possible,
I succeed in breaking away for the rest of the summer, I have lost you
beyond recall, and my affliction is deep and true. But we know what it
is better to have done even as an accompaniment of losing than never to
have done at all. And I didn't do nothing at all--on the contrary, I did
_that_: that which is better. This is but a flurried and feverish
word--hurried off in the hope of keeping your inevitable hating me from
becoming a settled habit. I follow you with much sympathy, and with
still more interest, attention and hope. I follow you, in short, with a
great many sentiments. May the great globe whirl round before long some
such holiday for you as will convert--for _me_--the pursuit I so
inadequately allude to into something in the nature of an encounter.
Only write to me. Do write to me. I mean when you begin to see your way.
I know you will have lots to do first--and I am very patient, as befits
one who is so constantly yours,