Part 13 (2/2)

”Oh, my dear, dreaming poet,” she wrote to Oxford, ”how could you possibly send me a letter to be laid on the breakfast-table beside _The Times_! With a poem in it, too. Fortunately my husband was in a hurry to get down to the City, and he neglected to read my correspondence. ('The unchivalrous blackguard,' John commented. 'But what can be expected of a woman beater?') Never, never write to me again at the house. A letter, care of Mrs. Best, 8A Foley Street, W.C., will always find me. She is my maid's mother. And you must not come here either, my dear handsome head-in-the-clouds, except to my 'At Homes,' and then only at judicious intervals. I shall be walking round the pond in Kensington Gardens at four next Wednesday, unless Mrs. Best brings me a letter to the contrary. And now thank you for your delicious poem; I do not recognise my humble self in the dainty lines, but I shall always be proud to think I inspired them. Will it be in the new volume? I have never been in print before; it will be a novel sensation. I cannot pay you song for song, only feeling for feeling. Oh, John Lefolle, why did we not meet when I had still my girlish dreams? Now, I have grown to distrust all men--to fear the brute beneath the cavalier....”

Mrs. Best did bring her a letter, but it was not to cancel the appointment, only to say he was not surprised at her horror of the male s.e.x, but that she must beware of false generalisations. Life was still a wonderful and beautiful thing--_vide_ poem enclosed. He was counting the minutes till Wednesday afternoon. It was surely a popular mistake that only sixty went to the hour.

This chronometrical reflection recurred to him even more poignantly in the hour that he circ.u.mambulated the pond in Kensington Gardens.

Had she forgotten--had her husband locked her up? What could have happened? It seemed six hundred minutes, ere, at ten past five she came tripping daintily towards him. His brain had been reduced to insanely devising problems for his pupils--if a man walks two strides of one and a half feet a second round a lake fifty acres in area, in how many turns will he overtake a lady who walks half as fast and isn't there?--but the moment her pink parasol loomed on the horizon, all his long misery vanished in an ineffable peace and uplifting.

He hurried, bare-headed, to clasp her little gloved hand. He had forgotten her unpunctuality, nor did she remind him of it.

”How sweet of you to come all that way,” was all she said, and it was a sufficient reward for the hours in the train and the six hundred minutes among the nursemaids and perambulators. The elms were in their glory, the birds were singing briskly, the water sparkled, the sunlit sward stretched fresh and green--it was the loveliest, coolest moment of the afternoon. John instinctively turned down a leafy avenue.

Nature and Love! What more could poet ask?

”No, we can't have tea by the Kiosk,” Mrs. Glamorys protested. ”Of course I love anything that savours of Paris, but it's become so fas.h.i.+onable. There will be heaps of people who know me. I suppose you've forgotten it's the height of the season. I know a quiet little place in the High Street.” She led him, unresisting but bemused, towards the gate, and into a confectioner's. Conversation languished on the way.

”Tea,” he was about to instruct the pretty attendant.

”Strawberry ices,” Mrs. Glamorys remarked gently. ”And some of those nice French cakes.”

The ice restored his spirits, it was really delicious, and he had got so hot and tired, pacing round the pond. Decidedly Winifred was a practical person and he was a dreamer. The pastry he dared not touch--being a genius--but he was charmed at the gaiety with which Winifred crammed cake after cake into her rosebud of a mouth. What an enchanting creature! How bravely she covered up her life's tragedy!

The thought made him glance at her velvet band--it was broader than ever.

”He has beaten you again!” he murmured furiously. Her joyous eyes saddened, she hung her head, and her fingers crumbled the cake. ”What is his pretext?” he asked, his blood burning.

”Jealousy,” she whispered.

His blood lost its glow, ran cold. He felt the bully's blows on his own skin, his romance turning suddenly sordid. But he recovered his courage. He, too, had muscles. ”But I thought he just missed seeing me kiss your hand.”

She opened her eyes wide. ”It wasn't you, you darling old dreamer.”

He was relieved and disturbed in one.

”Somebody else?” he murmured. Somehow the vision of the player-fellow came up.

She nodded. ”Isn't it lucky he has himself drawn a red-herring across the track? I didn't mind his blows--you were safe!” Then, with one of her adorable transitions, ”I am dreaming of another ice,” she cried with roguish wistfulness.

”I was afraid to confess my own greediness,” he said, laughing. He beckoned the waitress. ”Two more.”

”We haven't got any more strawberries,” was her unexpected reply.

”There's been such a run on them to-day.”

Winifred's face grew overcast. ”Oh, nonsense!” she pouted. To John the moment seemed tragic.

”Won't you have another kind?” he queried. He himself liked any kind, but he could scarcely eat a second ice without her.

Winifred meditated. ”Coffee?” she queried.

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