Regarding this as the most serious undertaking of my life, I had endeavoured to overlook nothing. I had obtained a marriage licence. A London registrar's office was to serve our purpose. I had previously secured a temporary lodging in London, and now went there with my luggage. Love did not blind me to practical considerations. While Cynthia was still in Dorking I had no time to spare. Now that she was entangled in her own home among last preparations for the wedding that was not to be, I turned my attention to matters affecting her future life with me.
Three afternoon appointments I kept with Arncliffe in the Advocate office. When I left him after our third talk, I was definitely re-engaged as a member of his staff, at a salary of six hundred pounds per annum, having promised to take up my duties with him in one month from that date. Every nerve in my body had been keyed to the attainment of this result, and I was grateful, and not a little flattered by its achievement. I was still a poor man; but this salary, with the few hundred pounds I might hope to add to it in a year, by means of independent literary work, would at all events mean that Cynthia need not face actual discomfort in her life with me. Further, I sincerely believed (and may very well have been correct in this) that her influence upon me would enlarge the scope and appeal of my literary work. I realised clearly that my beautiful lady-love had very much to give me. My life till then had not entirely lacked culture or intellectuality. But it emphatically had lacked that grace, that element of gentle fineness and delicacy which Cynthia would give it.
Cynthia, who in giving me herself would give all that I desired which my life had lacked, should come to me empty-handed, I thought. I did not want her to borrow from out the life which for my sake she was relinquishing. On the day before that fixed upon for the wedding at St. Margaret's, she should come to me in the park, near her home. There would be quite another sort of wedding, and by the evening train we would leave for the Continent. Every detail was arranged for. We met on the afternoon of the preceding day. I put my whole fate to the test, and Cynthia never wavered. We arranged to meet at two o'clock next day.
On the morning itself, just before noon, I hurried out from my lodging upon a final errand, intending to change my clothes and lock my bags, upon my return, within half an hour. My papers were in the pockets of the clothes I intended to wear, and a supply of money was left locked in my handbag. The most important moment of my life was at hand, and, as I walked down the crowded Strand into Fleet Street, I was conscious of such a measure of exaltation as I had never known before that day.
And then, for the second time in my life, brute force intervened, and made utter havoc of all my plans and prospects. Crossing Fleet Street, close to Chancery Lane, the pole of an omnibus struck my shoulder and flung me several yards along the road. The driver of a hansom cab shouted aloud as he jerked his horse to its haunches to avoid running over me. And in that moment, pawing wildly, the horse struck the back of my head with one of his fore feet.
For the second time in my life I lay in a hospital, suffering from concussion of the brain. Almost twelve hours passed before I first regained consciousness, and the morning of the following day was well advanced before I was able to inform the hospital authorities of my identity. No papers, nothing but a handful of silver, had been found in my pockets.
At eleven o'clock that morning there was solemnised at St. Margaret's Church the marriage of Cynthia and Charles Barthrop.
'If you call, I will come.'
But I had not called. I had even left Cynthia to pace to and fro through an afternoon in the park; at that most critical juncture in both our lives I had failed her. In a brief letter, posted to an address given me by her brother, I acquainted Cynthia with the facts of my accident, and nothing more than the facts.
In ten days I was out of the hospital; and Cynthia, another man's wife, was in Norway.