I suppose a passion of this sort comes to most men never, to a few just once and never leaves them. I haven't written a sensible word in an article since that eventful night in January, which now seems twenty or thirty years ago. Five minutes after I have left Elspeth I feel as if I had been separated from her for months and were never likely to see her again. I write the most pitiable, unmanly, mawkish letters to her: she bears with me wonderfully. I wonder if it would have been better for her if she married Conyngham. He has money and certainly would not be in danger of going off his head unless he was constantly with her. I had always been led to believe that the time of one's engagement was full of ecstatic joys. I wish I found it so. All I crave is marriage and never having to separate from Elspeth as long as I live. Every day this term, instead of playing cricket, I wander for miles alone, looking at all the cottages and bungalows along the shore to find a cheap enough place for us to live in.
Even Tony, though he does his best, cannot soothe me in my present paroxysms. It really is sheer cruelty to think of transplanting Elspeth from a place like Bath, away from society and shops and friends and games and amusements to a dead-alive hole like this, where she won't meet more than two girls of her own station in life in the year. I just spend my time in praying for the days to pass more quickly.
I had no idea that twenty-four hours could possibly take so long in the passing. Nothing contents me. I really try to plunge into my work but I have lost all interest for the moment, even in English. The only thing that consoles me is the fact that we have fixed the sixth of August for the wedding. I am like some Lower School fag: every day I cross off the date from five or six calendars, which I keep to show that so many days have gone, so many have still to go.
I have interviewed the Head Master about my staying and he wants me even as a married man. He has gone so far as to ask Elspeth to come up this term and stay with him.
Elspeth has all her time filled up making preparations for the wedding; she doesn't seem to miss me as I do her, which is after all not strange. I seem to be the girl in this affair and she the man. Every day I suffer more and more. Now the boys have nearly all got measles and I am picturing myself as getting them too just when she arrives. I have every sort of foreboding and dread on me all day and all night. I haven't slept since I came back this term. I wish I knew what was the matter with me. Day after day I watch for the post, waiting for the offer of some job to arrive. From the morning till the evening post seems a lifetime—but in the end I have been rewarded for my vigilant and arduous search. I have just heard from the Head Master of Marlton that he would like to see me on Wednesday with a view to my taking a post on his staff in September. I have written to Elspeth to meet me in London and come the rest of the way with me. I also mean to bring her back with me to Radchester: I can't stand the strain of this any longer.
June 11, 1913
I went to see Marlton and Elspeth joined me in London. It is as about as different from Radchester as Heaven from Hell. It is about the most beautiful old town I have ever seen. The country round is densely wooded, with undulating hills of no very great height, but extraordinarily picturesque. After leaving Lewes—it's in Sussex—one seems to lose all touch with the hurry of modern life: only the slowest of slow trains stops at Marlton. We were met at the old-world station, at which no one seems ever to alight, by a courteous old butler, who led us up past the castle and the kennels to the Priory, a huge Gothic church most beautifully proportioned, with flying buttresses on the north and south. The school is an adjunct of the Priory and is exactly like an Oxford College: it has the same perfectly kept lawns, the same remoteness from actuality, the same quaint old cloisters and tiny courts and quadrangles. All the buildings are hoary with age and ivy-covered. The Head Master's house is set right in the middle of the school buildings: the boys live in more modern houses scattered here and there about the town. The Head Master and his wife were exceedingly pleasant both to Elspeth and myself. They showed us over the buildings, which are indescribably beautiful; the boys are all quieter and far more gentlemanly than the northerners and looked attractive and friendly. We went down to the playing fields and watched them at cricket. They have none of our absurd rules here: there are no bounds and boys are given as much personal liberty as if they were at home. It will be splendid to teach in such a place. Both Elspeth and I were enchanted with it. After a titanic battle, I managed to get her to agree to come back to Radchester to stay for a few days with the Head Master of the Preparatory School, who has always been good to me. Poor Elspeth! When she saw the bleak desolate plain of Radchester she nearly wept. Thank God we are not going to live here. She stayed at the Prep. for ten days and I spent every spare second with her. Every morning I used to go down to fetch her and she used to come up the shore to meet me, looking just lovely. She would sit and sew in my rooms all day so that I could get to her at once after school and I abandoned all games so that I could be with her. After ten days she could stay no longer at the Prep. and the Head Master had not asked her for another month, so I had to try all sorts of people to see if they would entertain her. No one would! So she had to go home. I couldn't do without her: I thought I should go mad.
One morning the doctor came round and told me that I ought to give myself a rest, that my nerves were giving way, that he would fix up leave for me—that I was simply to go away at once. So without saying good-bye to any of my four-years' friends I packed a suit-case and left.
It seems impossible to believe, now that I am back in Bath with Elspeth, that I can ever have suffered as I did: it is all like the dim recollection of some horrible nightmare. I miss my boys, I miss my form, I hate to think of another man usurping my rooms, my place in chapel, taking my work—but the break is final. This morning I received all my books, my pictures, my clothes, everything that I had collected in my four years and Radchester and I part company for ever.