After the marriage, Elizabeth breathed again and became almost human. Then and only then did she think of consulting a doctor, who diagnosed some minor female malady, told her to “avoid cohabitation” for a few weeks, and poofed with laughter at her pregnancy. George and Elizabeth took a flat in Chelsea, and within three months Elizabeth was just as “enlightened” as before and fuller of “freedom” than ever. Relieved by the doctor’s assurance that only an operation could enable her to have a child, she “had an affair” with a young man from Cambridge, and told George about it. George was rather surprised and peeved, but played the game nobly, and most gallantly yielded the flat up for the night whenever Elizabeth dropped a hint. Of course, he didn’t suffer as much deprivation as Elizabeth thought, because he invariably spent those nights with Fanny.
This went on until about the end of 1915. George, though attractive to women, had a first-rate talent for the malapropos in dealing with them. If he had told Elizabeth about his affair with Fanny at the moment when she was full-flushed with the young man from Cambridge, she would no doubt have acquiesced, and the thing would have been smoothed over. Unluckily for George, he felt so certain that Fanny was right and so certain that Elizabeth was right. He was perfectly convinced that Elizabeth knew all about him and Fanny, and that if they didn’t speak of it together the only reason was that “one took such things for granted”, no need to “cerebrise” about them. Then one night, when Elizabeth was getting tired of the young man from Cambridge, she was struck by the extraordinary alacrity George showed in “getting out”.
“But, darling,” she said, “isn’t it very expensive always going to a hotel? Can we afford it? And don’t you mind?”
“Oh no,” said the innocent George; “I shall run round and spend the night with Fanny as usual, you know.”
Then there was a blazing row, Elizabeth at George, and then Fanny at George, and then – epic contest – Elizabeth at Fanny. Poor old George got so fed up, he went off and joined the infantry, fell into the first recruiting office he came to, and was whisked off to a training camp in the Midlands. But, of course, that didn’t solve the situation. Elizabeth’s blood was up, and Fanny’s blood was up. It was Achilles against Hector, with George as the body of Patroclus. Not that either of them so horribly wanted George, but it was essential to each to come off victorious and “bag” him, with the not improbable epilogue of dropping him pretty quickly after he had been “bagged” away from the other woman. So they each wrote him tender and emotional and “understanding” letters, and sympathized with his sufferings under military discipline. Elizabeth came down to the Midlands to bag him for week-ends; and then one week when she was “having an affair” with a young American in the Flying Corps, George got his “firing leave” and spent it with Fanny. George was a bit obtuse with women. He was very fond of Elizabeth, but he was also very fond of Fanny. If he hadn’t been taken in with the “freedom” talk and had kept Elizabeth permanently in the dark about Fanny, he might have lived an enviable double life. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t, and never did, see that the “freedom” talk was only talk with the two women, although it was real enough to him. So he wrote them both the most imbecile and provocative letters, praised Elizabeth to Fanny, and Fanny to Elizabeth, and said how much he cared for them both; and he was like Shelley, and Elizabeth was like Mary, and Fanny was like Emilia Viviani. And he went on doing that even in France, right up to the end. And he never even suspected what an ass he was.
Of course, George had not set foot on the boat which took him to the Boulogne Base-Camp for the first time, before both Elizabeth and Fanny had become absorbed in other “affairs”. They only fought for George in a desultory way as a symbol, more to spite each other than because they wanted to saddle themselves with him.
Elizabeth was out when her telegram came from the War Office. She did not get it until nearly midnight, when she came back to the flat with a fascinating young Swedish painter she had met at a Chelsea “rag” that evening. She was a bit sozzled, and the young Swede – tall, blond and handsome – was more than a little fired with love and whisky. The telegram was lying on the door-mat with two or three letters. Elizabeth picked them up, and opened the telegram mechanically as she switched on the electric light. The Swede stood watching her drunkenly and amorously. She could not avoid a slight start, and turned a little pale.
“What’s the matter?”
Elizabeth laughed her high little nervous laugh, and laid the telegram and letters on the table.
“The War Office regrets that my husband has been killed in action.”
It was now the Swede’s turn to be startled.
“Your husband?… Perhaps I’d better…”
“Don’t be a bloody fool,” said Elizabeth sharply; “he went out of my life years ago. She’ll mind, but I shan’t.”
She cried a bit in the bathroom, however; but the Swede was certainly a very attentive lover. They drank a good deal of brandy, too.
Next day Elizabeth wrote to Fanny the first letter she had sent her for months:
“Only a line, darling, to tell you that I have a telegram from the W.O. to say George was killed in France on the 4th. I thought it would be less of a shock for you to hear it from me than acci-dentally. Come and see me when you get your weeps over, and we can hold a post-mortem.”
Fanny didn’t reply to the letter. She had been rather fond of George, and thought Elizabeth heartless. But Elizabeth too had been fond of George; only, she wasn’t going to give it away to Fanny. I saw a good deal of Elizabeth while settling up George’s scanty estate – mostly furniture and books in the flat, his credit at Cox’s, a few War Bonds, a little money due to him from civilian sources, and Elizabeth’s pension. However, it meant a certain amount of letter-writing, which Elizabeth was glad to have me do. I also saw Fanny once or twice, and took her the trifles George had left her. But I never saw the two women together – they avoided each other; and when my duties as executor were done, I saw very little of either. Fanny went to Paris in 1919, and soon married an American painter. I saw her in the Dome one night in 1924, pretty well rouged and quite nicely dressed, with a party. She was laughing and flirting with a middle-aged American – possibly an art patron – and didn’t look as if she mourned much for George. Why indeed should she?
As for Elizabeth, she rather went to pieces. With her father’s allowance, which doubled and became her own income when he died, and her widow’s pension, she was quite well off as poor people of the “artistic” sort go. She travelled a good deal, always with a pretty large brandy-flask, and had more lovers than were good for her – or them. I hadn’t seen her for years, until about a month ago I ran into her on the corner of the Piazzetta in Venice. She was with Stanley Hopkins, one of those extremely clever young novelists who oscillate between women and homosexuality. He had recently published a novel so exceedingly clever, so stupendously smart and up-to-date and witty and full of personalities about well-known people, that he was quite famous, especially in America, where all Hopkins’s brilliantly quacking and hissing and kissing geese were taken as melodious swans and (vide Press) as a “startling revelation of the corruption of the British Aristocracy.”