Warm day” said the policeman.
The man thus addressed looked up from the steps, where he was sitting
bareheaded, and nodded. Then, rather quickly, he put on his hat.
“Not much Bank Holiday hereabouts.”
“So much the better,” said the man.
“It’s all very well for them as likes it,” said the policeman, wiping
his forehead.
It was the first Monday in August, and his beat was not a lively one.
Curiosity had attracted him toward the sitting figure, and the social
instinct prompted conversation. Receiving, however, an uninterested nod
in reply to his last remark, he turned away reluctantly and continued
his slow tramp up the street.
The man took no notice of his departure, but, resting his chin on his
hands, gazed wistfully across the road. Why he had come here to Holland
Park he scarcely knew. Perhaps, in his aimless walk from his lodgings
in Pimlico, he had unconsciously followed a once familiar track that had
brought him to a spot filled with sweet and bitter associations.
The blinds were drawn in the great house opposite that stared white in
the noonday sun. A beer-can hanging on the area railings announced the
caretaker. Like most of the mansions in the long, well-kept street, it
seemed abandoned to sun and silence.
It was the first time he had seen the house since the cloud had fallen
upon his life. Once its interior had been as familiar to him as his own
boyhood’s home. Its inmates gave him flattering welcome. He was courted
for his brilliant promise and admired for his good looks. A whisper of
feasting and riotous living that hovered around his reputation caused
him to be petted by the household as the prodigal cousin. The comforts
of wealth, the charm of refinement, the warmth of affection, were his
whenever he chose to knock for admittance at that door. Now he had lost
them all, as irrevocably as Adam lost Eden. He was an outcast among men.
Not only had he forfeited his right to mount the steps, but he knew that
the very mention of his existence in that household brought shame and
fierce injunctions of silence.
He gazed at the drawn blinds of the deserted house in an agony of
hopelessness, craving the warm sympathy, the laughter, the dear human
companionship, the mere sound of his Christian name which he had not
heard uttered for over two years--ever since he had entered by that gate
above which the _lasciate ogni speranza_ seemed written in letters of
flame. The lines deepened on his face. The touch of a friendly hand,
a kind glance from familiar eyes, the daily, unnoted possession of
millions, were to him a priceless treasure, forever beyond his reach.
He was barely thirty. His life was wrecked. Nothing lay before him but
pariahdom, and slinking from the gaze of honest men. And within him
there burnt no fiery sense of injustice to keep alive the flame of noble
impulse--only self-contempt, ignominy, the ineffaceable brand of the
gaol.
It was on the pavement opposite that he had been arrested. He had
tripped down the steps in evening dress, his ears buzzing with the
laughter within, in spite of tremulous throbbings of his heart, and had
walked into the arms of the two quiet officers in plain clothes who had
been patiently awaiting his exit. From that moment onward his life
had been one pain and horror. Regained freedom had brought him little
joy--had brought him in fact increased despair. During the last few
months of his imprisonment he had yearned sickeningly for the day of
release. It had come. Sometimes he regretted the benumbed hours of that
mid-time in gaol, when pain had been lost in apathy. He had been free
for five months. In all probability he would be free for the rest of his
life. Sometimes he shuddered at the prospect.
The policeman again passed by, and this time eyed him askance. Why was
he sitting on those steps? A suspicion of felonious purpose relieved the
monotony of his beat.
“You ’ll be moving on soon,” he said. “You mustn’t doss on them doorsteps
all day.”
The man looked at him rather stupidly. His first impulse was one of
servile obedience--an instinct of late habit, and he rose from
his seat. Then his sense of independence asserted itself, and
he said, in a somewhat defiant tone:--
“I felt faint from the heat. You have no right to molest me.”
The policeman glanced at him from head to foot. A gentleman evidently,
in spite of well-worn clothes and gloveless hands thrust into trousers
pockets. He wore no watch-chain, and his shirt-cuffs were destitute of
links. “Down upon his luck,” thought the policeman; “ill too.” The man’s
face was pinched, and of the transparent white of a thin, fair man with
delicately cut features. His eyes were heavy, deeply sunken, and wore an
expression of weariness mingled with fear. The side muscles by his mouth
were relaxed, as if a heavy drooping moustache had dragged them
down; the scanty blonde hair on his upper lip, curled up at the ends,
contrasted oddly with this impression. He looked careworn and ill. His
clothes hung loosely upon him. The policeman surrendered his point.
“Well, you ain’t obstructing the traffic,” he replied good-humouredly;
and again he left the man alone, who reseated himself on the shady
steps, as if disinclined to stir from comfortable quarters. But the
spell of his meditations had been broken. He leaned his head against the
stone pillar of the balustrade and tried to think of occupation for the
day. He longed for to-morrow, when he could resume his weary search for
work, interrupted since Saturday noon. At first he had plunged into the
hopeless task with feverish anxiety, humiliated by rebuffs, agonised
through the frustration of idle hopes. Now it had grown mechanical, a
daily routine, devoid of pain or joy, to drag himself through the busy
streets from office to office and from shop to shop. He resented the
Sunday cessation of work, as interfering with the tenor of his life.
This Bank Holiday added another Sunday to the week.
The heat and glare and soundless solitude of the street made him drowsy.
The thought of death passed through him: an euthanasia--to fade
there peacefully out of existence. And then to be picked up dead on a
doorstep--a fitting end. _Finis coronat opus_. He sniffed cynically at
the idea. The minutes passed. The shade gradually encroached upon the
sunlight of the pavement. A cat from one of the great deserted houses
drew near with meditative step, smelt his boots, and, in the bored
manner of her tribe, curled herself up to slumber. A butcher’s cart
rattling past awoke the man, and he bent down and stroked the creature
at his feet. Then he became aware of a figure approaching him, along
the pavement--a tiny woman, neatly dressed. He watched her idly, with
lack-lustre gaze. But when she came within distance of salutation, their
eyes met, and each started in recognition. He rose hurriedly and made a
step as if to cross the road, but the little lady stopped still.
“Stephen Chisely!”
She moved forward and laid a detaining touch upon his arm, and looked up
questioningly into his face:--
“Won’t you speak to me?”
The voice was so soft and musical, the intonation so winning, that he
checked his impulse of flight; but he stared at her half bewildered.
“You haven’t forgotten me--Yvonne Latour?” she continued.
“Forgotten you? No,” he replied, slowly. “But I am not accustomed to
being recognised.”
“The world is very full of hateful people,” she said. “Oh! how
wretchedly ill you are looking! That was why you were sitting down on
the doorstep. My poor fellow!”
There was a suggestion of tears in her eyes. He turned his head away
quickly.
“You mustn’t talk to me like that,” he said, huskily. “I’m not fit for
you to speak to. When I went under, I went under--for good and all.
Good-bye, Madame Latour--and God bless you for saying a kind word to
me.”
“Why need you go away? Walk a little with me, won’t you? We can go along
to the Park and sit quietly and talk.”
“Do you really mean it--that you would walk with me--in the public
streets?”
“Why, of course,” she replied, with a little air of surprise. “Did
we not have many walks together in the old days? Do you think I have
forgotten? And you want friends so, so badly that even poor little me
may be of some good. Come.”
They moved away together, and walked some steps in silence. He was too
dazed with the sudden realisation of his yearning for human tenderness
to find adequate speech. At last he said harshly:--
“You know what you are doing? You are in the company of a man who
committed a disgraceful crime and has rotted in a gaol for two years.”
“Ah, don’t say such things,” said Madame Latour. “You hurt me. There
are hundreds of people in this great London, honoured and respected, who
have done far worse than you. Hundreds of thousands,” she added, with
exaggerated conviction. “Besides, you are still my good, kind friend.
What has passed cannot alter that.”
“I can’t understand it yet,” he said lamely. “You are the first who has
said a kind word to me.”
“Poor fellow!” said Yvonne again.
They emerged into the Bayswater Road. Before he had time to remonstrate,
she had hailed an omnibus going eastward. “We will get out at the corner
of the Park. You mustn’t walk too much.”
The ’bus stopped. He entered with her and sat down by her side. When the
conductor came for the fares, Yvonne opened her purse quickly; but a
flush came over her companion’s pale face as he divined her intention.
“You must let me,” he said, producing a couple of pence from his pocket.
The rattling of the vehicle prevented serious conversation. The
talk drifted naturally into the desultory commonplace. Madame Latour
explained that she had been giving the last singing lesson of the season
at a house on the other side of Holland Park, that her pupil had neither
ear nor voice, and that by the time she had learned the accompaniment
to a song it had already grown out of date. “People are so stupid, you
know.”
She said it with such an air of conviction, as if she had discovered
a brand-new truth, that the man smiled. She noted it with her quick,
feminine glance, and felt gladdened. It was so much better to laugh than
to cry. She was encouraged to chatter lightly upon passing glimpses
of people in the street, of amusing incidents in her profession as a
concert singer. When the ’bus stopped, she jumped out, disregarding his
gravely offered hand, and laughed, her face glowing with animation.
“Oh, how nice it is to be with you again!” she said, as they crossed to
the entrance gate of Kensington Gardens. “Say that you are glad you met
me.”
“It is like a drop of water on the tongue of the damned,” he said in a
low voice--too low, however, for her to hear, for she continued to look
up at him, all smiles and sweetness.
She seemed a thing of warmth and sunshine, too impalpable for the rough
uses of the world. One would have said she was the embodied spirit of
the warm south of Keats’s ode. Her dark hair, massed in a hundred little
waves over her forehead and temples, gave an indescribable softness to
her face. A faint tinge of rose shone through her dark skin. Her
great brown eyes contained immeasurable depths of tenderness. A
subtly-mingled, all-pervading sense of summer and the exquisitely
feminine enveloped her from the beautiful hair to her tiny feet. She was
in the sweetest bloom of her womanhood and she had all the unconscious,
half-pathetic charm of a child. In a crowded ball-room, amidst dazzling
dresses and flashing arms and necks and under the electric light,
Yvonne’s beauty might have passed unnoticed. But there, in the shady
walk upon which they had just entered, in that quiet world of cool
greens and shadowed yellows, she appeared to the man’s weary eyes the
most beautiful thing on the earth.
“How sweet it is here,” she said, as they sat down upon a bench.
“Incomprehensibly sweet,” he replied.
His tone touched her. She laid her tiny gloved hand upon his arm.
“I wish I could help you--Mr. Chisely,” she said gently.
“That is no longer my name,” he said. “And so you must n’t call me by
it. I have given it up since--since I came out. Would you care to hear
about me? It would help me to speak a little.”
“That’s why I brought you here,” said Yvonne.
He bent forward, elbows on knees, covering his face in his hands.
“I don’t know, after all, that there’s much to say. My poor mother died
while I was in prison--you know that; I suppose I broke her heart. Her
money was sunk in an annuity. The furniture and things were sold to
pay outstanding debts of mine. I came out five months ago, penniless.
Everard’s bankers communicated with me. As the head of the family he had
collected a lump sum of money, which was given to me on condition that
I should change my name and never let any of the family hear of my
existence again. My mother’s people refused to have anything to do with
me. God knows why I was sitting outside their house to-day. Perhaps you
think I ought n’t to have accepted Everard’s gift. A man hasn’t much
pride left after two years’ hard labour.... I took the name of Joyce.
I saw it on a tradesman’s cart as I reached the street after the
interview. One name is as good as another.”
“But you are still Stephen?” said Yvonne.
“I suppose so. I have hardly thought of it. Yes, I suppose I keep the
Stephen.... I am husbanding this money. I have only that between me and
starvation, if anything happened, you know. What I have passed through
is not the best thing for one’s health. Meanwhile, I am trying to get
work. It is a bit hopeless. I know I ought to go out of England, but
London is in my blood somehow. I am loth to leave it. Besides, what
should I do in the colonies? I am not fit for hard manual labour. They
tried it in there, and I broke down; I made sacks and helped in the
kitchen most of my time. If I could earn a pound a week in London, I
should n’t care. It would keep body and soul together. Why I should want
to keep them together I don’t know. I suppose my spirit is broken, and I
am too apathetic to commit suicide. If I had the spirit of a louse I
should do so. But I haven’t.”
He stopped speaking and remained with his head bowed in his hands.
Yvonne could find no words to reply. His almost brutal terseness had
given her a momentary perception of his self-abasement which surprised
and frightened her. Generous and tender-hearted as she was, she had
ever found men insoluble enigmas. They knew so much, had so many strange
wants, seemed to exist in a world of ideas, feelings, and actions beyond
her ken. Here was one with nameless experiences and shames. She shrank
a few inches along the seat, not from repulsion, but from a sudden
sense of her own incapacity of comprehension. She felt tongue-tied and
helpless. So there was a short silence.
Joyce noticed the lack of spontaneous sympathy, and, raising a haggard
face, said:--
“I have shocked you.”
“You talk so strangely,” said Yvonne--“as if you had a stone instead of
a heart.”
“Forgive me,” he said, softening at the sight of her distress. “I am
ungrateful to you. I ought to be happy to-day. I will be happy. I should
like to bend down and kiss your feet for sitting here with me.”
The change in his tone brought the colour back into Yvonne’s face and
the sun into her eyes. She was a creature of quick impulses.
“Have I really made you happy? I am so glad. I seem to be always trying
to make people happy and never succeeding.”
“They must be strange people you have dealt with,” said Joyce with a
weary smile.
She shrugged her shoulders expressively.
“I suppose it is that other people are so strange and I am so ordinary.”
“You are the kindest, sunniest soul on earth,” said Joyce. “You always
were.”
“Oh, how can you say so?” she cried, shaking her head. She was all
brightness again. “I am such an insignificant little person. Everything
about me seems so small. I have a small body, a small voice, a small
sphere, a small mind, and oh! I live in such a small, tiny flat.
You must come and see me. I will sing to you--that is my one small
talent--and perhaps that will cheer you. You must be so lonely!”
“Why are you so good to me?” Joyce asked.
“Because you look wretched and ill and miserable.” she said impulsively,
“and I can’t bear it. You were good to me once. Do you remember how
kindly you settled everything for me after Amédée left me? I don’t know
what I should have done without you. And then, your mother. Ah, I know,”
she continued, lowering her voice a little, “I know, and I cried for
you. I saw her just before the end came and she spoke of you. She said
‘Yvonne, if ever you meet Stephen, give him a kind word for my sake.
He will have the whole world against him.’ And I promised--but I should
have done just the same if I had n’t promised. There is n’t any goodness
in it.”
He pressed her hand dumbly. Her eyes swam with starting tears, but his
were dry. Sometimes when he thought of the devastation his crime had
wrought, he would fall on his knees and bury his face, and long that he
could ease his heart in a storm of weeping. But it seemed too dead for
passionate outburst. Yet he had never felt so near to emotion as at that
moment.
They talked for a short while longer, of old days and home memories,
bitter-sweet to the young man, and of his present position, whose
hopelessness Yvonne refused to allow. She was anxious to effect a
reconciliation between him and his family. His mother’s relations who
lived in Holland Park she did not know. But his cousin, Everard Chisely,
Canon of Winchester, might be brought to more Christian sentiments of
forgiveness. She would plead with the Canon the first time that she met
him. But Joyce shook his head. No. He was the black sheep. Everard had
behaved generously. He must go his own way. No modern Christianity could
make a man forget the disgrace that had been brought upon his name by
felony. Besides, Everard never went back upon his word. Like Pilate,
what he had written, he had written, and there was an end of the matter.
“But how do you come to know Everard?” asked Joyce, wishing to turn the
conversation.
“I met him several times at your mother’s,” replied Yvonne. “He used
to be so kind to her. And there he heard me sing--and somehow we have
become immense friends. He comes to see me, and I sing to him. Dina
Vicary says he comes up to town on purpose. Did you ever hear such
a thing? But I can’t tell you how respectable it makes me feel--so
impressive you know--a real live dignitary. Once he came when Elsie
Carnegie and Vandeleur were there showing me her new song and dance.
You should have seen their faces when he came in. Van, who sings in the
choir of a West End church, began to talk hymns for all he was worth,
while Elsie flicked her lighted cigarette into a flower-pot. It was so
funny.”
Yvonne broke into a contagious ripple of laughter. Then, remembering the
flight of time, she looked at her watch and rose quickly from the seat.
“I had no idea it was so late! I am going out to lunch. Now you will
come and see me, won’t you? Come to-morrow evening. I live at 40
Aberdare Mansions, Marylebone Road. By the way, do you still sing?”
“I had forgotten there was such a thing as song in the world,” said
Joyce sadly.
“Well, you ’ll remember it to-morrow evening,” said Yvonne. “I have an
idea. _Au revoir_ then.”
“God bless you,” said Joyce, shaking hands with her.
She nodded brightly, and tripped away up the path. Joyce watched her
dainty figure until it was out of sight, and then he wandered aimlessly
through the Park, thinking of the past hour. And, for a short while,
some of the contamination of the gaol seemed to be wiped away.