There’s nothing like leather,” cried Yvonne, gaily. “If I had been a
milliner, I should have thought what a gentlemanly shopwalker you would
have made. As I am a singer, I can only think of the profession. You did
n’t know I was so philosophical, did you?”
“But I can’t sing a note now, Madame Latour,” said Joyce.
“We ’ll try after you have had some tea. But you ’ll be good enough for
Brum, I’m quite sure. If he did n’t take you on I should never speak to
him again.”
With which terrible threat she poured the tea outside the cup into the
saucer.
“It seems too good to be true,” said Joyce, in a subdued tone. “It
seemed impossible I should ever get work among honest men again. I am
deeply grateful to you, Madame Latour--I cannot tell you how deeply.”
“Here is some tea,” said Yvonne, cup in hand, “I have put milk in, but
no sugar. I am so glad you like my little scheme. I was afraid it was
n’t worth your while.”
Joyce laughed ironically.
“You would n’t say that if you knew the posts I have sought after, the
advertisements I have answered. It will be a fortune to me.”
“And it may lead--how far, you don’t know. Why in two or three years you
may be playing a leading part in a West End light opera. Or you may do
dramatic business and come to the top. One never can tell. Won’t it be
nice when you can command your £40 or £50 a week?”
Yvonne was very happy. She had conceived the plan all by herself and had
gone off impulsively to Brum to put it into execution. Joyce’s future
was assured. His cleverness, of which she used to be a little afraid in
earlier years, would soon lift him from the ranks. She was excited over
this forecast of his success. But Joyce could not look so far ahead. All
he could feel was a wondrous relief to find a door still open for
him, gratitude to the woman who had led him to it. His spirit was too
shrouded to catch a gleam of her enthusiasm. She strove to brighten him.
“You will find Brum all right. He has always been good to me, since
I stepped into a gap for him once at a charity matinée---a medley
entertainment, you know. When he has a theatre in London he always sends
me a box, if there’s one vacant. You see, I knew he was taking out ‘The
Diamond Door,’ into the provinces, and he pays pretty high salaries all
round--so I did n’t see why you should n’t have a chance in the chorus.
Oh, you ’ll like the stage so much. I wish I were on, instead of singing
at concerts. I have always hankered after it.”
“Why don’t you make the change?” asked Joyce.
“I’m not good enough. I am too insignificant. But I don’t really mind. I
love singing for singing’s sake, no matter where it is. I only have one
great anxiety in life--that I should lose my voice. Then I should put
my head under my wing and die, like the _cigale_. That is to say, if the
_cigale_ has wings--has she?”
“Yes, pretty brown wings--as yours must be. I believe you have them
somewhere hidden from us.”
“You mustn’t make pretty speeches,” said Yvonne, pleased.
“It expresses clumsily what I feel,” said Joyce, with a sudden rush of
feeling. “I have been asking myself what are the common grounds on
which we can meet--you, a pure, bright, beautiful soul--and I, a mean,
degraded man, who knows it to be almost an outrage upon you to cross
your threshold. I feel we are not of the same human clay. I wonder how
it is that the sight of me does n’t frighten you. Thank God you don’t
see me as I see myself.”
“Hush!” said Yvonne, gently.
She glanced at him in a puzzled way, unable to comprehend. She knew that
he felt his disgrace very deeply, but she could not understand the way
in which he related it with herself. Beyond looking careworn and ill,
he seemed almost the same externally as in the days of their former
intimacy; and more so now than on the occasion of their meeting on the
Bank Holiday, when he was shabbily attired. Now he was wearing a new
blue serge suit and a carefully tied cravat--he had bought the clothes
on the chance of his being suddenly required to be correctly dressed,
and this was his first time of wearing them--and looked at all points
the neat, well-groomed gentleman she had always known; so that she found
it difficult to realize fully even the change in his material fortunes.
The blight that had come over his soul was altogether beyond her power
of perception. She could find no words to supplement her sympathetic
exclamation, and so there was silence. When she looked at him again, as
he sat opposite, his cheek resting on his hand, and his mournful eyes
fixed upon her, she found herself thinking what a good-looking fellow
he was, with his clear-cut face, refined features and trim blonde
moustache. It was a pity he had those deep lines on each side of
his mouth and wore so unsmiling an expression. There was sunshine in
Yvonne’s heart that quickly dissipated clouds. She rose suddenly, and
went round to the key-board of the great piano.
“I ’ll sing you something first and then we ’ll try your voice.”
She paused before she sat down, and asked:
“Would you like something sad or something gay?”
The afternoon light, slanting in through the further unshaded window,
fell full upon her, and revealed the warmth of her cheeks and the
smiling softness of her lips. To have demanded sadness of her would have
been an act of unreason.
“Something bright,” said Joyce, instinctively.
She ran her fingers over the keys and broke into a _barcarolle_ of
Théophile Gautier.
“Dites, la jeune belle,
Où voulez-vous aller?
La voile ouvre son aile,
La brise va souffler!
L’aviron est d’ivoire.
Le pavillon de moire,
Le gouvernail d’or fin;
J’ai pour lest une orange,
Pour voile une aile d’ange,
Pour mousse un séraphin.”
Her exquisite voice, sounding like crystal in the little room, seemed to
Joyce as if it came from the dainty boat. Her sweet face seemed to peep
forth under the angel’s wing, mocking the seraphic cabin-boy.
The setting was as perfect as her rendering. All the joy and
inconsequence of life rang from her lips. She came to the last verse.
“Dites, la jeune belle,
Où voulez-vous aller?
La voile ouvre son aile,
La brise va souffler!
--Menez-moi, dit la belle,
À la rive fidèle
Où l’on aime toujours.
--Cette rive, ma chère,
On ne la connaît guère
Au pays des amours.”
When she had finished, she looked up at him, as he leaned over the tail
of the piano, with laughter in her eyes.
“I adore that song. It is so lovely and irresponsible. Canon Chisely
says it is cynical. But it always puts me in mind of a dragonfly.”
“I am afraid Everard is right,” replied Joyce, with a smile. “But if you
live in the fairyland of love, constancy must be a serious hindrance to
affairs.”
“Oh, now you talk just as you used to!” cried Yvonne, “I ’ll sing you
something else.” She scamped the prelude in her impulsive way, and
began, “Coming thro’ the Rye.” His black mood was lifted. The tender,
mischievous charm of her voice held him in a spell, and he smiled at her
like “a’ the lads” in the song.
“Now it is your turn,” she said, reaching towards a pile of songs. “Help
me to choose one.”
He selected one that he used to sing and commenced it creditably. But
after a few bars he broke down. Yvonne encouraged him to take it again,
which he did with greater success. But his voice, a high baritone, was
wofully out of condition. At a second breakdown, he looked at her in
dismay.
“I fear it’s no good,” he said.
“Oh, yes it is,” said Yvonne. “They don’t want a Santley in the chorus
of the provincial company of a comic-opera. We ’ll have a good long time
now. You shall do some scales. And you can come in to-morrow morning,
before you go to Brum, and have half-an-hour more, and that will set you
right.”
The little authoritative air sat oddly upon her. Vandeleur used to
say that Yvonne in a business mood was even more serious than a child
playing at parson. But she knew she was giving a professional opinion;
and that was bound to be serious. Taking him through the scales,
then, in her best professional manner, she brought the practice to a
satisfactory conclusion. Then she became the sunny Yvonne again, and,
after he had gone, sat smiling to herself with the conscious happiness
of a fairy god-mother.
*****
The interview with Brum, the manager, was satisfactory, and Joyce after
accepting the engagement at thirty shillings a week, went straight on
to rehearse with the rest of the chorus. And after this there were daily
rehearsals extending to the Sunday two weeks ahead when the start was to
be made for Newcastle, where the company opened. After the first two
or three days, the rather helpless sense of unfamiliarity wore off, and
Joyce found his task an easy one. His voice, by comparison, certainly
warranted his selection, and in knowledge of music and general ability
he was vastly superior to his colleagues, who received rough usage for
stupidity at the hands of the stage-manager. He found them mostly dull,
uneducated men, two or three with wives in the female chorus, very
jealous of their rights and the order of precedence among them, but with
little ambition and less capacity. In spite of the old suit, which he
was careful to wear, he was looked upon at first, rather resentfully,
as an amateur; but he bore disparaging remarks with philosophical
unconcern, and, after a judicious drink or two at a “professional” bar
near the stage-door of the theatre, he was accepted among them without
further demur.
But Joyce was too much exercised at this time with his own relations to
himself to think much of his relations to others. The reaction from the
most poignant despair he had known since his freedom, to sudden hope,
had set working many springs of resolution. He would banish all thoughts
of the past from his mind, forget Stephen Chisely in the new man Stephen
Joyce, take up the new threads fate had spun for him, and weave them
into a new life without allowing any of them to cross the old: a
resolution which would be laughable, were it not so eternal, and
so pathetic in its futility. The world will never know the enormous
expenditure of will-power by its weak men.
The fortnight, however, passed in something near to contentment and
peace of soul. If we can cheat ourselves into serenity at times, it is
a gift to be thankful for. Besides, occupation is a great anodyne to
trouble; and the provincial production of a great London success offers
considerable occupation for those concerned in it. Rehearsals were
called twice a day, morning and evening. As Joyce did not leave the
theatre until nearly midnight he had no time to look in at the familiar
billiard-room, and so Noakes and his “penny bloods” were forgotten. On
the other hand he spent several of his afternoons with Yvonne, who was
delighted with his accounts of himself, and sent him away cheered and
sanguine.
“The only thing I regret,” said Joyce, during his farewell visit, “is
that I shall be cutting myself off from you. I suppose every one is
entitled to a grievance. And this is mine. Do you know you are the only
friend I have in the world?”
As Yvonne knew that the world was very big and that she herself was
very small, the fact somewhat awed her. She regarded him pityingly for a
moment “What a dreadful thing it must be to feel alone like that.”
“I have n’t felt it so, since I met you,” said Joyce.
“But you won’t have even me, any more. I wish I could help you.”
“Help me? Why, you ‘ve raised me out of the gutter, Madame Latour.”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘Madame Latour,’” she said, “I don’t call you ‘Mr.
Joyce.’ I am ‘Yvonne’ to all my friends. You used to call me ‘Yvonne’
once.”
“You were not my benefactress then,” said Joyce.
“Please don’t call me hard names,” she returned whimsically, “or I shall
be afraid of you, as I used to be.”
“Afraid of me?” echoed Joyce.
“Yes. Weren’t you dreadfully clever? I was always afraid you would think
me silly. And then, often I could not quite understand what you were
saying--how much you meant of what you said. Don’t you see?”
“I see I must have been insufferable,” he replied. “It makes what you
are to me now all the more beautiful. But I scarcely dare call you
‘Yvonne’--don’t you understand? But it would gladden me to write it. May
I write to you on my pilgrimage?”
“It would be so good of you, if you would,” she answered eagerly. “I do
love people to write to me.”
She had unconsciously slipped from her fairy-godmother attitude. Her
simple mind could not look upon welcoming his letters as an act of
graciousness.
“Would you sing to me once more before I go?” he asked, a little later.
“I don’t know when I shall see you again, and I should like to carry
away a song of yours to cheer me.”
She sat down at the piano and sang Gounod’s Serenade. Something in
its yearning tenderness touched the man in his softened mood. The pure
passion of Yvonne’s voice pierced through the thick layers of shame and
dead hopes and deadening memories that had encrusted round his heart,
and met it in a tiny thrill. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the
walls, which grew misty before his eyes. The scene changed and he was
back again in his mother’s house and Yvonne was singing this song. The
benumbing spell that had kept him dry-eyed since the news came to him of
his mother’s death, was lifted for the moment. But, only when a sudden
silence broke the charm, was he aware that tears were on his face.
He brushed them away quickly, rose, took her hand and kissed it, and
then he laughed awkwardly, and bade her good-bye.
On his way downstairs he brushed against a man ascending. It was a
squarely-built, keen-faced man of forty in clerical attire. Each stepped
aside to apologise, and then came the flash of recognition. Joyce
looked down in some confusion. But Canon Chisely turned on his heel and
continued his ascent.
Joyce walked away moodily. His cousin’s cut brought back the old
familiar sense of degradation which Yvonne had charmed away. Again he
realised that he was an outcast, a blot upon society, an object of scorn
for men of good repute. No one but Yvonne could have befriended him
and forgotten what he was. And Yvonne herself,--was her friendship not
perhaps solely due to her childlike incapacity to appreciate the depths
of his disgrace? He would have given anything not to have met the Canon
on the stairs.
*****
Three weeks afterwards Yvonne was at Brighton for change of air
and holiday, accompanied by Geraldine Vicary, her dearest friend,
confidante, and chastener. They had taken lodgings in Lansdowne Place,
where they shared a sitting-room and discussed Yvonne’s prospects and
peccadilloes. Not but what the discussion was continued out of doors,
on the Parade, or in a quiet nook on the sands at Shoreham; but it
proceeded much more effectively within four walls, where there was
nothing to distract Yvonne’s attention. Miss Vicary had her friend’s
good most disinterestedly at heart, and Yvonne herself loved these
discussions, very much as she loved church. She felt a great deal better
and wiser, without in the least knowing why. In intervals of leisure
they idled about, dissected passing finery, and ate prodigious
quantities of ices--which, as all the world knows, is the proper way to
enjoy Brighton.
They were sitting in one of the shelters on the cliff overlooking the
electric toy-railway. It was a lovely day. A sea-breeze ruffled the blue
Channel into a myriad dancing ridges, and blew Yvonne’s mass of dark
hair further back from her forehead. Suddenly she slipped her hand into
her friend’s.
“Oh, Dina, is n’t this delicious!”
“Rapturous,” said Geraldine, with a smile. She was a tall,
plainly-dressed young woman, some four years older than Yvonne, with a
pleasant, frank face and a decided manner. She wore a plain sailor-hat,
a blouse, and a grey-stuff skirt that hung rather badly
beneath a buff belt; thus contrasting with Yvonne, who suggested dainty
perfection of attire, from the diminutive bonnet to the toe of her
little brown shoe. Miss Vicary gave the impression of the typical
schoolmistress, which she would most probably have been, had not the
possession of a magnificent voice decided her career otherwise.
“I mean it’s delicious being here alone with you,” returned Yvonne.
“Away from men altogether.”
“They are a horrid lot,” said Geraldine, drily. “I wonder you see as
much of them as you do.”
“But how can I help it? They will keep coming my way. Oh, I wish they
were all women. It would be so much nicer!”
Geraldine broke into a laugh.
“You goose!” she said. “You wouldn’t have the women falling in love with
you as the men do!”
“But I don’t want them to fall in love with me,” cried Yvonne. “It is so
stupid. I don’t fall in love with them.”
“Then why do you give them encouragement? I am always at you about it.”
“I am only kind to them, as any one else would be.”
“Fiddlesticks, my dear. You should keep them in their place.”
“But what _is_ their place?” asked Yvonne, pathetically. “I never know.
That is why I wish they were women. Oh, I love so being here with you,
Dina. I wish I had a lot of women friends that I could talk to when I
can’t see you. But you’re the only real woman friend I ’ve got.”
“You dear little mite!” exclaimed Geraldine, with sudden impulse. “I
can’t see why women don’t take to you. And I can understand all the men
falling in love with you. Even the Canon.”
“Oh, how can you say such a thing?” cried Yvonne, quickly, the colour
coming into her cheeks.
“By reason of the intelligence that God has given me, my dear,” replied
Geraldine. “I would send him packing if I were you.”
“It is very kind indeed of a man like that to come and see me.”
“And to pick you out from among all the concert singers in London for
his musical festival?”
“But we’re old friends, Dina. He is only doing me a good turn.”
“So as to deserve another, you simple darling. In the meantime,
I wouldn’t encourage Vandeleur or your new _protégé_, the Canon’s
unmentionable cousin.”
“You know, I once thought there was something between you and Van,”
remarked Yvonne, with guileless inconsequence.
“Rubbish!” said Miss Vicary. And then she added, rising hastily, after a
moment’s silence, “Look, you are getting chilly in this cold wind,--and
I am sure you have next to nothing underneath.”
To keep Yvonne out of draughts and other pretexts for catching cold was
one of Miss Vicary’s self-imposed tasks, and she sought to compensate
Yvonne’s reckless exposure of herself when alone by excess of vigilance
on her own part when Yvonne was under her control--which is not an
uncommon irrationality in women, who, geniuses or not, have an infinite
capacity for taking superfluous pains. However, in spite of her maternal
precautions, it happened that Yvonne was laid up two or three days
afterwards with a cold which flew at once to her throat. Although in
no way serious, it filled her with dismay. She knew her throat to be
delicate. That her voice might one day fail her was the dread of her
life.
“What does he say about me?” she asked, pathetically, when Geraldine had
returned from a short consultation with the doctor. “Is it going to hurt
my voice? Oh, do tell me, Dina?”
“You must n’t talk, or else it will,” replied Geraldine, severely.
Then she threw off the chastener, put on the consoler, and, sitting on
the bed, petted Yvonne until she had restored her mind to a measure of
peace.
“Then I must throw up my engagements?” Yvonne asked, wistfully, after a
while.
“Certainly the one here next week. But don’t bother your dear little
head about it.”
“And the concerts at Fulminster for Canon Chisely. I must get well for
them, Dina.”
“Why, of course you will,” replied Geraldine. “They are weeks and weeks
ahead. Besides, let the Canon go to Jericho!”
“Why are you so hard upon Canon Chisely?” asked Yvonne.
“A case of Dr. Fell, I suppose. I don’t like his always hanging about
you.”
Yvonne burst out laughing.
“I believe you are jealous, Dina,” she cried.
Miss Vicary’s retort was checked by the entrance of the landlady with
Yvonne’s supper. She busied herself with the arrangement of plates and
dishes on the tray. But all the time the expression on her face was that
of a woman who foresees a considerable amount of trouble to come.