’ll soon be able to get some singing lessons, and I ’ll find a situation
as railway porter, or something, and we ’ll rub along somehow till better
times.”
“Oh, you don’t know how much gladder I should be!” cried Yvonne with a
sparkle in her eyes. “If I only could earn something--not be a drag
upon you! Oh, I would sooner lead the life of a poor, poor woman, in the
humblest way, than take Everard’s money--you know that.”
“We can’t go on living here,” said Joyce, gently.
“Of course not. We will go to much cheaper rooms and live like
working-folks. I can do lots of things, lay fires, make pastry--”
“Dumplings will be as far as we can get,” said Joyce.
“Well, then, they ’ll be beautiful dumplings,” said Yvonne.
“And I dare say we can find a way to settle the furniture question,”
said Joyce. “I shall begin to look about for a cheap place at once.”
So the trouble fell from Yvonne for a time. Now that she had decided to
make no further appeal to Everard, but to endeavour once more to earn
her livelihood, she felt lighter-hearted. Her attachment to Stephen
had grown so strong that she had contemplated the loss of his
daily protection with dismay. The solitary life frightened her. The
vicissitudes through which she had passed, the loss of her voice
especially, had taken away her nerve. At first, she had been so weak
from her long illness and her helpless arm, that she found Stephen’s
presence an unspeakable comfort, and did not speculate upon any anomaly
in her position. By the time she regained health, their life under the
same roof appeared in the natural order of every-day things. And it
was very pleasant. Besides, with the daily intercourse, came a deeper
comprehension of his shipwreck. She began to realise that the material
dependence on her side was reciprocated by a spiritual dependence on
his. It awoke new and delicious stirrings of pride to feel her influence
over him, to find herself of use to a man. Once she could sing,
amuse--yield her lips with kind passivity to satisfy strange unknown
needs. She had regarded herself with wistful seriousness in her
relations with men, as a poor little instrument for men to play on. They
fingered the stops, extracted what music they could, and then laid the
pipe aside while they devoted themselves to the business of the world.
But Stephen approached her differently from other men. He did not want
her for her voice; he did not throw himself weary into a chair and say,
“Chatter and amuse me;” and he did not look at her with eyes yearning
for her lips. But his needs, quite other than she had known before, were
revealing themselves to her with gradual distinctness. She was learning
his humbled pride, his lacerated self-respect, his ingrained sense of
degradation, his crying need of sympathy and encouragement and ennobling
object in life. The strong man came to her, Yvonne, to be healed and
strengthened; and, from some fresh-discovered fountain within her, she
was finding remedy for maladies and sustaining draughts for weakness.
A new conception of herself was dawning before her, in a great, quiet
happiness; and her nature unconsciously expanded.
Thus a twofold instinct urged her to throw in her lot with Joyce.
He passed a very anxious week. It seemed as if his old bitter and
fruitless search for work was to be repeated. Neither could he find
suitable apartments. “I’m afraid it will have to come to the workhouse,”
he said in dejected jest.
“Oh, that will never do!” cried Yvonne. “They would separate us.”
She had been more successful. Two or three of the ex-pupils to whom
she had written had replied, promising their recommendation. With a
shrewdness that won Joyce’s admiration she used the address of her
former agents, who willingly forwarded her letters. But the sight of the
familiar office, whither she had gone to beg this favour, had brought
her a bitter pang of regret for the lost voice. She had cried all the
way home and then looked anxiously in the glass, afraid lest Joyce
should perceive the traces of her tears. She strove valiantly to cheer
him in his worries.
At last Joyce went to his friend, the secondhand bookseller in
Islington, whom he had seen less frequently since his life with Yvonne,
and there, to his delighted surprise, found a solution for all his
difficulties. The old man was growing too infirm to carry on the
business single-handed. He wanted an assistant “And where am I to get
one?” he said querulously. “I don’t want a damned fool who does n’t know
an Elzevir from a Catnach.”
“I ’ll come like a shot if you ’ll have me,” said Joyce, eagerly.
“You? Why, you’re a gentleman and a scholar,” said the old man.
“So much the better,” returned Joyce, laughing. “There will be something
mediaeval about the arrangement.”
The bargain was quickly struck. Furthermore, when Joyce explained his
domestic considerations, the old man offered him, at a small rent, three
rooms in the house, above the shop. There they were, he said; they were
not used; he once took in lodgers, but they pestered his life out; so
he had made up his mind not to be worried with them any more. However,
Joyce was an exception. He was quite welcome to them; he himself only
wanted a bedroom and the little back-parlour on the ground-floor.
These reserved quarters, the vacant three rooms and a kitchen with an
adjoining servant’s bedroom, made up the internal arrangements of the
old-fashioned, rather dilapidated house. Joyce went up to inspect. At
first his heart sank. The rooms were only half-furnished, the paper
was mouldy, dirt abounded, the ceilings were low and blackened. However,
many of these drawbacks could be remedied. Mr. Runcle promised a
thorough cleansing and repapering, whereat Joyce’s spirits rose again.
Next to the sitting-room was a fair-sized bedroom for Yvonne; upstairs
a little room for himself. He enquired about attendance. The old man
explained that a woman lived on the premises. She did for him and would
doubtless be glad to do for Joyce also, for a small sum per week.
*****
By the end of a few days they were settled in their new abode. The bits
of furniture, that had been the subject of such dispute, made the place
habitable. Re-papered and whitewashed and hung with curtains and a
few pictures out of Yvonne’s salvage, it looked almost cosy. But the
threadbare carpet and rug, the horsehair sofa, and odd, rickety chairs
and the small-paned, cheaply-painted windows gave it an aspect of
poverty that nothing could efface.
“It’s not a palace,” said Joyce ruefully, looking round him on the day
they took definite possession. “You will miss many comforts, Yvonne.”
“I’m not going to miss anything,” she replied, “except worry and
anxiety. I am going to be perfectly happy here.”
“You don’t know what a sweet incongruity you are among these
surroundings,” he said; “you remind one of a dainty piece of lace sewn
on to corduroys. Oh, I hope this life won’t be too rough for you--we
shall have to practise so many miserable little economies--coals, gas,
food--”
Yvonne broke into a sunny laugh. “Oh, that’s just like a man! Did you
ever hear of a well-regulated woman that did n’t love to economise? When
I was at Fulminster, you have no idea how I cut down expenses!”
She turned to take off her hat before the discoloured gilt mirror over
the mantelpiece, and then threw it quickly on the round centre table and
faced him again.
“I shall be quite as happy here as I was in Fulminster. Perhaps happier,
in a sense. You know, I always felt so small in that big house. This
just suits me.”
Thus began the odd life together of these two waifs, abandoned by
the world. The previous four months had been invested with an air of
transience. Yvonne’s presence beneath the same roof as Joyce had been a
temporary arrangement until supplies should come from the Bishop. They
had not joined in housekeeping. Whenever Joyce went down to Yvonne, he
had done so purely in the character of a visitor. From that state of
things to this life in common was a great step. And yet to each it
seemed natural. Society being unaware of their existence, they felt
no particular need of observing Society’s conventions. To the old
bookseller, to the servant, to each other, they were brother and sister,
and that was enough.
Joyce found his work fairly light. The important part of the business
was carried on by orders through the post. Purchases of “rare and
curious books” at prices per volume from three pounds upwards are rarely
made casually over the counter. Joyce knew this, of course, but he
was nevertheless surprised at the extensiveness of Ebenezer Runcle’s
connection. Every morning there was considerable correspondence to be
got through, parcels of books to be made up and despatched, the slips
for the monthly catalogue to be kept up to date. After that, if no
new stock was brought in, there was little else to do but wait for
customers. The long spells of leisure were invaluable to him for
writing. He found his mind worked smoothly in the quiet, musty
atmosphere of the books. There they were in brilliant rows around the
walls, on bookcases running longitudinally through the shop, piled
in stacks by the doorway, in comers, upon trestles, anywhere. A great
rampart of them cut off the draught of the door. In the small enclosed
space thus formed was a stove, on one side of which he placed his
writing-table, while on the other, in a dilapidated cane armchair, sat
the old man, a bent, wheezing figure, deep in his beloved patristic
literature.
At intervals during the day he saw Yvonne, who was proud and happy in
the superintendence of her humble establishment. Not long after the
move, some welcome singing-lessons came, at a house in Russell Square,
and enabled her to contribute her mite towards the household expenses.
It was a hard problem to make ends meet sometimes, on what Joyce was
able to set apart for housekeeping, and at first, through lack of
experience in close economy, she made dreadful blunders. Then she came
in tearful penitence to Joyce. On one of these occasions, he had arrived
for dinner, and found her gazing piteously upon three meatless bones,
standing like ribs of wreck in a beach of potatoes. She had thought
enough had been left from yesterday for two more meals. He consoled her
as best he could, and tackled the potatoes. But she watched him with
so miserable and remorse-stricken a face that at last he broke out
laughing. And then, Yvonne, who was quick to see the light side of
things, laughed too and forgot her troubles. After a time, no housewife
in the neighbourhood kept a shrewder eye upon the butcher.
The evenings they usually spent together, working or talking. Now and
then, at Joyce’s invitation, the old man would come in, and the trio
would talk literature, the old man vaunting the ancients and Joyce
defending the moderns, until a veritable Battle of the Books was
recontested, while Yvonne sat by, in awed silence, wondering at the
vastness of human learning. Often he wrote or discussed the novel with
her. In this she took the deepest interest. The intellectual processes
involved were a perpetual mystery to her, and caused her to place Joyce
on a pinnacle of genius. But her sympathy and enthusiasm helped him as
few other things could. And gradually her influence made itself felt
in his writing. His sympathies widened, his aspect upon life softened.
Planned to reveal the bitter sordidness of broken lives, and half
written in a grey, hopeless atmosphere, imperceptibly the book lost in
harshness, grew in tenderness and humanity. And this corresponded to the
softening in the nature of the man himself.
Yet now and then incidents occurred that brought back the past in all
its gloom. One in particular weighed for many days afterwards upon his
mind.
It was a sultry night. He had come out for a stroll down Upper Street
and High Street, before going to bed. Outside the Angel, the limit of
his walk, he lingered a moment and was looking with idle interest at
the great block of omnibuses, when he became aware that a poorly-dressed
woman was standing by him, gazing rigidly into his face. He started,
tried to fix her identity.
“Good God! It is you!” said the woman.
Then he remembered. It was Annie Stevens, the girl who had betrayed him
so miserably to the theatrical company years before.
“Won’t you speak to me?” she asked, somewhat humbly, as he remained
silent.
“You recall a very bitter time to me,” said Joyce.
“Do you think it is any sweeter to me?” she asked.
And then, with a quick glance round at an approaching policeman:--
“Walk on a little way with me, will you?”
He hesitated for a moment, but a beseeching look in her eyes touched
him. Her presence at that place, at that hour, spoke of tragedy. She had
never been pretty. Now she had grown thin and hard-featured.
“You need n’t fear I’m going to ask you for anything--you of all people
in the world. Of course, if you don’t want to be seen with me, don’t
come. You can’t hurt me. I’m past that. But I’d like to speak with you
for a minute or two.”
He had moved on with her while she was talking. Then there were a few
moments’ silence.
“Well?” he enquired. “What do you wish to say?”
“God knows--anything--just to ask you, perhaps, whether you’re right
again. I have thought of you enough.”
He glanced at her curiously.
“Why have you come to this?”
“Why did you go to prison?” she retorted.
“I did wrong and was punished for it.”
“So did I. This is my punishment. After you had gone, I could have
torn my heart out. I went on the drink--could n’t get engagements--went
downhill. I can’t go much lower, can I? If you want revenge, you ’ve got
it.”
She tossed her head in her old, defiant way. Joyce, perceiving her
association of himself in her downfall, felt somewhat moved with pity.
“God knows, revenge is the last thing I want. On the contrary, I am
distressed to see you come to this. If I could help you, I would do so.
But that, you know as well as I, is out of my power.”
“Yes; the only thing you could do, would be to marry me and make an
honest woman of me, and that is n’t likely,” she said, cynically.
“No, it is n’t likely,” said Joyce. “I can only be deeply sorry for
you.”
“I wonder whether you could tell what it is to me to talk to you even in
this way. Oh, God! if you knew how I longed to see you!”
“Why did you act as you did toward me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Don’t ask me. Because every woman’s got a tiger in her
somewhere, I suppose. I used to think men were the brutes. Now I know
it’s women. We’re all the same. I hate myself. I wish you would take me
up a back street and kill me. This is a hell of a life. Do you remember
the last words you said to me? ‘Some people are better dead.’ It’s the
truest thing I ’ve ever heard from man or woman.”
“It’s easy enough to get out of the world, if we want to,” said Joyce.
“But perhaps it’s better to fight it out. You must make an effort and
get out of this life--a proud girl like you.”
“I have n’t much pride left.”
“I thought so too. But it takes a lot of killing. I ’ve come out fairly
straight. Why shouldn’t you?”
“I ’ll come out straight, the only way--a corpse. But I’m glad things are
better with you. It relieves me to know it. I thought I had sent you to
the devil, and that’s why I went there myself, I suppose. Well, I won’t
keep you any longer. I know you hate being seen with me.”
“Can’t I do anything for you?” said Joyce, feeling in his pocket.
“Yes--flay me alive by offering me money. You did once--do you
remember?”
She stopped abruptly, took Joyce’s proffered hand, and said in a softer
voice:--
“It’s good of you to shake hands with me. Men are better than women.
Thank God I ’ve seen you at last. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Joyce, kindly.
They parted, and went their different ways, Annie Stevens to the horror
of her life and Joyce to the home that held Yvonne. The parallel and the
contrast smote him as he walked along the familiar street. Both himself
and this girl that had fallen were derelicts, both were expiating the
past, both were carrying within them a degraded self, that with a nobler
self waged cruel and eternal warfare. For the injury she had done him
he cherished no resentment. He felt a great pity for her, and judged her
gently.
It was strange how his rudderless course through the last six years had
been influenced by other lonely and drifting craft. Annie Stevens, who
had loved and nearly wrecked him, had been the cause of his linking
fortunes with poor Noakes; and it was through Yvonne--with whom,
sweetest of derelicts, he was now voyaging on unruffled waters--that he
had first drifted towards Annie Stevens. He was pondering over this
one day during an idle hour in the shop with the old bookseller, when a
whimsical fancy seized him.
“You lead a very lonely life, Mr. Runcle,” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” replied the old man. “I suppose I do. Beyond one sister, who has
been dying for many months, I have neither kith nor kin in the world.”
CHAPTER XIX--FERMENT
Is all this true?” asked Yvonne, mournfully.
“Yes, worse luck,” replied Joyce, looking up from his Sunday newspaper.
“It is very dreadful,” said Yvonne.
She was finishing “The Wasters,” Joyce’s lately published novel. It was
not a success. Its cultivated style received recognition everywhere, but
the unrelieved pessimism, powerfully as it was presented, repelled most
readers. He was inclined to be depressed at its reception. To Yvonne,
however, it was a revelation. She closed the book with a sigh, and
remained for some time gazing absently at the cover. Then she rose in
her quick way.
“Let us go out--into the sunshine--or I shall cry. I feel miserable,
Stephen.”
“On account of that wretched book?”
“That and other things. Take me to Regent’s Park--to see the flowers.”
He assented gladly and Yvonne went to put on her things. Shortly
afterwards they were side by side on the garden seat of a westward bound
omnibus.
“I feel better,” said Yvonne, breathing in the summer air. “Don’t you?”
“It is nice,” answered Joyce. “I shall be better pleased when we are
out of these joyless streets. The Pentonville Road on a Sunday is
depressing. I haven’t seen a smile on a human face since we have been
out. What grey lives people lead.”
“But they can’t all be unhappy,” she said.
The ’bus stopped for a moment. Three or four young roughs, in Sunday
clothes, with coarse, animal faces and discordant speech passed by below
on the pavement, and noisily greeted a couple of quiet-looking girls,
evidently acquaintances.
“These seem cheerful enough,” said Yvonne.
Joyce shrugged his shoulders.
“Did it ever occur to you what misery men of that type work in the
world? By the laws of their class they will all marry--and marry young.
Fancy a woman’s life in the hands of any of those fellows.”
The ’bus moved on. Yvonne was silent.
His tone was that of the book she had just been reading. She stole a
side glance at him. His face in repose was always sad and brooding.
To-day she seemed to read more clearly in it the lines that the breaking
of the spirit had caused. She identified him with the characters in the
sordid scenes he had described. Presently she laid her hand lightly on
his arm.
“Do you think we live a very grey life--now?”
“You have a very hard, dull, monotonous life,” he replied.
“I don’t,” said Yvonne stoutly. “I am very pleased and contented. I only
want one thing to make me perfectly happy.”
“So does every one. The one thing just makes the difference. It’s the
one thing we can’t possibly get.”
“It is n’t what you imagine,” said Yvonne. “You are thinking of money
and all that.”
“No. It’s your voice.”
“It is n’t!” cried Yvonne, with a touch of petulant earnestness. “It is
to see you bright and happy--as you used to be long, long ago. You might
have known.”
“It is very dear of you,” he answered, after a pause. “I am selfish--and
can’t understand your sweet spirit. Sometimes I seem to have a stone
heart, like the man in the German story.”
“You have a warm, generous heart, Stephen. What other man would have
done what you have for me?”
“It was pure selfishness on my part,” he replied. “The loneliness was
too appalling. And then, further, I am never quite sure I have acted
rightly by you.”
“I am,” she said. “And I’m the best judge, I think.”
But Joyce was correct in his bitter self-analysis. Now and then his
sensitive fibres vibrated. But generally the weight of the past years
was on his heart, and repressed continuous emotion. To live on these
intimate terms with Yvonne and never consider the possibility of loving
her, after the way of men, was absurd. The chivalrous instincts awakened
by her implicit trust in him, and the double barrier which forbade
a love that could result in marriage, made him dismiss such
considerations. But often, in gloomy introspective moods, his
self-contempt denied these instincts as arrogant pretensions, and
attributed the absence of warmer feelings towards Yvonne to the
petrifaction of all emotional chords. Of late, however, he had ceased to
speculate, taking his insensibility for granted.
When they arrived at the Regent’s Park, they proceeded for some distance
northwards up the great avenue. It was crowded. Joyce looked about him,
with a fidgeted air, at the stream of passers-by.
“Let us get away from the people and sit under a tree,” he said at
length.
Yvonne slipped her hand impulsively through his arm.
“I wish you knew how proud I am of you,” she said.
“It’s for your sake, too, Yvonne, dear,” he replied in a touched voice.
She made one of her magnificent little gestures with the hand holding
her sunshade.
“I have never done anything to be ashamed of yet,” she said proudly, and
glanced from Joyce to a pompous elderly couple with an air of defiance.
Then she brought him abruptly to a stand before a flower-bed bright in
its summer glory.
“Oh, how lovely! Look!”
She broke into little joyous exclamations. Colour affected her like
music. A glow came into her cheek. She became again the thing of
warmth and sunshine that had gladdened him four years before, when his
degradation lay heavy on him.
“It _is_ a beautiful world, Stephen.”
“You are right, dear. It is. And you are the most beautiful thing in
it.”
The glow deepened on her face, and a bright moisture appeared in her
eyes as she glanced upwards.
“That’s very, very foolish. But you said it as if you meant it.”
“I did indeed, Yvonne.”
“Let us go and find a place under the trees,” she said softly.
They left the main avenue and wandered on over the green turf, seeking
for a long time a piece of shade untenanted by sprawling men, or lovers,
or heterogeneous families. At last they found a lonely tree and sat down
beneath it.
“Are you happier here?” she asked.
“Much. It is so peaceful. When I was in South Africa I yearned for
civilisation and men and women. Now I am in London, I am happiest away
from them. Men are funny animals, Yvonne.”
Yvonne looked down at the ground and nervously plucked at the grass.
Then she raised her eyes quickly.
“When are you going to be quite happy, Stephen?”
“I am happy enough now.”
“But when you get home, the black mood may come over you again. Can’t
you forget all the horrid past--the prison--and all that?” It was the
first time she had ever alluded to it directly; her voice quavered on
the word.
“No, I can never forget it,” he replied in a low tone. “If I live to be
a hundred, I shall remember it on my deathbed.”
“You seem to feel it--just like a woman does--who has been on the
streets--as if nothing could wipe it away.”
He was startled. Signs had not been wanting of a change coming over
Yvonne, but he had never heard a saying on her lips of such perceptive
earnestness. It was strange, too, that she had hit upon a parallel that
had been in his mind since the night he had met Annie Stevens.
“Nothing can wipe it away, Yvonne. It is like a woman’s sense of
degradation--just as you say.”
“I would give anything--my voice over again, if I had it--to help you.
You have never told me about it--the dreadful part of it--I want to
know--every bit--tell me now, will you?”
“You would loathe me, as much as I loathe myself, if I told you.”
He was lying on one elbow, by her side. She ventured a gossamer touch
upon his forehead.
“You don’t know much about a woman, although you do write books,” she
said.
The touch and the tone awoke a great need of expansion. He struggled for
a few moments, and at last gave way.
“Yes, I ’ll tell you--from the very beginning.” And there in the
quasi-solitude of their tree--one of innumerable camping-spots for
recumbent figures, that met the eye on all sides--he gave, for the first
time, definite utterance to the horrors that had haunted him for six
years. He told her the old story of the earthenware pot careering down
the stream in company with the brazen vessels; of his debts, staring
ruin, and his yielding to the great temptation; of his trial, his
sentence rendered heavier by the fact that his malversations had brought
misery into other lives. He described to her in lurid detail just what
the prison-life was, what it meant, how its manifold degradation ate
into a man’s flesh, became infused in his blood and ran for ever through
his veins. He spared her nothing of which decency permitted the telling.
Now and then Yvonne shivered a little and drew in a quick breath; but
her great eyes never left his face--save once when he showed her his
hands still scarred by the toil from which delicate fingers never
recover.
He had spoken jerkily, in hard, dry tones; so he ended abruptly. There
was silence. Yvonne’s little gloved hand crept to his and pressed it.
Then, with a common impulse, they rose to their feet.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said, coming near to him and taking his
arm. “I did not know how how terrible it has been--and I never realised
what a brave man you are.”
“I--brave, Yvonne?” he cried with a bitter laugh.
“Yes--to have gone through that and to be the loyal, tender,
true-hearted gentleman that you are.”
He looked down at her and saw her soft eyes filled with tears and her
lips quivering.
“You still feel the same to me, Yvonne, now that you know it all?” he
asked, bending forward on his stick.
“More,” she answered. “Oh,--much more.”
They walked back to the Park gates in a happy silence, drawn very near
to one another, since both hearts were very full. So close together
did they walk, so softened was the man’s face, and so sweetly proud the
woman’s, that they might have been taken for lovers. But if love was
hovering over them, he touched neither with an awakening feather. And so
they passed on their way untroubled.
That day was, in a certain sense, a landmark in their lives. Yvonne
never referred to the prison again, but she learned to know when its
shadow was over him and at such times her nature melted in tenderness
towards him.
The days wore on. The second novel, over whose pages Yvonne had cast
gleams of sunshine, was finished and disposed of to the same publishers.
His source of income from occasional journalism showed signs of becoming
steadier. But all the same, the struggle with poverty continued hard.
Yvonne fell ill again and lost her music-lessons. It took some time
after her recovery to pay off the debts incurred for doctor, medicine,
and invalid necessaries. To obtain funds to take her to the seaside
for a few days, Joyce was forced to ask his publishers for an advance.
However, the trip restored Yvonne to health again, and their uneventful
life pursued its usual course.
One day a strange phenomenon occurred. A visitor was announced. It was
the sister who had tended Yvonne in the hospital. Once before, while
Yvonne was living in the Pimlico lodgings, she had paid a flying visit.
On this occasion she stayed for a couple of hours with Yvonne, who,
happy as she was with Joyce, felt a wonderful relief in talking again
familiarly with one of her own sex. She poured forth the little history
of all that had befallen her since she had left the hospital.
“Do you mean to tell me,” the sister said at last, “that you keep house
together on this romantically Platonic basis?”
Yvonne regarded her, wide-eyed.
“Of course. Why should n’t we?”
The sister was a woman of the world. When she had entered the room and
perceived the unmistakable signs of a man’s general presence, she had
drawn her own conclusions.
That these were erroneous, Yvonne’s innocent candour most clearly
proved. Yet she was astonished, perhaps a little disappointed. The
offending Eve lingers in many women, even after much self-whipping--for
the greater comfort of their lives.
“But how can a man look at you and not fall in love with you?” she asked
downright.
Yvonne laughed, and ran to the kettle that was boiling over on the
gas-stove--she was making tea for her visitor.
“Oh, you can’t think of the number of people who have said those same
words to me! Why, that is why I am so happy with Stephen--he has never
dreamed of making love to me; never once--really. And, do you know, he’s
the only man I ’ve ever had much to do with who has n’t.”
“He looks like a man who has seen a great deal of trouble,” said the
sister.
Yvonne’s laugh faded, and a great seriousness came into her eyes.
“Awful trouble,” she said in a very low and earnest voice.
“Perhaps that makes him different from other men,” said the sister,
taking her hand and smoothing it.
“Perhaps,” replied Yvonne.
It was a new light, quick and clear, flashed upon their relations. Her
woman’s instinct clamoured for confirmation.
“Do you think that if he had not this great trouble, he would
necessarily have fallen in love with me, like the others?”
“It stands to reason,” replied the elder woman gently--“if he’s a man at
all. And he is a man--one, too, that many women could love and be proud
of.”
“Oh, thank you for saying that!” cried Yvonne, impulsively. “I am proud
of him.” An imperceptible smile played over the sister’s plain, pleasant
face. Her calling had brought her a certain knowledge of human nature,
and taught her to judge by suppressions. This side-light on the inner
lives of the two beings whose fortunes had long ago interested her,
quickened her sympathies for them. She determined to keep them in view
for the future--and with this intention she offered Yvonne opportunities
for continuing the friendship.
“So you ’ll come and see me often,” she said at last. “I have n’t very
many friends.”
“And I haven’t any at all,” said Yvonne, smiling. “And oh! you don’t
know what a comfort it would be to have a woman to go to now and then!”
The visit left Yvonne thoughtful and happy. A new feeling towards Joyce
budded in her heart and the process was accompanied by tiny shocks
of tender resentment. So conscious was she of this, that that evening
whilst Joyce was working in the armchair opposite to her, she suddenly
broke into a little musical laugh. He looked up and caught the
reflection of her smile.
“What is amusing you, Yvonne?”
She still smiled, but a deep red flush showed beneath her dark skin.
“My thoughts,” she said, in a tone that admitted of no further question.
Yet she would have liked to tell him. It was so humorous that she should
feel angry because he did not fall in love with her.
Sometimes light moods are delicate indexes to far-away, unknown
commotions. Afterwards, in the serious moments, when the birdlike
inconsequence fled away from her and she realised herself as a grown
woman to whom had come the knowledge of life, this that she had laughed
and blushed over appeared sad and painful. It kept her awake sometimes
at nights. Once she got out of bed, lit her candle, and looked closely
at her face in the glass. But she returned comforted. She was not
getting old and unattractive.
Yet a vague ferment in her nature began to puzzle her sorely. Her mind,
that was once as simple as a child’s and as clear as spring water,
seemed now tangled with many complexities; she saw into it, as in a
glass, darkly. Life, for the first time appeared to her incomplete. She
was weighed down with a sense of failure. The very facts that had caused
the happy possibility of her comradeship with Joyce smote her as proofs
of the inadequacy of her own womanhood. The essential fierce vanity of
sex was touched.
Once only before had she used her sex as a weapon--on that miserable day
at Ostend, to keep Everard by her side. Then she had felt the fire of
shame. Now she was tempted to use it again, and the shame burned deeper.
And Joyce, familiarised with the daily sweetness of her companionship,
did not notice the gradually stealing increase of tenderness in her
ways.
CHAPTER XX--UPHEAVAL
It was late in the afternoon. The old man had gone away to Exeter, to
bury his sister, his only surviving relative. Joyce was alone in the
shop busily sorting a job lot of books that had come in during the
morning. They were stacked in great piles at the further end, forming
a barrier between himself and the doorway, where the falling light
was creeping in upon the neatly-arranged shelves. Above him flared a
gas-jet. It was warm and dusty work, and Joyce had taken off his coat
and collar and rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Some of the
worthless books he threw on two piles on the floor, to be placed in the
twopenny and fourpenny boxes outside. Others he priced and catalogued.
Others, again, in good bindings, or otherwise obviously of value, he
dusted with a feather brush and put aside for the old man’s inspection.
Now and again space failed for the assorted lots, and he would carry
great strings of volumes supported under his chin to convenient
stacking-spaces on the shelves. Then he would proceed with his sorting,
cataloguing, and cleansing.
Presently the back-parlour door opened and Yvonne appeared. Joyce
paused, with a grimy volume in his hand, in the midst of a cloud of dust
that rose like incense, and his heart gave a little throb of gladness.
She looked so fresh and sweet as she stood there, daintily aproned, in
the darkness of the doorway, with the light from the gas-jet falling
upon her face.
“Tea’s ready,” she remarked.
“Let me finish this lot,” he said, pointing to a pile, “and then I ’ll
come.”
She nodded, advanced a step and took up a great in-folio black-letter.
“What silly rubbish,” she said, with a superior little grimace, as she
turned over the pages. “Fancy any one wanting to buy this.”
“You had better put it down, if you don’t want to cover yourself with
dirt,” said Joyce.
She dropped the book, looked at her soiled hands with a comic air of
disgust.
“Horrid things! Why did n’t you tell me?”
Joyce laughed for answer. It was so like Yvonne. After she had
withdrawn, with a further reminder about the tea, he went on smiling to
himself.
It was very sweet, this brother and sister life of theirs, in spite of
its isolation. There seemed no reason why it should not continue for
ever. Indeed, he scarcely thought of change. Now that his small earnings
seemed practically assured and Yvonne could contribute from her singing
lessons something to the household expenses, the wolf was kept pretty
far from the door.
He was in one of his lighter moods, when Yvonne’s sunshine “scattered
the ghosts of the past,” and illuminated the dark places in his heart.
He hummed a song, forgetful of the gaol and his pariahdom, and thought
of Yvonne’s face awaiting him at the tea-table, as soon as he had
completed his task.
A hesitating step was heard in the shop. He thought it was the boy
returning from an errand.
“Another time you are sent out round the corner, don’t take a quarter of
an hour,” he cried, without turning round.
An irritated tap of the foot made him realise that it was a customer. He
sprang forward with apologies, and, as it had grown dusk, he seized a
taper and quickly lighted the gas in the shop.
Then he looked at the man and started back in amazement; and the man
looked at him; and for a few seconds they remained staring at one
another. The visitor wore apron and gaiters and a bishop’s hat, and
his dignified presence was that of Everard Chisely. He surveyed Joyce’s
grimy and workaday figure with a curl of disgust on his lip. The glance
stung Joyce like a taunt. He flushed, drew himself up defiantly.
“You are the last person I expected to meet here,” said the Bishop,
haughtily.
“Your lordship is the last person I desired to see,” retorted Joyce.
“Doubtless,” replied the Bishop. “And now we have met, I have only one
thing to say to you. I have traced Madame Latour to this house. Where is
she?”
“She is here--upstairs.”
“In this--” began the Bishop, looking round and seeking for a word
expressive of distaste.
“--hovel?” suggested Joyce. “Yes.”
“Under your protection?”
“Under my protection.”
Then Joyce noticed that his lips twitched, and that the perspiration
beaded on his forehead, and that an agony of questioning was in his
eyes.
“Have you been villain enough--?” he began in a hoarse, trembling voice.
But Joyce checked him with a sudden flash and an angry gesture.
“Stop! She is as pure as the stars. Let there be no doubt about that. I
tell you for her sake, not for yours.”
The Bishop drew a long breath and wiped his forehead. Joyce took his
silence for incredulity.
“If I were a villain,” he continued, “do you think it would matter a
brass button to me whether you knew it? I should say ‘yes,’ and you
would walk away and I should never see you again.”
He thrust his hands in his pockets and faced his cousin. All the
pariah’s bitter hatred arose within him against the man who stood there,
the representative of the caste that had disowned and reviled him;
conscious, too, as he was, of standing for the moment on a higher plane.
“I believe you. Oh--indeed--I believe you,” replied Everard, hurriedly.
“But why is she here? Why has she sunk as low as this?”
“Your lordship should be the last to ask such a question.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Joyce, with a shrug of his
shoulders.
The sarcasm sounded in the Bishop’s ears like cynicism.
“Do you mean that you have inveigled Madame Latour into supporting you?”
he asked in a tone of disgust.
Joyce laughed mirthlessly.
“Listen,” he said. “Let us come to some understanding. I am a member
of the criminal classes, and you are a bishop of the English church.
Perhaps the God you believe in may condescend to judge between us.
The woman who was once your wife appealed to you when she was sick and
penniless, and you disregarded her appeal. I, a poverty-stricken outcast
supported her, gave her a home, and reverenced her as a sacred trust.
‘Whether of them twain did the will of his father?’”
Everard stared at him in wide-eyed agitation. A customer entered with
a book he had selected from the stall outside. Joyce went forward,
received the money and returned to his former position by the Bishop.
“I received no appeal from her,” said the latter.
“You did, through me. She was too ill to write.”
“When was this?”
“Last November, a year ago.”
Everard reflected for a moment and then a sudden memory flashed upon
him, and an expression of deep pain came over his face.
“God forgive me! I threw your letter into the fire unopened.”
“Might I ask your reason?” asked Joyce, feeling a grim joy in his
cousin’s humiliation.
“I had been warned that you had gone to Fulminster on a begging
errand--”
“Did the Rector have the iniquity to write you that?” burst in Joyce
fiercely.
“It was not the Rector.”
“Who, then? I saw no one but him. I was simply seeking Madame Latour.”
“I name no names,” replied the Bishop, stiffly. “I am merely explaining.
The letter, in fact, came by the same mail as yours. Little suspecting
that you could address me on any subject unconnected with yourself, and
keeping to my resolution to hold no further communication with you, I
destroyed, as I say, your letter unopened. Believe me, the apology I
tender to you--”
“Is neither here nor there,” said Joyce, coldly. “I am past feeling
such slights. I suppose your correspondent was that she-devil Emmeline
Winstanley. I congratulate you.” The Bishop made no reply, but paced
backwards and forwards two or three times with bent head, along the
book-lined shelves. Then he stopped and said abruptly:--
“Tell me the facts about Yvonne.”
The conciliatory mention of her by her Christian name thawed Joyce for
the moment. He rapidly sketched events, while Everard listened, looking
at him rigidly from under bent brows.
“I would have given the last drop of my blood rather than she should
have suffered so.”
“So would I,” replied Joyce.
“Would to God I had known of it!”
“It was your own doing.”
“You are right. My uncharitableness towards you has brought its
punishment.”
“I cannot say I am sorry,” said Joyce, grimly.
There was a short silence, compelled by the struggling emotions in
each man’s heart. In Joyce’s there was war, a sense of victory, of the
sweetness of revenge. He felt, too, that now Yvonne would indubitatively
reject the Bishop’s offer of help. He had won the right to support her.
Suddenly her voice was heard from the back-parlour door.
“Do come. The tea is getting quite cold.”
Both men started. A quick flash came into Everard’s eyes and he made a
hasty step forward. But Joyce checked him with a gesture.
“I had better prepare her for the surprise of seeing you.”
The Bishop nodded assent. Joyce ran to the street door to see that the
boy had returned to his post, and, satisfied, left the Bishop and went
to join Yvonne in their little sitting-room upstairs.
She had just entered, was lifting a plate of hot toast from the fender.
She held it out threateningly with both hands.
“If it’s all dried up it is not my fault,” she scolded. “And oh! you
know I don’t allow you to sit down in your shirt-sleeves!”
He made no reply, but took the plate mechanically from her and placed it
on the table.
“What is the matter, Stephen?” she asked suddenly, scanning his face.
“Some one has called to see you, Yvonne.”
“Me?”
She looked at him for a puzzled moment. Then something in his face told
her. She caught him by his shirt-sleeve.
“It can’t be Everard?” she cried, agitated.
“Yes. It is Everard.”
She grew deadly pale and her breath came fast.
“How has he managed to find me?”
“I don’t know. Possibly he will explain.”
Yvonne sat down by the table and put her hand to her heart.
“It is so sudden,” she said deprecatingly.
“Perhaps you would rather put off seeing him,” suggested Joyce.
“Oh no, no. I will see him now--if you don’t mind, Stephen, dear. I am
quite strong again. Tell him to come. And don’t be unhappy about me.”
She smiled up at him and held out her hand. He took it in his and kissed
it.
“My own brave, dear Yvonne,” he said impulsively. A flush and a grateful
glance rewarded him.
He found the Bishop scanning the book backs.
“Will you let me show you up to the sitting-room?” said Joyce.
The Bishop bowed and followed. At the foot of the stairs he paused.
“I think it right to tell you,” he said, “that I have received authentic
news of the death of Madame Latour’s first husband. The object of my
sudden visit to England is to take her back with me as my wife.”
The unexpectedness of the announcement smote Joyce like a blast of
icy air. The loftiness of the Bishop’s assurance dwarfed him to
insignificance. As at previous crises of his life, the sudden check
cowed the spirit yet under the prison yoke. His defiance vanished.
He turned with one foot on the stair and one hand on the baluster and
stared stupidly at the Bishop. The latter motioned to him to proceed. He
obeyed mechanically, mounted, turned the handle of the sitting-room door
in silence, and descended again to the shop.
No sooner was he alone than a swift consciousness of his moral rout made
him hot with shame and anger. His heart rose in fierce revolt. Yvonne
was free. Free to marry whom she liked. What right over her had this
man who had cast her off, spent two whole years at the other end of the
world without once troubling to enquire after her welfare? What right
had the man to come and rob him of the one blessing that life held for
him?
The prospect of life alone, without Yvonne, shimmered before him like a
bleak landscape revealed by sheet-lightning. A panic shook him. A second
flash revealed him to himself. This utter dependence upon Yvonne, this
intense need of her that had gone on strengthening, week by week, and
day by day, was love. Use, self-concentration, the mere unconcealed
affection of daily life had kept it dormant as it grew. Now it awakened
under the sudden terror of losing her. A thrill ran through his body.
He loved her. She was free. This other set aside, he could marry her. He
paced among the piles of books in strange excitement.
The boy, who had been rapping his heels against his box-seat by the
door, strolled in to see what was doing. Joyce abruptly ordered him to
put up the shutters and go home.
Meanwhile he made pretence to continue his work of cataloguing. But his
brain was in a whirl. His eyes fell upon the marks of Yvonne’s hands and
arms on the dust of the folio she had been handling. The mute testimony
of their intimacy eloquently moved him. She was part and parcel of his
life. He would not give her up without fierce fighting.
Then, in the midst of the glow came the fresh memory of his collapse.
He sat down by the little deal table, where he was wont to write,
and buried his face in his hands, and shivered. His manhood had gone.
Nothing could ever restore it. Its semblance was liable to be shattered
at any moment by an honest man’s self-assertion. It had perished during
those awful years; not to be revived, even by the pure passion of love
that was throbbing in his veins.
Too restless to sit long, he rose presently and walked about the shop,
among the books. The close, dusty air suffocated him. He longed to go
out, walk the streets, and shake off the burden that was round his neck.
But the feeling that he ought, for Yvonne’s sake, to remain until the
Bishop’s departure kept him an irritable prisoner. The minutes passed
slowly. Outside was the ceaseless hum and hurry of the street: within,
the flare of the gas-jets and the sound of his own purposeless tread.
And so for two hours he waited, running the gamut of his emotions with
maddening iteration. The terror of losing Yvonne brought at times the
perspiration to his forehead. With feverish intensity he argued out his
claim upon her. She could not throw him over to go and live with that
proud, unsympathetic man who must for ever be to her a stranger. Then
his jealous wrath burst forth again, and again came the old hated shiver
of degradation. How dare he match himself against one who, with all his
faults, had yet lived through his life a stainless gentleman?
CHAPTER XXI--A DEMAND IN MARRIAGE
“Yes, he is dead,” said the Bishop, gravely. “You are a free woman.
I have come from the other end of the world to tell you so.” Yvonne,
sitting opposite him, looked into the red coals of the fire, and clasped
her hands nervously. His presence dazed her. She had not yet recovered
from the shock of his sudden embrace. The pressure of his arms was yet
about her shoulders. The change wrought in her life by the loss of her
voice was almost like a change of identity. It was with an effort
that she realised the former closeness of their relations. He seemed
unfamiliar, out of place, to have dropped down from another sphere. The
oddity of his attire struck a note of the unusual. The dignity of his
title invested him with remoteness. His face too, did not correspond
with her remembered impression. It was thinner, more deeply lined. His
hair had grown scantier and greyer.
She had listened, almost in a dream, to the story of his coming. How, to
his bitter regret, he had destroyed Joyce’s letter. How, later, growing
anxious about her, he had written for news of her welfare. How his
letter had been returned to him through the post-office. How, meanwhile,
the detective whom he had employed for the purpose in Paris, had sent
him proofs of Bazouge’s death. How he had been unable to rest until he
had found her, and, impatient of the long weary posts, he had left New
Zealand; and lastly, how he had obtained her present address from the
musical agents, who had informed him of her illness and the loss of her
voice.
“You are free, Yvonne, at last,” repeated the Bishop.
The tidings scarcely affected her. She had counted Amédée so long as
dead, even after his disastrous resurrection, that now she could feel
no shock either of pain or relief. It was not until the after-sound of
Everard’s last words penetrated her consciousness, that she realised
their import. She started quickly from her attitude of bewilderment, and
looked at him with a dawning alarm in her eyes.
“It can make very little difference to me,” she said.
“I thought it might make all the difference in the world to me,” said
Everard. “Do you think I have ever ceased to love you?”
There was the note of pain in his voice which all her life long had
had power to move her simple nature. She trembled a little as she
answered:--
“It is all so long ago, now. We have changed.”
“You have not changed,” he said, with grave tenderness. “You are still
the same sweet flower-like woman that was my wife. And I have not
changed. I have longed for you all through these bitter, lonely years.
Do you know why I left Fulminster?”
“No,” murmured Yvonne.
“Because it grew unbearable--without you. I thought a changed scene and
new responsibilities would fill my thoughts. I was mistaken. And added
to my want of you was remorse for harshness in that terrible hour.”
“I have only thought of your kindness, Everard,” said Yvonne, with
tears in her eyes. His emotion impressed her deeply with a sense of his
suffering.
He rose, came forward and bent over her chair.
“Will you come back with me, Yvonne?”
She would have given worlds to be away; to have, at least, a few hours
to consider her answer. He expected it at once. Feminine instinct
desperately sought evasion.
“I shall be of no use to you. I can’t sing any more. Listen.”
She turned sideways in her chair, and drawing back her head far from
him, began, with a smile, the “Aria” of the Angel in the Elijah. The
grave man drew himself up, shocked to the heart. He had not realised
what the loss of her voice meant. Instead of the pure dove-notes that
had stirred the passion of his manhood, nothing came from her lips but
toneless, wheezing sounds. She stopped, bravely tried to laugh, but the
laugh was choked in a sob and she burst into tears.
“Come back with me, my darling,” he said, bending down again. “I will
love you all the more tenderly.”
Yvonne dried her eyes in her impulsive way.
“I am foolish,” she said. “Crying can’t mend it.”
“I will devote the rest of my life to making compensation,” said the
Bishop. “Come, Yvonne.”
“Oh, give me time to answer you, Everard,” she cried, driven to bay at
last. “It is all so strange and sudden.”
He left her side, with a kind of sigh, and resumed his former seat. He
was somewhat disappointed. He had not contemplated the chance of
her refusal. A glance, however, round the shabby, low-ceilinged room
reassured him. The coarse, not immaculate tablecloth, the homely
crockery, the half-emptied potted-meat tins on the table, the threadbare
hearthrug at his feet--all spoke, if not of poverty, at least of very
narrow means. She could not surely hesitate. But she did.
“Take your time--of course,” he said, crossing his gaitered legs. There
was a short silence. At last she said, with a little quiver of the
lip:--
“I promised you, I know. But things have altered so since then. I
thought I should always be free. But now I am not, you see.”
“What do you mean?” he cried, startled.
“It is Stephen,” Yvonne explained. “He saved me from starvation, gave me
all he had, to make me well again, and has been staying all this time to
support me. You don’t know how nobly he has behaved to me--yes, nobly,
Everard, there is no other word for it. He has rights over me that a
brother or father would have--I could not leave him without his consent.
It would be cruel and ungrateful. Don’t you see that it would be wicked
of me, Everard,” she added earnestly.
His face clouded over. Pride rose in revolt. He crushed it down,
however, and suffered the humiliation.
“It would lift a responsibility from his shoulders,” he said. “I myself
am willing to take him by the hand again, and help him to rise from his
present position.”
“You will let bygones be bygones--quite?”
“With all my heart,” replied Everard.
“He suffers dreadfully still,” said Yvonne.
“I will do my best to heal the wound,” replied the Bishop. “I own I have
judged him too harshly already.”
A flush of pleasure arose in Yvonne’s cheeks, and her eyes thanked him.
Then she reflected, and said somewhat sadly:--
“Perhaps if you help him in that way, he won’t miss me.”
“I will guarantee his prosperity,” he answered, with dignified
conviction. And then, changing his manner, after a pause, and leaning
forward and looking at her hungeringly, “Yvonne,” he said, “you will
come and share my life again--in a new world, where everything is
beautiful--? I have been growing old there, without you. You will make
me young again, and the blessing of God will be upon us. I must have
you with me, Yvonne. I cannot live in peace without your smile and your
happiness around me. My child--”
His voice grew thick with emotion. He stood up and stretched out his
arms to her. Yvonne rose timidly and advanced toward him, drawn by his
pleading. But just as his hands were about to touch her, she hung back.
“You must ask Stephen for me,” she said, in her serious, simple way.
His hands fell to his sides, in a gesture of impatience.
“Impossible. How can I do such a thing? It would be absurd.”
“But I can’t,” she said.
Her tiny figure, the plaintiveness of her upturned face, the wistfulness
of her soft eyes, brought back to him a flood of memories. She was still
the same sweet, innocent soul. The lines about his lips relaxed into a
smile, and he took her, yielding passively, into his arms and kissed her
cheek.
“I will do what you like, dear,” he said, in a low voice. “Anything
in the world to win you again. I will ask him. It will be making
reparation. And then you will marry me?”
“Yes,” murmured Yvonne faintly, “I promised you.”
“Why did you not write to me again?” he asked, still holding her hands.
“I was going to write when the answer came,” she said, looking down.
“But no answer did come. And then, I was content to help Stephen.”
“You could have helped Stephen, all the same.”
“Oh, no!” she cried, with a swift look upwards. “Don’t you understand?”
The Bishop saw the delicacy of the point, and motioned an affirmative.
But he regarded Stephen with mingled feelings. It was intensely
repugnant to him to find his once reprobated cousin a barrier between
himself and Yvonne. An uneasy suspicion passed through his mind. Might
not Stephen be even a more serious rival?
“You are not marrying me merely on account of that promise years ago,
Yvonne?” he asked.
“Oh, no, Everard,” she replied gently. “It is because you want me--and
because it’s right.”
He kissed her good-bye.
“I shall not visit you here again, Yvonne,” he said. “When I receive
the final answer I shall make suitable arrangements. We shall be married
quietly, by special licence. Will that please you?”
“Yes,” said Yvonne. “Thank you.”
At the door he turned for a parting glance. Then he descended the
stairs, with the intention of broaching the matter to Joyce then and
there. But although he found lights burning in the shop, Joyce was
nowhere to be seen. Nor were there any apparent means of ascertaining
his whereabouts. The Bishop bit his lip with annoyance. He did not
wish to procrastinate in this affair. Suddenly his eye fell upon an old
stationery-rack against the wall, in which were visible the paper and
envelopes used for the business. With prompt decision the Bishop took
what was necessary, sought and found pen and ink, and wrote at Joyce’s
table a letter, which he addressed and left in a conspicuous position.
Then he found with some difficulty the street-door of the house and let
himself out.
Joyce, whom a longing for air had at last driven outside, was walking
up and down the pavement, keeping his eye on the door. As soon as he
witnessed Everard’s departure, he entered and went through the passage
into the shop. The letter attracted his attention. He opened it and
read:--
Dear Stephen,--I wished for a word with you. But as the
matter is urgent, I write. I should like to express to you
my sense of the generous chivalry of your conduct toward
Yvonne. I should also like to hold out to you the hand of
sincere friendship.
In earnest of this I approach you, as man to man, with
reference to one of the most solemn affairs in life. Yvonne,
gratefully acknowledging the vast obligations under which
she is bound to you, has made her acceptance of my offer of
remarriage dependent upon your consent. For this consent,
therefore, I earnestly beg you.
For the future, in what way soever my friendship can be of
use to you, it will most gladly be directed.
Yours sincerely,
E. Chisely.
Burgon’s Hotel, W.
Joyce grew faint as he read. The words swam before his eyes. A
great pain shot through his heart. The letter contained one torturing
fact--that of Yvonne’s acquiescence. The Bishop’s acknowledgment of
his uprightness, the courtesy of the formal request, the offer of
friendship--all were meaningless phrases. Yvonne was going to leave
him--of her own free-will. Although his fears had anticipated the blow,
it none the less stunned him. He flung himself down by his table, with
a groan, and buried his face in his arms. The realisation of what Yvonne
was to him flooded him with a mighty rush. She was his hope of salvation
in this world and the next, his guardian angel, his universe. Without
her all was chaos, void and horrible.
Presently Yvonne’s voice was heard calling him from the top of the
stairs:--
“Stephen!”
He raised a haggard face, and with an effort steadied his voice to
reply. Then he rose, turned off the gas, from force of habit, and went
with heavy tread up the stairs.
“Your tea,” said Yvonne, busying herself with a kettle. “I am making you
some afresh.”
“I will go and wash my hands,” he said drearily.
He mounted to his bedroom and cleansed himself from the book-dust and
returned to Yvonne. He drew his chair to the table. She poured him out
his tea, and helped him to butter, according to a habit into which
she had fallen. She deplored the spoilt toast. He said that it did not
matter. But when he tried to eat, the food stuck in his throat. Yvonne
made no pretence at eating, but trifled with her teaspoon, with downcast
eyes. Joyce looked at her anxiously. She seemed to have grown older.
The childlike expression had changed into a sad, womanly seriousness.
Presently she raised her eyes, soft and appealing as ever, and met his.
“Did you see Everard?” she asked.
“No. I was out. But he left a note--that told me everything.”
“He asks for your consent?”
“Yes.”
“And will you give it?” she asked, below her breath.
“It would be worse than folly for me to try to withhold it,” he said,
bitterly.
“I will stay with you, and go on living this life, if you wish.”
“And yourself?”
“I don’t count,” she said, “I must do as I am told.”
“Would you be happy with Everard?” he asked huskily.
“Yes--of course--I was before,” she replied. But her cheek grew paler.
“And you would stay, if I asked you, and share all this struggle and
poverty with me?”
“How could I refuse? Don’t I owe you my life?”
He looked for a tremulous second into her pure eyes and knew that he was
master of her fate. The condition she had imposed upon Everard was no
graceful act of acknowledgment. It was a serious placing of her future
in his hands. He was silent for a few moments, deep in agitated thought,
trembling with a struggle against a fierce temptation. The hand that
nervously tugged at his moustache was shaking. Yvonne read the anxious
trouble on his face.
“Don’t worry over it now,” she said, gently. “There is time, you know.
Why should people always want to decide things straight off?”
“You are right, Yvonne,” said Stephen. “Let us forget it for a little.”
“Your poor tea,” add Yvonne, with pathetic return to her old manner. “It
will never be drunk. And do eat something, to please me.”
But it was a miserable meal. The tabooed subject filled the heart and
thoughts of each. It was with an effort that they caught the drift of
casual commonplaces uttered from time to time. Now and then, during the
long spells of silence, Yvonne stole a swift feminine glance at his
face. But his sombre expression seemed to tell her nothing of that which
she longed to know. At last the farce ended. They rose from the table
and went to their usual seats by the fireside. Joyce filled his pipe,
and was fumbling in his pockets for a match, when Yvonne came forward
with a spill and stood before him holding it until the pipe was alight.
He tried to thank her, but the words would not come. The tender act of
intimacy made his heart swell too painfully. Yvonne rang the bell and
the elderly, slatternly maid-of-all-work, cleared away the tea-things.
Sarah was one of the elements of the establishment that made Joyce hate
his poverty. She drank, was unclean, was a perpetual soil in the
atmosphere that Yvonne breathed. The sight of her was a new factor in
the case against himself.
It was a terrible decision that he was called upon to make. On the
one hand, wealth and ease and social happiness for Yvonne, despair and
misery for himself. On the other, a selfish happiness for himself, and
for Yvonne this squalor and ostracism. He knew that her sweet, gentle
nature would accept the latter portion unmurmuringly. A voice rang
in his ears the certainty that she would marry him, if he pleaded.
To repress the temptation to cast all other thoughts but his yearning
passion to the winds was indescribable torture.
“I wish I could sing to you,” she said, breaking a long silence. “I
don’t know what to do now, when I feel things. Once I could sing them.”
“I should ask you to sing Gounod’s ‘Serenade,’” said Joyce.
“Oh, not that!” she cried quickly. “It was the last thing I ever sang to
you, and it brought us bad luck.”
For a moment he put a lover’s passionate interpretation upon her words.
His heart beat fast. He controlled the wild impulse that seized him,
biting through the amber of his pipe with the nervous effort.
And then he realised that he must be alone to work out this stern
problem, on whose solution depended the happiness of three human lives.
He rose to his feet.
“I am going out, Yvonne,” he said, in a constrained voice. “All this is
rather upsetting--and you had better go to bed early. You look tired.”
“Yes. I have a splitting headache,” said Yvonne.
She tried to smile brightly, as he wished her good-night. But when the
door closed upon him, the smile faded, and her face grew drawn, almost
haggard. A spirit had descended, touched her with magical wings, and
changed at last the child into the woman. Her eyes were set in steadfast
envisaging of the future; and they beheld the responsibilities and
sadnesses of life, no longer as vague terrors and discomforts from which
her light bird-like nature shrank to the nearest refuge, but as dull
realities, commonplace in form and grey in hue.
It was her duty to go back to Everard, Stephen not wanting her; for she
had promised. It was her duty to ask Stephen for his consent. And it was
Stephen’s duty to give it, if he did not want her for more than daily
companionship. She had proved that Stephen did not love her. Never had
she felt so keenly the failure of her womanhood. It had not cleared his
life of haunting cares. If it had, his heart would have been stirred
with needs for closer union. The weapon of her sex was powerless. Newer
knowledge had come to her. He needed her less than Everard. She argued
with desperate logic. And yet there was a lingering, feverish hope--one
that made her now and then draw a sharp convulsive breath, as she sat
staring, with clear vision, at her life.
CHAPTER XXII--SEEKING SALVATION
He could walk no longer through the drizzling rain, in futile struggle
with his soul’s needs. As possible to cut out his heart and fling it at
Everard’s feet as to surrender Yvonne. He called himself a fool.
The glare in front of a cheap music-hall attracted him. He entered,
mounted to the nine-penny balcony, where he stood leaning over the
wooden partition, wedged among a crowd of loungers. The air was filled
with the smoke of cheap tobacco and the fumes of the bar behind. A girl
on the stage was singing a song in the chorus of which the thronged
house roared lustily. Then came a tenor vocalist with drawing-room
ballads. Joyce attended absently, hearing and seeing in a confused
dream. A neighbour asking him for a light aroused him from his reverie.
He wondered why he had come. To-night of all nights, when he might be at
home in the joy of his heart’s desire. Yet he stayed.
A flashing family appeared riding on nondescript cycles. He watched
them with half-shut eyes, caressing a quaint conceit that they were
his thoughts whirling around in concrete form. The bursts of deafening
applause seemed to soothe him. Presently a street-scene cloth was let
down and a battered man appeared and sang a song about drink and twins
and brokers. He threw such humourous gusto into the performance that
Joyce laughed in spite of his preoccupation, and remained in amused
anticipation of his second turn. The bell tinkled. The “comedian” came
on and was greeted with vociferous applause. With music-hall realism
he was dressed in prison-clothes, glengarry, woollen stockings,
and black-arrowed suit all complete. He had made up his face into a
startling brute. Joyce felt sick. He did not catch the first verse; only
the concluding lines of the chorus,
“I ‘ve done my bit of time,
For ’itting of my missus on the chump, chump, chump.”
But then the man began to speak, and Joyce could not help hearing.
A horrible fascination held him. The ignoble figure poured out with
grotesque and voluble cynicism the comic history of the prison-life;
the plank-bed, the skilly, the oakum, the exercise-yard. He sketched
his pals, detailed the sordid tricks for obtaining food, the mean
malingering, the debasing habits. And all with a horrible fidelity. The
audience shrieked with laughter. But Joyce lost sense of the mime. The
man was real, one of the degraded creatures with whom he himself had
once been indistinguishably mingled--a loathsome fact from the past. The
smell of the prison floated over the footlights and filled his nostrils.
All his overwrought nerves quivering with repulsion, he broke through
the crowd hemming him in against the partition, and rushed down into the
street.
*****
How long and whither he walked he did not know. At last he found himself
within familiar latitudes, outside the Angel Tavern. He was wet through
from the fine, penetrating rain, tired, cold, and utterly miserable. The
revulsion of feeling in the music-hall had thrown him back years in his
self-esteem. The soil of the gaol had never seemed so ineffaceable.
In the blaze of light by the tavern door he paused, irresolute. Then,
remembering the disastrous results of an attempt years before to seek
such consolation, he shivered and turned away. It was too dangerous.
About a hundred yards further, a woman passed him, turned, and overtook
him.
“I thought it was you,” she said. He recognised the voice as that of
Annie Stevens. It was not far from the spot where he had first met her,
and where, some short time after, he had met her again. For months,
however, he had lost sight of her. He recognised her voice, but her
appearance was unfamiliar, and her face was half hidden by a Salvation
Army bonnet. The apparent cynicism of her attire revolted him.
“Why are you masquerading like this?” he asked, continuing to walk
onwards.
“It’s not masquerading. It’s real. I recognised you, and thought perhaps
you’d care to know.”
He slackened his pace imperceptibly, and she walked by his side.
“You don’t seem to believe it,” she resumed. “I don’t tell lies. It’s
the truth that has generally cursed me.”
“Then why are you walking up and down here at this time of night?”
“Doing rescue work.”
“Have you rescued any one yet?” asked Joyce, with a touch of sarcasm.
“No. I scarce expect to.”
“Then why are you trying?”
“Because it’s the beastliest thing I could think of doing,” she said,
stopping abruptly, and facing him, as he turned, in the defiant way he
remembered from the theatre days.
“You ’re an odd girl,” he said.
“You don’t suppose I wear this disgusting bonnet and get hustled by
roughs and blackguarded by women because I like it! I haven’t been
converted, and I don’t shriek out ‘Hallelujah,’ and I won’t,--but I earn
an honest living at the Shelter during the day, and at night I come out.
It’s the beastliest thing I can think of doing,” she repeated. “If I
knew of anything beastlier I’d do it. I ’ve had flames inside me since I
gave you away,--I’d have killed myself for you after,--and hell since I
went on the streets,--but I think the other was worse. I ’ve learned what
you felt like; now I’m trying to burn out the fire--”
“Stop for a moment,” he said, with a queer catch in his throat. “Do you
mean you are doing this for your own inner self?”
“Yes,” she replied, her direct intuition divining the implied
alternative. “I don’t know much about Jesus and my immortal soul.
That ’ll come. I want one day to be able to remember that I loved
you--without hating myself and feeling sick with the shame and the
horror of it all. You may think me a silly fool if you like, but that’s
why I’m doing it. Let us walk on. We need n’t attract attention.” This
was wise; for more than one passer-by had turned round, struck by the
two intent white faces. Joyce obeyed passively, but continued for some
moments to look down upon her in great wonder. An idea, which he became
dimly aware had been struggling for birth in the dark of his soul for
the past two hours, dawned upon him amid a strange, exulting excitement.
Suddenly he took her by the arm and held it very tightly. She looked up
at him, astonished.
“What is the matter with you?”
“Do you know what you have done tonight?” he said, in a shaking voice.
“You have shown me how to burn out my hell too. You have retrieved any
wrong you have done me. If my forgiveness is worth having, you have it,
from the depths of my soul.”
He was strangely moved. In the impulse of his exaltation, he drew
her quickly into the gloom of a doorway--the pavement was momentarily
deserted--and kissed her. She uttered a little cry and shrank back.
“Is that for forgiveness?”
“Yes,” he cried; and then he broke from her abruptly, and went on along
the pavement with great strides.
He was no longer uncertain. The problem of his life was solved. His mind
was crystal clear. At last the time had come for the great atonement to
his degraded self, the supreme sacrifice that should clear his being of
stain.
At last he could perform that act of renunciation that would give
the strength back into his eyes to meet calmly the scrutiny of his
fellow-man. Renunciation! The word rang in his ears and echoed to his
footsteps.
He did not doubt that it would not be to Yvonne’s lesser happiness to
regain her lost environment of luxury and tender care. On the other
hand, he judged her rightly enough to know that she would have found
compensating pleasures in a life of privation with himself. Had it not
been so, mere manliness would have decided in the Bishop’s favour. In
perfect fairness (he saw now), he could have claimed her. His sacrifice
was made in pure loyalty to his conscience.
And it had been reserved, too, for that ignorant, wayward woman, who had
groped her unguided way thus grotesquely to the Principle, to have led
him thither and revealed its elemental application. He felt a stirring
of shame that strengthened his manhood.
The rain had stopped. The clouds broke and drifted across the heavens,
and a misty moon appeared at intervals, shedding its pale light upon the
unlovely thoroughfare. A fresh breeze sprang up and made Joyce, in his
wet things, shiver with cold. At the nearest tavern he stopped, entered,
called for some hot spirits, this time from no temptation to drown care,
and asked for writing materials. Then, in the midst of the noise of
thick voices and clatter of drinking vessels, he wrote at a corner of
the bar his letter of renunciation.
Dear Everard,--I accept your letter in the spirit in which
it was written. I put the sweetest and purest of God’s
creatures into your keeping. Cherish her.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Joyce.
A few minutes afterwards he dropped it into a pillar-box. The faint
patter of its fall inside struck like a death-note upon his ear, shocked
him with a sense of the irrevocable. Now that the act of renunciation
was accomplished, he felt frightened. The immensity of his sacrifice
began to loom before him. He became conscious of the dull premonitions
of an agony hitherto undreamed of, for all his suffering in the past.
Shiveringly he bent his steps homeward. The gas was burning dimly in the
sitting-room. As was usual on the rare occasions when he had spent the
evening out, Yvonne had brought down his bedroom candle and had laid his
modest supper neatly for him. His slippers were warming by the fire. At
the sight, his pain grew greater. Having taken off his wet boots and lit
his candle--he could eat no supper--he turned off the gas, and went out
of the room. On the landing outside Yvonne’s door were the tiny shoes
she had placed there for Sarah to clean. He looked at them for a second
or two and mounted the stairs hurriedly.
In the shock and excitement of battle a man can bear the amputation of
a mangled limb without great suffering. It is afterwards that the agony
sets in, when the nerves have quieted to responsiveness. So it was with
Joyce on that sleepless night of his great renunciation, and with his
misery was mingled despair lest all should prove to be futile, his
theory of renunciation; a ghastly fallacy. Time was when he would have
mocked at the proposition. Could he even now defend it upon rational
grounds? Had he not cut off his leg to compensate for the loss of an
arm, thereby adding to the gaiety of the high gods? He tossed about in
the bed in anguish, “burning out his hell.”
A man of sensitive, emotional temperament, however, cannot pass through
such an ordeal unchanged. Some fibres must be shrivelled up, whilst
others are toughened. Joyce rose in the morning with aching head and
exhausted nerves, but still with a dull sense of calm. Fallacy or not,
at any rate he had chosen the man’s part. The consciousness of it was an
element of strength. He dressed and went downstairs.
Yvonne was already in the room, neat and dainty as usual, making the
toast for breakfast. She was pale and had the faint rings below the
eyes that ever tell tales on a woman’s face. She looked round at him
anxiously, as she knelt before the fire. He saw her trouble and went and
sat in the armchair beside her and spread out his hands to warm them.
“You have been worrying, my poor little Yvonne,” he said gently. “I was
a selfish beast to let you think I wanted to make up my mind, when
my course was so plain. I wrote to Everard last night. I told him to
cherish the treasure that he has got. You shouldn’t have worried over
it.”
Yvonne turned away her face from him, and remained silent for some
moments, half kneeling, half sitting, the toasting-fork drooping idly
from her hand.
“It was foolish of me,” she replied at last “But it seemed hard to leave
you alone--and I ’ve got so used to this little place--one gets attached
to places, like a cat--Did you--were you sorry to give me away?”
“Of course,” said Joyce. “I thought we could go on being brother and
sister till the end of all things. Well, all things have an end, and
this is it.”
“You would not prefer me to stay?” asked Yvonne, in her soft voice.
He would have given his soul to have been able to throw his arms round
her, passionately and wildly--she was so near him, so maddeningly
desired. Did she realise, he wondered, what flame was in her words? He
leaned back in the chair, as if to avert the temptation by increasing
the distance between them.
“No,” he said, with a sharp breath, “I could not--it will be a wrench
breaking up the--partnership. But it is all for the best. I know you
will be happy and cared for, and that will be a happiness to me.”
Sarah brought in the breakfast and retired. They sat down to table.
Somehow or other the meal proceeded. Two things had come by post for
Joyce, one a belated but laudatory notice of “The Wasters,” the other
a cheque from the office of a weekly paper. He passed them both to her,
according to custom.
“You mustn’t bother about me at all, Yvonne. I am in a different way of
business altogether from what I was when we first started housekeeping.
The new book will do ever so much better than ‘The Wasters.’ I shall
miss you terribly--at first--but it will all dry straight, Yvonne. I
dare say I shall go on living here. Runcle and I are immense pals, you
know--perhaps I may go into partnership with him and bring some modern
go-ahead ideas into the concern--become a Quaritch or Sotheran--who
knows? Yes, I should n’t like to leave these quaint, dear old rooms,”
he said, looking round, anywhere but in Yvonne’s face, with an air of
cheerfulness that he felt in his heart must be ghastly. “Something of
you and your dear companionship will linger about them. I shall pretend,
like the ‘Marchioness,’ that you are with me.”
He passed his tea-cup, and, meeting her eyes, tried to smile. The comers
of her lips responded bravely.
“And at last you will come into indisputed possession of your
furniture,” she said.
He had not the heart to protest. So they continued to talk in this light
strain of the coming parting, until Joyce, looking at his watch, found
it was time to go down to the shop. At the door, on his way out, he
paused to relight his pipe. Then, without trusting himself to look
round, he left her. But if he had turned he would have seen her grow
suddenly very white, clutch the mantel-piece for support with one hand
while the other pressed her bosom hard, and sway for a second or two
with shut eyes.
Downstairs he resumed his unfinished task of the evening before. He
worked at it doggedly, trying not to think. But it was as futile as
trying to hold one’s breath beyond a certain period.
“Yvonne is going--to marry Everard--going for ever--I shall be
alone--she will lie in his arms--I shall go mad--God help me--if it
is more than I can bear, there is a way out--I can keep up till she
goes--she shall not know--afterwards.” His brain could not work beyond.
The same thoughts throbbed with almost rhythmic recurrence as he priced
and catalogued the books. Once he opened a tattered “Marcus Aurelius”:--
“If pain is an affliction, it must affect either the body or the mind;
if the body is hurt, let it say so; as for the soul, it is in her power
to preserve her serenity and calm, by supposing the accident no evil.”
He laughed to himself mirthlessly, and threw the book on the fourpenny
heap. “Or pretending, like the Marchioness,” he said. He was scarcely in
a mood for “Marcus Aurelius.”
A messenger-boy appeared with a letter for Madame Latour. Joyce sent it
up to her by the shop-boy, who presently brought down a reply note. The
preparations for her departure had begun. Joyce’s heart seemed set in a
vice and he nearly cried aloud with the pain.
The hours wore on; the piles of books were disposed of; nothing to do,
but wait for customers. To keep himself employed he copied untidy pages
of his manuscript. He went up for dinner. Yvonne was more subdued than
at breakfast, and they scarcely spoke. When the meal was over, she told
him quietly of the letter she had received.
“Everard says that he is getting the special licence to-day, and the
marriage will take place to-morrow at St Luke’s, Islington. Considering
the circumstances, he thinks it best that there should be no delay.”
“It is just as well,” he replied. “When changes come, it is best
that they should come swiftly. Has he made any more definite
arrangements--the hour?”
“He will send me a message later.”
“You will have to put up your things. If I can help you, Yvonne--”
“Thanks--no. I have so little. The few odds and ends I shall leave
you--as mementoes. You would like to keep them, would n’t you?”
“Thank you, Yvonne,” he said, turning away. They had spoken in subdued
voices, as folks do when discussing funeral arrangements. Joyce, blinded
and dazed by his misery, was unperceptive of her joylessness. At the
most, he was conscious of a seriousness that, under the circumstances,
was not unnatural. His own pain he hid with anxious effort.
The afternoon hours passed. He lit the gas in the shop, and proceeded
with whatever mechanical employment he could find. It was a relief to be
alone. The old man’s gossip would have jarred upon him, driven him up
to the sitting-room where the ordeal was fiercest, or out into the
hard-featured streets. He would have two or three days of solitude
before Runcle returned from Exeter.
Messages came from the Bishop. One for Yvonne. Another for him,
acknowledging his letter, announcing that the hour of noon had been
fixed upon, shortly before which time a carriage would be sent to convey
Yvonne to the church, and begging him in most courteous terms to assist
at the ceremony and give Yvonne away. An echo of the Salvation
Army girl’s voice came back to him, and he smiled grimly. “It’s the
beastliest thing I can do.”
He scribbled a line of acquiescence and gave it to the waiting
messenger-boy. “I had not thought of the dregs,” he said to himself.
That evening they sat drearily in their accustomed places by the
fireside, each knowing it to be their last together. Night after night
they had spent in each other’s society, Yvonne sewing or reading or
dreaming in a lazy, contented way, Joyce writing upon a board laid
across his knees. Sometimes she would come and lean over the back of his
chair and watch the words as they came from his pen, her soft wavy black
hair very near his fair, close-trimmed head.
“Send me away if I’m worrying you,” she used to say.
Whereupon he would laugh happily and answer:--
“See how beautifully I am writing. I should never have thought of that
remark if you had not been there.”
“I like to play at feeling a guardian angel,” she said once.
“You can feel it without the playing,” he replied, drawing his head
aside and looking round at her. “When your wings are over me like that,
I do work that I could n’t do unaided.”
And she had blushed and felt very happy.
But now, on this last evening, they sat apart--half the world already
between them--and talked constrainedly, with long silences. For the
greater part of the time he shaded his face with his hand, sparing
himself the sight of her hungered-for sweetness and saving her the sight
of the hunger he felt was in his eyes. When at last she rose to bid him
good-night, he nerved himself to meet her gaze calmly. And then for the
first time he was shocked at the change that the night and the day had
wrought in her.
She stood before him, infinitely sweet and simple; but more wan even
than she had been on that day in the hospital when she had learned the
loss of her voice. For the still unvanished pathos of childhood that had
then smoothed her face was gone, and the sterner pathos of the woman’s
experience had taken its place. Yet the interpretation did not come to
him.
“My poor child,” he said. “You are scarcely strong enough yet to bear
such an upheaval as this. Try to have a good sleep.” He held the door
for her to pass out. And then with a great gulp, he continued, “You must
look your best to-morrow.”
He caught her soft cold hand, put it to his lips, and shut the door
quickly. The prison seemed as comfort when compared with this torment.
CHAPTER XXIII--AN END AND A BEGINNING
In the middle of the night he broke down utterly.
If he had been a strong man he would not have yielded to the series of
temptations that had culminated in his crime and his disgrace. Or,
passing that, his spirit would not have been broken during the months of
his punishment If he had been even of slightly robuster fibre, the sense
of degradation would not have palsied his life. He would have gone at
once to a new land and made himself master of his destiny. A strong man
would not have been found by Yvonne, that August morning, sitting, a
self-abhorring outcast before his rich uncle’s door. He would not have
lost his wit and courage, when assailed by his prison companion at Hull.
He would not have joined fortunes with Noakes in their futile African
expedition. A strong man would not have clung for comfort and moral
support to the poor ridiculous creature, his own protection of whom was
that of the woman rather than that of the man. A strong man would not
have yielded to the numbing despair of the after solitude in Africa, nor
writhed that night in agony of spirit upon the lonely star-lit veldt And
lastly, a strong man would not have had that terror of loneliness which
had made him in the first place cling to Yvonne much as a child, afraid
of the dark, clings to the hand of another child weaker than itself.
By the law of evolution the strong survive and the weak die. But in the
eternal struggle between humanity and the pitiless law, conditions are
modified, and the sympathy of the race, that expression of revolt which
we call civilisation, gives surviving power to the weak, so that not
only the strong man has claims to life and love. And when the weak man
strives with all his quivering fibres towards strength, he is doing a
greater deed than the strong wot of.
So Joyce, fool or hero, had performed an act of strength beyond his
nature. The strain of the day had been intense. Every nerve in his body
was stretched to breaking-point. At last, in the middle of the night, as
he was pacing the room, one of them seemed to snap, and he fell forwards
on to the bed and broke into a passion of sobbing. Ashamed he buried
his face in the blankets and bit them with his teeth. But a grown man’s
sobbing is not to be checked, like a child’s. It is a terrible thing,
which comes from the soul’s depths and convulses flesh and spirit to
their foundations; and it is horrible to hear. The shuddering heaves
came into his throat and forced their way in sound through his lips.
And the utterances of pain came from him, inarticulate prayers to God
to help him, and half-stifled cries for his love and for Yvonne. But he
knew that he was wrestling with his spirit for the last time, and that,
after this paroxysm of agony, would come calm and strength to meet his
fate.
And Yvonne, clad in dressing gown and bare-footed, with her hair about
her shoulders, stood trembling outside his door and heard. Although his
room was not immediately above hers, being over the sitting-room, yet in
her sleeplessness she had listened for hours and hours to his movements.
At last, obeying an incontrollable impulse, she had crept up the stairs.
A long time she waited, her hand upon the door, his name upon her lips,
shaking from head to foot with the revelation of the man’s agony. Every
sound was like a stab in her tender flesh. The warm, impulsive old
Yvonne within her would have burst at the first sob into his room,
but the newer womanhood held her back. When all was silent she crept
downstairs again into her bed, and lay there, throbbing and shivering
until the morning.
And Joyce, unconscious that she had been so near to him, that had he but
opened his door, he would have been caught in her arms and been given
for all eternity that which he was renouncing, lay down in his bed
exhausted, and when the morning was near at hand, sank into heavy sleep.
He awoke later than usual. The water that Sarah had put for him was
nearly cold. He drew up the blind and saw a cheerless grey morning--a
fitting dawn for his new life. The minor details of the day before him
presented themselves painfully. The first was the necessity of being
well shaven, groomed and dressed. He drew from the drawer the clothes of
decent life that he could now so seldom afford to wear. The last time
he had put them on was three weeks ago, when he had taken Yvonne to a
ballad concert at St. James’s Hall. He remembered how, in her bright
way, she had said, on their way thither, “You look so handsome and
distinguished, I feel quite proud.”
And now he was to wear them at her wedding with another man. And he was
to give her away.
He had regained his nerve, felt equal to the task. After dressing with
scrupulous care, he slowly went down to breakfast,--his last breakfast
with Yvonne. He contemplated the fact with the fatalistic calmness with
which men condemned to death often face their last meal on earth. Yvonne
had not yet appeared. Sarah had not even brought up the breakfast. He sat
down and waited, unfolded his halfpenny morning paper and tried to read.
After a time he became aware that he was studying the advertisements. So
he laid it aside.
Presently he went up to his room to get a handkerchief, and on his
return to the landing he noticed that Yvonne’s bedroom door was ajar.
She was stirring, evidently. He knocked gently and called her name.
There was no reply. Perhaps she was still sleeping, he thought; but it
was odd that her door should be open. He returned to the sitting-room,
wandered about nervously, looked out of the window into the dismal
street. The pavement was wet, people were hurrying by with umbrellas up,
the capes of drivers gleamed miserably in the misty air. He turned away
and put some coals on a sulky fire, and again took up the paper. But
an undefined feeling of uneasiness began to creep over him. It was long
past nine o’clock. He went again and knocked at Yvonne’s door. It opened
a little wider and he saw by the light in the room that the blind had
been drawn up. He called her in loud tones. His voice seemed to fall in
a void. Agitated, he ventured to take a swift glance into the room. The
bed was empty. There was no Yvonne.
He went back and rang the bell violently. After a short interval Sarah
appeared, leisurely bringing in the breakfast-tray.
“Where is Madame Latour?” asked Joyce. “Oh, she went out early, and said
you weren’t to wait breakfast for her.”
“At what time did she go out?”
“Shortly after eight.”
“Thank you,” said Joyce.
“I think she was took ill, and was going to see a doctor,” said Sarah,
unloading the tray noisily.
“Did Madame Latour tell you so?”
“No. But she was looking so bad I was frightened to see her.”
“Very well,” said Joyce, not wishing to show the servant his agitation.
“She will be back soon. Yes, you can leave the breakfast.” Sarah quitted
the room with her heavy, scuffling step. Joyce remained by the fire
tugging at his moustache, his mind filled with nameless anxieties. The
presentiment of ill grew in intensity. Why had Yvonne left the house at
that early hour? Sarah’s suggestion was manifestly absurd. If Yvonne had
been poorly, she would have sent for a doctor. Yet the servant’s last
remark frightened him. He remembered Yvonne’s pallor of the night before.
A dreadful surmise began to dawn upon him. Had he been blind, all the
way through, and condemned her to a fate impossible to bear? Once,
in South Africa, he had seen an innocent man sentenced to death. The
picture of the man’s face in its wistful despair rose before him. It was
terribly like Yvonne’s. Had she, then, pronounced sentence on herself?
He walked to and fro in feverish helplessness, his heart weighed down by
the new load. The cheap American clock on the mantel-piece struck ten.
There came, soon after, a knock at the door. Joyce sprang to open it.
But it was only the boy from the shop wanting to know if any one
was coming down. Joyce put his hand to his forehead. He had entirely
forgotten Mr. Runcle’s absence and his own consequent responsibility.
“You can take the money for any book outside, Tommy,” he said, after
a little reflection. “If a customer wants anything inside, come up and
call me.”
The boy went away, proud at being left in charge. Joyce filled a cup
with the rapidly cooling coffee, and drank it at a draught. The minutes
crept on. If his wild and dreadful fancies were groundless, where could
Yvonne be? She could not have chosen a time before the shops were open
to make any necessary purchases before the ceremony. Or had she gone out
of the house so as to avoid spending a painful morning in his company?
But that was unlike Yvonne. At last he descended, and stood bareheaded
in the raw air, gazing up and down the street.
“I ‘ve taken eightpence already,” said the boy, handing him a pile of
coppers.
Joyce took them from him absently, and put them in his pocket, while
Tommy went back to his seat on the upturned box, and resumed his
occupation of blowing on his chilled fingers. No sign of Yvonne.
Several passers-by turned round and looked at Joyce. In his well-fitting
clothes, and with his refined, thorough-bred air, he seemed an
incongruous figure standing hatless in the doorway of the dingy
secondhand book-shop.
Presently he became aware of an elderly man trying to pass him. He
stepped aside with apologies, and followed the customer.
“Are you serving here?” asked the latter, with some diffidence.
On Joyce’s affirmative, he enquired after two editions of “Berquin,”
which he had seen in Runcle’s catalogue. Joyce took one from the
shelves,--the original edition. It was priced two guineas. The customer
haggled, then wished to see the other. As this was on the top shelf at
the back part of the shop, Joyce had to mount the ladder and hunt for it
in the dusky light. While thus employed, he felt something sweep against
the foot of the ladder, and, looking down, he saw Yvonne. She shot a
quick upward glance, and hurriedly disappeared.
His heart gave a great bound as he saw her, and he dropped the books he
was holding. He could not seek any more for the “Berquin.” In another
moment he was by the side of the customer.
“We must have sold the other copy. How much will you give for this?”
“Thirty-five shillings.”
“You can have it,” said Joyce.
Never was book tied up at greater speed. He thrust it into the man’s
hand, received the money without looking at it, and left the elderly man
standing in the middle of the shop, greatly astonished at the haste of
the transaction.
Joyce flew up the stairs into the sitting-room.
“Oh, where--” he began.
Then he stopped, dazed and bewildered, for Yvonne, her arms
outstretched, her head thrown back, her lips parted, and a great
yearning light in her eyes, came swiftly to him from where she stood,
uttering a little cry, and in another moment was sobbing in his arms.
“Oh, my love, my dear, dear love!” she cried, “I could not leave
you--take me--for always. I love you--I love you--I could n’t leave
you!”
“Yvonne,” he cried hoarsely, his pulses throbbing like a great engine’s
piston-rod, in the tremendous amazement, as he held her--how tightly he
did not know--and gazed down wildly into her face, “Yvonne, what are
you saying? What is it? Tell me--for God’s sake--the marriage--Everard?”
Then she threw back her head further against his arm, and their eyes met
and hung upon each other for a breathless space. And there was that in
Yvonne’s eyes--“the light that never was on sea or land”--that no man
yet had seen or dreamed of seeing there. The straining, passionate love
too deep for smiling, glorified her pure face.
“There will be no marriage,” she murmured faintly, still holding him
with her eyes, “I went to Everard this morning.”
She raised her lips almost unconsciously toward him, and then the man’s
whole existence was drowned in the kiss.
For many moments they scarcely spoke. Passion plays its part in swift
burning utterances and tumultuous silences. At last, she freed herself
gently and moved towards the fire. But only to be taken once again into
his clasp.
“Oh, my darling, my darling, is this joy madness, or is it real?”
“It is real,” said Yvonne. “Nothing can ever part us, until we die.”
He helped her off with her hat and jacket and led her to the great
armchair by the fire and knelt down by her side.
“Oh, Stephen dear,” she said in piteous happiness, “it has been such
suffering.”
“My poor child,” he said tenderly.
“I did n’t know that you cared about me--in this way--until last night.
I tried to make you tell me--Stephen darling, why didn’t you? I was
bound to go to Everard--I had promised, and he wanted me--and what could
I tell him? I could n’t say to him, dear, that I would go on for ever
living on your dear charity, a burden upon you--yes, in a sense I must
be one--rather than keep my promise and marry him, could I, dear?
I could only refer him to you--and when you said I must go, it was
miserable, for I hungered all the time to stay. And I knew you were sad,
it was natural--but I thought you found you did not love me enough to
want me as a wife and felt it your duty to give me up. Why did you give
me up when you loved me so?”
“I will tell you all, some day, dear, not now,” said Joyce. “But one
thing--I did not know either that you loved me--like this. When did you
begin to love me, Yvonne?”
“I think I must have begun in the years and years ago--but I only knew
it last night--knew it as I do now,” she added, with a tremor in her
voice.
She closed her eyes, gave herself up for a flooded moment to the
lingering sense of the first great kiss she had ever given. And before
she opened them, the memory had melted into actuality as she felt his
lips again meet hers.
“Thank God, I have got you, my own dear love,” she murmured. “It has
been a hard battle for you--this morning. I went out as soon as I
dared--to go to him. I seemed to be going to do an awful thing--to
give him that pain for our sakes. He told me I had not treated him
wickedly--but I felt as if I had been committing murder, until I saw
your face at the door. I told him all--all that I knew about my own
feelings and yours. I said that you did not know I loved you--that your
noble-heartedness was making the sacrifice--that I would marry him and
leave you and never see you again, and be a devoted wife to him, if he
wished it, but that my love was given to you. And he looked all the
time at me with an iron-grey face, and scarcely spoke a word. Tell me,
Stephen dear, does it pain you to hear?”
“No,” said Joyce, softly. “Your heart has been bursting with it. It is
best for us to share it, as we shall share all things, joy and pain, to
the far end.”
“I shall feel lighter for telling you. It was so terrible to see
him--oh, Stephen, if I had not loved you, I couldn’t have borne it--he
seemed stricken. Oh, why is there all this pain in the world? And to
think that I--Yvonne--should have had to inflict it--either on him,
who has been good and kind to me, or on you, whom I love better than
I thought I could love anything in the world! And when I had ended,
he said, ‘He is young, and I am old; he has had all the sufferings and
despair of life, and my lot has been cast in pleasant places; he has
come out of the furnace with love and charity in his heart, and I have
pampered my pride and uncharitableness. Go back to him--and I pray God
to bless you both.’ He spoke as if each word was a knife driven into
him--and his face--I shall never forget it--it seemed to grow old, and
ashen, and hardened.”
She covered her face with her hands for a moment, and then, suddenly,
the memory of the night flashing through her, she dashed them away with
a woman’s fierceness and clasped his head.
“But your need was greater, a million times greater than his,” she cried
in ringing tones, “and your sufferings greater, and your heart nobler,
and I should have died if I had not come to you--you are my king, my
lord, my God, my everything.”
*****
In the formally appointed hotel sitting-room, where Yvonne had twice
parted from him, sat Everard Chisely, with grey, withered face. The blow
had fallen heavily. He had hungered for her of late years with a poor,
human, unidealising passion. The pitifulness of it had galled his pride,
and he had striven to put her out of his thoughts. He had lived an
austere life, seeking in an unfamiliar asceticism to conquer the
inherited, unregenerate cravings for a fuller aesthetic and emotional
existence. Yet he had longed intensely for the death of the man who
stood between himself and Yvonne. Twice a year his agent in Paris had
reported news of Amédée Bazouge. Such communications he had opened with
trembling fingers: the man was still alive; he prayed passionate prayers
that the murder in his heart might not be counted to him as a sin. At
last, in the New Zealand spring, came the news of Bazouge’s death. His
blood tingled like the working sap in the trees. He could not wait. He
came and found Yvonne.
For thirty-six hours he had become a young man again, treading on air,
hurrying on events with a lover’s impatience. And now the crash had
come. He was an old man. He sat by his untasted breakfast, and covered
his face in his hands. His life rose up before him, self-complacent,
dignified, immaculate. Yet, somehow, he felt like a Pharisee. He was a
Churchman first, a Christian afterwards. His religion had given him very
little comfort. It had taken Yvonne from him once, at a time when
he might have won her to him forever, and it had brought him no
consolation. A man does not often get a glimpse at his own soul; when he
does, he finds it rather a pitiable sight. The Bishop saw in its depths
poignant regret that he then had not loved the woman enough to sin for
her sake. And there, too, was revealed to him miserably that outraged
pride, disillusion, the traditions of social morality, the authority of
the Church’s ordinances--all externals--had been the leading factors of
his life’s undoing. A great wish rose amid the bitterness of his heart
that he had been, like Stephen, one of the publicans and sinners, upon
whom could shine the Light of the World.
*****
Joyce and Yvonne were married one morning quietly at a registrar’s,
and came back to continue the day’s routine. The old bookseller did
not appear astonished when Joyce informed him of the unusual change of
relationship.
“You have both had your troubles,” he said, shrewdly, looking up over
his spectacles, and keeping his thumb in the volume of Origen he was
reading. “Any one can see that. You would n’t be here otherwise. And
I’m not enquiring into them. But I hope they’re ended. And now,” he
continued, rising with an old man’s stiffness, “I ’ve got some old
Madeira that I bought thirty years ago with a job-lot of things out of a
gentleman’s chambers, and I’d like to open a bottle in your honour.”
Joyce brought Yvonne down to the back-parlour. The wine came out of
the dirt-encrusted bottle like sunshine breaking through a cloud, and
gladdened their hearts. And that was their marriage feast. Thus began
the wedded life of these two. Years of struggle, poverty, and ostracism
lay before them. They faced it all fearlessly. To each of them the
long-denied love had come, at last, new and vivifying, changing the
meaning of existence. Yet the final word of mutual revelation awaited
the loosening touch. It came with tragic unexpectedness.
One evening, not long after their marriage, Joyce, looking through the
shop copy of “The Islington Gazette,” caught the head-line, “Salvation
lassie commits suicide in New River.” A presentiment of what would
follow flashed upon him. It was true. Annie Stevens had killed herself.
“Good God!” he said involuntarily.
Yvonne looked up from her sewing, and grew alarmed at the distress on
his face.
“What is it?”
He was silent for a few moments. To tell her would involve long
explanations. Yvonne knew of Annie Stevens in connection with his
disgrace on the tour of “The Diamond Door,” but he had not spoken of
after meetings. Yvonne put her work aside, in her quick way, and came
and sat down on the footstool by his feet. As he bent and kissed her, she
drew his arm round her neck, holding his hand.
“What has pained you?”
And then he told her the whole of the girl’s miserable story, her love
for him, her degradation and downfall, and her wild idea of atonement.
“And this is the end,” he said, showing her the paragraph.
“Poor girl!” said Yvonne, deeply touched. “It was so pathetically
impossible, was n’t it?”
“Yes, dear,” Joyce answered. “I, too, know that.”
“What?”
“The tragic futility of such self-crucifixion. I have never told you the
history of that night--why I gave you up--and the part this poor dead
girl played in it.”
In a low voice, he went over the old ground of degradation and his
longing for atonement, and briefly laid before her the facts of his
renunciation.
“I know now,” he concluded, “that it could only add misery to misery.
Nothing that a man or a woman alone can do can restore lost honour and
self-reverence. No fasting or penance or sacrifice is of any use.”
Yvonne drew her face away from him, so as to see him better. Pain was in
her eyes. Her lips quivered.
“Then--Stephen--dear--is it still the same with you about the
prison--the old horror and shame?”
“My dearest,” he said tenderly, “I said man alone was powerless. It is
the touch of your lips that has wiped away all stain for ever.”
They looked deep into each other’s eyes for a long, speechless moment
And then Yvonne, like a foolish woman, fell a-sobbing on his knees.
“Oh, thank God, my dear, thank God!” she said.