Two weeks passed and Joyce found himself in Hull. During the previous week Miss Stevens had lodged quite near to the theatre, and there had been no occasion for his escort after the performance. Besides, she had maintained a distant attitude toward him which precluded further offer of sympathy in her affairs. He was sorry for her; she seemed lonely, like himself, and, like himself, to have some inward suffering that made life bitter. He was glad, then, to find at Hull that they lodged in the same street, some distance away from the Theatre Royal, so that he could propose, as a natural thing, the resumption of their former habit. She had acquiesced readily on the Monday night, and they had met as a matter of course on the four succeeding evenings. Her late aloofness was followed by a more intimate and submissive manner. There were no more defiant utterances and fits of petulance. She seemed anxious to atone for past irritability, and Joyce, vaguely remembering a spring-tide cynicism of his, that one must be astonished at nothing in a woman, received these advances kindly, and looked upon their friendly relations as consolidated.
He also found himself progressing in favour with the rest of the company. Several desultory chats with Miss Verrinder, the friend of Yvonne, had not only brightened the dulness of the theatre life, but also given him a littleprestigeamong his colleagues. For there is a good deal of humanity in man, including the chorus of comic opera. So, such as it was, Joyce’s contentment rose to high-level at Hull. He did not couple the town with Hell and Halifax in his litany of supplication, but, on the contrary, found it a not unpleasant place, which, moreover, was in process of undergoing a rare week of sunshine.
His favourite spot was the Corporation Pier, with its double deck and comfortable seats and view across the Humber. His well-worn clothes were in harmony with its frequenters, and he felt more at ease than on the Parade of a seaside resort thronged with well-dressed people. Here he brought his book and pipe, read discursively, watched the shipping, fell into talk with seafaring men, who told him the tonnage of vessels and the ports from which they came. Often a great steamer performing the passenger service across the North Sea would come into the docks close by, and he would go and watch her land her passengers and cargo. The hurry and movement were welcome to him, breaking, as they did, the lethargy of the day. If the docks were quiet, there was always the mild excitement of witnessing the arrival of the Grimsby boat at the pier.
On Saturday morning this last incident had attracted him from his seat on the lower gallery to the little knot of expectant idlers gathered by the railing. The steamer was within a quarter of a mile, the churn of her paddles the only break visible in the sluggish water of the river. He stood leaning over, pipe in mouth, idly watching her draw near. When she was moored alongside and the gangway pushed on to the landing-stage below, he moved with the others to the head of the slope to watch the passengers ascend. Why he should particularly interest himself in the passage of humdrum labourers, fishwives, artisans, and young women come to shop in Hull, he did not know. He watched them, with unspeculating gaze, pass hurrying by, until suddenly a pair of evil eyes looking straight into his own made him start back with a shiver of dismay.
Escape was impossible; in another moment the man was by his side.
“Hullo, old pal! Who would have thought of seeing you?”
Joyce did not take the dirty hand that was proffered. He stuck his own deep in his pockets, frowned at the man, and turned away. But the other followed.
“Look here, old pal, I don’t call this a friendly lead—bust me if I do. You might pass the time of day with a bloke—especially as it is n’t so long ago——”
The man’s voice was loud, the pier busy with people. The air seemed to Joyce filled with a thousand listening ears. His blood tingled with shame. He faced round with an angry look.
“What do you want with me?”
“Oh, don’t take on, old pal,” replied the other, in lower tones. “I ain’t going to give you away—don’t you fear. It’s only pleasant to meet old pals again—in better circs. Ain’t it?”
Joyce had always loathed him—a flabby, sallow, greasy-faced fellow, with blear eyes and a protruding under-lip. He had been sentenced for a foul offence against decency. Joyce’s soul used to revolt at the sight of him as they sat on either side of the reeking tub washing up the cooking utensils in the prison kitchen. The hateful stench rose again to his nostrils now and turned his stomach.
“Can’t you see I am going to have nothing to do with you?” he said angrily.
“Come, don’t be hard on a bloke when he’s down,” replied the man. “It ain’t everyone that gets on their legs again when they comes out. I ’ve been out two months, and I haven’t had a job yet. S’welp me! And there’s the wife and the kids starving. Give us a couple of quid to send to ’em and make ’em happy again. Just two thick uns.”
Joyce stared at him, breathless with indignation at his impudence.
“I ’ll see you damned first!” he cried fiercely.
“Well, make it ten bob, or five, or the price of a drink, old pal. You can’t leave an old fellow-boarder in distress, or the luck will turn agen you.”
He leered up into Joyce’s face, disclosing a jagged row of yellow teeth. But Joyce started forward and took him by the collar.
“If you try to blackmail me,” said he, pointing to a policeman on the quay, “I ’ll give you in charge. Just stay where you are and let me go my ways.”
He released him and marched off. But the man did not attempt to follow. He slipped into a seat close by and sang out sarcastically: “If you ’ll leave your address, I ’ll send you a mourning card when the kids is dead!”
Joyce caught the words as he hurried down the stairs. When he had crossed the quay to the hotels, he looked up at the pier, and saw the man leaning over with a grin on his face. It was only when he reached his lodging that he breathed freely again.
What he had long expected had come to pass—recognition by a fellow-prisoner. It was a horrible experience. It might occur again and again indefinitely. He walked agitated up and down his poorly-furnished bedroom. Could he do nothing to guard against such things in the future? If he could only disguise himself! Then he remembered that the moustache which might have served him as a slight protection against casual glances had been sacrificed to theatrical exigencies. He ground his teeth at the futility of the idea. And at intervals wrath rose up hot within him at the man’s cool impudence. Two pounds—more than a week’s salary—to be thrown away on swine like that! He laughed savagely at the thought.
He grew calm after a time, lay down on his bed and opened a book. But the face of the man, bringing with it scenes of a past in which they had been associated came between his eyes and the page.
“Anyhow, it’s over,” he exclaimed at last, with a determined effort to banish the memories. “And, thank God, it’s Saturday, and I shall be in Leeds to-morrow.”
To avoid the chance of meeting him in the streets, however, he stayed at home all day, sending round a note of excuse on the score of seediness to Miss Stevens, with whom he had arranged to take an afternoon stroll. On his way to the theatre he caught sight of the man standing by a gas-lamp at a street-corner on the other side of the way. He hurried on, glad at his escape, for the glance of the man’s eyes resting upon him was abhorrent.
For the first time since he had started on the tour the rough companionship of the dressing-room was a comfort and delight. Here were kindly words, welcoming faces, the pleasant familiarity of common avocation. He forgot the heat, and the crush, and the tomfool aspect the dressing had always presented. The place was home-like, familiar, sheltering. His costume, as he took it down from the peg, seemed like an old friend. The jolly voices of his companions rang gratefully in his ears. The disgust of the day faded into the memory of a nightmare. This was a reality—this hearty good-fellowship with uncontaminated men.
When he went out with them on to the stage, before the curtain rose, and met the ladies of the chorus, he greeted those that he liked with a newer sense of friendliness. Until then he had never been aware how pleasant it was to have Annie Stevens’s head resting on his knee. He thanked God he was a criminal no longer—not as that other man was. Certainly Phariseeism is justifiable at times.
He was very kind to Miss Stevens all the evening during the waits, when they happened to be together. His apologies for having to put off their engagement met with her full acceptance. She was solicitous as to his health—asked him in her downright fashion whether he ate enough.
“You are a gentleman, you know, and not accustomed to poor people’s ways and their privations.”
“My dear,” he replied, dropping for the first time into the old professional’s mode of address. “I ’ve gone through privations in my life that you have never dreamed of. This is clover—knee-deep.”
And he believed it; thought, too, what a fool he had been to grumble at this honest, pleasant theatrical life. The reaction had rather excited him.
“I look upon myself as jolly well off here,” he said. “And I eat like an ox, I assure you. Do you know, it’s very good of you to take an interest in me?”
“Do you think so?” said the girl, with a little laugh, and turning away her head.
At the end of the first act a fresh pleasure awaited him. It was a night of surprising sensations. The stage-manager called him into his room.
“Walker has been telegraphed for—wife very ill—and he won’t be able to play on Monday. Do you think you could play his part till he comes back?”
“Rather!” said Joyce, delighted.
“You are the only one of the crowd that can sing worth a cent,” said the stage-manager with a seasonable mixture of profanity. “I ’ll pull you through. Perhaps he’s not coming back at all. One never knows. If he does n’t and you go all right, there’s no reason why you should n’t stick to it.”
Walker spoke exactly four lines, sang once in a quartette and had a couplet solo. Otherwise he made himself useful in the chorus. But it was a part, his name was down in the bill. The value of the step, moral, pecuniary and professional was considerable. Joyce felt that his luck had turned at last. Here was the gate into the profession proper open to him.
The news soon spread through the company. A “call” for rehearsal on Monday morning for the chorus and those of the principals concerned in the change was posted up. He felt himself a person of some importance. McKay congratulated him; and Blake, although he said, “You swells get all the fat,” spoke by no means enviously. The others cracked jokes and suggested drinks all round, which, being sent for by Joyce, were consumed in the dressing-room. Annie Stevens squeezed his hand, during their dance together, and whispered a word of pleasure. He had no idea that so infinitesimal a success could have masqueraded as such a triumph. He longed to get back to his room to write it all to Yvonne.
At the stage-door, after the performance, he met Annie Stevens, who had hurried through her dressing.
“I’m glad for your sake, but I’m sorry for my own,” she said, after they had walked a few steps.
“Why, what difference can it make to you?” asked Joyce laughing.
“I shall have to play and sing with somebody else.”
“True. I was forgetting. Yes, it will seem funny. I shall miss you too.”
“I don’t believe you care one bit,” said the girl.
To acquiesce would have been rude. He answered her with vague regrets. She interrupted him with a laugh in which was the faintest note of scorn.
“Oh, you’re very glad to get rid of me, and the stupid kissing and everything. You won’t have to give any one a Chinese kiss now. And they were very Chinese, you know.”
“An English kiss would have been out of the picture,” said Joyce.
“We’re not in the picture now,” she said softly.
Joyce felt that he was doing something very foolish, perhaps dangerous. He had never had the remotest fancy for allowing his companionship with her to degenerate into a flirtation. But what could he do? He bent down and kissed her.
There was an awkward silence for a few yards, which she broke at last in her irrelevant way.
“I should so like a glass of port wine tonight.”
“So should I,” said Joyce, cheerfully. “Or something like it. We ’ll go into the Crown yonder.”
Two or three times before they had had a glass together on their way home. To-night, therefore, the suggestion seemed natural. They entered the private bar of the public-house, and Joyce ordered the liquors. Only one young man was there, reading a sporting paper on a high stool. It was a quiet place, with the view beyond the counter down the bar cut off by a ground-glass screen, through a low space under which the customers were served.
Joyce pushed the port wine smilingly to Miss Stevens, and, with his back to the door, was pouring some water into his whisky, when a voice sounded in his ear, causing him to start violently and flood the counter.
“I say, old pal,areyou goin’ to help a poor feller?”
The man was standing behind him, the leer upon his greasy face. Joyce had been blissfully unaware that he had dogged his steps from that street corner to the stage-door of the theatre, and from the stage-door hither. The sight of him was a stroke of cold terror.
“Go away. I ’ll give you in charge,” he stammered, losing his head for the moment.
Annie Stevens clutched his arm.
“Who is this beastly man?” she said.
“Only an old pal, miss,” said the man, edging towards the door. “We was in quod many months together, and now he won’t give me ’arf a crown to keep me from starving.”
“By God!” cried Joyce, making a sudden dash at him.
But the man was too quick; he had secured his retreat, and when Joyce reached the pavement—the house was at a corner of cross roads—he could not catch the fall of his footsteps. The man had vanished into the night, and pursuit was hopeless. It had all passed with the sudden unexpectedness of a dream. Joyce put his hand to his forehead and tried to think. He could scarcely realise exactly what had happened. He seemed to be enveloped with tiny tingling waves that drew his skin tight like a drum for his heart to beat against. He turned, and saw Annie Stevens standing by his side, in the light of the public-house, with anger on her face.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” she asked brusquely.
“Do you believe that man?” said Joyce, the words coming painfully.
Their lack of conviction damned him. The girl drew back a step, and looked at him with revulsion in her eyes.
“You can’t deny it! I see that you can’t. You’ve just come out of prison.”
If the world had been at his feet he could not have lied convincingly at that moment. He could only stare at her haggardly and rack his brains for words that would not come. She moved away instinctively from the public glare and turned down the dark street that led toward their destination.
“It’s a lie,” he said desperately, striding to her side.
“No it is n’t. It’s truth. I read it on your face. That’s why you’ve come down in the world—that’s why you live by yourself—that’s why you didn’t dare come out this afternoon—and that’s where you’ve known all those privations I never dreamed of. It’s no good telling lies.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Joyce. “And I ’ve paid the penalty for my folly ten times over. Forget all this, Annie, for God’s sake.”
“Go away!” she cried, walking faster. “I don’t want to see you again. Oh, to think of it makes me sick! Go away, do!”
But he followed her imploringly. He was at her mercy. “I don’t care what you think of me,” he said. “I will keep out of your way as much as you like. Only, a word from you would ruin me. Keep my story secret, like an honourable woman. I have done nothing to you.”
“Yes, you have!” she cried, stopping short and facing him. “You have dared to kiss me. Oh—a pretty fine gentleman you are—with your patronising superior ways—and I thinking myself an ignorant, common girl, not good enough for you! What were you? A pickpocket?”
“You abuse me as if I were one,” said Joyce, bitterly. “Good-night, Miss Stevens. I shall not molest you any further.” He motioned to her with his hand to pass on in front. She regarded him for a moment stonily, and then, with a short exclamation of disgust, swung round sharply and proceeded at a hurried pace down the dismal, ill-lighted street. Joyce watched her until she was swallowed up in the darkness, and had obtained sufficient start for him to follow in her footsteps without fear of overtaking her.
But as he walked along, the dread of her indignation seized him. If only he could say another word to her before the morning, he might secure her pity and her silence. The idea grew more and more insistent, until he could bear it no longer. He started off at a run, at first on the pavement of the quiet side street, and then in the roadway by the kerb of the busier thoroughfare into which it led, and regardless of jostling and oaths, continued his way, until he succeeded in catching her up just as she was inserting the latchkey into her door.
“Annie,” he cried, his chest heaving painfully from the exertion of running. “Promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to any one.”
She let herself in deliberately and stood in the dark passage.
“I ’ll promise nothing. I never want to set my eyes on you again!”
And then she slammed the door in his face.
He turned away sick at heart, and went to his own lodging. Resentment at her coarse anger, and speculation as to the motives of the sudden change from friendliness to hatred were things that did not come to him till afterwards. Sufficient for the night was the despair of the sleepless hours, the dread of the girl’s tongue, and the anguish of tottering hopes. He did not write to Yvonne. The little triumph of the evening seemed like a gay pagoda struck by lightning.
At the railway station the next afternoon he found most of the company already assembled on the platform. Curious glances were cast upon him as he appeared; there were nudgings and whisperings; some giggling on the part of the chorus girls standing round Annie Stevens, who was looking paler and more defiant than usual. A group of his colleagues melted away at his approach. He saw at once what had happened. The fears that had haunted him all the night and all that day were realised. He felt his face and lips grow white, and his limbs trembled. With an instinctive remnant of self-assertion, he went up to Blake, who was standing by one of the reserved carriages. It seemed a long time before he could speak. At last he asked him stupidly at what time the train started.
“Four-forty,” said Blake, curtly.
“And when do we get to Leeds?”
“How the devil should I know? If you want to know, there’s the guard. Ask him.”
With which he moved away and joined two or three others a few steps off. Joyce felt too sick with misery to resent the rudeness. He walked a short distance along the train, and seeing one of his colleagues in a compartment, concluded that it was reserved for the chorus-men and crept into the far corner, where he sat down, holding a newspaper before his face.
The compartment filled and the train started. At first there was a general constraint in the talk. Then a game at nap was instituted; but no one spoke to Joyce. At Selby there was over an hour’s wait. With a feeling that he must be alone at any cost, he rushed out of the station, and, avoiding the town, wandered aimlessly through lanes and fields until it was time to return. He was too dazed and overwhelmed by this sudden blow to think coherently. Now it was the girl’s deliberate cruelty that passed his comprehension; now the sickening shame at being known in his true colours to a whole society burned into his flesh. Only one thought stood out from the rest in lurid clearness—the impossibility of his continuing the tour. Even if the management took no notice of the discovery, he felt he would rather starve to death in a hole than live through that hell of daily aversion and contempt. To return to the company and travel with them as far as Leeds was pain enough. He would face that, however, and then—
It was gathering dusk when he arrived at the station, just in time to see the guard about to wave the green flag. The handle of the compartment was in his grasp when he heard McKay say:—
“Well, because a fellow’s happened to be in quod, that doesn’t mean he’s likely to sneak your watches out of the dressing-room!”
He opened the door and entered amid a dead silence, which lasted, with few interruptions, all the rest of the journey. Joyce looked round at his seven companions, with an awful sense of isolation. Only four-and-twenty hours before he had loved them for their warm good-fellowship. He was wrung with the pity of it. McKay’s words still sounded in his ear. They were horrible enough, but it was evident they were meant in his defence. Once he met his glance, and read in it a signal of kind intent. But the others steadily looked another way when his eye fell upon them.
When they left the train at Leeds, McKay touched him on the shoulder and drew him apart from the hurrying stream of passengers and porters.
“What’s all this yarn that Annie Stevens has been telling us?”
“Oh, it’s true enough,” replied Joyce, wearily.
“The damned little hell-cat,” said McKay. “I told you to keep clear of women.”
“It was bound to come out. One of you fellows might just as well have been with me in the pub last night.”
“Do you think a man would have given you away like this?” asked McKay, with great scorn.
“I ’ve come to the conclusion that anything’s possible in this infernal world,” said Joyce, bitterly. “I suppose the whole crowd are against me.”
“Well, there is a bit of feeling, certainly,” replied McKay, in an embarrassed tone. “And maybe it won’t be very pleasant for you. They all talk as if they were plaster of Paris saints,—and, dash it all—they made me sick; so I thought I’d come and say I’d stand by you.”
“Thank you, McKay,” said Joyce, touched. “You are a good sort. But I sha’n’t ask you. I am not going on with the tour.”
“I think you’re just as well out of it, to tell you the truth,” said McKay. Then his anger against Annie Stevens broke out again in an unequivocal epithet.
“The little————,” he said.
“I suppose it is horrible in a woman’s eyes,” said Joyce, moving with McKay toward the crowd round the luggage-van. “But I can’t see why she should hate me like this, all of a sudden, and wish to ruin me.”
“Can’t you? It’s pretty plain.”
“No,” said Joyce. “We have always been the best of friends.”
“Friends? You don’t mean to say you did n’t know she was gone on you—clean gone, all off her chump? No one liked to chaff you about it, because you have an infernal sarcastic way of scoring off fellows. But, Gawd! The way she used to look at you was enough to make a man sick!”
“Do you mean she was in love with me?” asked Joyce, falteringly, as the whole situation of affairs, past and present, began to dawn upon him.
“Well, rather,” said McKay, with a chuckle. “What do you think?”
Several of the company were still around the pile of luggage by the van, claiming their things and waiting for porters. Standing on one side was Annie Stevens, and, as it happened, Joyce recognised his Gladstone bag lying at her feet He went and picked it up, and was going off silently with it, when he felt her touch on his arm. Dim as the light was, he could see that her face was haggard and drawn. She met his stern gaze beseechingly.
“For God’s sake, forgive me,” she whispered.
“You have played too much havoc with my life,” replied Joyce coldly.
“I shall kill myself,” said the girl.
“Some people are better dead,” said Joyce, turning away, bag in hand.
On the platform beyond the barriers he met McKay again.
“Good-bye, McKay,” he said. “I have only two friends in the world who know my story, and you are one.”
“Good-bye, old man,” said McKay. “Better luck next time.”
They shook hands and parted, McKay to join his friend Blake at the lodgings they had secured already, Joyce to put up for the night at the first cheap hotel he could find.
The next day he was in London again, in his old room in Pimlico—a broken-hearted, broken-spirited man. For two days he remained in a state of stupid misery, yearning for the life he had just abandoned; tortured, too, by reproaches for his cowardice. Why had he not faced the ignominy, and tried to live it down? Then the conviction of the hopelessness of the attempt was forced upon him. Even if he had continued in the profession, his name would soon have been known throughout it as the ex-convict,—and he had been in it long enough to perceive how narrow the theatrical circle is,—and all hope of advancement would have been worse than futile. On the third day he went to see Yvonne, but she had just gone out of town. The porter at the flat did not know how long she would be away. She was at Fulminster. Her letters were forwarded there. So Joyce wrote her a short note, explaining his situation, and set himself to wait patiently for her coming.
But on that evening, out of sheer weariness and longing for human companionship, he turned into his old haunt, the billiard-room in Westminster. It seemed just the same as on the last evening he had been there. The occupants of the divan might never have moved from that night to this. His appearance was greeted with incurious, uninterested nods. The only one that offered his hand was Noakes, who was sitting at the end, still in his Chesterfield overcoat and old curly silk hat, but looking more woe-begone and pallid than ever. There was a touch of pain, too, in his usually expressionless pale-blue eyes. Joyce took his seat next to him and bent forward, elbows on knees and chin resting in his hands.
“You have been absent from town?” asked Noakes, in his precise, toneless way.
Joyce nodded, with a murmur of assent.
“I, too, have not been here lately.”
“Press of literary work?” asked Joyce, without looking up.
The other did not notice the shade of sarcasm. He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed.
“I have given it up.”
“Have you come into a fortune?”
“No. I have had the deadliest misfortune that can befall a man.”
Something genuinely tragic in his tone made Joyce start up from his dejected attitude and look at his neighbour.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I did not know.”
“Of course not; no one does. At least, no one I can repose any confidence in.”
There was an air of dignity in this oddly attired figure, with the ludicrous silk hat above the black mutton-chop whiskers and bushy white hair, and yet a mute appeal for sympathy which Joyce could not but perceive.
“I, too, have been hard hit lately,” he said, in a low voice.
“Ah, not like me,” said the other, turning round in his seat, so that his words should reach only Joyce’s ear. “Until three weeks ago I had a wife and child. No man ever loved as I did. I worked for them till my brain almost gave way—fifteen hours a day, week after week, starved myself for them, denied myself the clothes on my back. Now I have them no longer. Life is valueless to me.”
“Are they—dead?” asked Joyce.
“No. Gone off with the lodger on the first floor,” replied Noakes, solemnly.
Joyce remained silent. What could he say? He looked sympathetic. Noakes blew his nose in a dirty piece of calico with frayed edges that courtesy called a pocket-handkerchief, and continued:—
“So my life is wrecked. My imagination is darkened and I can write no more. I have given up my literary ambitions. It is not worth while writing penny bloods at half a crown a thousand for one’s own support.”
“What are you going to do then?” asked Joyce, interested in the quaint creature.
“I am going abroad. I have come here perhaps for the last time. On the day after to-morrow I sail for South Africa.”
Was it a sudden inspiration? Was it the coming to a head of vague resolutions, despairs, workings, the final word of a destiny driving him from England? Was it a sudden sense of protecting brotherhood towards this forlorn, tragic scarecrow of a man? Joyce never knew. Possibly it was all bursting upon his soul at once. Springing to his feet, he held out his hand to Noakes.
“By all that’s holy, I ’ll come with you!” he cried, in a strange voice.
The other, after some hesitation, took his hand and looked at him pathetically.
“Are you in earnest?”
“In dead earnest.”
“I am going in the very cheapest possible manner.”
“So am I.”
“I am going, with a few pounds I have scraped together, to try my luck.”
“The same with me. It can’t be worse than England; starvation is certain here. Come, say, honour bright—will you be glad of me as a companion—as a friend if you like? I am a lonely bit of driftwood like yourself.”
Then Noakes rose to his feet and this time squeezed Joyce’s hand and his pale eyes glistened.
“I ’ll swear to be your friend in peace and in danger,” he said, in his quaint phraseology. “And I thank the God of all mercies for sending you to me in my hour of need.”
“All right,” said Joyce. “And now let us have some whisky, and talk over details.”
And so, in that dingy billiard-room, unknown to the moulting Bohemians huddled up in somnolent attitudes close by on the divan and unheeded by the shirt-sleeved men passing around the table intent on their game, was struck the strangest bargain of a friendship ever made between two outcast men; a friendship that was to last through want and sickness and despair and hope, and to leave behind it the ineffaceable stamp of nobler feeling.
But at first there was much admixture of cynicism on Joyce’s side. He laughed aloud, in the bitterness of his heart, at the object he had taken for his bosom friend. It was only later, when he learned the patient, dog-like devotion of the man, that he felt humbled and ashamed at these beginnings.
With a draft on a Cape Town bank for the remainder of his capital, and a last regretful letter from Yvonne in his pocket, he left Southampton. And as they steamed down Channel, in the mizzling rain of a grey November day, he leaned over the taffrail and stared at the land of his brilliant hopes, his crime, his punishment, his struggles and his dishonour, with a man’s agony of unshed tears.
He was going to begin life anew in a strange undesired country; hopeless, aimless, friendless save for that useless creature who was pacing up and down the deck behind him, still in his ridiculous headgear. He had made no plans. The future to him when he should land at Cape Town was as unknown—as it is to any of the sons of men, did we but realise it.
While Joyce was straining his eyes through the darkness for the last sight of land and eating out his heart in bitter regrets, Yvonne was busily engaged at Fulminster in rehearsing for the next day’s concert. She had spent four days at Fulminster, the guest of Mrs. Winstanley, and found herself somewhat lost among the very decorous society of which Canon Chisely was a leading member. And while she was scanning the social heavens in half pathetic search of her bearings, Joyce’s letters had arrived, with their tidings of catastrophe and exile. So, while there was a smile on her lip for the Canon and his friends, there was a tear in her eye for Joyce. His humiliation and her failure as fairy godmother brought her a pang of disappointment. She felt very tenderly towards Joyce. In her imagination, too, Africa was a dreadful place, made up of deserts, lions, and ferocious negroes in a state of nudity.
If she had seen him before he started, she might have dissuaded him from encountering such discomforts. She thought of this tearfully in the intervals that Fulminster affairs allowed her for reflection.
She was staying with Mrs. Winstanley. Now Mrs. Winstanley was the leading social authority in Fulminster. She was a distant cousin of Canon Chisely. In fact, she was an infinite number of irreproachable things. Mothers came to her as a matrimonial oracle. The Mayor consulted her on ticklish questions of civic etiquette. The affairs of the parish were in her hands. Although she inhabited a well-appointed house of her own, she superintended the domestic arrangements of the Rectory; and performed all the duties of hostess for her cousin when he entertained. Thus, parochially and socially she was invaluable to the Canon—his right-hand woman, one who could share his dignity, and, by so doing, add to its impressiveness. If he had been called upon to write her epitaph, he would have carved upon the stone, “Here lies a woman of sense.” Now, when a responsibly placed and grave bachelor of three-and-forty holds that opinion of a woman of his own years, and consults her in all his concerns, the result is not difficult to imagine. Cousin Emmeline ruled the Rectory, with exquisite tact it is true—for if there was one of her peculiar and original virtues of which she made a speciality, it was tact—but yet her influence was paramount.
When the Canon had come to her with a request to invite Madame Yvonne Latour to stay with her, she had elevated polite eyebrows.
“Whoever heard of such a thing!”
“It seems simple,” said the Canon. “I can’t invite her to my own house, so I beg you to invite her to yours.”
“You are not going to do this for all the professionals engaged at the festival?”
“Of course not,” answered the Canon; “who is suggesting anything so absurd?”
“Then why make an exception of Madame Latour, who is not even singing the leading parts?”
“She is very delicate and requires comforts,” he replied. “If she is not taken care of, she may not be able to sing at all. Besides, it is my particular desire, Emmeline. I assume the privilege of expressing it to you.”
“I take it she is a very great friend of yours?”
“A very great friend,” said the Canon.
Mrs. Winstanley reviewed many unpleasant possibilities. Certain weaknesses becoming apparent in her own impregnable position strongly tempted her to refuse. She bit her lip and looked at her manicured finger-nails.
“Come, you’re a woman of sense,” added the Canon, after a pause.
The tribute turned the tide of her judgment. She was a woman of sense. How absurd of her to have forgotten. An ironical smile played on her lips and lurked in her steel-grey eyes.
“You want to present Madame Latour to Fulminster society, Everard, with whatever advantages may be attached to my chaperonage?”
“Precisely,” said the Canon.
“Well, I will send the invitation. But will she accept it?”
“I ’ll see about that,” he replied briskly. “I am deeply indebted to you, Emmeline.”
She smiled, shook hands and followed him, with a word of parting, to the door. Then as soon as it was shut upon him, she stamped her foot and walked across the room, with an exclamation of impatience.
“I wonder what kind of a fool he is going to make of himself!”
She soon saw. One is not a woman of sense for nothing. On the eve of the Festival, which was being held for the purpose of raising funds for the restoration of the old Abbey church, of which the Canon was rector, he gave a consecrating dinner-party.
The Bishop of the diocese, who was staying at the Rectory, was there; Sir Joshua and Lady Santyre, and others of the high and solemn world of Fulminster. Yet the Canon, with a high-bred tact, delicately conveyed the impression that Madame Latour was the guest of the evening. Mrs. Winstanley kept eyes and ears on the alert. There was much talk of the Festival. On the morrow the “Elijah” was to be given, with Madame Latour in the contralto part. The Canon was solicitous as to her voice, beamed with pleasure when she offered, in her sweet, simple way to sing to his guests, and stood behind her as she sung, with what, in Mrs. Winstanley’s eyes, appeared an exasperating expression of fatuity.
A little later in the evening, a young girl, Sophia Wilmington, went up to him with the charming insolence of youth.
“Why did n’t you tell us she was so sweet? I ’ve fallen head over ears in love with her.” The Canon smiled, bowed, and delivered himself of this extraordinary speech:—
“My dear Sophia, next to falling in love with me, myself, you could not give me greater pleasure.”
“She is so lovely,” said the girl.
“A chance for a medallion,” said the Canon. Miss Wilmington had a pretty taste in medallion painting.
“Oh, I couldn’t get her colouring; but I should love to try—and her voice. To me, any one with a gift like that seems above ordinary mortals. You see I am quite ready to worship your angel.”
“My angel?” said the Canon, sharply.
Mrs. Winstanley, who was close by, discussing the Engadine with the Bishop, did not lose a word of the above conversation. At his last exclamation, she shot a swift side glance which caught the momentary confusion and flush on the Canon’s face. She was quite certain now of the sort of fool he was going to make of himself.
Meanwhile, the girl broke into a gay laugh.
“It did sound funny. I meant the angel in the ‘Elijah.’”
“Oh,” said the Canon, “I was forgetting the ‘Elijah.’”
Mrs. Winstanley resolved at least to say a warning word. Before she left, she managed to have a few words with him.
“I hope you are keeping your eyes very wide open, Everard,” she said, in a whisper.
The Canon took her literally and so regarded her. But she smiled and put her hand on his sleeve.
“She is quite charming and all of that, I grant. But she is very much deeper than she looks.”
“Really, my dear Emmeline—” he began, drawing himself up.
“Tut! my dear friend; don’t be offended. You have called me a wise woman so often that I believe I am one. Well, trust a wise woman, and look before you leap.”
“I am not in the habit of leaping, Emmeline,” said the Canon, stiffly.
Mrs. Winstanley laughed, as if she had a sense of humour; and in a few minutes was driving Yvonne homewards in her snug brougham.
But the Canon, after he had performed his last duties as host towards his right reverend guest, sought the great leathern armchair before his study fire and lit a cigar. Emmeline’s words had disturbed him. That is the worst of keeping a consultant cousin—a woman of sense. Her advicemaysave you from months of regret, but it is sure to cause you bad quarters of an hour. You remember the woman and disregard the sense on such occasions; orvice versa. Hitherto Emmeline had been infallible. The fact annoyed him, and he let his cigar die out, another irritation. At last he rose impatiently, and going to a violin-case, drew from it a favourite Guarnerius fiddle, tenderly wrapped in a silk handkerchief. And then, having put on thesourdine, so as not to disturb right reverend slumbers, he played “O, rest in the Lord,” with considerable taste and execution.
Perhaps it is well that Mrs. Winstanley did not hear him.
The concert began at three o’clock. The new Town Hall was packed from ceiling to floor. Canon Chisely stood up by his seat near the platform and looked around at the great mass of the audience, which included the flower and influence of the county, and then, turning, scanned the serried hedgerow of the orchestra, the crowding terraces of the choir, and the thin line of professionals in front, among whom Yvonne’s tiny figure had just come to make a spot of grace; and he felt a glow of pride. It was all his doing. The dream of many years was in process of being realised—the completion of the Abbey Restoration Fund. Moreover, he had succeeded in developing his first conception of an unambitious concert into a musical event, to be chronicled by critics from the London dailies. He had other reasons, too, for satisfaction, neither professional nor aesthetic.
Yvonne was feeling fluttered and happy. Fluttered, because it was an important engagement. There are very few chances, even for a real contralto, in oratorio music, and her voice was more mezzo. Hitherto she had contented herself with the scraps. If she had known that the “Elijah” had been deliberately selected because it was the one oratorio in which the contralto part not only suited her voice perfectly, but also rivalled the soprano in importance, the fluttering would have been intensified by perplexity. And she was happy, because all the world was smiling on her, particularly Geraldine Vicary and Vandeleur, with whom she was in immediate converse. Vandeleur had been engaged long since by the Canon for the name-part, partly on account of his magnificent bass voice, and partly to please Yvonne. Geraldine Vicary had stepped into a gap caused by the withdrawal of a more celebrated soprano at the last moment. Yvonne was smiling brightly upon Vandeleur. She liked him. He had made no subsequent reference to his declaration of love, and Yvonne, with her facile temperament, had almost forgotten the circumstance. Besides, he had gone back to his old allegiance to Geraldine, which pleased Yvonne greatly.
The conductor stepped to his stand and tapped with his baton. Silence succeeded the buzz of talk and the din of the tuning of fiddles. Three chords from the orchestra, and Vandeleur sang the introduction; the overture, the opening chorus, and then Yvonne took up her part. Singing was her life. After the first bar, she sang spontaneously, like the birds, free from nervousness or self-consciousness. And during her waits the sublime music absorbed her senses. It swept on through its themes of despair, renunciation, revelation, and promise; through all its vivid contrasts—the great trumpet voice of the prophet, the rolling mass of sound of the chorus, the vibrating notes of the messenger—“Hear ye, Israel; hear what the Lord speaketh “—the calm, sweet voice of the angel, telling of peace.
The Canon listened through all with the ear of a musician and the heart of a religious man. But there was a chord in his nature that remained untouched when Yvonne was not singing, and quivered strangely when her voice was raised. It was so pathetically weak, so different in quality from Geraldine Vicary’s powerful soprano, apparently so incapable of filling that vast hall; and yet so true, so exquisitely modulated that every note rang clear to the farthest gallery. The man forgot his three-and-forty years, the strange mingling of worldly wisdom and priestly dignity by which most of his judgments were formed, and he identified the woman with the voice, pure, angelic, irresistibly lovable.
He turned to his neighbour, Mrs. Winstanley, after the “O, rest in the Lord,” his eyes glistening, and whispered, “What do you think?”
“An unqualified success, Everard.”
“I am so glad.”
“You deserve every congratulation.”
“Thanks, from my heart, Emmeline.”
“The Obadiah man is delightful.”
He looked blankly at her, unable to read what lay behind those calm, grey eyes. Then a great comfort fell upon him. The woman of sense had manifested a lack of intuition that could be called by no other name than stupidity. He hugged his knee, delighted. But he made no more references to Yvonne.
The silence following the crash of the last “Amen,” announced the end. It woke him from a dream. He started to his feet with the impulse to seek Yvonne on the platform, but he was immediately hemmed in by a circle of congratulatory friends. As soon as he obtained breathing space, he turned round, to find that she had withdrawn to the ladies’ dressing-room to put on her things. The hall cleared rapidly. Mrs. Winstanley waited for Yvonne, who did not come at once, having a flood of things to tell to Geraldine. The Canon grew impatient. It was getting late, and he had to drive the Bishop home in time to dress for dinner at a great house some distance away. It would be his only chance of seeing Yvonne that evening. At last she came through the side-door and down the platform with Miss Vicary. He advanced to assist them at the steps, and then, after a few courteous words of thanks to Geraldine, who walked on unconcernedly toward the waiting group, found himself alone with Yvonne.
She wore high-standing fur at her throat and a tiny fur toque in the mass of dark hair, and she looked very winsome. Foolish speeches ran in his grave head, but he could not formulate them.
“I hope you are not very tired,” he said, with dignified lameness, pacing by her side, his hands behind his back.
“Not very. My throat is a bit stiff, but that will go off. Well, was I all right?”
“My dear child—” began the Canon, stopping abruptly.
“I was afraid I might let the piece down, you know,” she said, with a serene smile. “I am not a great vocalist, like Miss Vicary.”
“Don’t speak like that,” he said, awkwardly.
“Besides, your voice has a charm that hers can never have.”
“So you are quite pleased with me?” She looked up at him with such trustful simplicity that his rather stern face grew tender with a smile. It seemed as if a glimpse of her true nature was revealed to him.
“You are like a child-angel, asking if it has been good.”
“Oh, what a sweet, pretty thing to say!” cried Yvonne, gaily. “I shall always remember it, Canon Chisely. Now I know I sang nicely. And, you know, it’s almost like being in heaven to sing that part.”
“You called us all there to you,” said the Canon.
Yvonne blushed, pleased to her heart by the sincerity of the compliment. Coming from Canon Chisely, it had singular force. There was an air of strength and dignity about his broad shoulders, his strongly-marked, thoughtful face, and his grave, yet kindly manner, that had always set him apart, in her estimation, from the other men with whom she came into contact. She never included him in her generalisations upon men and their strange ways. His profession and position, as well as his personality, put him into a category where her unremembered father, and Mr. Gladstone, and the great throat-surgeon whom she had once consulted, vaguely figured. She was always conscious of being on her very best behaviour while talking to him.
The Canon glanced at his friends. They were conversing animatedly, as if in no great hurry to depart. So he leant back against the platform and lingered a while with Yvonne.
“You must take care not to catch cold,” he said, after a while. “I believe it’s a horrid evening.”
“Oh, don’t fear. I shall be all right tomorrow,” said Yvonne.
“I am not thinking of to-morrow at all, though any hitch then would be a misfortune, certainly. I am anxious about yourself. Your throat is already relaxed.”
“You mustn’t spoil me, Canon Chisely. I am used to going out in all kinds of weather. I have to, you know.”
“I wish you had n’t. You are far too fragile.”
“Oh, I am stronger than I look. I am tough—really.”
She brought out the incongruous epithet so prettily that he put back his head and laughed.
“If I had any authority over you, you should not play tricks with yourself,” he said, in grave playfulness.
“But you have a great deal of authority over me. I should never dream of disobeying you.”
He leaned his body forward, his hands resting on the platform edge behind him, and looked at her earnestly.
“Do you think so much of me as that?” he asked, in a low voice.
“Why, of course, I think everything of you,” replied Yvonne, innocently. “Don’t you know that?”
An answer was on his lips, but, happening to look round, he caught Mrs. Winstanley’s ironical glance, an off-switch to sentiment. He stroked a grizzling whisker and drew himself up.
“I mustn’t keep the Bishop waiting,” he said.
“Nor I, Mrs. Winstanley.”
They joined the group, where Yvonne received her congratulations and compliments with childish pleasure. In a few moments they separated, and the Canon drove off, regarding the Bishop by his side with uncanonical feelings.
Late that evening Vandeleur was smoking a cigarette in Miss Vicary’s hotel sitting-room. As Yvonne’s friends, they had been dining with Mrs. Winstanley. Vandeleur was charmed with her urbanity, and sang her praises with Celtic hyperbole.
“I should n’t trust her further than I could see her,” said Geraldine. “She hangs up her smile every night on her dressing-table.”
“Just hear a woman, now,” said the Irishman.
“Yes, just hear a woman,” retorted Geraldine, sarcastically. “I suppose you think she loves Yvonne, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m sure she’s thinking how sweet she is this very minute.”
“She would like to be poisoning Yvonne this very minute.”
“Well, I’m blest!” exclaimed Vandeleur, letting the match die out with which he was preparing to light a fresh cigarette. “It takes a woman to imagine gratuitous devilry!”
“And it takes a man to absorb himself in his dinner to the besotting of his intelligence! But I have eyes. And a logical mind—don’t tell me I have n’t. Now, hitherto, Mrs. Winstanley seems to have been the central figure in this wretched little provincial society. Who is, at the present moment?”
“Sure, it’s yourself, Geraldine—the great soprano from London.”
She did not condescend to notice the flattery.
“It’s Yvonne. I bet you she’s the most-talked-of person in Fulminster this evening. And Mrs. Winstanley the sickest. Oh, how dull men are! What is all this Festival, really, but the apotheosis of Yvonne?”
“It’s the canonisation of Yvonne, I should say,” remarked Vandeleur, drily.
Miss Vicary’s expression relaxed, and she leaned back in her chair.
“You’re not such a fool, after all, Van.”
“So I ’ve been told before,” he replied, with a chuckle. “Anyhow, it will be a splendid thing for the dear child.”
“Oh, how can it be? I have no patience with you!”
“That’s obvious,” said Vandeleur.
“Yvonne would give any man her head, if he whimpered or clamoured for it,” Geraldine, rising to her feet, “and then tell you in her pathetic way, ‘but he wanted it so, dear.’ And there isn’t a man living who could be good enough to Yvonne!”
“There I agree with you,” said Vandeleur.
Meanwhile, Yvonne was going to sleep, quite unconscious of the facts that had aroused Miss Vicary’s indignation. The memory of the artistic triumph of the day and the Canon’s generous praise lingered pleasantly around her pillow. But if there was any one man to whom her thoughts were tenderly given, it was the unhappy friend of her girlhood, who was then speeding into exile over the bleak autumn seas.