“There is no reason to thank me, Yvonne,” he said, with bitterness. “What I have done for you has cost me nothing—the cheapest of all services; I have only given you advice.”
Yvonne looked at him wistfully.
“If you talk like that, you will make me cry again.”
“Forgive me,” said Joyce. “I am a beast.”
It was night. Yvonne lay wide awake. A suffused sound of breathing filled the air. Now and then a moan or a smothered cry of pain broke sharply upon the stillness. The woman in the adjacent bed began to murmur broken words in her sleep: “For the children’s sake, Joe—my poor little children—I wish we was all dead.” Some poor tragedy reenacting itself in slumber. Yvonne listened pityingly. The woman had seemed as broken down that day with misery as she herself. Then silence again, and Yvonne fell back upon her own tragedy, which seemed to be working itself out in the staring wakeful hours.
She had not written to Everard. Pen, ink, and paper had been brought. The sister had propped her up with pillows in a posture especially comfortable for writing. But her strength had failed her. To ask him for money was more than her pride could do.
Instead, she had written a long outpouring to Joyce, which lay unposted under her pillow.
This pride was a seam of flint in her soft nature. She would have returned to Everard as his wife, willingly, gratefully, glad to lay her tired head on his shoulder, and feel his strong protection around her once more. But from any one rather than him would she accept charity. Illogical, irrational, absurd—but a reality none the less in her heart.
Perhaps it was a protest of wounded sex. If Everard had treated her differently on that disastrous day, the quivering feminine might have gone unscathed. But in his anger, pain and disillusion he had driven her wrongs towards him into her flesh, almost like infidelities. She was too generous to feel resentful. An offer of remarriage would be a natural acknowledgment of error. To accept his support, apart from him, stung her to the soul with a sense of being cast off as faithless wife or dishonest mistress, to whom, however, he was forgivingly and charitably disposed. And yet what was she to do? Joyce would save her from immediate want, but she could not look to him for anything but temporary assistance. More was preposterous.
At last she gave up thinking. Joyce, with his cleverness, would see some way out of her difficulties. Somewhat comforted, she fell asleep. The next day was long and intensely dismal. The more clearly she saw that Joyce’s counsel was the only course to follow, the more hateful it seemed to her to write the letter. She put it off from hour to hour. And then the terrible blow that had befallen her weighed upon her mind. She strove to realise herself moving about the world without a voice. It was as hard to grasp as the conception of herself as a bodiless shade on the banks of Acheron. When the elusiveness ceased, and the reality loomed upon her in all its grimness, she wept bitterly. The consequence was that, in her still weak state, she broke down with the mental worry, and, when Joyce next came, he found her in a far worse state than before. She could scarcely move or speak. Letter-writing was out of the question. By the merest chance he learned, during the five minutes the sister allowed him to have with her, that she had not yet written to Everard.
“But the mail goes to-morrow,” he said. “I have been making enquiries. If we don’t write now, we shall lose a month. Shall I write to Everard, seeing that your poor little self is incapable?”
She murmured assent, and sighed as if in grateful relief. Joyce comforted her as best he could and left her reluctantly. When he got home, he wrote the letter, a bald statement of facts to which he appended his signature and the address of his lodgings. He sealed it, directed it, in his nervous, characteristic handwriting and hurried out to post it at once. It was a most disagreeable duty over, for to communicate with his cousin went sorely against the grain. A pleasanter duty awaited him, as soon as he could settle down to his evening’s work, the correction of the first batch of proofs from the publishers.
In the course of time, Yvonne recovered her spirits and was on the mend again. Signs of returning strength showed themselves in her left arm, which, together with the throat on that side, had been affected by the disease. Her speaking voice also began to regain some of its old sweetness, though the surgeons confirmed their statement that the singing voice was irrevocably gone.
“Do say they are wrong,” said Yvonne casting a pleading look at Joyce.
“Perhaps they are,” said he; “let us hope.”
“Then I may not need Everard’s money, after all.”
“You will for a couple of years, at least,” he said kindly. “But you may be able to pay it back afterwards.”
This consoled her, and she began to build great schemes. On another occasion she said to him irrelevantly:—
“Do you think I ought to write to Everard?” She had raised him by this time to the position of father confessor. A certain feminine weakness in Joyce’s nature, developing gradually, through his intercourse with her, into a finer sensitiveness, made it easy for her to give him her confidence, to speak with him much as she used to speak with Geraldine. And yet, he being a man, his utterances on such questions, had for her all their masculine weight.
“It is a matter entirely of your own inclination,” he replied oracularly.
“But I don’t know what my inclination is,” said Yvonne. “Everard once told me that it was a much harder thing to know what one’s duty was than to do it when you know what it is.”
“He was plagiarising from George Eliot,” said Joyce, not ill-pleased at a malicious hit at the Bishop. And then, teasingly to Yvonne: “And I’m sure they both put it a little more grammatically.”
“I won’t talk grammar,” cried Yvonne. “I always hated it. It is silly stuff. You understood perfectly what I meant, did n’t you?”
“Perfectly,” said Joyce.
“Then what’s the good of grammar?” cried Yvonne, triumphantly. “But you make me forget what I was going to say. It was something quite clever. Oh yes! Substitute ‘inclination’ for ‘duty,’ and you have my difficulty. Now do tell me what I am to do.”
“Well, wait until you hear from Everard, and then write him a nice long letter,” said Joyce.
“That’s just what I wanted to do,” said she; “you are so good to me.”
She was to leave the hospital in January. The time was rapidly approaching. Much of their time together was spent in the discussion of plans for the immediate future. Yvonne wanted to sell her furniture, which Joyce had inspected and found in safe hands. He opposed the idea. What was the use, when she would want it again, as soon as she was comfortably situated? In three months she would be in receipt of funds. Everard might cable her back a remittance long before. In the meantime, he could advance her a lump sum out of his capital.
“Then you can take unfurnished rooms and put in your own things at once. It will be much cheaper.”
“But suppose I don’t pay you back,” said Yvonne. “How can you make me?”
“I can suggest nothing but a bill of sale on the furniture,” he replied laughingly.
“What is that?”
“Well, you sign a paper saying that if the debt is not paid in three months, at the end of that time I can put in the brokers and sell your furniture and take all the money.”
“Oh, that would be lovely!” cried Yvonne. “Do let me do it. I should feel so businesslike. Draw it up now and I ’ll sign it.”
“It will have to be registered,” said Joyce.
“Well, register it then. What’s to prevent you?”
“I was only jesting,” said Joyce.
“But I’m quite serious. Don’t you see how serious I am? Come—to please me.”
The idea caught her childish fancy, and she spoke quite in her old, gay mood. She was sitting up now, partially dressed, and, being able to move her limbs more freely, reached for writing materials that lay on the little table by her bed.
“There, draw it up at once, as fearfully legally as you can, with all kinds of ‘afore-saids’ in it.”
Joyce fell into her humour, and drew up the document in due form, read it over to her solemnly, and called one of the nurses to witness the signatures. Then he wrote out a cheque for the amount of the loan, which she locked up in her despatch-box. He went away with the bill of sale in his pocket. On his next visit he informed her that it had been registered and that he would be a merciless creditor. The frivolity of the proceedings cheered him.
Meanwhile, the real problem of Yvonne’s arrangements presented itself. The idea of going at once into unfurnished rooms was abandoned. She was far too weak and helpless as yet for the worries of housekeeping. He suggested a boarding-house. But Yvonne shrank from the prospect of living among strangers.
“Besides, you could n’t come and see me as often as I should like,” she added, with a little air of worldly wisdom. “You haven’t an idea what scandal is talked in those places.” So Joyce quickly acquiesced in her taboo of boarding-houses, and found the choice of domicile narrowed down to furnished apartments.
Yvonne was beginning to be a vital interest in his life. On the days that the hospital was not open to him, he sent her little notes of his doings and of such things as might amuse her. In her helpless dependence she grew to be what Noakes had been to him in his latter days—with the sweet and subtle difference made by her sex. He had moods almost of happiness. Yet, like Noakes, Yvonne had not the power of freeing him from himself, from the awful memories, from the taint that clung to him. His crime and its punishment was his hair-shirt, for ever next the sensitive skin, never for the shortest intervals forgotten. Small incidents were never wanting to bring back the old burning anguish. Already in the streets he had passed, unrecognised, two old prison-associates. The sight of them was hateful. Once, in the Strand, he came face to face with a man, his chief intimate in that fashionable demi-reputable world which had drawn him to his precipice. The man cut him dead. On another occasion he met a troop of his cousins from Holland Park on the terrace of the British Museum. He noticed a girl recognize him and turn round another way, with a start, as he sprang hurriedly by through the folding doors. After such encounters, he cowered under the sense of everlasting disgrace. The old longing that always had lain dormant within him revived with intense poignancy; the longing to redeem his self-respect by some wild heroic deed of atonement. Sometimes he thought of realising all his capital, including the publisher’s eighty pounds and giving it to Yvonne. But soon she would be beyond the need of his help and his sacrifice would be merely silly. Common-sense leads us generally to the most hopeless commonplace. Nor did patient bearing of his lot appeal to his sensitive fancy as an expiation. The self-respect that would enable him to free the world’s back with cheerful calm could only be purchased by some great self-sacrifice. But what chances for such were offered in his humdrum, poverty-stricken life?
The days passed uneventfully. He wrote from morning to night, either in the Museum or in his attic, with a fierce determination to earn a livelihood that braced his powers. His attempts at occasional journalism were fairly encouraging. The new novel grew daily in gloomy bulk. Often, on Yvonne-less days, he strolled up to the secondhand bookshop, where he had bought the French novels, and chatted with the proprietor, with whom he had struck up an acquaintance. He was a snuffy, rheumy-eyed old man, Ebenezer Runcle by name, with chronic bronchitis and a deep disdain for the remnant of the universe outside his bookshop. But for the lumbering, chaotic, higgledy-piggledy world of volumes within its book-lined walls, he had a passionate veneration. Joyce found him a mine of extraordinary and useless information. To sit on a pile of books and listen to unceasing gossip about Gregory Nazianzene, Sozomen, Evagrius, Photius—about Aristotle, Averrhoes, Duns Scotus, and the Schoolmen—about Hakluyt and Purchas—about forgotten historians, churchmen, poets, dramatists, of all countries in Europe; to turn over musty old editions of famous printers, the Aldi, Junta, Elzevirs, Stephani, Allobrandi, Jehans, which the old man shuffled off to procure from dim recesses of the shelves, was a new intellectual delight. It was a renewal of the keen book-interest of his Oxford days, and a mental stimulus such as he had not received for many weary years. Gradually it appeared that Mr. Runcle looked forward to his visits; and Joyce, who had been shy at first of trespassing upon his time, gladly took advantage of his welcome. Sometimes he helped the old man in the constant work of rearranging and cataloguing the stock. One afternoon, he found him wheezing so painfully with his complaint, that he persuaded him to sit in the little back parlour, while he himself took charge of the establishment and served customers till closing time. After that he dropped into the habit of playing salesman. The old man seemed a lonely, pathetic figure. Joyce’s heart instinctively warmed toward him.
One afternoon, toward the middle of January, he visited Yvonne for the last time in the hospital. She received him, as on the last two or three occasions, in the sister’s little sitting-room just outside the ward. For the first time, however, she was completely dressed, and only now did Joyce realise how thin and fragile she had become. She looked absurdly small in the great cane armchair before the fire.
“So I am to call for you on Thursday at twelve and carry you off to your new abode,” he said.
“Have you settled yet?” asked Yvonne.
“No, not yet. If I can get the place in Elm Park, I shall give up the other. I shall hear to-morrow.”
Yvonne looked wistfully into the fire, and sighed.
“I shall feel awfully lonesome there, by myself. I am beginning to dread it. You won’t think me silly, will you? I used not to mind living alone. But then it was different. You ’ll come and see me very, very often. Bring your writing, and I ’ll be as quiet as a mouse and won’t disturb you. You don’t know how frightened and nervous I am. I suppose it’s because I have been so ill.”
“You poor little thing,” said Joyce, looking down upon her, as he stood on the hearthrug, “I wish I knew some motherly soul to take care of you—or that I could take care of you myself,” he added, with a smile.
“Oh, I wish you could,” cried Yvonne, piteously, with an appealing glance. “Oh, Stephen—could n’t you? I would n’t give you much trouble.”
“Do you mean, Yvonne, that you would like me to get lodgings in the same house as you?” asked Joyce, with a sudden flash in his eyes.
“Yes,” said Yvonne. “Just at first. Until I feel stronger. I have been longing to ask you, but I didn’t dare. Don’t think me selfish and horrid.”
The notion dawned upon him like an inspiration. Why had he not thought of it before? Why should he not find a garret above her rooms whence he could look protectingly down upon her, in brotherly affection, instead of leaving her ill and alone to the dubious mercy of landladies and lodging-house servants? He was quite bewildered by the charm of her proposal.
“But, Yvonne, do you know what undreamed of happiness you are offering me?” he said.
“Then you would like it?” she cried gladly.
“Why, my dear child!” said Joyce; and he walked about the room to express his feelings.
“I have thought it all out,” said Yvonne, sagely. “We can go to much cheaper rooms than you intended me to have, so that you can pay the same for your own lodgings as you pay now. I would n’t lead you into extravagances for anything in the world.”
“If it comes to that,” said Joyce, “the second floor is vacant where I lodge now.”
“But that is delightful!” cried Yvonne. “The fates have arranged it on purpose for us.” They talked for a while over the new plan. Joyce’s acquiescence, relieving her of much nervous dread of loneliness, raised her spirits wonderfully.
“You won’t tyrannise over me too much, will you? If I am going out with tan shoes, you won’t send me indoors to put on black ones? Promise me.”
He laughed. The idea of such an attitude towards her seemed to belong more to comic opera than to real life. And yet he felt his authority. She regarded him with the implicit trust of a stray child.
The sister came in and stayed whilst afternoon tea was in progress. She had built up a lone woman’s romance for these two, and had taken them both into her friendship. Hence the use of the sitting-room, the tea and her wise counsels to Joyce as to the proper care of Yvonne. When she left them alone again, a silence fell upon them, and with it the gloomy cloud upon Joyce, that no sunshine could dispel for long. He looked broodingly into the fire, the lines deepening on his face, the old pain in his eyes.
Was it a right thing that he was about to do—to associate his tarnished name with hers? It was all very well to dream of the sweetness and light that daily companionship with her would bring into his life—but was he fit, socially, morally, spiritually, to live with her? It was taking advantage of her innocence. His sensitiveness shrank, as if from the suggestion of a baser disloyalty to her trustingness.
Yvonne, leaning back in her long chair, kept her dark eyes fixed upon him. At first she wondered at his sudden gloom, and fancied distressedly that it proceeded from her proposal. But suddenly an illumination, such as she had never in her life experienced, lit up her mind, and caused her a strange little thrill. She called his name softly. He started, turned, rose at her sign and bent low over her chair.
“I want to come and live with you more than ever now, Stephen,” she said; and as she spoke her voice seemed to have regained its musical softness. “I mean to try and drive away the sad thoughts from you. Perhaps, after all, though I can’t sing, I may do a little good in the world.”
Her tenderness touched him. He wished she was a child that he might kiss her. The temptation to receive this boon the gods were giving him was too strong. He yielded entirely. And from that hour began Yvonne’s conscious battle with the powers of darkness in the desolate depths of a man’s heart.
They lived together four months, Yvonne in her comfortable rooms, Joyce in his attic overhead. At first she had been helpless, requiring much aid both from Joyce and from the landlady, over whom she had cast her accustomed charm; but with the early spring weather she recovered full use of her limbs, and strength enough to fight her small battles for herself. To Joyce it had been a time of consolation in many black moods. He dreaded the arrival of the New Zealand mail, which he calculated would bring Yvonne her freedom. It was almost a relief when he assured himself by enquiries that no news had come from the Bishop. He had another month of Yvonne’s companionship to look forward to. When that passed, however, and the second mail from New Zealand proved as fruitless as the first, he was forced to look at matters from a practical point of view. He had already far exceeded the original advance he had made to Yvonne. Under the assurance that he would be reimbursed, he had not scrupled to spend money freely on little luxuries and comforts. At the present rate of living, therefore, another two months would see him at the end of his resources, which included money that he had received in advance for the copyright of his book. His current income from occasional journalism was ridiculously small. The new novel was only half-way towards completion. Poverty stared him in the face.
As a last resource he went to Everard’s bankers, but only to learn that his cousin had withdrawn his account. He found Yvonne anxiously awaiting the result of this errand. As he entered, she rose impulsively, scattering scissors and spool of cotton from her lap. She read his failure in his face.
“What is to be done?” she asked, when he had finished his report.
“I don’t know,” replied Joyce, truthfully.
He looked at her, puzzled and distressed.
“You must pay yourself out of the furniture and let me go,” said Yvonne.
“Where would you go to?”
“I don’t know,” said Yvonne in her turn.
At the picture of helpless dismay Joyce broke into a laugh.
“Oh, howcanyou laugh, when I owe you all this money?” she said, with a choke in her voice.
“Because I am glad, Yvonne, that fate seems to compel me to go on looking after you.”
“But how can you go on? How can I burden you any further?”
“Don’t talk about burdens,” he said gently. “You repay me twice over for what little I have given you.”
“But the furniture is not worth all that,” said Yvonne.
“What has the furniture to do with it?”
“Why it is yours, is n’t it?”
“How, mine?”
“The bill of sale,” replied Yvonne seriously.
“Oh, you dear little goose,” cried Joyce, “you don’t suppose I am going to sell you up!”
“Why not—if you need the money? The furniture is all your own.”
“How can it be when I don’t claim it?”
Yvonne shook her head. Ordinarily the most easily swayed of women, now and then she was inconvincible. She had got it into her head that the furniture had lapsed by sheer law of England into his possession, and no argument could move her. He explained that he could renew the bill. She dismissed the explanation with a little foreign gesture.
“I own nothing in the world but what I stand up in,” she persisted.
“Then you’re worse off than ever,” said Joyce.
“I am,” she said despondently. “Is n’t it strange to want money! I never knew what it was before.”
There was an odd pathos in her face that touched him.
“Cheer up, little woman. Nothing is ever so bad as it looks.”
Comforting words were nice, but they did not change the position. Money had to be obtained. Where was it to come from?
“I suppose I must write to Everard, since your letter has miscarried.”
“Letters don’t miscarry nowadays,” said Joyce. “They don’t even do so in novels. Still, you had better write. I wish you felt you need n’t.”
“So do I.”
“We shall have to part as soon as he cables a remittance.”
“Oh, I wish we could get along as we are,” said Yvonne. “I have been so happy here with you.”
“Then let us fight it out between us,” exclaimed Joyce resolutely. “You ’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.”