Is There A God

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Is There A God

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 Is There A God

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.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Derelicts
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Derelicts

Author: William John Locke

Release date: November 10, 2017 [eBook #55927]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DERELICTS ***

John Lane: The Bodley Head London and New York

1897
CONTENTS
Part I
CHAPTER I—BEYOND THE PALE
CHAPTER II—YVONNE
CHAPTER III—IN THE DEPTHS
CHAPTER IV—DEA EX MACHINA
CHAPTER V—THE COMIC MUSE
CHAPTER VI—MELPOMENE
CHAPTER VII—A FORLORN HOPE
CHAPTER VIII—THE CANON’S ANGEL
CHAPTER IX—PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
CHAPTER X—COUNSELS OF PERFECTION
CHAPTER XI—THE OUTCAST COUSIN
CHAPTER XII—HISTOIRE DE REVENANT
CHAPTER XIII—Dis Aliter Visum

Part II
CHAPTER XIV—“IN A STRANGE LAND”
CHAPTER XV—KNIGHT-ERRANT
CHAPTER XVI—LA CIGALE
CHAPTER XVII—YVONNE PROPOSES
CHAPTER XVIII—DRIFTWOOD
CHAPTER XIX—FERMENT
CHAPTER XX—UPHEAVAL
CHAPTER XXI—A DEMAND IN MARRIAGE
CHAPTER XXII—SEEKING SALVATION
CHAPTER XXIII—AN END AND A BEGINNING
Part I
 CHAPTER I—BEYOND THE PALE

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

T
hat evening Yvonne was standing by the door of a concert-
hall, as her friend and fellow-artist Vandeleur adjusted a red
wrap round her shoulders. He was a burly, pudding-faced
Irishman with twinkling dark blue eyes and a persuasive manner. His
fingers lingered about the wrap longer than was necessary.
“Good-bye,” said Yvonne, “and thank you.” She was feeling a little
upset. Vandeleur, a popular favourite, had preceded her on the
programme, and his song had been met with rapturous applause.
“You have ‘queered’ me, Van,” she had said, in pure jest.
Whereupon, he had returned to the platform to give his
enthusiastically demanded encore, and, to the disappointment of the
audience, had sung the most villainous drawing-room ballad he
could think of, without an attempt at expression. The applause had
been perfunctory, and Yvonne’s appearance had created a
quickening of interest. Vandeleur’s unnecessary quixotism put
Yvonne into a false position. So she thanked him shyly.
“Let me just have ten minutes of a cigarette at home with you,” he
pleaded.
Yvonne was tired. It was very hot; she had been running hither
and thither about London since the morning, and was longing in a
feminine way to free herself of hampering garments, and to lie down
with a French novel for an hour before going to bed. But when a
man spoke to her with that note of entreaty in his voice she did not
know how to refuse. She nodded assent. Vandeleur called a cab and
they drove together to her flat.
 It was up many flights of stairs—the passage was very narrow, the
drawing-room very tiny. The big Irishman standing on the hearthrug
seemed to fill all the space left by the grand piano. How this article
of furniture was ever brought into the flat puzzled Yvonne’s friends
as much as the entrance of the apples into the dumplings puzzled
George III., until some one suggested the same solution of the
problem—the flat had been built round the piano. Everything else in
the room was small, like Yvonne herself, the armchairs, the couch,
the three occasional tables. A few water-colours hung around the
walls. The curtains and draperies were fresh and tasteful. All the
room, with its dainty furniture and pretty feminine knick-knacks, was
impressed with Yvonne’s graceful individuality—all except the
immense grand piano, which asserted itself loudly, a polished
rosewood solecism. It seemed such a very big instrument for so
small a person as Yvonne.
She threw herself into an armchair by the fire, with a little sigh.
She had been unusually quiet during the drive home.
“And what’s making you miserable?” asked Vandeleur, in a tone of
concern.
“I wish you had n’t done that, Van,” she said, with a wistful
puckering of her forehead.
“Ah, there! now you’re vexed with me. There never was an animal
like me for treading on my dearest friends. I’m like the elephant you
may have heard of, that squashed the mother of a brood of chickens
by mistake, and, taking it to heart, just like me, gathered the little
ones under his wing, and, sitting down upon them, said: ‘Ah, be aisy
now, I’ll be a mother to you’; he did n’t hurt the chickens’ feelings
exactly—but it was mistaken kindness. Was it your feelings I
trampled on?”
“Ah, no, Van,” said Yvonne, smiling. “But don’t you see, it was
doing a thing I can never pay you back for.”
“Faith, the sight of your sweet face is payment enough.”
 “But you can have that for nothing—such as it is.”
“It’s the sweetest face that ever was made,” said the Irishman,
flinging a freshly-lighted cigarette into the grate behind him. “I’d cut
off my head any day to get a sight of it But are you wanting to pay
me more than that? By my soul, there’s just an easy way out of your
difficulty, Yvonne!”
He looked down at her, his face very red, and questioning in his
eyes. She caught his glance and sat upright, stretching out her hand
appealingly. Men had looked at her like that before,—craving for
something she had not in her to give. She had always, on such
occasions, felt what a shallow, poverty-stricken little soul she was.
What was in her that could bring the trouble into men’s eyes? Here
was Van, the kind friend and good comrade, going the way of the
others. She was frightened and distressed.
“Oh, Van, don’t!” she cried. “Not that. I can’t bear it!”
She covered her face with her hands, as he came quickly forward
and leaned over her chair. “Just a tiny bit of love, Yvonne. So small
that you would n’t miss it. I could do with it all, but I know I can’t
get that. I only ask for a sample. Come, Yvonne.”
But Yvonne shook her head.
“Don’t, Van,” she repeated, piteously; “you’re hurting me.”
Her tone was so pathetic that the big man drew himself up,
thumped his chest, and seized his hat. “I’m a great big brute to
come and take advantage of you like this. Of course you couldn’t
care about a great fat bounder like me. And you’re half dropping
with weariness. It’s a villain I am. I’ll leave you to your sleep, poor
little woman. Good night.”
He held out his hand, and she allowed hers to remain in it for a
moment.
 “I have n’t been ungrateful to you, have I?” she asked. “I did n’t
mean to be. But I thought you were different.”
“How, different?”
“That you would never make love to me. Don’t, Van, please. It
would spoil it all.”
“Well, perhaps it would,” replied Vandeleur, philosophically. “Only it
is so devilish hard not to make love to you when one’s got the
chance. And, begad! if you’d just give up looking like a little warm,
brown saint, it would be better for the peace of mind of the men.”
He stooped and touched her hand with his lips and strode
buoyantly out of the room. She heard him humming one of his songs
along the passage, then the slam of the front door; then there was
silence, and Yvonne went to bed with a grateful sense of escape
from unknown dangers. Still, she was sorry for Vandeleur, although
she had a dim perception of the superficiality of his passion. It would
have been nice, had it been possible, to make him happy. She had a
queer, unreasonable little feeling that she had been selfish. She
sighed as she settled herself to sleep. The ways of the world were
very complicated.
To those who knew her it was often a subject for marvel that she
was not crushed in the fierce struggle of life. A creature so yielding,
so simple, so unaffected by experience or the obvious external
lessons of the world, and yet standing serenely in the midst of the
turmoil, seemed an incongruity—gave a sense of shock, a prompting
to rescue, such as would arise from the sight of a child in the middle
of a roadway clashing with traffic. She was made for protection,
tenderness, all the sheltering luxuries and amenities of life. It was a
flaw in the eternal fitness of things that she was alone, earning her
livelihood, with nothing but her sweetness and innocence to guard
her from buffeting and downfall.
Yet it was her very simplicity that saved her from outward strain;
and inward stress was as yet spared her, through her unawakened
child's nature. She laughed when folks pitied her. To earn her living
was an easy matter. Born in the profession, trained for it from her
earliest days, she had taken to it as a young swan to the water.
Engagements came like the winds, the visits of her friends, and
other such natural and commonplace phenomena. She sang, or gave
her lessons, and the money was paid in to the branch of the City
Bank close by her flat, and when she needed funds for her modest
expenses she wrote a cheque and sent her maid to cash it When her
balance was getting low, she practised little economies and
postponed payment of bills; when it was high, she settled her debts,
bought new clothes, and had a dozen oysters now and then for
supper. It was very simple. She did not pity herself at all. Nor did she
feel the trouble of her past married life. It had gone by like a cloudy
day, forgotten in succeeding sunshine, and had left singularly little
trace upon her character. Even the period of unhappiness had not
weighed unduly. A more resistful nature might have been wrecked
irretrievably; but Yvonne had been cast upon the shoals only for a
season.
When Amédée Bazouge, a Parisian tenor who had settled in
London, first met her, he was surfeited with various blonde beauties
of the baser sort, and in a sentimental mood, during which he
frequently invoked the memory of his mother, he chose to fall
desperately in love with little brown Yvonne, likening her to the
Blessed Virgin and as many saints as he recollected. Yvonne was
very young; this sudden worship was new to her; the pain in his
heart that he so passionately dwelt upon seemed a terrible thing for
her to have caused. She married him because he said that his life
was at stake. She gave him herself as she would have given
sixpence to a poor man in the street. Why she was necessary to his
life’s happiness she could not guess. However, Amédée said so, and
she took it on faith.
For a while she was mildly content in his exuberant delight. He
whispered, in soft honeymoon hours, “m’aimes-tu?”—and she said
“Yes,” because she knew it would please him; but she was always
happier at other times, when she was not called upon for display or
expression of feeling. She liked him well enough. His somewhat
common handsomeness pleased her, his effervescent fancy and
boulevard wit kept her lightly amused, and his vehement passion
provided her with an interest strangely compounded of fright,
wonder, and pity.
But Amédée Bazouge was not made either by nature or education
for the domestic virtues. His repentant mood passed away; he forgot
the memory of his mother, and found Yvonne’s innocence grow
insipid. He hankered after the strange goddesses with their full-
flavoured personalities, their cynicism, their passions, and their
stimulating variety. Regret came to him for having broken with the
last, who always kept him in a state of delicious uncertainty whether
she would overwhelm him with passionate kisses or break the
looking-glass in a tempest of wrath. So, gradually, he sought
satisfaction for his reactionary yearnings and drifted away from
Yvonne. And then she grew unhappy. He did not treat her unkindly.
In all their dealings with each other a harsh word never passed the
lips of either. But she felt cold and neglected. Instead of being met
after a concert and accompanied to their little house at Staines, she
went the long journey alone. The quiet evenings of music and
singing together were things of the past. Often a week elapsed
without their meeting. To complete her trouble, her mother died
suddenly, and Yvonne felt very lonely. She would sit sometimes and
cry like a lost child.
At last they parted. Amédée returned to Paris, and Yvonne took
her little flat in the Marylebone Road. The clouds passed by and
Yvonne was happy again. She had retained professionally her
maiden name of Latour, and now she assumed it altogether, only
changing the former “Mademoiselle” into “Madame.” Her husband
faded into a vague memory. When she received news of him it was
through a paragraph in the “Figaro,” announcing his death in a Paris
hospital. She wore a little crape bonnet to notify to the world the
fact of her widowhood, but she had no tears to shed. When friends
condoled with her over her sad lot, she opened her round eyes in
astonishment.
“But, my dear, I am as happy as I can possibly be,” she would say
in remonstrance. And it was true. She had come through the ordeal
of an unhappy marriage, pure and childlike, her heart unruffled by
passion and her soul unclouded by disillusion.
There are some women born to be loved by many men, yielding,
trustful, appealing irresistibly to the masculine instincts of protection
and possession. Sometimes they are carried off by one successful
owner and bear him children, and hear nothing of the hopeless loves
that they inspire. Sometimes, like Yvonne, they are at the mercy of
every gust of passion that stirs the hearts of the men around them.
They are too innocent of the meaning and scope of love to bide the
time when love shall take them in its grip; too weak, tender, and
compassionate to harden their hearts against the sufferings of men.
If they fail, the world is unsparing in condemnation. If happy
circumstance shelters them, they are canonised for virtues that stop
short of their logical conclusion. Wherefore we are tempted to say
hard things of the world.
Fate, however, had dealt not unkindly with Yvonne. At times her
path had been sadly tangled and she had sighed, as she did this
night after Vandeleur’s unexpected declaration. But chance had
always come to her aid and cleared her way. She trusted to it now
as she fell asleep.
 CHAPTER III—IN THE DEPTHS

I
f you step this way, the manager will see you,” said the clerk,
lifting the flap of the counter.
Joyce rose from the cane-bottomed chair on which he had
been sitting, and followed the clerk through the busy outer office
into the private room beyond. An elderly man in gold spectacles
looked up from his desk.
“What can I do for you?”
“I am seeking employment,” said Joyce, “can you give me any?”
“Employment?”
If Joyce had asked him for Prester John’s cap, or the Cham of
Tartary’s beard, his tone could not have expressed more surprise.
“Yes,” replied Joyce. “I don’t mind what it is—clerk, copyist,
handy-man, messenger—so long as it’s work.”
“Utterly impossible,” said the manager, shortly.
“Would it be of any use to leave my address?” asked Joyce.
“Not a bit. Good day to you.”
Joyce walked out apathetically on to the landing. It was a nest of
city offices in a great block of buildings in Fenchurch Street, a
labyrinth of staircases, passages, and ground-glass doors black-
lettered with the names of firms. He was going through them
systematically. Often he could not gain access to a person in
authority. When he succeeded, it was the same history of rebuff. He
felt somewhat downcast at the result of this last interview, the
cheerful alacrity with which he had been received having given him