“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.