“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.