“Thank you, Yvonne,” he said, turning away. They had spoken in subdued voices, as folks do when discussing funeral arrangements. Joyce, blinded and dazed by his misery, was unperceptive of her joylessness. At the most, he was conscious of a seriousness that, under the circumstances, was not unnatural. His own pain he hid with anxious effort.
The afternoon hours passed. He lit the gas in the shop, and proceeded with whatever mechanical employment he could find. It was a relief to be alone. The old man’s gossip would have jarred upon him, driven him up to the sitting-room where the ordeal was fiercest, or out into the hard-featured streets. He would have two or three days of solitude before Runcle returned from Exeter.
Messages came from the Bishop. One for Yvonne. Another for him, acknowledging his letter, announcing that the hour of noon had been fixed upon, shortly before which time a carriage would be sent to convey Yvonne to the church, and begging him in most courteous terms to assist at the ceremony and give Yvonne away. An echo of the Salvation Army girl’s voice came back to him, and he smiled grimly. “It’s the beastliest thing I can do.”
He scribbled a line of acquiescence and gave it to the waiting messenger-boy. “I had not thought of the dregs,” he said to himself.
That evening they sat drearily in their accustomed places by the fireside, each knowing it to be their last together. Night after night they had spent in each other’s society, Yvonne sewing or reading or dreaming in a lazy, contented way, Joyce writing upon a board laid across his knees. Sometimes she would come and lean over the back of his chair and watch the words as they came from his pen, her soft wavy black hair very near his fair, close-trimmed head.
“Send me away if I’m worrying you,” she used to say.
Whereupon he would laugh happily and answer:—
“See how beautifully I am writing. I should never have thought of that remark if you had not been there.”
“I like to play at feeling a guardian angel,” she said once.
“You can feel it without the playing,” he replied, drawing his head aside and looking round at her. “When your wings are over me like that, I do work that I could n’t do unaided.”