After a few undecided turns up and down the pavement, he directed his steps mechanically to a customary haunt of his, the billiard-room of a public-house in Westminster. It was better than the wearying streets and the choking solitude of his attic. A couple of shabby men in dingy shirt-sleeves were playing at the table. On the raised divan, in the gloom of the walls, sat a silent company of lookers-on. With a group of these, Joyce exchanged nods, and took his place sombrely among them. They were a depressed, out-at-elbows crew, who came here night after night, speaking little, drinking less, and never playing billiards at all. They watched the game, now and then applauded, oftener condoled with the loser than congratulated the winner. They formed an orderly and appreciative gallery, and set, as it were, a tone of decorum in the room; and for this reason their presence was not discouraged by the landlord. Eight was their average number. They were mostly men in the prime of life, and belonged, as far as one could judge by their voluntary confidences, to the obscure fringes of journalism, the stage, and independence. Those who occupied the last position lived chiefly on their wives. There was a decayed medical student who did Heaven knows what for a living, and a red-headed, vulgar man, who gave out that he had thrown up a country rectorship, through conscientious scruples. Differing widely as they did in personality, yet they retained one common characteristic. Failure seemed written on each man’s face. A kind of mutual affinity had drawn them together. To Joyce’s cynical humour it appeared as if something more than mere chance had caused him to stumble upon them one evening two months before.
“I’m afraid I have left my ’baccy at home,” said the man sitting next to Joyce, who was filling his pipe. “Thank you very much. A change in tobacco is very gratifying at times to the palate.”
He was a man of singular appearance. The bones in his face were very large, the flesh scanty; his nose hooked, his eyebrows black and meeting. His long upper-lip and his chin were shaven; but he wore thick black mutton-chop whiskers which contrasted oddly with a bush of whitening hair above his temples and at the back of his head. Whether he was bald or not, no one ever knew, as he always retained his hat fixed in one never-changing, respectable angle. This hat was very, very old, an extravagantly curled silk hat of the masher days in the early eighties. But the most striking feature of his costume consisted in a long thick Chesterfield overcoat which he obviously wore without coat or waistcoat beneath. In the sultry August weather the sight of him made the beholder perspire. Although there was no trace of linen at his wrists or down the arms as far as one could see, a dirty frayed collar and a shirt-front adorned with a straight black tie appeared above the tightly buttoned overcoat. Joyce knew him by the name of Noakes.
He looked at Joyce, as he spoke, out of pale-blue, unspeculative eyes, and returned the tobacco-pouch. “You had better take another fill or two, while you are about it,” said Joyce.
“I don’t like to trespass upon your generosity,” said Noakes. But he helped himself plentifully, tying up the tobacco in his pocket-handkerchief. They smoked on during a long silence, broken only by the click of the billiard-balls, the monotonous cry of the marker, and occasional murmurs of applause. The air was heavy with drink and tobacco-smoke, fresh and stale.
“I must be getting back to work,” said Noakes at last.
The word roused Joyce from the lethargy into which he had fallen. He had never associated Noakes with definite employment. For a moment he envied him.
“I wish to heaven I could,” he said.
“A man of your attainments,” replied Noakes, respectfully, “ought never to be at a loss. Now I should say you have been to a public school?”
Joyce nodded.