Noakes’s hint had taken root in his mind. If that dilapidated man could maintain himself honestly by “popular fiction,” surely he could do so too. Off and on during the last five months he had striven to write an article or short story, but his mind had refused to work. The conviction that his intellect had been shattered during those two awful years had added to his despair. But now he told himself that this was work in which intellectual subtlety and fastidiousness would prove a hindrance. The one thing needful was imagination: also a terrible faculty for continuous quill-driving. To gain a livelihood there would have to be written daily stuff equal to three columns of the “Globe” newspaper. And seven-and-sixpence as the reward! A noble end, he thought bitterly to himself as he walked along, to the ambition of Stephen Chisely, double-first of New College, Oxford—to become a writer of “penny bloods.”
Still, the suggestion had acted as a stimulus. When he entered his room, he did not feel so broken and purposeless as when he had left it. The intellectual effort he had made whilst walking home in scheming out an experimental chapter had broken the spell of morbid introspection. As soon as he had lit the gas, he drew out writing materials, and, sitting before his dressing-table, began the scene of slaughter he had arranged. At the end of a couple of hours he found he had written two slips of one hundred and fifty words each. He regarded them ruefully. At that rate it would take him twenty hours a day to earn his seven-and-sixpence. The idea occurred to him to look at the “Doom of the Floating Fiend.” He read a few pages and then dropped the work hopelessly on to the floor. The instinct of the scholar and man of culture awakened in revolt. His mind would not be prostituted to stuff like that.
“Sooner death!” he said to himself, with whimsical bitterness. His own carefully elaborated efforts he tore up with a sigh. Then, tired out, he prepared to go to bed.
Suddenly, in the midst of his undressing, he caught sight, to his immense surprise, of a letter lying on his counterpane, where the maid of all work had carelessly thrown it. From whom could it be? Letters were things of an almost forgotten past. It was in a woman’s hand. Then he remembered he had given his address to Yvonne. The letter was from her, and ran:—
“Dear Stephen,—Oh, why didn’t you come last night? I was
so disappointed. You surely did n’t think I only asked you
out of politeness. I hope nothing has happened to you. My
head was running over all day with a little plan for you. Do
come and catch it before it all runs away. I shall be in to-
morrow afternoon.
You know it’s just like old times—writing a silly little
note to you.
Yours sincerely,
Yvonne Latour.”
Joyce went to bed and slept the sound sleep of a jaded man. But the letter lay under his pillow.
CHAPTER IV—DEA EX MACHINA
There’s nothing like leather,” cried Yvonne, gaily. “If I had been a milliner, I should have thought what a gentlemanly shopwalker you would have made. As I am a singer, I can only think of the profession. You did n’t know I was so philosophical, did you?”