With a draft on a Cape Town bank for the remainder of his capital, and a last regretful letter from Yvonne in his pocket, he left Southampton. And as they steamed down Channel, in the mizzling rain of a grey November day, he leaned over the taffrail and stared at the land of his brilliant hopes, his crime, his punishment, his struggles and his dishonour, with a man’s agony of unshed tears.
He was going to begin life anew in a strange undesired country; hopeless, aimless, friendless save for that useless creature who was pacing up and down the deck behind him, still in his ridiculous headgear. He had made no plans. The future to him when he should land at Cape Town was as unknown—as it is to any of the sons of men, did we but realise it.
CHAPTER VIII—THE CANON’S ANGEL
While Joyce was straining his eyes through the darkness for the last sight of land and eating out his heart in bitter regrets, Yvonne was busily engaged at Fulminster in rehearsing for the next day’s concert. She had spent four days at Fulminster, the guest of Mrs. Winstanley, and found herself somewhat lost among the very decorous society of which Canon Chisely was a leading member. And while she was scanning the social heavens in half pathetic search of her bearings, Joyce’s letters had arrived, with their tidings of catastrophe and exile. So, while there was a smile on her lip for the Canon and his friends, there was a tear in her eye for Joyce. His humiliation and her failure as fairy godmother brought her a pang of disappointment. She felt very tenderly towards Joyce. In her imagination, too, Africa was a dreadful place, made up of deserts, lions, and ferocious negroes in a state of nudity.
If she had seen him before he started, she might have dissuaded him from encountering such discomforts. She thought of this tearfully in the intervals that Fulminster affairs allowed her for reflection.
She was staying with Mrs. Winstanley. Now Mrs. Winstanley was the leading social authority in Fulminster. She was a distant cousin of Canon Chisely. In fact, she was an infinite number of irreproachable things. Mothers came to her as a matrimonial oracle. The Mayor consulted her on ticklish questions of civic etiquette. The affairs of the parish were in her hands. Although she inhabited a well-appointed house of her own, she superintended the domestic arrangements of the Rectory; and performed all the duties of hostess for her cousin when he entertained. Thus, parochially and socially she was invaluable to the Canon—his right-hand woman, one who could share his dignity, and, by so doing, add to its impressiveness. If he had been called upon to write her epitaph, he would have carved upon the stone, “Here lies a woman of sense.” Now, when a responsibly placed and grave bachelor of three-and-forty holds that opinion of a woman of his own years, and consults her in all his concerns, the result is not difficult to imagine. Cousin Emmeline ruled the Rectory, with exquisite tact it is true—for if there was one of her peculiar and original virtues of which she made a speciality, it was tact—but yet her influence was paramount.
When the Canon had come to her with a request to invite Madame Yvonne Latour to stay with her, she had elevated polite eyebrows.
“Whoever heard of such a thing!”