Derelicts

Warm day” said the policeman.

The man thus addressed looked up from the steps, where he was sitting bareheaded, and nodded. Then, rather quickly, he put on his hat.

“Not much Bank Holiday hereabouts.”

“So much the better,” said the man.

“It’s all very well for them as likes it,” said the policeman, wiping his forehead.

It was the first Monday in August, and his beat was not a lively one. Curiosity had attracted him toward the sitting figure, and the social instinct prompted conversation. Receiving, however, an uninterested nod in reply to his last remark, he turned away reluctantly and continued his slow tramp up the street.

The man took no notice of his departure, but, resting his chin on his hands, gazed wistfully across the road. Why he had come here to Holland Park he scarcely knew. Perhaps, in his aimless walk from his lodgings in Pimlico, he had unconsciously followed a once familiar track that had brought him to a spot filled with sweet and bitter associations.

The blinds were drawn in the great house opposite that stared white in the noonday sun. A beer-can hanging on the area railings announced the caretaker. Like most of the mansions in the long, well-kept street, it seemed abandoned to sun and silence.

It was the first time he had seen the house since the cloud had fallen upon his life. Once its interior had been as familiar to him as his own boyhood’s home. Its inmates gave him flattering welcome. He was courted for his brilliant promise and admired for his good looks. A whisper of feasting and riotous living that hovered around his reputation caused him to be petted by the household as the prodigal cousin. The comforts of wealth, the charm of refinement, the warmth of affection, were his whenever he chose to knock for admittance at that door. Now he had lost them all, as irrevocably as Adam lost Eden. He was an outcast among men. Not only had he forfeited his right to mount the steps, but he knew that the very mention of his existence in that household brought shame and fierce injunctions of silence.

He gazed at the drawn blinds of the deserted house in an agony of hopelessness, craving the warm sympathy, the laughter, the dear human companionship, the mere sound of his Christian name which he had not heard uttered for over two years--ever since he had entered by that gate above which the lasciate ogni speranza seemed written in letters of flame. The lines deepened on his face. The touch of a friendly hand, a kind glance from familiar eyes, the daily, unnoted possession of millions, were to him a priceless treasure, forever beyond his reach. He was barely thirty. His life was wrecked. Nothing lay before him but pariahdom, and slinking from the gaze of honest men. And within him there burnt no fiery sense of injustice to keep alive the flame of noble impulse--only self-contempt, ignominy, the ineffaceable brand of the gaol.

It was on the pavement opposite that he had been arrested. He had tripped down the steps in evening dress, his ears buzzing with the laughter within, in spite of tremulous throbbings of his heart, and had walked into the arms of the two quiet officers in plain clothes who had been patiently awaiting his exit. From that moment onward his life had been one pain and horror. Regained freedom had brought him little joy--had brought him in fact increased despair. During the last few months of his imprisonment he had yearned sickeningly for the day of release. It had come. Sometimes he regretted the benumbed hours of that mid-time in gaol, when pain had been lost in apathy. He had been free for five months. In all probability he would be free for the rest of his life. Sometimes he shuddered at the prospect.

The policeman again passed by, and this time eyed him askance. Why was he sitting on those steps? A suspicion of felonious purpose relieved the monotony of his beat.

“You ’ll be moving on soon,” he said. “You mustn’t doss on them doorsteps all day.”

The man looked at him rather stupidly. His first impulse was one of servile obedience--an instinct of late habit, and he rose from his seat. Then his sense of independence asserted itself, and he said, in a somewhat defiant tone:--

“I felt faint from the heat. You have no right to molest me.”

The policeman glanced at him from head to foot. A gentleman evidently, in spite of well-worn clothes and gloveless hands thrust into trousers pockets. He wore no watch-chain, and his shirt-cuffs were destitute of links. “Down upon his luck,” thought the policeman; “ill too.” The man’s face was pinched, and of the transparent white of a thin, fair man with delicately cut features. His eyes were heavy, deeply sunken, and wore an expression of weariness mingled with fear. The side muscles by his mouth were relaxed, as if a heavy drooping moustache had dragged them down; the scanty blonde hair on his upper lip, curled up at the ends, contrasted oddly with this impression. He looked careworn and ill. His clothes hung loosely upon him. The policeman surrendered his point.

“Well, you ain’t obstructing the traffic,” he replied good-humouredly; and again he left the man alone, who reseated himself on the shady steps, as if disinclined to stir from comfortable quarters. But the spell of his meditations had been broken. He leaned his head against the stone pillar of the balustrade and tried to think of occupation for the day. He longed for to-morrow, when he could resume his weary search for work, interrupted since Saturday noon. At first he had plunged into the hopeless task with feverish anxiety, humiliated by rebuffs, agonised through the frustration of idle hopes. Now it had grown mechanical, a daily routine, devoid of pain or joy, to drag himself through the busy streets from office to office and from shop to shop. He resented the Sunday cessation of work, as interfering with the tenor of his life. This Bank Holiday added another Sunday to the week.

The heat and glare and soundless solitude of the street made him drowsy. The thought of death passed through him: an euthanasia--to fade there peacefully out of existence. And then to be picked up dead on a doorstep--a fitting end. Finis coronat opus. He sniffed cynically at the idea. The minutes passed. The shade gradually encroached upon the sunlight of the pavement. A cat from one of the great deserted houses drew near with meditative step, smelt his boots, and, in the bored manner of her tribe, curled herself up to slumber. A butcher’s cart rattling past awoke the man, and he bent down and stroked the creature at his feet. Then he became aware of a figure approaching him, along the pavement--a tiny woman, neatly dressed. He watched her idly, with lack-lustre gaze. But when she came within distance of salutation, their eyes met, and each started in recognition. He rose hurriedly and made a step as if to cross the road, but the little lady stopped still.

“Stephen Chisely!”

She moved forward and laid a detaining touch upon his arm, and looked up questioningly into his face:--

“Won’t you speak to me?”

The voice was so soft and musical, the intonation so winning, that he checked his impulse of flight; but he stared at her half bewildered.

“You haven’t forgotten me--Yvonne Latour?” she continued.

“Forgotten you? No,” he replied, slowly. “But I am not accustomed to being recognised.”

“The world is very full of hateful people,” she said. “Oh! how wretchedly ill you are looking! That was why you were sitting down on the doorstep. My poor fellow!”

There was a suggestion of tears in her eyes. He turned his head away quickly.

“You mustn’t talk to me like that,” he said, huskily. “I’m not fit for you to speak to. When I went under, I went under--for good and all. Good-bye, Madame Latour--and God bless you for saying a kind word to me.”

“Why need you go away? Walk a little with me, won’t you? We can go along to the Park and sit quietly and talk.”

“Do you really mean it--that you would walk with me--in the public streets?”

“Why, of course,” she replied, with a little air of surprise. “Did we not have many walks together in the old days? Do you think I have forgotten? And you want friends so, so badly that even poor little me may be of some good. Come.”

They moved away together, and walked some steps in silence. He was too dazed with the sudden realisation of his yearning for human tenderness to find adequate speech. At last he said harshly:--

“You know what you are doing? You are in the company of a man who committed a disgraceful crime and has rotted in a gaol for two years.”

“Ah, don’t say such things,” said Madame Latour. “You hurt me. There are hundreds of people in this great London, honoured and respected, who have done far worse than you. Hundreds of thousands,” she added, with exaggerated conviction. “Besides, you are still my good, kind friend. What has passed cannot alter that.”

“I can’t understand it yet,” he said lamely. “You are the first who has said a kind word to me.”

“Poor fellow!” said Yvonne again.

They emerged into the Bayswater Road. Before he had time to remonstrate, she had hailed an omnibus going eastward. “We will get out at the corner of the Park. You mustn’t walk too much.”

The ’bus stopped. He entered with her and sat down by her side. When the conductor came for the fares, Yvonne opened her purse quickly; but a flush came over her companion’s pale face as he divined her intention. “You must let me,” he said, producing a couple of pence from his pocket.

The rattling of the vehicle prevented serious conversation. The talk drifted naturally into the desultory commonplace. Madame Latour explained that she had been giving the last singing lesson of the season at a house on the other side of Holland Park, that her pupil had neither ear nor voice, and that by the time she had learned the accompaniment to a song it had already grown out of date. “People are so stupid, you know.”

She said it with such an air of conviction, as if she had discovered a brand-new truth, that the man smiled. She noted it with her quick, feminine glance, and felt gladdened. It was so much better to laugh than to cry. She was encouraged to chatter lightly upon passing glimpses of people in the street, of amusing incidents in her profession as a concert singer. When the ’bus stopped, she jumped out, disregarding his gravely offered hand, and laughed, her face glowing with animation.

“Oh, how nice it is to be with you again!” she said, as they crossed to the entrance gate of Kensington Gardens. “Say that you are glad you met me.”