“What would Violet have thought? What would my poor Violet have thought of this?”
His splendid fortitude, his superhuman courage to recreate his existence over the ruins of it and to defy fate, were broken down. Life was bigger, more cruel, more awful than he had imagined.
XI
Prison
“Joe,” inquired Elsie, “where’s your papers?”
She had brought his clothes—dry, folded, and possibly wearable—back into her bedroom. She had found nothing in the pockets of the suit except some cigarette-card portraits of famous footballers, a charred pipe, three French sous, and a broken jackknife. These articles, the raiment, and a pair of battered shoes which she had pushed under the bed and forgotten, seemed to be all that Joe had to show for more than twenty years of strenuous and dangerous life on earth—much less even than Elsie could show. The paucity of his possessions did not trouble her, and scarcely surprised her, for she knew that very many unmarried men, with no incentive to accumulate what they could immediately squander in personal use, had no more reserves than Joe; but the absence of the sacred “papers” disturbed her. Every man in her world could, when it came to the point, produce papers of some sort from somewhere—army-discharge, pension documents, testimonials, birth-certificate, etc., etc. Even the tramps who flitted in and out of Rowton House had their papers to which they rightly attached the greatest importance. No man in Elsie’s world could get far along without papers, unless specially protected by heaven; and, sooner or later—generally sooner than later—heaven grew tired of protecting.
All day Elsie had been awaiting an opportunity to speak to Joe about his papers. The opportunity had now come. Mr. Earlforward could be left for an hour or so. Joe was apparently in less pain. The two bedrooms were tidied up. Both men had been fed. Joe had had more quinine. She could not sponge him again till the morrow. She herself had drunk two cups of tea, and eaten the last contents of the larder. She had lighted a new candle—the last candle—in the candlestick. She had brought coal and mended the fire. The next morning she would have a great deal to do and to arrange—getting money, marketing, seeing the doctor and Mrs. Belrose, discussing the funeral with Mr. Earlforward—terrible anxieties—but for the present she was free.
Joe made no answer. He seemed to be trying to frame sentences. She encouraged him with a repetition:
“Where’s your papers? I can’t find ’em nowhere. You haven’t lost them, have ye?” Her brow contracted in apprehension.
“I sold ’em,” said Joe, in his deep, vibrating and yet feeble voice. He looked away.
“Sold ’em, Joe? Ye never sold ’em!”
“Yes I have, I tell ye. I sold ’em yesterday morning.”
“But, Joey—”
“I sold ’em yesterday morning to a man as came to meet a man as came out of Pentonville same time as me.”
“Pentonville! Joe, d’ye mean ye’ve been to prison?” He nodded. “What a shame!” she exclaimed in protest, not at his having done anything wicked enough to send him to prison, but at the police having been wicked enough to send him to prison. She assumed instinctively and positively that he was an innocent victim of the ruthless blue men whom some people know only as pilots of perambulators across busy streets.
“There was no option, ye know, so I had fourteen days.”
She dropped on her knees at the bedside, and put her left arm under his neck and threw her right arm over his waist, and with it felt again the familiar shape of his waist through the bedclothes, and gazed into his homely, ugly face upon which soft, dark hair—a beard on the chin—was sprouting. This faith and tenderness made Joe cry.
“Tell me,” she murmured, scarcely hoping that he would succeed in any narrative.
“Oh, it’s nothin’,” Joe replied gloomily. “Armistice Day, ye know. I had my afternoon, and I went out.”
“Were ye in a place, Joe?”
“I had a part-time place in Oxford Street—carrying coal upstairs, and cleaning brasses and sweeping and errands. And a bed. Yes, in the basement. Sort of a watchman. Doctor he give me a testimonial. Least, he sent it me when I wrote and asked him.” (No doubt whatever that she had been unjust to that doctor!) “I went down to Piccadilly to see the sights, and when it was about dark I see our old divisional general in a damn big car with two young ladies. There was a block, ye see, in Piccadilly Circus, and he was stopped by the kerb where them flower-girls are, ye know, by the fountain, and I was standing there as close as I am to you, Elsie. We used to call him the Slaughterer. That was how we called him. We never called him nothin’ else. And there he was with his two rows o’ ribbons and his flash women, perhaps they weren’t flash, and I didn’t like the look of his face—hard, ye know. Cruel. We knowed him, we did. And then I thought of the two minutes’ silence, and hats off and stand at ’tention, and the Cenotaph, and it made me laugh. I laughed at him through the glass. And he didn’t like it, he didn’t. I was as close to him as I am to you, ye see. And he lets down the glass and says something about insultin’ behaviour to these ladies, and I put my tongue out to him. That tore it, that did. That fair put the lid on. I felt something coming over me—ye know. Then there was a crowd, and I caught a policeman one on the shoulder. Oh, they marched me off, three of ’em! The doctor at the station said I was drunk, me as hadn’t had a drop for three days! Next morning the beak he said he’d treat me lenient because it was Armistice Day, and I’d had some and I’d fought for the old country, but assaulting an officer of the law,
