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The Nether World

by George Gissing · English · Gutenberg #4301 · 913,262 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Nether World

Author: George Gissing


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4301]
                Most recently updated: October 6, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4301


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NETHER WORLD ***




The Nether World


by George Gissing




CONTENTS


CHAPTER
I A THRALL OF THRALLS
II A FRIEND IN REQUEST
III A SUPERFLUOUS FAMILY
IV CLARA AND JANE
V JANE IS VISITED
VI GLIMPSES OF THE PAST
VII MRS. BYASS’S LODGINGS
VIII PENNYLOAF CANDY
IX PATHOLOGICAL
X THE LAST COMBAT
XI A DISAPPOINTMENT
XII ‘IO SATURNALIA!’
XIII THE BRINGER OF ILL NEWS
XIV A WELCOME GUEST
XV SUNLIGHT IN DREARY PLACES
XVI DIALOGUE AND COMMENT
XVII CLEM MAKES A DISCLOSURE
XVIII THE JOKE IS COMPLETED
XIX A RETREAT
XX A VISION OF NOBLE THINGS
XXI DEATH THE RECONCILER
XXII WATCHING FROM AMBUSH
XXIII ON THE EVE OF TRIUMPH
XXIV THE FAMILY
HISTORY PROGRESSES
XXV A DOUBLE CONSECRATION
XXVI SIDNEY’S STRUGGLE
XXVII CLARA’S RETURN
XXVIII THE SOUP-KITCHEN
XXIX PHANTOMS XXX ON A BARREN SHORE
XXXI WOMAN AND ACTRESS
XXXII A HAVEN
XXXIII A FALL FROM THE IDEAL
XXXIV THE DEBT REPAID
XXXV THE TREASURY UNLOCKED
XXXVI THE HEIR
XXXVII MAD JACK’S DREAM
XXXVIII JOSEPH TRANSACTS MUCH BUSINESS
XXXIX SIDNEY
XL JANE




CHAPTER I

A THRALL OF THRALLS


In the troubled twilight of a March evening ten years ago, an old man,
whose equipment and bearing suggested that he was fresh from travel,
walked slowly across Clerkenwell Green, and by the graveyard of St.
James’s Church stood for a moment looking about him. His age could not
be far from seventy, but, despite the stoop of his shoulders, he gave
little sign of failing under the burden of years; his sober step
indicated gravity of character rather than bodily feebleness, and his
grasp of a stout stick was not such as bespeaks need of support. His
attire was neither that of a man of leisure, nor of the kind usually
worn by English mechanics. Instead of coat and waistcoat, he wore a
garment something like a fisherman’s guernsey, and over this a coarse
short cloak, picturesque in appearance as it was buffeted by the wind.
His trousers were of moleskin; his boots reached almost to his knees;
for head-covering he had the cheapest kind of undyed felt, its form
exactly that of the old petasus. To say that his aspect was Venerable
would serve to present him in a measure, yet would not be wholly
accurate, for there was too much of past struggle and present anxiety
in his countenance to permit full expression of the natural dignity of
the features. It was a fine face and might have been distinctly noble,
but circumstances had marred the purpose of Nature; you perceived that
his cares had too often been of the kind which are created by ignoble
necessities, such as leave to most men of his standing a bare humanity
of visage. He had long thin white hair; his beard was short and merely
grizzled. In his left hand he carried a bundle, which probably
contained clothing.

The burial-ground by which he had paused was as little restful to the
eye as are most of those discoverable in the byways of London. The
small trees that grew about it shivered in their leaflessness; the rank
grass was wan under the failing day; most of the stones leaned this way
or that, emblems of neglect (they were very white at the top, and
darkened downwards till the damp soil made them black), and certain
cats and dogs were prowling or sporting among the graves. At this
corner the east wind blew with malice such as it never puts forth save
where there are poorly clad people to be pierced; it swept before it
thin clouds of unsavoury dust, mingled with the light refuse of the
streets. Above the shapeless houses night was signalling a murky
approach; the sky—if sky it could be called—gave threatening of sleet,
perchance of snow. And on every side was the rumble of traffic, the
voiceful evidence of toil and of poverty; hawkers were crying their
goods; the inevitable organ was clanging before a public-house hard by;
the crumpet-man was hastening along, with monotonous ringing of his
bell and hoarse rhythmic wail.

The old man had fixed his eyes half absently on the inscription of a
gravestone near him; a lean cat springing out between the iron railings
seemed to recall his attention, and with a slight sigh he went forward
along the narrow street which is called St. James’s Walk. In a few
minutes he had reached the end of it, and found himself facing a high
grey-brick wall, wherein, at this point, was an arched gateway closed
with black doors. He looked at the gateway, then fixed his gaze on
something that stood just above—something which the dusk half
concealed, and by so doing made more impressive. It was the sculptured
counterfeit of a human face, that of a man distraught with agony. The
eyes stared wildly from their sockets, the hair struggled in maniac
disorder, the forehead was wrung with torture, the cheeks sunken, the
throat fearsomely wasted, and from the wide lips there seemed to be
issuing a horrible cry. Above this hideous effigy was carved the
legend: ‘MIDDLESEX HOUSE OF DETENTION.’

Something more than pain came to the old man’s face as he looked and
pondered; his lips trembled like those of one in anger, and his eyes
had a stern resentful gleaming. He walked on a few paces, then suddenly
stopped where a woman was standing at an open door.

‘I ask your pardon,’ he said, addressing her with the courtesy which
owes nothing to refined intercourse, ‘but do you by chance know anyone
of the name of Snowdon hereabouts?’

The woman replied with a brief negative; she smiled at the appearance
of the questioner, and, with the vulgar instinct, looked about for
someone to share her amusement.

‘Better inquire at the ’ouse at the corner,’ she added, as the man was
moving away. ‘They’ve been here a long time, I b’lieve.’

He accepted her advice. But the people at the public-house could not
aid his search. He thanked them, paused for a moment with his eyes
down, then again sighed slightly and went forth into the gathering
gloom.

Less than five minutes later there ran into the same house of
refreshment a little slight girl, perhaps thirteen years old; she
carried a jug, and at the bar asked for ‘a pint of old six.’ The
barman, whilst drawing the ale, called out to a man who had entered
immediately after the child:

‘Don’t know nobody called Snowdon about ’ere, do you, Mr. Squibbs?’

The individual addressed was very dirty, very sleepy, and seemingly at
odds with mankind. He replied contemptuously with a word which, in
phonetic rendering may perhaps be spelt ‘Nay-oo.’

But the little girl was looking eagerly from one man to the other; what
had been said appeared to excite keen interest in her. She forgot all
about the beer-jug that was waiting, and, after a brief but obvious
struggle with timidity, said in an uncertain voice:

‘Has somebody been asking for that name, sir?’

‘Yes, they have,’ the barman answered, in surprise. ‘Why?’

My name’s Snowdon, sir—Jane Snowdon.’

She reddened over all her face as soon as she had given utterance to
the impulsive words. The barman was regarding her with a sort of
semi-interest, and Mr. Squibbs also had fixed his bleary (or beery)
eyes upon her. Neither would have admitted an active interest in so
pale and thin and wretchedly-clad a little mortal. Her hair hung loose,
and had no covering; it was hair of no particular colour, and seemed to
have been for a long time utterly untended; the wind, on her run
hither, had tossed it into much disorder. Signs there were of some kind
of clothing beneath the short, dirty, worn dress, but it was evidently
of the scantiest description. The freely exposed neck was very thin,
but, like the outline of her face, spoke less of a feeble habit of body
than of the present pinch of sheer hunger. She did not, indeed, look
like one of those children who are born in disease and starvation, and
put to nurse upon the pavement; her limbs were shapely enough, her back
was straight, she had features that were not merely human, but
girl-like, and her look had in it the light of an intelligence
generally sought for in vain among the children of the street. The
blush and the way in which she hung her head were likewise tokens of a
nature endowed with ample sensitiveness.

‘Oh, your name’s Jane Snowdon, is it?’ said the barman. ‘Well, you’re
just three minutes an’ three-quarters too late. P’r’aps it’s a fortune
a-runnin’ after you. He was a rum old party as inquired. Never mind;
it’s all in a life. There’s fortunes lost every week by a good deal
less than three minutes when it’s ’orses—eh, Mr. Squibbs?’

Mr. Squibbs swore with emphasis.

The little girl took her jug of beer and was turning away.

‘Hollo!’ cried the barman. ‘Where’s the money, Jane?—if _you_ don’t
mind.’

She turned again in increased confusion, and laid coppers on the
counter. Thereupon the man asked her where she lived; she named a house
in Clerkenwell Close, near at hand.

‘Father live there?’

She shook her head.

‘Mother?’

‘I haven’t got one, sir.’

‘Who is it as you live with, then?’

‘Mrs. Peckover, sir.’

‘Well, as I was sayin’, he was a queer old joker as arsted for the name
of Snowdon. Shouldn’t wonder if you see him goin’ round.’

And he added a pretty full description of this old man, to which the
girl listened closely. Then she went thoughtfully—a little sadly—on her
way.

In the street, all but dark by this time, she cast anxious glances
onwards and behind, but no old man in an odd hat and cloak and with
white hair was discoverable. Linger she might not. She reached a house
of which the front door stood open; it looked black and cavernous
within; but she advanced with the step of familiarity, and went
downstairs to a front-kitchen. Through the half-open door came a strong
odour and a hissing sound, plainly due to the frying of sausages.
Before Jane could enter she was greeted sharply in a voice which was
young and that of a female, but had no other quality of graciousness.

‘You’ve taken your time, my lady! All right! just wait till I’ve ‘ad my
tea, that’s all! Me an’ you’ll settle accounts to-night, see if we
don’t. Mother told me as she owed you a lickin’, and I’ll pay it off,
with a little on my own account too. Only wait till I’ve ‘ad my tea,
that’s all. What are you standin’ there for, like a fool? Bring that
beer ’ere, an’ let’s see ‘ow much you’ve drank.’

‘I haven’t put my lips near it, miss; indeed I haven’t,’ pleaded the
child, whose face of dread proved both natural timidity and the
constant apprehension of ill-usage.

‘Little liar! that’s what you always was, an’ always will be.— Take
that!’

The speaker was a girl of sixteen, tall, rather bony, rudely handsome;
the hand with which she struck was large and coarse-fibred, the muscles
that impelled it vigorous. Her dress was that of a work-girl,
unsubstantial, ill-fitting, but of ambitious cut; her hair was very
abundant, and rose upon the back of her head in thick coils, an elegant
fringe depending in front. The fire had made her face scarlet, and in
the lamplight her large eyes glistened with many joys.

First and foremost, Miss Clementina Peckover rejoiced because she had
left work much earlier than usual, and was about to enjoy what she
would have described as a ‘blow out.’ Secondly, she rejoiced because
her mother, the landlady of the house, was absent for the night, and
consequently she would exercise sole authority over the domestic slave,
Jane Snowdon—that is to say, would indulge to the uttermost her
instincts of cruelty in tormenting a defenceless creature. Finally—a
cause of happiness antecedent to the others, but less vivid in her mind
at this moment—in the next room lay awaiting burial the corpse of Mrs.
Peckover’s mother-in-law, whose death six days ago had plunged mother
and daughter into profound delight, partly because they were relieved
at length from making a pretence of humanity to a bed-ridden old woman,
partly owing to the fact that the deceased had left behind her a sum of
seventy-five pounds, exclusive of moneys due from a burial club.

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Miss Peckover (who was affectionately known to her
intimates as ‘Clem’), as she watched Jane stagger back from the blow,
and hide her face in silent endurance of pain. ‘That’s just a morsel to
stay your appetite, my lady! You didn’t expect me back ’ome at this
time, did you? You thought as you was goin’ to have the kitchen to
yourself when mother went. Ha ha! ho ho!—These sausages is done; now
you clean that fryin’-pan; and if I can find a speck of dirt in it as
big as ‘arlf a farden, I’ll take you by the ‘air of the ’ed an’ clean
it with your face, _that’s_ what I’ll do! Understand? Oh, I mean what I
say, my lady! Me an’ you’s a-goin’ to spend a evenin’ together, there’s
no two ways about that. He ho! he he!’

The frankness of Clem’s brutality went far towards redeeming her
character. The exquisite satisfaction with which she viewed Jane’s
present misery, the broad joviality with which she gloated over the
prospect of cruelties shortly to be inflicted, put her at once on a par
with the noble savage running wild in woods. Civilisation could bring
no charge against this young woman; it and she had no common criterion.
Who knows but this lust of hers for sanguinary domination was the
natural enough issue of the brutalising serfdom of her predecessors in
the family line of the Peckovers? A thrall suddenly endowed with
authority will assuredly make bitter work for the luckless creature in
the next degree of thraldom.

A cloth was already spread across one end of the deal table, with such
other preparations for a meal as Clem deemed adequate. The
sausages—five in number—she had emptied from the frying-pan directly on
to her plate, and with them all the black rich juice that had exuded in
the process of cooking—particularly rich, owing to its having several
times caught fire and blazed triumphantly. On sitting down and squaring
her comely frame to work, the first thing Clem did was to take a long
draught out of the beer-jug; refreshed thus, she poured the remaining
liquor into a glass. Ready at hand was mustard, made in a tea-cup;
having taken a certain quantity of this condiment on to her knife, she
proceeded to spread each sausage with it from end to end, patting them
in a friendly way as she finished the operation. Next she sprinkled
them with pepper, and after that she constructed a little pile of salt
on the side of the plate, using her fingers to convey it from the
salt-cellar. It remained to cut a thick slice of bread—she held the
loaf pressed to her bosom whilst doing this—and to crush it down well
into the black grease beside the sausages; then Clem was ready to
begin.

For five minutes she fed heartily, showing really remarkable skill in
conveying pieces of sausage to her mouth by means of the knife alone.
Finding it necessary to breathe at last, she looked round at Jane. The
hand-maiden was on her knees near the fire, scrubbing very hard at the
pan with successive pieces of newspaper. It was a sight to increase the
gusto of Clem’s meal, but of a sudden there came into the girl’s mind a
yet more delightful thought. I have mentioned that in the back-kitchen
lay the body of a dead woman; it was already encoffined, and waited for
interment on the morrow, when Mrs. Peckover would arrive with a certain
female relative from St. Albans. Now the proximity of this corpse was a
ceaseless occasion of dread and misery to Jane Snowdon; the poor child
had each night to make up a bed for herself in this front-room,
dragging together a little heap of rags when mother and daughter were
gone up to their chamber, and since the old woman’s death it was much
if Jane had enjoyed one hour of unbroken sleep. She endeavoured to hide
these feelings, but Clem, with her Red Indian scent, divined them
accurately enough. She hit upon a good idea.

‘Go into the next room,’ she commanded suddenly, ‘and fetch the matches
off of the mantel-piece. I shall want to go upstairs presently, to see
if you’ve scrubbed the bedroom well.’

Jane was blanched; but she rose from her knees at once, and reached a
candlestick from above the fireplace.

‘What’s that for?’ shouted Clem, with her mouth full. ‘You’ve no need
of a light to find the mantel-piece. If you’re not off—’

Jane hastened from the kitchen. Clem yelled to her to close the door,
and she had no choice but to obey. In the dark passage outside there
was darkness that might be felt. The child all but fainted with the
sickness of horror as she turned the handle of the other door and began
to grope her way. She knew exactly where the coffin was; she knew that
to avoid touching it in the diminutive room was all but impossible. And
touch it she did. Her anguish uttered itself, not in a mere sound of
terror, but in a broken word or two of a prayer she knew by heart,
including a name which sounded like a charm against evil. She had
reached the mantel-piece; oh, she could not, could not find the
matches! Yes, at last her hand closed on them. A blind rush, and she
was out again in the passage. She re-entered the front-kitchen with
limbs that quivered, with the sound of dreadful voices ringing about
her, and blankness before her eyes.

Clem laughed heartily, then finished her beer in a long, enjoyable
pull. Her appetite was satisfied; the last trace of oleaginous matter
had disappeared from her plate, and now she toyed with little pieces of
bread lightly dipped into the mustard-pot. These _bonnes bouches_ put
her into excellent humour; presently she crossed her arms and leaned
back. There was no denying that Clem was handsome; at sixteen she had
all her charms in apparent maturity, and they were of the coarsely
magnificent order. Her forehead was low and of great width; her nose
was well shapen, and had large sensual apertures; her cruel lips may be
seen on certain fine antique busts; the neck that supported her heavy
head was splendidly rounded. In laughing, she became a model for an
artist, an embodiment of fierce life independent of morality. Her
health was probably less sound than it seemed to be; one would have
compared her, not to some piece of exuberant normal vegetation, but
rather to a rank, evilly-fostered growth. The putrid soil of that
nether world yields other forms besides the obviously blighted and
sapless.

‘Have you done any work for Mrs. Hewett to-day?’ she asked of her
victim, after sufficiently savouring the spectacle of terror.

‘Yes, miss; I did the front-room fireplace, an’ fetched fourteen of
coals, an’ washed out a few things.’

‘What did she give you?’

‘A penny, miss. I gave it to Mrs. Peckover before she went.’

‘Oh, you did? Well, look ’ere; you’ll just remember in future that all
you get from the lodgers belongs to me, an’ not to mother. It’s a new
arrangement, understand. An’ if you dare to give up a ‘apenny to
mother, I’ll lick you till you’re nothin’ but a bag o’ bones.
Understand?’

Having on the spur of the moment devised this ingenious difficulty for
the child, who was sure to suffer in many ways from such a conflict of
authorities, Clem began to consider how she should spend her evening.
After all, Jane was too poor-spirited a victim to afford long
entertainment. Clem would have liked dealing with some one who showed
fight—some one with whom she could try savage issue in real
tooth-and-claw conflict. She had in mind a really exquisite piece of
cruelty, but it was a joy necessarily postponed to a late hour of the
night. In the meantime, it would perhaps be as well to take a stroll,
with a view of meeting a few friends as they came away from the
workrooms. She was pondering the invention of some long and hard task
to be executed by Jane in her absence, when a knocking at the
house-door made itself heard. Clem at once went up to see who the
visitor was.

A woman in a long cloak and a showy bonnet stood on the step,
protecting herself with an umbrella from the bitter sleet which the
wind was now driving through the darkness. She said that she wished to
see Mrs. Hewett.

‘Second-floor front,’ replied Clem in the offhand, impertinent tone
wherewith she always signified to strangers her position in the house.

The visitor regarded her with a look of lofty contempt, and, having
deliberately closed her umbrella, advanced towards the stairs. Clem
drew into the back regions for a few moments, but as soon as she heard
the closing of a door in the upper part of the house, she too ascended,
going on tip-toe, with a noiselessness which indicated another side of
her character. Having reached the room which the visitor had entered,
she brought her ear close to the keyhole, and remained in that attitude
for a long time—nearly twenty minutes, in fact. Her sudden and swift
return to the foot of the stairs was followed by the descent of the
woman in the showy bonnet.

‘Miss Peckover!’ cried the latter when she had reached the foot of the
stairs.

‘Well, what is it?’ asked Clem, seeming to come up from the kitchen.

‘Will you ’ave the goodness to go an’ speak to Mrs. Hewett for a
hinstant?’ said the woman, with much affectation of refined speech.

‘All right! I will just now, if I’ve time.’

The visitor tossed her head and departed, whereupon Clem at once ran
upstairs. In five minutes she was back in the kitchen.

‘See ’ere,’ she addressed Jane. ‘You know where Mr. Kirkwood works in
St. John’s Square? You’ve been before now. Well, you’re to go an’ wait
at the door till he comes out, and then you’re to tell him to come to
Mrs. Hewett at wunst. Understand?—Why ain’t these tea-things all
cleared away? All right! Wait till you come back, that’s all. Now be
off, before I skin you alive!’

On the floor in a corner of the kitchen lay something that had once
been a girl’s hat. This Jane at once snatched up and put on her head.
Without other covering, She ran forth upon her errand.




CHAPTER II

A FRIEND IN REQUEST


It was the hour of the unyoking of men. In the highways and byways of
Clerkenwell there was a thronging of released toilers, of young and
old, of male and female. Forth they streamed from factories and
workrooms, anxious to make the most of the few hours during which they
might live for themselves. Great numbers were still bent over their
labour, and would be for hours to come, but the majority had leave to
wend stable-wards. Along the main thoroughfares the wheel-track was
clangorous; every omnibus that clattered by was heavily laden with
passengers; tarpaulins gleamed over the knees of those who sat outside.
This way and that the lights were blurred into a misty radiance;
overhead was mere blackness, whence descended the lashing rain. There
was a ceaseless scattering of mud; there were blocks in the traffic,
attended with rough jest or angry curse; there was jostling on the
crowded pavement. Public-houses began to brighten up, to bestir
themselves for the evening’s business. Streets that had been hives of
activity since early morning were being abandoned to silence and
darkness and the sweeping wind.

At noon to-day there was sunlight on the Surrey hills; the fields and
lanes were fragrant with the first breath of spring, and from the
shelter of budding copses many a primrose looked tremblingly up to the
vision of blue sky. But of these things Clerkenwell takes no count;
here it had been a day like any other, consisting of so many hours,
each representing a fraction of the weekly wage. Go where you may in
Clerkenwell, on every hand are multiform evidences of toil, intolerable
as a nightmare. It is not as in those parts of London where the main
thoroughfares consist of shops and warehouses and workrooms, whilst the
streets that are hidden away on either hand are devoted in the main to
dwellings Here every alley is thronged with small industries; all but
every door and window exhibits the advertisement of a craft that is
carried on within. Here you may see how men have multiplied toil for
toil’s sake, have wrought to devise work superfluous, have worn their
lives away in imagining new forms of weariness. The energy, the
ingenuity daily put forth in these grimy burrows task the brain’s power
of wondering. But that those who sit here through the livelong day,
through every season, through all the years of the life that is granted
them, who strain their eyesight, who overtax their muscles, who nurse
disease in their frames, who put resolutely from them the thought of
what existence _might_ be—that these do it all without prospect or hope
of reward save the permission to eat and sleep and bring into the world
other creatures to strive with them for bread, surely that thought is
yet more marvellous.

Workers in metal, workers in glass and in enamel, workers in weed,
workers in every substance on earth, or from the waters under the
earth, that can be made commercially valuable. In Clerkenwell the
demand is not so much for rude strength as for the cunning fingers and
the contriving brain. The inscriptions on the house-fronts would make
you believe that you were in a region of gold and silver and precious
stones. In the recesses of dim byways, where sunshine and free air are
forgotten things, where families herd together in dear-rented garrets
and cellars, craftsmen are for ever handling jewellery, shaping bright
ornaments for the necks and arms of such as are born to the joy of
life. Wealth inestimable is ever flowing through these workshops, and
the hands that have been stained with gold-dust may, as likely as not,
some day extend themselves in petition for a crust. In this house, as
the announcement tells you, business is carried on by a trader in
diamonds, and next door is a den full of children who wait for their
day’s one meal until their mother has come home with her chance
earnings. A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse.
Inextinguishable laughter were perchance the fittest result of such
musing; yet somehow the heart grows heavy, somehow the blood is
troubled in its course, and the pulses begin to throb hotly.

Amid the crowds of workpeople, Jane Snowdon made what speed she might.
It was her custom, whenever dispatched on an errand, to run till she
could run no longer, then to hasten along panting until breath and
strength were recovered. When it was either of the Peckovers who sent
her, she knew that reprimand was inevitable on her return, be she ever
so speedy; but her nature was incapable alike of rebellion and of that
sullen callousness which would have come to the aid of most girls in
her position. She did not serve her tyrants with willingness, for their
brutality filled her with a sense of injustice; yet the fact that she
was utterly dependent upon them for her livelihood, that but for their
grace—as they were perpetually reminding her—she would have been a
workhouse child, had a mitigating effect upon the bitterness she could
not wholly subdue.

There was, however, another reason why she sped eagerly on her present
mission. The man to whom she was conveying Mrs. Hewett’s message was
one of the very few persons who had ever treated her with human
kindness. She had known him by name and by sight for some years, and
since her mother’s death (she was eleven when that happened) he had by
degrees grown to represent all that she understood by the word
‘friend.’ It was seldom that words were exchanged between them; the
opportunity came scarcely oftener than once a month; but whenever it
did come, it made a bright moment in her existence. Once before she had
fetched him of an evening to see Mrs. Hewett, and as they walked
together he had spoken with what seemed to her wonderful gentleness,
with consideration inconceivable from a tall, bearded man,
well-dressed, and well to do in the world. Perhaps he would speak in
the same way to-night; the thought of it made her regardless of the
cold rain that was drenching her miserable garment, of the wind that
now and then, as she turned a corner, took away her breath, and made
her cease from running.

She reached St. John’s Square, and paused at length by a door on which
was the inscription: ‘H. Lewis, Working Jeweller.’ It was just possible
that the men had already left; she waited for several minutes with
anxious mind. No; the door opened, and two workmen came forth. Jane’s
eagerness impelled her to address one of them.

‘Please, sir, Mr. Kirkwood hasn’t gone yet, has he?’

‘No, he ain’t,’ the man answered pleasantly; and turning back, he
called to some one within the doorway; ‘Hello, Sidney! here’s your
sweetheart waiting for you.’

Jane shrank aside; but in a moment she saw a familiar figure; she
advanced again, and eagerly delivered her message.

‘All right, Jane! I’ll walk on with you,’ was the reply. And whilst the
other two men were laughing good-naturedly, Kirkwood strode away by the
girl’s side. He seemed to be absent-minded, and for some hundred yards’
distance was silent; then he stopped of a sudden and looked down at his
companion.

‘Why, Jane,’ he said, ‘you’ll get your death, running about in weather
like this.’ He touched her dress. ‘I thought so; you’re wet through.’

There followed an inarticulate growl, and immediately he stripped off
his short overcoat.

‘Here, put this on, right over your head. Do as I tell you, child!’

He seemed impatient to-night. Wasn’t he going to talk with her as
before? Jane felt her heart sinking. With her hunger for kind and
gentle words, she thought nothing of the character of the night, and
that Sidney Kirkwood might reasonably be anxious to get over the ground
as quickly as possible.

‘How is Mrs. Hewett?’ Sidney asked, when they were walking on again.
‘Still poorly, eh? And the baby?’

Then he was again mute. Jane had something she wished to say to
him—wished very much indeed, yet she felt it would have been difficult
even if he had encouraged her. As he kept silence and walked so
quickly, speech on her part was utterly forbidden. Kirkwood, however,
suddenly remembered that his strides were disproportionate to the
child’s steps. She was an odd figure thus disguised in his over-jacket;
he caught a glimpse of her face by a street lamp, and smiled, but with
a mixture of pain.

‘Feel a bit warmer so?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Haven’t you got a jacket, Jane?’

‘It’s all to pieces, sir. They’re goin’ to have it mended, I think.’

‘They’ was the word by which alone Jane ventured to indicate her aunt.

‘Going to, eh? I think they’d better be quick about it.’

Ha! that was the old tone of kindness! How it entered into her blood
and warmed it! She allowed herself one quick glance at him.

‘Do I walk too quick for you?’

‘Oh no, sir. Mr. Kirkwood, please, there’s something I—’

The sentence had, as it were, begun itself, but timidity cut it short.
Sidney stopped and looked at her.

‘What? Something you wanted to tell me, Jane?’

He encouraged her, and at length she made her disclosure. It was of
what had happened in the public-house. The young man listened with much
attention, walking very slowly. He got her to repeat her second-hand
description of the old man who had been inquiring for people named
Snowdon.

‘To think that you should have been just too late!’ he exclaimed with
annoyance. ‘Have you any idea who he was?’

‘I can’t think, sir,’ Jane replied sadly.

Sidney took a hopeful tone—thought it very likely that the inquirer
would pursue his search with success, being so near the house where
Jane’s parents had lived.

‘I’ll keep my eyes open,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I might see him. He’d be
easy to recognise, I should think.’

‘And would you tell him, sir,’ Jane asked eagerly.

‘Why, of course I would. You’d like me to, wouldn’t you?’

Jane’s reply left small doubt on that score. Her companion looked down
at her again, and said with compassionate gentleness:

‘Keep a good heart, Jane. Things’ll be better some day, no doubt.’

‘Do you think so, sir?’

The significance of the simple words was beyond all that eloquence
could have conveyed. Sidney muttered to himself, as he had done before,
like one who is angry. He laid his hand on the child’s shoulder for a
moment.

A few minutes more, and they were passing along by the prison wall,
under the ghastly head, now happily concealed by darkness. Jane stopped
a little short of the house and removed the coat that had so
effectually sheltered her.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, returning it to Sidney.

He took it without speaking, and threw it over his arm. At the door,
now closed, Jane gave a single knock; they were admitted by Clem, who,
in regarding Kirkwood, wore her haughtiest demeanour. This young man
had never paid homage of any kind to Miss Peckover, and such neglect
was by no means what she was used to. Other men who came to the house
took every opportunity of paying her broad compliments, and some went
so far as to offer practical testimony of their admiration. Sidney
merely had a ‘How do you do, miss?’ at her service. Coquetry had failed
to soften him; Clem accordingly behaved as if he had given her mortal
offence on some recent occasion. She took care, moreover, to fling a
few fierce words at Jane before the latter disappeared into the house.
Thereupon Sidney looked at her sternly; he said nothing, knowing that
interference would only result in harsher treatment for the poor little
slave.

‘You know your way upstairs, I b’lieve,’ said Clem, as if he were all
but a stranger.

‘Thank you, I do,’ was Sidney’s reply.

Indeed he had climbed these stairs innumerable times during the last
three years; the musty smells were associated with ever so many bygone
thoughts and states of feeling; the stains on the wall (had it been
daylight), the irregularities of the bare wooden steps, were
remembrancers of projects and hopes and disappointments. For many
months now every visit had been with heavier heart; his tap at the
Hewetts’ door had a melancholy sound to him.

A woman’s voice bade him enter. He stepped into a room which was not
disorderly or unclean, but presented the chill discomfort of poverty.
The principal, almost the only, articles of furniture were a large bed,
a wash-hand stand; a kitchen table, and two or three chairs, of which
the cane seats were bulged and torn. A few meaningless pictures hung
here and there, and on the mantel-piece, which sloped forward somewhat,
stood some paltry ornaments, secured in their places by a piece of
string stretched in front of them. The living occupants were four
children and their mother. Two little girls, six and seven years old
respectively, were on the floor near the fire; a boy of four was
playing with pieces of firewood at the table. The remaining child was
an infant, born but a fortnight ago, lying at its mother’s breast. Mrs.
Hewett sat on the bed, and bent forward in an attitude of physical
weakness. Her age was twenty-seven, but she looked several years older.
At nineteen she had married; her husband, John Hewett, having two
children by a previous union. Her face could never have been very
attractive, but it was good-natured, and wore its pleasantest aspect as
she smiled on Sidney’s entrance. You would have classed her at once
with those feeble-willed, weak-minded, yet kindly-disposed women, who
are only too ready to meet affliction half-way, and who, if
circumstances be calamitous, are more harmful than an enemy to those
they hold dear. She was rather wrapped up than dressed, and her hair,
thin and pale-coloured, was tied in a ragged knot. She wore slippers,
the upper parts of which still adhered to the soles only by miracle. It
looked very much as if the same relation subsisted between her frame
and the life that informed it, for there was no blood in her cheeks, no
lustre in her eye. The baby at her bosom moaned in the act of sucking;
one knew not how the poor woman could supply sustenance to another
being.

The children were not dirty nor uncared for, but their clothing hung
very loosely upon them; their flesh was unhealthy, their voices had an
unnatural sound.

Sidney stepped up to the bed and gave his hand.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come before Clara,’ said Mrs. Hewett. ‘I hoped you
would. But she can’t be long, an’ I want to speak to you first. It’s a
bad night, isn’t it? Yes, I feel it in my throat, and it goes right
through my chest—just ’ere, look! And I haven’t slep’ not a hour a
night this last week; it makes me feel that low. I want to get to the
Orspital, if I can, in a day or two.’

‘But doesn’t the doctor come still?’ asked Sidney, drawing a chair near
to her.

‘Well, I didn’t think it was right to go on payin’ him, an’ that’s the
truth. I’ll go to the Orspital, an’ they’ll give me somethin’. I look
bad, don’t I, Sidney?’

‘You look as if you’d no business to be out of bed,’ returned the young
man in a grumbling voice.

‘Oh, I _can’t_ lie still, so it’s no use talkin’! But see, I want to
speak about Clara. That woman Mrs. Tubbs has been here to see me,
talkin’ an’ talkin’. She says she’ll give Clara five shillin’ a week,
as well as board an’ lodge her. I don’t know what to do about it, that
I don’t. Clara, she’s that set on goin’, an’ her father’s that set
against it. It seems as if it ‘ud be a good thing, don’t it, Sidney? I
know _you_ don’t want her to go, but what’s to be done? What _is_ to be
done?’

Her wailing voice caused the baby to wail likewise. Kirkwood looked
about the room with face set in anxious discontent.

‘Is it no use, Mrs. Hewett?’ he exclaimed suddenly, turning to her.
‘Does she mean it? Won’t she ever listen to me?’

The woman shook her head miserably; her eyes filled with tears.

‘I’ve done all I could,’ she replied, half sobbing. ‘I have; you know I
have, Sidney! She’s that ’eadstrong, it seems as if she wouldn’t listen
to nobody—at least nobody as we knows anything about.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ he inquired abruptly. ‘Do you think there’s
any one else?’

‘How can I tell? I’ve got no reason for thinkin’ it, but how can I
tell? No, I believe it’s nothin’ but her self-will an’ the fancies
she’s got into her ‘ead. Both her an’ Bob, there’s no doin’ nothin’
with them. Bob, he’s that wasteful with his money; an’ now he talks
about goin’ an’ gettin’ a room in another ’ouse, when he might just as
well make all the savin’ he can. But no, that ain’t his idea, nor yet
his sister’s. I suppose it’s their mother as they take after, though
their father he won’t own to it, an’ I don’t blame him for not speakin’
ill of her as is gone. I should be that wretched if I thought my own
was goin’ to turn out the same. But there’s John, he ain’t a wasteful
man; no one can’t say it of him. He’s got his fancies, but they’ve
never made him selfish to others, as well you know, Sidney. He’s been
the best ’usband to me as ever a poor woman had, an’ I’ll say it with
my last breath.’

She cried pitifully for a few moments. Sidney, mastering his own
wretchedness, which he could not altogether conceal, made attempts to
strengthen her.

‘When things are at the worst they begin to mend,’ he said. ‘It can’t
be much longer before he gets work. And look here, Mrs. Hewett, I won’t
hear a word against it; you must and shall let me lend you something to
go on with!’

‘I dursn’t, I dursn’t, Sidney! John won’t have it. He’s always
a-saying: “Once begin that, an’ it’s all up; you never earn no more of
your own.” It’s one of his fancies, an’ you know it is. You’ll only
make trouble, Sidney.’

‘Well, all I can say is, he’s an unreasonable and selfish man!’

‘No, no; John ain’t selfish! Never say that! It’s only his fancies,
Sidney.’

‘Well, there’s one trouble you’d better get rid of, at all events. Let
Clara go to Mrs. Tubbs. You’ll never have any peace till she does, I
can see that. Why shouldn’t she go, after all? She’s seventeen; if she
can’t respect herself now, she never will, and there’s no help for it.
Tell John to let her go.’

There was bitterness in the tone with which he gave this advice; he
threw out his hands impatiently, and then flung himself back, so that
the cranky chair creaked and tottered.

‘An’ if ‘arm comes to her, what then?’ returned Mrs. Hewett
plaintively. ‘We know well enough why Mrs. Tubbs wants her; it’s only
because she’s good-lookin’, an’ she’ll bring more people to the bar.
John knows that, an’ it makes him wild. Mind what I’m tellin’ you,
Sidney; if any ‘arm comes to that girl, her father’ll go out of his
‘ead. I know he will! I know he will! He worships the ground as she
walks on, an’ if it hadn’t been for that, she’d never have given him
the trouble as she is doin’. It ‘ud a been better for her if she’d had
a father like mine, as was a hard, careless man. I don’t wish to say no
‘arm of him as is dead an’ buried, an’ my own father too, but he was a
hard father to us, an’ as long as he lived we dursn’t say not a word as
he didn’t like. He’d a killed me if I’d gone on like Clara. It was a
good thing as he was gone, before—’

‘Don’t, don’t speak of that,’ interposed Kirkwood, with kindly
firmness. ‘That’s long since over and done with and forgotten.’

‘No, no; not forgotten. Clara knows, an’ that’s partly why she makes so
little of me; I know it is.’

‘I don’t believe it! She’s a good-hearted girl—’

A heavy footstep on the stairs checked him. The door was thrown open,
and there entered a youth of nineteen, clad as an artisan. He was a
shapely fellow, though not quite so stout as perfect health would have
made him, and had a face of singular attractiveness,
clear-complexioned, delicate featured, a gleam with intelligence. The
intelligence was perhaps even too pronounced; seen in profile, the
countenance had an excessive eagerness; there was selfish force about
the lips, moreover, which would have been better away. His noisy
entrance indicated an impulsive character, and the nod with which he
greeted Kirkwood was self-sufficient.

‘Where’s that medal I cast last night, mother?’ he asked, searching in
various corners of the room and throwing things about.

‘Now, do mind what you’re up to, Bob!’ remonstrated Mrs. Hewett.
‘You’ll find it on the mantel in the other room. Don’t make such a
noise.’

The young man rushed forth, and in a moment returned. In his hand,
which was very black, and shone as if from the manipulation of metals,
he held a small bright medal. He showed it to Sidney, saying, ‘What
d’you think o’ that?’

The work was delicate and of clever design; it represented a racehorse
at full speed, a jockey rising in the stirrups and beating it with
orthodox brutality.

‘That’s “Tally-ho” at the Epsom Spring Meetin’,’ he said. ‘I’ve got
money on him!’

And, with another indifferent nod, he flung out of the room.

Before Mrs. Hewett and Kirkwood could renew their conversation, there
was another step at the door, and the father of the family presented
himself.




CHAPTER III

A SUPERFLUOUS FAMILY


Kirkwood’s face, as he turned to greet the new-comer, changed suddenly
to an expression of surprise.

‘Why, what have you been doing to your hair?’ he asked abruptly.

A stranger would have seen nothing remarkable in John Hewett’s hair,
unless he had reflected that, being so sparse, it had preserved its
dark hue and its gloss somewhat unusually. The short beard and whiskers
were also of richer colour than comported with the rest of the man’s
appearance. Judging from his features alone, one would have taken John
for sixty at least; his years were in truth not quite two-and-fifty. He
had the look of one worn out with anxiety and hardship; the lines
engraven upon his face were of extraordinary depth and frequency; there
seemed to be little flesh between the dry skin and the bones which
sharply outlined his visage. The lips were, like those of his son,
prominent and nervous, but none of Bob’s shrewdness was here
discoverable; feeling rather than intellect appeared to be the father’s
characteristic. His eyes expressed self-will, perhaps obstinacy, and he
had a peculiarly dogged manner of holding his head. At the present
moment he was suffering from extreme fatigue; he let himself sink upon
a chair, threw his hat on to the floor, and rested a hand on each knee.
His boots were thickly covered with mud; his corduroy trousers were
splashed with the same. Rain had drenched him; it trickled to the floor
from all his garments.

For answer to Sidney’s question, he nodded towards his wife, and said
in a thick voice, ‘Ask her.’

‘He’s dyed it,’ Mrs. Hewett explained, with no smile. ‘He thought one
of the reasons why he couldn’t get work was his lookin’ too old.’

‘An’ so it was,’ exclaimed Hewett, with an angry vehemence which at
once declared his position and revealed much of his history. ‘So it
was. My hair was a bit turned, an’ nowadays there’s no chance for old
men. Ask any one you like. Why, there’s Sam Lang couldn’t even get a
job at gardenin’ ’cause his hair was a bit turned. It was him as told
me what to do. “Dye your hair, Jack,” he says; “it’s what I’ve had to
myself,” he says. “They won’t have old men nowadays, at no price.” Why,
there’s Jarvey the painter; you know him, Sidney. His guvnor sent him
on a job to Jones’s place, an’ they sent him back. “Why, he’s an old
man,” they says. “What good’s a man of that age for liftin’ ladders
about?” An’ Jarvey’s no older than me.’

Sidney knitted his brows. He had heard the complaint from too many men
to be able to dispute its justice.

‘When there’s twice too many of us for the work that’s to be done,’
pursued John, ‘what else can you expect? The old uns have to give way,
of course. Let ’em beg; let ’em starve! What use are they?’

Mrs. Hewett had put a kettle on the fire, and began to arrange the
table for a meal.

‘Go an’ get your wet things off, John,’ she said. ‘You’ll be havin’
your rheumatics again.’

‘Never mind me, Maggie. What business have you to be up an’ about? You
need a good deal more takin’ care of than I do. Here, let Amy get the
tea.’

The three children, Amy, Annie, and Tom, had come forward, as only
children do who are wont to be treated affectionately on their father’s
return. John had a kiss and a caress for each of them; then he stepped
to the bed and looked at his latest born. The baby was moaning feebly;
he spoke no word to it, and on turning away glanced about the room
absently. In the meantime his wife had taken some clothing from a chest
of drawers, and at length he was persuaded to go into the other room
and change. When he returned, the meal was ready. It consisted of a
scrap of cold steak, left over from yesterday, and still upon the
original dish amid congealed fat; a spongy half-quartern loaf, that
species of baker’s bread of which a great quantity can be consumed with
small effect on the appetite; a shapeless piece of something purchased
under the name of butter, dabbed into a shallow basin; some pickled
cabbage in a tea-cup; and, lastly, a pot of tea, made by adding a
teaspoonful or two to the saturated leaves which had already served at
breakfast and midday. This repast was laid on a very dirty cloth. The
cups were unmatched and chipped, the knives were in all stages of
decrepitude; the teapot was of dirty tin, with a damaged spout.

Sidney began to affect cheerfulness. He took little Annie on one of his
knees, and Tom on the other. The mature Amy presided. Hewett ate the
morsel of meat, evidently without thinking about it; he crumbled a
piece of bread, and munched mouthfuls in silence. Of the vapid liquor
called tea he drank cup after cup.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked at length. ‘Where’s Clara?’

‘I daresay she’s doin’ overtime,’ replied his wife. ‘She won’t be much
longer.’

The man was incapable of remaining in one spot for more than a few
minutes. Now he went to look at the baby; now he stirred the fire; now
he walked across the room aimlessly. He was the embodiment of worry. As
soon as the meal was over, Amy, Annie, and Tom were sent off to bed.
They occupied the second room, together with Clara; Bob shared the bed
of a fellow-workman upstairs. This was great extravagance, obviously;
other people would have made two rooms sufficient for all, and many
such families would have put up with one. But Hewett had his ideas of
decency, and stuck to them with characteristic wilfulness.

‘Where do you think I’ve been this afternoon?’ John began, when the
three little ones were gone, and Mrs. Hewett had been persuaded to lie
down upon the bed. ‘Walked to Enfleld an’ back. I was told of a job out
there; but it’s no good; they’re full up. They say exercise is good for
the ’ealth. I shall be a ’ealthy man before long, it seems to me. What
do _you_ think?’

‘Have you been to see Corder again?’ asked Sidney, after reflecting
anxiously.

‘No, I haven’t!’ was the angry reply; ‘an’ what’s more, I ain’t goin’
to! He’s one o’ them men I can’t get on with. As long as you make
yourself small before him, an’ say “sir” to him with every other word,
an’ keep tellin’ him as he’s your Providence on earth, an’ as you don’t
know how ever you’d get on without him—well, it’s all square, an’ he’ll
keep you on the job. That’s just what I _can’t_ do—never could, an’
never shall. I should have to hear them children cryin’ for food before
I could do it. So don’t speak to me about Corder again. It makes me
wild!’

Sidney tapped the floor with his foot. Himself a single man, without
responsibilities, always in fairly good work, he could not invariably
sympathise with Hewett’s sore and impracticable pride. His own temper
did not err in the direction of meekness, but as he looked round the
room he felt that a home such as this would drive him to any degree of
humiliation. John knew what the young man’s thoughts were; he resumed
in a voice of exasperated bitterness.

‘No, I haven’t been to Corder—I beg his pardon; _Mister_ Corder—James
Corder, Esquire. But where do you think I went this mornin’? Mrs.
Peckover brought up a paper an’ showed me an advertisement. Gorbutt in
Goswell Bead wanted a man to clean windows an’ sweep up, an’ so
on;—offered fifteen bob a week. Well, I went. Didn’t I, mother? Didn’t
I go after that job? I got there at half-past eight; an’ what do you
think I found? If there was one man standin’ at Gorbutt’s door, _there
was five hundred_! Don’t you believe me? You go an’ ask them as lives
about there. If there was one, there was five hundred! Why, the p’lice
had to come an’ keep the road clear. Fifteen bob! What was the use o’
me standin’ there, outside the crowd? What was the use, I say? Such a
lot o’ poor starvin’ devils you never saw brought together in all your
life. There they was, lookin’ ready to fight with one another for the
fifteen bob a week. Didn’t I come back and tell you about it, mother?
An’ if they’d all felt like me, they’d a turned against the shop an’
smashed it up—ay, an’ every other shop in the street! What use? Why, no
use; but I tell you that’s how I felt. If any man had said as much as a
rough word to me, I’d a gone at him like a bulldog. I felt like a
beast. I wanted to fight, I tell you—to fight till the life was kicked
an’ throttled out of me!’

‘John, don’t, don’t go on in that way,’ cried his wife, sobbing
miserably. ‘Don’t let him go on like that, Sidney.’

Hewett jumped up and walked about.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked the next moment. And when Sidney told him
that it was half-past nine, he exclaimed, ‘Then why hasn’t Clara come
’ome? What’s gone with her?’

‘Perhaps she’s at Mrs. Tubbs’s,’ replied his wife, in a low voice,
looking at Kirkwood.

‘An’ what call has she to be there? Who gave her leave to go there?’

There was another exchange of looks between Sidney and Mrs. Hewett;
then the latter with hesitation and timidity told of Mrs. Tubbs’s visit
to her that evening, and of the proposals the woman had made.

‘I won’t hear of it:’ cried John. ‘I won’t have my girl go for a
barmaid, so there’s an end of it. I tell you she shan’t go!’

‘I can understand you, Mr. Hewett,’ said Sidney, in a tone of argument
softened by deference; ‘but don’t you think you’d better make a few
inquiries, at all events? You see, it isn’t exactly a barmaid’s place.
I mean to say, Mrs. Tubbs doesn’t keep a public-house where people
stand about drinking all day. It is only a luncheon-bar, and
respectable enough.’

John turned and regarded him with astonishment.

‘Why, I thought you was as much set against it as me? What’s made you
come round like this? I s’pose you’ve got tired of her, an’ that’s made
you so you don’t care.’

The young man’s eyes flashed angrily, but before he could make a
rejoinder Mrs. Hewett interposed.

‘For shame o’ yourself, John. If you can’t talk better sense than that,
don’t talk at all. He don’t mean it, Sidney. He’s half drove off his
head with trouble.’

‘If he does think it,’ said Kirkwood, speaking sternly but with
self-command, ‘let him say what he likes. He can’t say worse than I
should deserve.’

There was an instant of silence. Hewett’s head hung with more than the
usual doggedness. Then he addressed Sidney, sullenly, but in a tone
which admitted his error.

‘What have you got to say? Never mind me. I’m only the girl’s father,
an’ there’s not much heed paid to fathers nowadays. What have you got
to say about Clara? If you’ve changed your mind about her goin’ there,
just tell me why.’

Sidney could not bring himself to speak at once, but an appealing look
from Mrs. Hewett decided him.

‘Look here, Mr. Hewett,’ he began, with blunt earnestness. If any harm
came to Clara I should feel it every bit as much as you, and that you
ought to know by this time. All the same, what I’ve got to say is this:
Let her go to Mrs. Tubbs for a month’s trial. If you persist in
refusing her, mark my words, you’ll be sorry. I’ve thought it all over,
and I know what I’m talking about. The girl can’t put up with the work
room any longer. It’s ruining her health, for one thing, anybody can
see that, and it’s making her so discontented, she’ll soon get
reckless. I understand your feeling well enough, but I understand her
as well; at all events, I believe I do. She wants a change; she’s
getting tired of her very life.’

‘Very well,’ cried the father in shrill irritation, ‘why doesn’t she
take the change that’s offered to her? She’s no need to go neither to
workroom nor to bar. There’s a good home waiting for her, isn’t there?
What’s come to the girl? She used to go on as if she liked you well
enough.’

‘A girl alters a deal between fifteen and seventeen,’ Sidney replied,
forcing himself to speak with an air of calmness, of impartiality. ‘She
wasn’t old enough to know her own mind. I’m tired of plaguing her. I
feel ashamed to say another word to her, and that’s the truth. She only
gets more and more set against me. If it’s ever to come right, it’ll
have to be by waiting; we won’t talk about that any more. Think of her
quite apart from me, and what I’ve been hoping. She’s seventeen years
old. You can’t deal with a girl of that age like you can with Amy and
Annie. You’ll have to trust her, Mr. Hewett. You’ll have to, because
there’s no help for it. We’re working people, we are; we’re the lower
orders; our girls have to go out and get their livings. We teach them
the best we can, and the devil knows they’ve got examples enough of
misery and ruin before their eyes to help them to keep straight. Rich
people can take care of their daughters as much as they like; they can
treat them like children till they’re married; people of our kind can’t
do that, and it has to be faced.’

John sat with dark brow, his eyes staring on vacancy.

‘It’s right what Sidney says, father,’ put in Mrs. Hewett; ‘we can’t
help it.’

‘You may perhaps have done harm when you meant only to do good,’
pursued Sidney. ‘Always being so anxious, and showing what account you
make of her, perhaps you’ve led her to think a little too much of
herself. She knows other fathers don’t go on in that way. And now she
wants more freedom, she feels it worse than other girls do when you
begin to deny her. Talk to her in a different way; talk as if you
trusted her. Depend upon it, it’s the only hold you have upon her.
Don’t be so much afraid. Clara has her faults—I see them as well as any
one—but I’ll never believe she’d darken your life of her own free
will.’

There was an unevenness, a jerky vehemence, in his voice, which told
how difficult it was for him to take this side in argument. He often
hesitated, obviously seeking phrases which should do least injury to
the father’s feelings. The expression of pain on his forehead and about
his lips testified to the sincerity with which he urged his views, at
the same time to a lurking fear lest impulse should be misleading him.
Hewett kept silence, in aspect as far as ever from yielding. Of a
sudden he raised his hand, and said, ‘Husht!’ There was a familiar step
on the stairs. Then the door opened and admitted Clara.

The girl could not but be aware that the conversation she interrupted
had reference to herself. Her father gazed fixedly at her; Sidney
glanced towards her with self-consciousness, and at once averted his
eyes; Mrs. Hewett examined her with apprehension. Having carelessly
closed the door with a push, she placed her umbrella in the corner and
began to unbutton her gloves. Her attitude was one of affected
unconcern; she held her head stiffly, and let her eyes wander to the
farther end of the room. The expression of her face was cold,
preoccupied; she bit her lower lip so that the under part of it
protruded.

‘Where have you been, Clara?’ her father asked.

She did not answer immediately, but finished drawing off her gloves and
rolled them up by turning one over the other. Then she said
indifferently:

‘I’ve been to see Mrs. Tubbs.’

‘And who gave you leave?’ asked Hewett with irritation.

‘I don’t see that I needed any leave. I knew she was coming here to
speak to you or mother, so I went, after work, to ask what you’d said.’

She was not above the middle stature of women, but her slimness and
erectness, and the kind of costume she wore made her seem tall as she
stood in this low-ceiled room. Her features were of very uncommon type,
at once sensually attractive and bearing the stamp of intellectual
vigour. The profile was cold, subtle, original; in full face, her high
cheekbones and the heavy, almost horizontal line of her eyebrows were
the points that first drew attention, conveying an idea of force of
character. The eyes themselves were hazel-coloured, and, whatever her
mood, preserved a singular pathos of expression, a look as of
self-pity, of unconscious appeal against some injustice. In contrast
with this her lips were defiant, insolent, unscrupulous; a shadow of
the naivete of childhood still lingered upon them, but, though you
divined the earlier pout of the spoilt girl, you felt that it must have
foretold this danger-signal in the mature woman. Such cast of
countenance could belong only to one who intensified in her personality
an inheritance of revolt; who, combining the temper of an ambitious
woman with the forces of a man’s brain, had early learnt that the world
was not her friend nor the world’s law.

Her clothing made but poor protection against the rigours of a London
winter. Its peculiarity (bearing in mind her position) was the lack of
any pretended elegance. A close-fitting, short jacket of plain cloth
made evident the grace of her bust; beneath was a brown dress with one
row of kilting. She wore a hat of brown felt, the crown rising from
back to front, the narrow brim closely turned up all round. The high
collar of the jacket alone sheltered her neck. Her gloves, though worn,
were obviously of good kid; her boots—strangest thing of all in a
work-girl’s daily attire—were both strong and shapely. This simplicity
seemed a declaration that she could not afford genuine luxuries and
scorned to deck herself with shams.

The manner of her reply inflamed Hewett with impotent wrath. He smote
the table violently, then sprang up and flung his chair aside.

‘Is that the way you’ve learnt to speak to your father?’ he shouted.
‘Haven’t I told you you’re not to go nowhere without my leave or your
mother’s? Do you pay no heed to what I bid you? If so, say it! Say it
at once, and have done with it.’

Clara was quietly removing her hat. In doing so, she disclosed the one
thing which gave proof of regard for personal appearance. Her hair was
elaborately dressed. Drawn up from the neck, it was disposed in thick
plaits upon the top of her head; in front were a few rows of crisping.
She affected to be quite unaware that words had been spoken to her, and
stood smoothing each side of her forehead.

John strode forward and laid his hands roughly upon her shoulders.

‘Look at me, will you? Speak, will you?’

Clara jerked herself from his grasp and regarded him with insolent
surprise. Of fear there was no trace upon her countenance; she seemed
to experience only astonishment at such unwonted behaviour from her
father, and resentment on her own behalf. Sidney Kirkwood had risen,
and advanced a step or two, as if in apprehension of harm to the girl,
but his interference was unneeded. Hewett recovered his self-control as
soon as Clara repelled him. It was the first time he had ever laid a
hand upon one of his children other than gently; his exasperation came
of over-tried nerves, of the experiences he had gone through in search
of work that day, and the keen suffering occasioned by his argument
with Sidney. The practical confirmation of Sidney’s warning that he
must no longer hope to control Clara like a child stung him too
poignantly; he obeyed an unreasoning impulse to recover his authority
by force.

The girl’s look entered his heart like a stab; she had never faced him
like this before, saying more plainly than with words that she defied
him to control her. His child’s face, the face he loved best of all!
yet at this moment he was searching it vainly for the lineaments that
were familiar to him. Something had changed her, had hardened her
against him, in a moment. It seemed impossible that there should come
such severance between them. John revolted against it, as against all
the other natural laws that visited him harshly.

‘What’s come to you, my girl?’ he said in a thick voice. ‘What’s wrong
between us, Clara? Haven’t I always done my best for you? If I was the
worst enemy you had, you couldn’t look at me crueller.’

‘I think it’s me that should ask what’s come to _you_, father,’ she
returned with her former self-possession. ‘You treat me as if I was a
baby. I want to know what you’re going to say about Mrs. Tubbs. I
suppose mother’s told you what she offers me?’

Sidney had not resumed his chair. Before Hewett could reply he said:

‘I think I’ll leave you to talk over this alone.’

‘No; stay where you are,’ said John gruffly. ‘Look here, Clara.
Sidney’s been talkin’ to me; he’s been sayin’ that I ought to let you
have your own way in this. Yes, you may well look as if it surprised
you.’ Clara had just glanced at the young man, slightly raising her
eyebrows, but at once looked away again with a careless movement of the
head. ‘He says what it’s hard an’ cruel for me to believe, though I
half begin to see that he’s right; he says you won’t pay no more heed
to what _I_ wish, an’ it’s me now must give way to you. I didn’t use to
think me an’ Clara would come to that; but it looks like it—it looks
like it.’

The girl stood with downcast eyes. Once more her face had suffered a
change; the lips were no longer malignant, her forehead had relaxed
from its haughty frown. The past fortnight had been a period of contest
between her father’s stubborn fears and her own determination to change
the mode of her life. Her self-will was only intensified by opposition.
John had often enough experienced this, but hitherto the points at
issue had been trifles, matters in which the father could yield for the
sake of pleasing his child. Serious resistance brought out for the
first time all the selfish forces of her nature. She was prepared to go
all lengths rather than submit, now the question of her liberty had
once been broached. Already there was a plan in her mind for quitting
home, regardless of all the misery she would cause, reckless of what
future might be in store for herself. But the first sign of yielding on
her father’s part touched the gentler elements of her nature. Thus was
she constituted; merciless in egotism when put to the use of all her
weapons, moved to warmest gratitude as soon as concession was made to
her. To be on ill terms with her father had caused her pain, the only
effect of which, however, was to heighten the sullen impracticability
of her temper. At the first glimpse of relief from overstrained
emotions, she desired that all angry feeling should be at an end.
Having gained her point, she could once more be the affectionately
wilful girl whose love was the first necessity of John Hewett’s
existence.

‘Well,’ John pursued, reading her features eagerly, ‘I’ll say no more
about that, and I won’t stand in the way of what you’ve set your mind
on. But understand, Clara, my girl! It’s because Sidney persuaded me.
Sidney answers for it, mind you that!’

His voice trembled, and he looked at the young man with something like
anger in his eyes.

‘I’m willing to do that, Mr. Hewett,’ said Kirkwood in a low but firm
voice, his eyes turned away from Clara. ‘No human being can answer for
another in the real meaning of the word; but I take upon myself to say
that Clara will bring you no sorrow. She hears me say it. They’re not
the kind of words that a man speaks without thought of what they mean.’

Clara had seated herself by the table, and was moving a finger along
the pattern of the dirty white cloth. She bit her under-lip in the
manner already described, seemingly her habit when she wished to avoid
any marked expression of countenance.

‘I can’t see what Mr. Kirkwood’s got to do with it at all,’ she said,
with indifference, which now, however, was rather good-humoured than
the reverse. ‘I’m sure I don’t want anybody to answer for _me_.’ A
slight toss of the head. ‘You’d have let me go in any case, father; so
I don’t see you need bring Mr. Kirkwood’s name in.’

Hewett turned away to the fireplace and hung his head. Sidney, gazing
darkly at the girl, saw her look towards him, and she smiled. The
strange effect of that smile upon her features! It gave gentleness to
the mouth, and, by making more manifest the intelligent light of her
eyes, emphasised the singular pathos inseparable from their regard. It
was a smile to which a man would concede anything, which would vanquish
every prepossession, which would inspire pity and tenderness and
devotion in the heart of sternest resentment.

Sidney knew its power only too well; he averted his face. Then Clara
rose again and said:

‘I shall just walk round and tell Mrs. Tubbs. It isn’t late, and she’d
like to know as soon as possible.’

‘Oh, surely it’ll do in the mornin’!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hewett, who had
followed the conversation in silent anxiety.

Clara paid no attention, but at once put on her hat again. Then she
said, ‘I won’t be long, father,’ and moved towards the door.

Hewett did not look round.

‘Will you let me walk part of the way with you?’ Sidney asked abruptly.

‘Certainly, if you like.’

He bade the two who remained ‘Good-night,’ and followed Clara
downstairs.




CHAPTER IV

CLARA AND JANE


Rain no longer fell, but the gusty and bitter wind still swept about
the black streets. Walking side by side without speech, Clara and her
companion left the neighbourhood of the prison, and kept a northward
direction till they reached the junction of highways where stands the
‘Angel.’ Here was the wonted crowd of loiterers and the press of people
waiting for tramcar or omnibus—east, west, south, or north; newsboys,
eager to get rid of their last batch, were crying as usual, ‘Ech-ow!
Exteree speciul! Ech-ow! Steendard!’ and a brass band was blaring out
its saddest strain of merry dance-music. The lights gleamed dismally in
rain-puddles and on the wet pavement. With the wind came whiffs of
tobacco and odours of the drinking-bar.

They crossed, and walked the length of Islington High Street, then a
short way along its continuation, Upper Street. Once or twice Clara had
barely glanced at Kirkwood, but his eyes made no reply, and his lips
were resolutely closed. She did not seem offended by this silence; on
the contrary, her face was cheerful, and she smiled to herself now and
then. One would have imagined that she found pleasure in the sombreness
of which she was the cause.

She stopped at length, and said:

‘I suppose you don’t want to go in with me?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll say good-night. Thank you for coming so far out of your
way.’

‘I’ll wait. I may as well walk back with you, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh, very well. I shan’t be many minutes.’

She passed on and entered the place of refreshment that was kept by
Mrs. Tubbs. Till recently it had been an ordinary eating-house or
coffee-shop; but having succeeded in obtaining a license to sell strong
liquors, Mrs. Tubbs had converted the establishment into one of a more
pretentious kind. She called it ‘Imperial Restaurant and Luncheon Bar.’
The front shone with vermilion paint; the interior was aflare with many
gas-jets; in the window was disposed a tempting exhibition of ‘snacks’
of fish, cold roast fowls, ham-sandwiches, and the like; whilst farther
back stood a cooking-stove, whereon frizzled and vapoured a savoury
mess of sausages and onions.

Sidney turned away a few paces. The inclemency of the night made Upper
Street—the promenade of a great district on account of its spacious
pavement—less frequented than usual; but there were still numbers of
people about, some hastening homewards, some sauntering hither and
thither in the familiar way, some gathered into gossiping groups.
Kirkwood was irritated by the conversation and laughter that fell on
his ears, irritated by the distant strains of the band, irritated above
all by the fume of frying that pervaded the air for many yards about
Mrs. Tubbs’s precincts. He observed that the customers tending that way
were numerous. They consisted mainly of lads and young men who had come
forth from neighbouring places of entertainment. The locality and its
characteristics had been familiar to him from youth upwards; but his
nature was not subdued to what it worked in, and the present fit of
disgust was only an accentuation of a mood by which he was often
possessed. To the Hewetts he had spoken impartially of Mrs. Tubbs and
her bar; probably that was the right view; but now there came back upon
him the repugnance with which he had regarded Clara’s proposal when it
was first made.

It seemed to him that he had waited nearly half an hour when Clara came
forth again. In silence she walked on beside him. Again they crossed by
the ‘Angel’ and entered St. John Street Road.

‘You’ve made your arrangements?’ Sidney said, now that there were few
people passing.

‘Yes; I shall go on Monday.’

‘You’re going to live there altogether?’

‘Yes; it’ll be more convenient, and then it’ll give them more room at
home. Bob can sleep with the children, and save money.’

‘To be sure!’ observed the young man with bitter irony.

Clara flashed a glance at him. It was a new thing for Sidney to take
this tone with her; not seldom he had expressed unfavourable judgments
by silence, but he had never spoken to her otherwise than with
deference and gentleness.

‘You don’t seem in a very good temper to-night, Mr. Kirkwood.’ she
remarked in a suave tone.

He disregarded her words, but in a few moments turned upon her and said
scornfully:

‘I hope you’ll enjoy the pleasant, ladylike work you’ve found! I should
think it’ll improve your self-respect to wait on the gentlemen of Upper
Street!’

Irony is not a weapon much in use among working people; their wits in
general are too slow. With Sidney, however, it had always been a habit
of speech in indignant criticism, and sympathy made him aware that
nothing would sting Clara more acutely. He saw that he was successful
when she turned her head away and moved it nervously.

‘And do you suppose I go there because the place pleases me?’ she asked
in a cold, hostile voice. ‘You make a great mistake, as you always do
when you pretend to know anything about me. Wait till I’ve learned a
little about the business; you won’t find me in Upper Street then.’

‘I understand.’

Again they walked on in silence. They were nearing Clerkenwell Close,
and had to pass a corner of the prison in a dark lane, where the wind
moaned drearily. The line of the high blank wall was relieved in
colourless gloom against a sky of sheer night. Opposite, the shapes of
poverty-eaten houses and grimy workshops stood huddling in the
obscurity. From near at hand came shrill voices of children chasing
each other about—children playing at midnight between slum and gaol!

‘We’re not likely to see much of each other after to-night,’ said
Sidney, stopping.

‘The less the better, I should say, if this is how you’re going to talk
to me.’

‘The less the better, perhaps—at all events for a time. But there’s one
or two things on my mind, and I’ll say them now. I don’t know whether
you think anything about it, but you must have seen that things are
getting worse and worse at home. Your mother—’

‘She’s no mother of mine!’ broke in Clara angrily.

‘She’s been a mother to you in kindness, that’s certain, and you’ve
repaid her almost as ill as you could have done. Another girl would
have made her hard life a bit easier. No; you’ve only thought of
yourself. Your father walks about day after day trying to get work, and
how do you meet him when he comes home? You fret him and anger him; you
throw him back ill-tempered words when he happens to think different
from you; you almost break his heart, because you won’t give way in
things that he only means for your good—he that would give his life for
you! It’s as well you should hear the truth for once, and hear it from
me, too. Anyone else might speak from all sorts of motives; as for me,
it makes me suffer more to say such things than it ever could you to
hear them. Laugh if you like! I don’t ask you to pay any heed to what
_I_’ve wished and hoped; but just give a thought to your father, and
the rest of them at home. I told him to-night he’d only to trust you,
that you never could do anything to make him ashamed of you. I said so,
and I believe it. Look, Clara! with all my heart I believe it. But now
you’ve got your way, think of them a little.’

‘It isn’t your fault if I don’t know how bad I am,’ said the girl with
a half-smile. That she did not resent his lecture more decidedly was no
doubt due to its having afforded new proof of the power she had over
him. Sidney was shaken with emotion; his voice all but failed him at
the last.

‘Good-bye,’ he said, turning away.

Clara hesitated, looked at him, but finally also said ‘Good-bye,’ and
went on alone.

She walked with bent head, and almost passed the house-door in absence
of thought. On the threshold was standing Miss Peckover; she drew aside
to let Clara pass. Between these two was a singular rivalry. Though by
date a year younger than Clara, Clem gave no evidence of being
physically less mature. In the matter of personal charms she regarded
herself as by far Miss Hewett’s superior, and resented vigorously the
tone of the latter’s behaviour to her. Clara, on the other hand, looked
down upon Miss Peckover as a mere vulgar girl; she despised her brother
Bob because he had allowed himself to be inveigled by Clem; in
intellect, in social standing, she considered herself out of all
comparison with the landlady’s daughter. Clem had the obvious advantage
of being able to ridicule the Hewetts’ poverty, and did so without
sparing. Now, for instance, when Clara was about to pass with a distant
‘Good-night,’ Clem remarked:

‘It’s cold, ain’t it? I wonder you don’t put on a ulster, a night like
this.’

‘Thank you,’ was the reply. ‘I shan’t consult you about how I’m to
dress.’

Clem laughed, knowing she had the best of the joke.

The other went upstairs, and entered the back-room, where it was quite
dark.

‘That you, Clara?’ asked Amy’s voice. ‘The candle’s on the
mantel-shelf.’

‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ Clara returned sharply. But the irritation
induced by Clem’s triumph quickly passed in reflection on Sidney’s mode
of leave-taking. That had not at all annoyed her, but it had made her
thoughtful. She lit the candle. Its light disclosed a room much barer
than the other one. There was one bed, in which Amy and Annie lay
(Clara had to share it with them), and a mattress placed on the floor,
where reposed little Tom; a low chest of drawers with a very small
looking-glass upon it, a washstand, a few boxes. Handsome girls,
unfortunate enough to have brains to boot, do not cultivate the patient
virtues in chambers of this description.

There was a knock at the door. Clara found her father standing there.

‘Have you anything to tell me, my girl?’ he asked in a subdued voice,
furtively regarding her.

‘I shall go on Monday.’

He drew back a step, and seemed about to return to the other room.

‘Father, I shall have to give Mrs. Tubbs the five shillings for a few
weeks. She’s going to let me have a new dress.’

‘Your earnin’s is your own, Clara.’

‘Yes; but I hope very soon to be able to give you something. It’s hard
for you, having no work.’

John brightened wonderfully.

‘Don’t you trouble, my dear. That’s all right. Things’ll come round
somehow. You’re a good girl. Good-night, my darlin’!’

He kissed her, and went consoled to his rest.

Miss Peckover kept going up and down between the kitchen and the
front door. Down below, Jane was cleaning a copper kettle. Clem, who
had her sweetest morsel of cruelty yet in store, had devised this
pleasant little job as a way of keeping the child employed till all was
quiet.

She had just come down to watch the progress of the work, and to give a
smart rap or two on the toiling fingers, when a heavy footstep in the
passage caused her to dart upstairs again. It was Bob Hewett, returned
from his evening recreations.

‘Oh, that’s you, is it?’ cried Clem. ‘Come down; I want to speak to
you.’

‘Wait till to-morrow,’ answered Bob, advancing towards the stairs.

‘Wait! we’ll see about that!’

She sprang forward, and with a prompt exertion of muscle, admirable in
its way, whirled Bob round and dragged him to the head of the kitchen
flight. The young fellow took it in good part, and went down with her.

‘You go up into the passage,’ said Clem to her servant, and was
immediately obeyed.

‘Now,’ resumed Miss Peckover, when she had closed the door, ‘who have
you been goin’ about with to-night?’

‘What are you talking about?’ returned Bob, who had seated himself on
the table, and was regarding Clem jocosely. ‘I’ve been with some pals,
that’s all.’

‘Pals! what sort o’ pals? Do you call Pennyloaf Candy one o’ your
pals?’

She stood before him in a superb attitude, her head poised fiercely,
her arms quivering at her sides, all the stature and vigour of her
young body emphasised by muscular strain.

‘Pennyloaf Candy!’ Bob repeated, as if in scorn of the person so named.
‘Get on with you! I’m sick of hearing you talk about her. Why I haven’t
seen her not these three weeks.’

‘It’s a —— lie!’ Clem’s epithet was too vigorous for reproduction.
‘Sukey Jollop saw you with her down by the meat-market, an’ Jeck
Bartley saw you too.’

‘Jeck did?’ He laughed with obstreperous scorn. ‘Why, Jeck’s gone to
Homerton to his mother till Saturday night. Don’t be such a bloomin’
fool! Just because Suke Jollop’s dead nuts on me, an’ I won’t have
nothin’ to say to her, she goes tellin’ these bloomin’ lies. When I see
her next, I’ll make her go down on her marrow-bones an’ beg my pardon.
See if I don’t just!’

There was an engaging frankness in Bob’s way of defending himself which
evidently impressed Miss Peckover, though it did not immediately soothe
her irritation. She put her arms a-kimbo, and examined him with a
steady suspicion which would have disconcerted most young men. Bob,
however, only laughed more heartily. The scene was prolonged. Bob had
no recourse to tenderness to dismiss the girl’s jealousy. His
self-conceit was supreme, and had always stood him in such stead with
the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were ‘dead nuts on
him,’ that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took
the form of genial banter _de haut en bas_. ‘Don’t be a bloomin’ fool!’
was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female
heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour’s
wrangling, Clem abandoned her hostile attitude, and eyed him with a
savage kind of admiration.

‘When are you goin’ to buy me that locket, Bob, to put a bit of your
‘air in?’ she inquired pertinently.

‘You just wait, can’t you? There’s a event coming off next week. I
won’t say nothing, but you just wait.’

‘I’m tired o’ waitin’. See here; you ain’t goin’ to best me out of it?’

‘Me best you? Don’t be a bloomin’ fool, Clem!’

He laughed heartily, and in a few minutes allowed himself to be
embraced and sent off to his chamber at the top of the house.

Clem summoned her servant from the passage. At the same moment there
entered another lodger, the only one whose arrival Clem still awaited.
His mode of ascending the stairs was singular; one would have imagined
that he bore some heavy weight, for he proceeded very slowly, with a
great clumping noise, surmounting one step at a time in the manner of a
child. It was Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, and his way of going up to
bed was very simply explained by the fact that a daily sixteen hours of
sitting on the box left his legs in a numb and practically useless
condition.

The house was now quiet. Clem locked the front door and returned to the
kitchen, eager with anticipation of the jest she was going to carry
out. First of all she had to pick a quarrel with Jane; this was very
easily managed. She pretended to look about the room for a minute, then
asked fiercely:

‘What’s gone with that sixpence I left on the dresser?’

Jane looked up in terror. She was worn almost to the last point of
endurance by her day and night of labour and agitation. Her face was
bloodless, her eyelids were swollen with the need of sleep.

‘Sixpence!’ she faltered, ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen no sixpence, miss.’

‘You haven’t? Now, I’ve caught you at last. There’s been nobody ’ere
but you. Little thief! We’ll see about this in the mornin’, an’
to-night _you shall sleep in the back-kitchen_!’

The child gasped for breath. The terror of sudden death could not have
exceeded that which rushed upon her heart when she was told that she
must pass her night in the room where lay the coffin.

‘An’ you shan’t have no candle, neither,’ proceeded Clem, delighted
with the effect she was producing. ‘Come along! I’m off to bed, an’
I’ll see you safe locked in first, so as no one can come an’ hurt you.’

‘Miss! please!—I can’t, I durstn’t!’

Jane pleaded in inarticulate anguish. But Clem had caught her by the
arm, was dragging her on, on, till she was at the very door of that
ghastly death-cellar. Though thirteen years old, her slight frame was
as incapable of resisting Clem Peckover’s muscles as an infant’s would
have been. The door was open, but at that moment Jane uttered a shriek
which rang and echoed through the whole house. Startled, Clem relaxed
her grasp. Jane tore herself away, fled up the kitchen stairs, fled
upwards still, flung herself at the feet of someone who had come out on
to the landing and held a light.

‘Oh, help me! Don’t let her! Help me!’

‘What’s up with you, Jane?’ asked Clara, for it was she who, not being
yet in bed, had come forth at once on hearing the scream.

Jane could only cling to her garment, pant hysterically, repeat the
same words of entreaty again and again. Another door opened, and John
Hewett appeared half-dressed.

‘What’s wrong?’ he cried. ‘The ’ouse o’ fire? Who yelled out like
that?’

Clem was coming up; she spoke from the landing below.

‘It’s that Jane, just because I gave her a rap as she deserved. Send
her down again.’

‘Oh, no!’ cried the poor girl. ‘Miss Hewett! be a friend to me! She’s
goin’ to shut me up all night with the coffin. Don’t let her, miss! I
durstn’t! Oh, be a friend to me!’

‘Little liar!’ shouted Clem. ‘Oh, that bloomin’ little liar! when I
never said a word o’ such a thing!’

‘I’ll believe her a good deal sooner than you,’ returned Clara sharply.
‘Why, anybody can see she’s tellin’ the truth—can’t they, father? She’s
half-scared out of her life. Come in here, Jane; you shall stay here
till morning.’

By this time all the grown-up people in the house were on the
staircase; the clang of tongues was terrific. Clem held her ground
stoutly, and in virulence was more than a match for all her opponents.
Even Bob did not venture to take her part; he grinned down over the
banisters, and enjoyed the entertainment immensely. Dick Snape, whose
room Bob shared, took the opportunity of paying off certain old scores
he had standing against Clem. Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, was very loud
and very hoarse in condemnation of such barbarity. Mrs. Hewett, looking
as if she had herself risen from a coffin, cried shame on the general
heartlessness with which Jane was used.

Clara held to her resolve. She led Jane into the bedroom, then, with a
parting shot at Miss Peckover, herself entered and locked the door.

‘Drink some water, Jane,’ she said, doing her best to reassure the
child. ‘You’re safe for to-night, and we’ll see what Mrs. Peckover says
about this when she comes back to-morrow.’

Jane looked at her rescuer with eyes in which eternal gratitude mingled
with fear for the future. She could cry now, poor thing, and so little
by little recover herself. Words to utter her thanks she had none; she
could only look something of what she felt. Clara made her undress and
lie down with little Tom on the mattress. In a quarter of an hour the
candle was extinguished, and but for the wind, which rattled sashes and
doors, and made ghostly sounds in the chimneys, there was silence
throughout the house.

Something awoke Clara before dawn. She sat up, and became aware that
Jane was talking and crying wildly, evidently re-acting in her sleep
the scene of a few hours ago. With difficulty Clara broke her slumber.

‘Don’t you feel well, Jane?’ she asked, noticing a strangeness in the
child’s way of replying to her.

‘Not very, miss. My head’s bad, an’ I’m so thirsty. May I drink out of
the jug, miss?’

‘Stay where you are. I’ll bring it to you.’

Jane drank a great deal. Presently she fell again into slumber, which
was again broken in the same way. Clara did not go to sleep, and as
soon as it was daylight she summoned her father to come and look at the
child. Jane was ill, and, as everyone could see, rapidly grew worse.




CHAPTER V

JANE IS VISITED


At ten o’clock next morning Mrs. Peckover reached home. She was a tall,
big-boned woman of fifty, with an arm like a coalheaver’s. She had dark
hair, which shone and was odorous with unguents; a sallow, uncomely
face, and a handsome moustache. Her countenance was more difficult to
read than Clem’s; a coarse, and most likely brutal, nature was plain
enough in its lines, but there was also a suggestion of self-restraint,
of sagacity, at all events of cunning—qualities which were decidedly
not inherited by her daughter. With her came the relative whose
presence had been desired at the funeral to-day. This was Mrs. Gully, a
stout person with a very red nose and bleared eyes. The credit of the
family demanded that as many relatives as possible should follow the
hearse, and Mrs. Peckover’s reason for conducting Mrs. Gully hither was
a justifiable fear lest, if she came alone, the latter would arrive in
too manifest a state of insobriety. A certain amount of stimulant had
been permitted on the way, just enough to assist a genteel loquacity,
for which Mrs. Gully had a reputation. She had given her word to
abstain from further imbibing until after the funeral.

The news which greeted her arrival was anything but welcome to Mrs.
Peckover. In the first place, there would be far more work than usual
to be performed in the house to-day, and Jane could be ill spared.
Worse than that, however, Clara Hewett, who was losing half a day’s
work on Jane’s account, made a very emphatic statement as to the origin
of the illness, and said that if anything happened to Jane, there would
be disagreeable facts forthcoming at a coroner’s inquest. Having looked
at the sick child, Mrs. Peckover went downstairs and shut herself up
with Clem. There was a stormy interview.

‘So you thought you’d have yer fling, did you, just because I wasn’t
’ere? You must go makin’ trouble, just to suit yer own fancies! I’ll
pay you, my lady! Gr-r-r!’

Whereupon followed the smack of a large hand on a fleshy cheek, so
vigorous and unexpected a blow that even the sturdy Clem staggered
back.

‘You leave me alone, will you?’ she roared out, her smitten cheek in a
flame. ‘Do that again, an’ I’ll give you somethin’ for yerself! See if
I don’t! You just try it on!’

The room rang with uproarious abuse, with disgusting language, with the
terrific threats which are such common flowers of rhetoric in that
world, and generally mean nothing whatever. The end of it all was that
Clem went to fetch a doctor; one in whom Mrs. Peckover could repose
confidence. The man was, in fact, a druggist, with a shop in an obscure
street over towards St. Luke’s; in his window was exhibited a card
which stated that a certain medical man could be consulted here daily.
The said medical man had, in fact, so much more business than he could
attend to—his name appearing in many shops—that the druggist was
deputed to act as his assistant, and was considerately supplied with
death-certificates, already signed, and only needing to be filled in
with details. Summoned by Mrs. Peckover, whose old acquaintance he was,
the druggist left the shop in care of his son, aged fifteen, and sped
to Clerkenwell Close. He made light of Jane’s ailment. ‘A little fever,
that was all—soon pull her round. Any wounds, by-the-by? No? Oh, soon
pull her round. Send for medicines.’

‘We’ll have her down in the back-kitchen as soon as the corffin’s
away,’ said Mrs. Peckover to Mrs. Hewett. ‘Don’t you upset yerself
about it, my dear; you’ve got quite enough to think about. Yer ’usband
got anythink yet? Dear, dear! Don’t you put yerself out. I’m sure it
was a great kindness of you to let the troublesome thing lay ’ere all
night.’

Funeral guests were beginning to assemble. On arriving, they were
conducted first of all into the front-room on the ground floor, the
Peckovers’ parlour. It was richly furnished. In the centre stood a
round table, which left small space for moving about, and was at
present covered with refreshments. A polished sideboard supported a row
of dessert-plates propped on their edges, and a number of glass
vessels, probably meant for ornament alone, as they could not possibly
have been put to any use. A low cupboard in a recess was surmounted by
a frosted cardboard model of St. Paul’s under a glass case, behind
which was reared an oval tray painted with flowers. Over the
mantel-piece was the regulation mirror, its gilt frame enveloped in
coarse yellow gauze; the mantel-piece itself bore a ‘wealth’ of
embellishments in glass and crockery. On each side of it hung a framed
silhouette, portraits of ancestors. Other pictures there were many, the
most impressive being an ancient oil-painting, of which the canvas
bulged forth from the frame; the subject appeared to be a ship, but was
just as likely a view of the Alps. Several German prints conveyed
instruction as well as delight; one represented the trial of Strafford
in Westminster Hall; another, the trial of William Lord Russell, at the
Old Bailey. There was also a group of engraved portraits, the Royal
Family of England early in the reign of Queen Victoria; and finally,
‘The Destruction of Nineveh,’ by John Martin. Along the window-sill
were disposed flower-pots containing artificial plants; one or other
was always being knocked down by the curtains or blinds.

Each guest having taken a quaff of ale or spirits or what was called
wine, with perhaps a mouthful of more solid sustenance, was then led
down into the back-kitchen to view the coffin and the corpse. I mention
the coffin first, because in everyone’s view this was the main point of
interest. Could Mrs. Peckover have buried the old woman in an
orange-crate, she would gladly have done so for the saving of expense;
but with relatives and neighbours to consider, she drew a great deal of
virtue out of necessity, and dealt so very handsomely with the
undertaker, that this burial would be the talk of the Close for some
weeks. The coffin was inspected inside and out, was admired and
appraised, Mrs. Peckover being at hand to check the estimates. At the
same time every most revolting detail of the dead woman’s last illness
was related and discussed and mused over and exclaimed upon. ‘A lovely
corpse, considerin’ her years,’ was the general opinion. Then all went
upstairs again, and once more refreshed themselves. The house smelt
like a bar-room.

‘Everythink most respectable, I’m sure!’ remarked the female mourners
to each other, as they crowded together in the parlour.

‘An’ so it had ought to be!’ exclaimed one, in an indignant tone, such
as is reserved for the expression of offence among educated people, but
among the poor—the London poor, least original and least articulate
beings within the confines of civilisation—has also to do duty for
friendly emphasis. ‘If Mrs. Peckover can’t afford to do things
respectable, who can?’

And the speaker looked defiantly about her, as if daring contradiction.
But only approving murmurs replied. Mrs. Peckover had, in fact, the
reputation of being wealthy; she was always inheriting, always
accumulating what her friends called ‘interess,’ never expending as
other people needs must. The lodgings she let enabled her to live
rent-free and rate-free. Clem’s earnings at an artificial-flower
factory more than paid for that young lady’s board and clothing, and
all other outlay was not worth mentioning as a deduction from the
income created by her sundry investments. Her husband—ten years
deceased—had been a ‘moulder’; he earned on an average between three
and four pounds a week, and was so prudently disposed that, for the
last decade of his life, he made it a rule never to spend a farthing of
his wages. Mrs. Peckover at that time kept a small beer-shop in Rosoman
Street—small and unpretending in appearance, but through it there ran a
beery Pactolus. By selling the business shortly after her husband’s
death, Mrs. Peckover realised a handsome capital. She retired into
private life, having a strong sense of personal dignity, and feeling it
necessary to devote herself to the moral training of her only child.

At half-past eleven Mrs. Peckover was arrayed in her mourning
robes—new, dark-glistening. During her absence Clem had kept guard over
Mrs. Gully, whom it was very difficult indeed to restrain from the
bottles and decanters; the elder lady coming to relieve, Clem could
rush away and don her own solemn garments. The undertaker with his men
arrived; the hearse and coaches drove up; the Close was in a state of
excitement. ‘Now that’s what I call a respectable turn out!’ was the
phrase passed from mouth to mouth in the crowd gathering near the door.
Children in great numbers had absented themselves from school for the
purpose of beholding this procession. ‘I do like to see spirited ’orses
at a funeral!’ remarked one of the mourners, who had squeezed his way
to the parlour window. ‘It puts the finishin’ touch, as you may say,
don’t it?’ When the coffin was borne forth, there was such a press in
the street that the men with difficulty reached the hearse. As the
female mourners stepped across the pavement with handkerchiefs held to
their mouths, a sigh of satisfaction was audible throughout the crowd;
the males were less sympathetically received, and some jocose comments
from a costermonger, whose business was temporarily interrupted,
excited indulgent smiles.

The procession moved slowly away, and the crowd, unwilling to disperse
immediately, looked about for some new source of entertainment. They
were fortunate, for at this moment came round the corner an individual
notorious throughout Clerkenwell as ‘Mad Jack.’ Mad he presumably
was—at all events, an idiot. A lanky, raw-boned, red-beaded man,
perhaps forty years old; not clad, but hung over with the filthiest
rags; hatless, shoeless. He supported himself by singing in the
streets, generally psalms, and with eccentric modulations of the voice
which always occasioned mirth in hearers. Sometimes he stood at a
corner and began the delivery of a passage of Scripture in French; how,
where, or when he could have acquired this knowledge was a mystery, and
Jack would throw no light on his own past. At present, having watched
the funeral coaches pass away, he lifted up his voice in a terrific
blare, singing, ‘All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise
Him and magnify Him for ever.’ Instantly he was assailed by the
juvenile portion of the throng, was pelted with anything that came to
hand, mocked mercilessly, buffeted from behind. For a while he
persisted in his psalmody, but at length, without warning, he rushed
upon his tormentors, and with angry shrieks endeavoured to take
revenge. The uproar continued till a policeman came and cleared the
way. Then Jack went off again, singing, ‘All ye works of the Lord.’
With his voice blended that of the costermonger, ‘Penny a bundill!’

Up in the Hewetts’ back-room lay Jane Snowdon, now seemingly asleep,
now delirious. When she talked, a name was constantly upon her lips;
she kept calling for ‘Mr. Kirkwood.’ Amy was at school; Annie and Tom
frequently went into the room and gazed curiously at the sick girl.
Mrs. Hewett felt so ill to-day that she could only lie on the bed and
try to silence her baby’s crying.

The house-door was left wide open between the departure and return of
the mourners; a superstition of the people demands this. The Peckovers
brought back with them some half a dozen relatives and friends, invited
to a late dinner. The meal had been in preparation at an eating-house
close by, and was now speedily made ready in the parlour. A liberal
supply of various ales was furnished by the agency of a pot-boy (Jane’s
absence being much felt), and in the course of half an hour or so the
company were sufficiently restored to address themselves anew to the
bottles and decanters. Mrs. Gully was now permitted to obey her
instincts; the natural result could be attributed to overstrung
feelings.

Just when the mourners had grown noisily hilarious, testifying thereby
to the respectability with which things were being conducted to the
very end, Mrs. Peckover became aware of a knocking at the front door.
She bade her daughter go and see who it was. Clem, speedily returning,
beckoned her mother from among the guests.

‘It’s somebody wants to know if there ain’t somebody called Snowdon
livin’ ’ere,’ she whispered in a tone of alarm. ‘An old man.’

Mrs. Peckover never drank more than was consistent with the perfect
clearness of her brain. At present she had very red cheeks, and her
cat-like eyes gleamed noticeably, but any kind of business would have
found her as shrewdly competent as ever.

‘What did you say?’ she whispered savagely

‘Said I’d come an’ ask.’

‘You stay ’ere. Don’t say nothink.’

Mrs. Peckover left the room, closed the door behind her, and went along
the passage. On the doorstep stood a man with white hair, wearing an
unusual kind of cloak and a strange hat. He looked at the landlady
without speaking.

‘What was you wantin’, mister?’

‘I have been told,’ replied the man in a clear, grave voice, ‘that a
child of the name of Snowdon lives in your house, ma’am.’

‘Eh? Who told you that?’

‘The people next door but one. I’ve been asking at many houses in the
neighbourhood. There used to be relations of mine lived somewhere here;
I don’t know the house, nor the street exactly. The name isn’t so very
common. If you don’t mind, I should like to ask you who the child’s
parents was.’

Mrs. Peckover’s eyes were searching the speaker with the utmost
closeness.

‘I don’t mind tellin’ you,’ she said, ‘that there _is_ a child of that
name in the ’ouse, a young girl, at least. Though I don’t rightly know
her age, I take her for fourteen or fifteen.’

The old man seemed to consult his recollections.

‘If it’s anyone I’m thinking of,’ he said slowly, ‘she can’t be quite
as old as that.’

The woman’s face changed; she looked away for a moment.

‘Well, as I was sayin’, I don’t rightly know her age. Any way, I’m
responsible for her. I’ve been a mother to her, an’ a good
mother—though I say it myself—these six years or more. I look on her
now as a child o’ my own. I don’t know who you may be, mister. P’r’aps
you’ve come from abroad?’

‘Yes, I have. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that I’m
trying to find any of my kin that are still alive. There was a married
son of mine that once lived somewhere about here. His name was Joseph
James Snowdon. When I last heard of him, he was working at a
‘lectroplater’s in Clerkenwell. That was thirteen years ago. I deal
openly with you; I shall thank you if you’ll do the like with me.’

‘See, will you just come in? I’ve got a few friends in the front-room;
there’s been a death in the ’ouse, an’ there’s sickness, an’ we’re out
of order a bit, I’ll ask you to come downstairs.’

It was late in the afternoon, and though lights were not yet required
in the upper rooms, the kitchen would have been all but dark save for
the fire. Mrs. Peckover lit a lamp and bade her visitor be seated. Then
she re-examined his face, his attire, his hands. Everything about him
told of a life spent in mechanical labour. His speech was that of an
untaught man, yet differed greatly from the tongue prevailing in
Clerkenwell; he was probably not a Londoner by birth, and—a point of
more moment—he expressed himself in the tone of one who is habitually
thoughtful, who, if the aid of books has been denied to him, still has
won from life the kind of knowledge which develops character. Mrs.
Peckover had small experience of faces which bear the stamp of simple
sincerity. This man’s countenance put her out. As a matter of course,
he wished to overreach her in some way, but he was obviously very deep
indeed. And then she found it so difficult to guess his purposes. How
would he proceed if she gave him details of Jane’s history, admitting
that she was the child of Joseph James Snowdon? What, again, had he
been told by the people of whom he had made inquiries? She needed time
to review her position.

‘As I was sayin’,’ she resumed, poking the fire, ‘I’ve been a mother to
her these six years or more, an’ I feel I done the right thing by her.
She was left on my ’ands by them as promised to pay for her keep; an’ a
few months, I may say a few weeks, was all as ever I got. Another woman
would a sent the child to the ‘Ouse; but that’s always the way with me;
I’m always actin’ against my own interesses.’

‘You say that her parents went away and left her?’ asked the old man,
knitting his brows.

‘Her father did. Her mother, she died in this very ’ouse, an’ she was
buried from it. He gave her a respectable burial, I’ll say that much
for him. An’ I shouldn’t have allowed anything but one as was
respectable to leave this ’ouse; I’d sooner a paid money out o’ my own
pocket. That’s always the way with me. Mr. Willis, he’s my undertaker;
you’ll find him at Number 17 Green Passage. He buried my ’usband;
though that wasn’t from the Close; but I never knew a job turned out
more respectable. He was ’ere to-day; we’ve only just buried my
’usband’s mother. That’s why I ain’t quite myself—see?’

Mrs. Peckover was not wont to be gossipy. She became so at present,
partly in consequence of the stimulants she had taken to support her
through a trying ceremony, partly as a means of obtaining time to
reflect. Jane’s unlucky illness made an especial difficulty in her
calculations. She felt that the longer she delayed mention of the fact,
the more likely was she to excite suspicion; on the other hand, she
could not devise the suitable terms in which to reveal it. The steady
gaze of the old man was disconcerting. Not that he searched her face
with a cunning scrutiny, such as her own eyes expressed; she would have
found that less troublesome, as being familiar. The anxiety, the
troubled anticipation, which her words had aroused in him, were wholly
free from shadow of ignoble motive; he was pained, and the frequent
turning away of his look betrayed that part of the feeling was caused
by observation of the woman herself, but every movement visible on his
features was subdued by patience and mildness. Suffering was a life’s
habit with him, and its fruit in this instance that which (spite of
moral commonplace) it least often bears—self-conquest.

‘You haven’t told me yet,’ he said, with quiet disregard of her
irrelevancies, ‘whether or not her father’s name was Joseph Snowdon.’

‘There’s no call to hide it. That was his name. I’ve got letters of his
writin’. “J. J. Snowdon” stands at the end, plain enough. And he was
your son, was he?’

‘He was. But have you any reason to think he’s dead?’

‘Dead! I never heard as he was. But then I never heard as he was
livin’, neither. When his wife went, poor thing—an’ it was a chill on
the liver, they said; it took her very sudden—he says to me, “Mrs.
Peckover,” he says, “I know you for a motherly woman”—just like
that—see?—“I know you for a motherly woman,” he says, “an’ the idea I
have in my ’ed is as I should like to leave Janey in your care,
’cause,” he says, “I’ve got work in Birmingham, an’ I don’t see how I’m
to take her with me. Understand me?” he says. “Oh!” I says—not feelin’
quite sure what I’d ought to do—see? “Oh!” I says. “Yes,” he says; “an’
between you an’ me,” he says, “there won’t be no misunderstanding. If
you’ll keep Janey with you”—an’ she was goin’ to school at the time,
’cause she went to the same as my own Clem—that’s
Clemintiner—understand?—“if you’ll keep Janey with you,” he says, “for
a year, or maybe two years, or maybe three years—’cause that depends on
cirkinstances”—understand?—“I’m ready,” he says, “to pay you what it’s
right that pay I should, an’ I’m sure,” he says, “as we shouldn’t
misunderstand one another.” Well, of course I had my own girl to bring
up, an’ my own son to look after too. A nice sort o’ son; just when he
was beginnin’ to do well, an’ ought to a paid me back for all the
expense I was at in puttin’ him to a business, what must he do but take
his ’ook to Australia.’

Her scrutiny discerned something in the listener’s face which led her
to ask:

‘Perhaps you’ve been in Australia yourself, mister?’

‘I have.’

The woman paused, speculation at work in her eyes.

‘Do you know in what part of the country your son is?’ inquired the old
man absently.

‘He’s wrote me two letters, an’ the last, as come more than a year ago,
was from a place called Maryborough.’

The other still preserved an absent expression; his eyes travelled
about the room.

‘I always said,’ pursued Mrs. Peckover, ‘as it was Snowdon as put
Australia into the boy’s ’ed. He used to tell us he’d got a brother
there, doin’ well. P’r’aps it wasn’t true.’

‘Yes, it was true,’ replied the old man coldly. ‘But you haven’t told
me what came to pass about the child.’

An exact report of all that Mrs. Peckover had to say on this subject
would occupy more space than it merits. The gist of it was that for
less than a year she had received certain stipulated sums irregularly;
that at length no money at all was forthcoming; that in the tenderness
of her heart she had still entertained the child, sent her to school,
privately instructed her in the domestic virtues, trusting that such
humanity would not lack even its material reward, and that either
Joseph Snowdon or someone akin to him would ultimately make good to her
the expenses she had not grudged.

‘She’s a child as pays you back for all the trouble you take, so much I
_will_ say for her,’ observed the matron in conclusion. ‘Not as it
hasn’t been a little ‘ard to teach her tidiness, but she’s only a young
thing still. I shouldn’t wonder but she’s felt her position a little
now an’ then; it’s only natural in a growin’ girl, do what you can to
prevent it. Still, she’s willin’; that nobody can deny, an’ I’m sure I
should never wish to. Her cirkinstances has been peculiar; that you’ll
understand, I’m sure. But I done my best to take the place of the
mother as is gone to a better world. An’ now that she’s layin’ ill, I’m
sure no mother could feel it more—’

‘Ill? Why didn’t you mention that before?’

‘Didn’t I say as she was ill? Why, I thought it was the first word I
spoke as soon as you got into the ’ouse. You can’t a noticed it, or
else it was me as is so put about. What with havin’ a burial—’

‘Where is she?’ asked the old man anxiously.

‘Where? Why, you don’t think as I’d a sent her to be looked after by
strangers? She’s layin’ in Mrs. Hewett’s room—that’s one o’ the
lodgers—all for the sake o’ comfort. A better an’ kinder woman than
Mrs. Hewett you wouldn’t find, not if you was to—’

With difficulty the stranger obtained a few details of the origin and
course of the illness—details wholly misleading, but devised to
reassure. When he desired to see Jane, Mrs. Peckover assumed an air of
perfect willingness, but reminded him that she had nothing save his
word to prove that he had indeed a legitimate interest in the girl.

‘I can do no more than tell you that Joseph James Snowdon was my
younger son,’ replied the old man simply. ‘I’ve come back to spend my
last years in England, and I hoped—I hope still—to find my son. I wish
to take his child into my own care; as he left her to strangers—perhaps
he didn’t do it willingly; he may be dead—he could have nothing to say
against me giving her the care of a parent. You’ve been at expense—’

Mrs. Peckover waited with eagerness, but the sentence remained
incomplete. Again the old man’s eyes strayed about the room. The
current of his thoughts seemed to change, and he said:

‘You could show me those letters you spoke of—of my son’s writing?’

‘Of course I could,’ was the reply, in the tone of coarse resentment
whereby the scheming vulgar are wont to testify to their dishonesty.

‘Afterwards—afterwards. I should like to see Jane, if you’ll be so
good.’

The mild voice, though often diffident, now and then fell upon a note
of quiet authority which suited well with the speaker’s grave, pure
countenance. As he spoke thus, Mrs. Peckover rose, and said she would
first go upstairs just to see how things were. She was absent ten
minutes, then a little girl—Amy Hewett—came into the kitchen and asked
the stranger to follow her.

Jane had been rapidly transferred from the mattress to the bedstead,
and the room had been put into such order as was possible. A whisper
from Mrs. Peckover to Mrs. Hewett, promising remission of half a week’s
rent, had sufficed to obtain for the former complete freedom in her
movements. The child, excited by this disturbance, had begun to moan
and talk inarticulately. Mrs. Peckover listened for a moment, but heard
nothing dangerous. She bade the old man enter noiselessly, and herself
went about on tip-toe, speaking only in a hoarse whisper.

The visitor had just reached the bedside, and was gazing with deep,
compassionate interest at the unconscious face, when Jane, as if
startled, half rose and cried painfully, ‘Mr. Kirkwood! oh, Mr.
Kirkwood!’ and she stretched her hand out, appearing to believe that
the friend she called upon was near her.

‘Who is that?’ inquired the old man, turning to his companion.

‘Only a friend of ours,’ answered Mrs. Peckover, herself puzzled and
uneasy.

Again the sick girl called ‘Mr. Kirkwood!’ but without other words.
Mrs. Peckover urged the danger of this excitement, and speedily led the
way downstairs.




CHAPTER VI

GLIMPSES OF THE PAST


Sidney Kirkwood had a lodging in Tysoe Street, Clerkenwell. It is a
short street, which, like so many in London, begins reputably and
degenerates in its latter half. The cleaner end leads into Wilmington
Square, which consists of decently depressing houses, occupied in the
main, as the lower windows and front-doors indicate, by watchmakers,
working jewellers, and craftsmen of allied pursuits. The open space,
grateful in this neighbourhood, is laid out as a garden, with trees,
beds, and walks. Near the iron gate, which, for certain hours in the
day, gives admission, is a painted notice informing the public that, by
the grace of the Marquis of Northampton, they may here take their ease
on condition of good behaviour; to children is addressed a distinct
warning that ‘This is not a playing ground.’ From his window Sidney had
a good view of the Square. The house in which he lived was of two
storeys; a brass plate on the door showed the inscription, ‘Hodgson,
Dial Painter.’ The window on the ground floor was arched, as in the
other dwellings at this end of the street, and within stood an artistic
arrangement of wax fruit under a glass shade, supported by a heavy
volume of Biblical appearance. The upper storey was graced with a small
iron balcony, on which straggled a few flower-pots. However, the
exterior of this abode was, by comparison, promising; the curtains and
blinds were clean, the step was washed and whitened, the brass plate
shone, the panes of glass had at all events acquaintance with a duster.
A few yards in the direction away from the Square, and Tysoe Street
falls under the dominion of dry-rot.

It was not until he set forth to go to work next morning that Sidney
called to mind his conversation with Jane. That the child should have
missed by five minutes a meeting with someone who perchance had the
will and the power to befriend her, seemed to him, in his present mood,
merely an illustration of a vice inherent in the nature of things. He
determined to look in at the public-house of which she had spoken, and
hear for himself what manner of man had made inquiries for people named
Snowdon. The name was not a common one; it was worth while to spend a
hope or two on the chance of doing Jane a kindness. Her look and voice
when he bade her be of good courage had touched him. In his rejected
state, he felt that it was pleasant to earn gratitude even from so
humble a being as the Peckovers’ drudge.

His workshop, it has been mentioned, was in St. John’s Square. Of all
areas in London thus defined, this Square of St. John is probably the
most irregular in outline. It is cut in two by Clerkenwell Road, and
the buildings which compose it form such a number of recesses, of
abortive streets, of shadowed alleys, that from no point of the Square
can anything like a general view of its totality be obtained. The exit
from it on the south side is by St. John’s Lane, at the entrance to
which stands a survival from a buried world—the embattled and windowed
archway which is all that remains above ground of the great Priory of
St. John of Jerusalem. Here dwelt the Knights Hospitallers, in days
when Clerkenwell was a rural parish, distant by a long stretch of green
country from the walls of London. But other and nearer memories are
revived by St. John’s Arch. In the rooms above the gateway dwelt, a
hundred and fifty years ago, one Edward Cave, publisher of the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, and there many a time has sat a journeyman
author of his, by name Samuel Johnson, too often _impransus_. There it
was that the said Samuel once had his dinner handed to him behind a
screen, because of his unpresentable costume, when Cave was
entertaining an aristocratic guest. In the course of the meal, the
guest happened to speak with interest of something he had recently read
by an obscure Mr. Johnson; whereat there was joy behind the screen, and
probably increased appreciation of the unwonted dinner. After a walk
amid the squalid and toil-infested ways of Clerkenwell, it impresses
one strangely to come upon this monument of old time. The archway has a
sad, worn, grimy aspect. So closely is it packed in among buildings
which suggest nothing but the sordid struggle for existence, that it
looks depressed, ashamed, tainted by the ignobleness of its
surroundings. The wonder is that it has not been swept away, in
obedience to the great law of traffic and the spirit of the time.

St. John’s Arch had a place in Sidney Kirkwood’s earliest memories.
From the window of his present workshop he could see its grey
battlements, and they reminded him of the days when, as a lad just
beginning to put questions about the surprising world in which he found
himself, he used to listen to such stories as his father could tell him
of the history of Clerkenwell. Mr. Kirkwood occupied part of a house in
St. John’s Lane, not thirty yards from the Arch; he was a printers’
roller maker, and did but an indifferent business. A year after the
birth of Sidney, his only child, he became a widower. An intelligent,
warm-hearted man, the one purpose of his latter years was to realise
such moderate competency as should place his son above the anxieties
which degrade. The boy had a noticeable turn for drawing and colouring;
at ten years old, when (as often happened) his father took him for a
Sunday in the country, he carried a sketch-book and found his delight
in using it. Sidney was to be a draughtsman of some kind; perhaps an
artist, if all went well. Unhappily things went the reverse of well. In
his anxiety to improve his business, Mr. Kirkwood invented a new kind
of ‘composition’ for printers’ use; he patented it, risked capital upon
it, made in a short time some serious losses. To add to his troubles,
young Sidney was giving signs of an unstable character; at fifteen he
had grown tired of his drawing, wanted to be this, that, and the other
thing, was self-willed, and showed no consideration for his father’s
difficulties. It was necessary to take a decided step, and, though
against his will, Sidney was apprenticed to an uncle, a Mr. Roach, who
also lived in Clerkenwell, and was a working jeweller. Two years later
the father died, all but bankrupt. The few pounds realised from his
effects passed into the hands of Mr. Roach, and were soon expended in
payment for Sidney’s board and lodging.

His bereavement possibly saved Sidney from a young-manhood of
foolishness and worse. In the upper world a youth may ‘sow his wild
oats’ and have done with it; in the nether, ‘to have your fling’ is
almost necessarily to fall among criminals. The death was sudden; it
affected the lad profoundly, and filled him with a remorse which was to
influence the whole of his life. Mr. Roach, a thick-skinned and rather
thick-headed person, did not spare to remind his apprentice of the most
painful things wherewith the latter had to reproach himself. Sidney
bore it, from this day beginning a course of self-discipline of which
not many are capable at any age, and very few indeed at seventeen.
Still, there had never been any sympathy between him and his uncle, and
before very long the young man saw his way to live under another roof
and find work with a new employer.

It was just after leaving his uncle’s house that Sidney came to know
John Hewett; the circumstances which fostered their friendship were
such as threw strong light on the characters of both. Sidney had taken
a room in Islington, and two rooms on the floor beneath him were
tenanted by a man who was a widower and had two children. In those
days, our young friend found much satisfaction in spending his Sunday
evenings on Clerkenwell Green, where fervent, if ungrammatical, oratory
was to be heard, and participation in debate was open to all whom the
spirit moved. One whom the spirit did very frequently move was Sidney’s
fellow-lodger; he had no gift of expression whatever, but his brief,
stammering protests against this or that social wrong had such an
honest, indeed such a pathetic sound, that Sidney took an opportunity
of walking home with him and converting neighbourship into friendly
acquaintance. John Hewett gave the young man an account of his life. He
had begun as a lath-render; later he had got into cabinet-making,
started a business on his own account, and failed. A brother of his,
who was a builder’s foreman, then found employment for him in general
carpentry on some new houses; but John quarrelled with his brother, and
after many difficulties fell to the making of packing-cases; that was
his work at present, and with much discontent he pursued it. John was
curiously frank in owning all the faults in himself which had helped to
make his career so unsatisfactory. He confessed that he had an
uncertain temper, that he soon became impatient with work ‘which led to
nothing,’ that he was tempted out of his prudence by anything which
seemed to offer ‘a better start.’ With all these admissions, he
maintained that he did well to be angry. It was wrong that life should
be so hard; so much should not be required of a man. In body he was not
strong; the weariness of interminable days over-tried him and excited
his mind to vain discontent. His wife was the only one who could ever
keep him cheerful under his lot, and his wedded life had lasted but six
years; now there was his lad Bob and his little girl Clara to think of,
and it only made him more miserable to look forward and see them going
through hardships like his own. Things were wrong somehow, and it
seemed to him that ‘if only we could have universal suffrage—’

Sidney was only eighteen, and strong in juvenile Radicalism, but he had
a fund of common sense, and such a conclusion as this of poor John’s
half-astonished, half-amused him. However, the man’s personality
attracted him; it was honest, warm-hearted, interesting; the logic of
his pleadings might be at fault, but Sidney sympathised with him, for
all that. He too felt that ‘things were wrong somehow,’ and had a
pleasure in joining the side of revolt for revolt’s sake.

Now in the same house with them dwelt a young woman of about nineteen
years old; she occupied a garret, was seldom seen about, and had every
appearance of being a simple, laborious girl, of the kind familiar
enough as the silent victims of industrialism. One day the house was
thrown into consternation by the news that Miss Barnes—so she was
named—had been arrested on a charge of stealing her employer’s goods.
It was true, and perhaps the best way of explaining it will be to
reproduce a newspaper report which Sidney Kirkwood thereafter
preserved.

‘On Friday, Margaret Barnes, nineteen, a single woman, was indicted for
stealing six jackets, value 5_l_., the property of Mary Oaks, her
mistress. The prisoner, who cried bitterly during the proceedings,
pleaded guilty. The prosecutrix is a single woman, and gets her living
by mantle-making. She engaged the prisoner to do what is termed
“finishing off,” that is, making the button-holes and sewing on the
buttons. The prisoner was also employed to fetch the work from the
warehouse, and deliver it when finished. On September 7th her mistress
sent her with the six jackets, and she never returned. Sergeant Smith,
a detective, who apprehended the prisoner, said he had made inquiries
in the case, and found that up to this time the prisoner had borne a
good character as an honest, hard-working girl. She had quitted her
former lodgings, which had no furniture but a small table and a few
rags in a corner, and he discovered her in a room which was perfectly
bare. Miss Oaks was examined, and said the prisoner was employed from
nine in the morning to eight at night. The Judge: How much did you pay
her per week? Miss Oaks: Four shillings. The Judge: Did you give her
her food? Miss Oaks: No; I only get one shilling each for the jackets
myself when completed. I have to use two sewing-machines, find my own
cotton and needles, and I can, by working hard, make two in a day. The
Judge said it was a sad state of things. The prisoner, when called
upon, said she had had nothing to eat for three days, and so gave way
to temptation, hoping to get better employment. The Judge, while
commiserating with the prisoner, said it could not be allowed that
distress should justify dishonesty, and sentenced the prisoner to six
weeks’ imprisonment.’

The six weeks passed, and about a fortnight after that, John Hewett
came into Sidney’s room one evening with a strange look on his face.
His eyes were very bright, the hand which he held out trembled.

‘I’ve something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get married
again.’

‘Really? Why, I’m glad to hear it!’

‘And who do you think? Miss Barnes.’

Sidney was startled for a moment. John had had no acquaintance with the
girl prior to her imprisonment. He had said that he should meet her
when she came out and give her some money, and Sidney had added a
contribution. For a man in Hewett’s circumstances this latest step was
somewhat astonishing, but his character explained it.

‘I’m goin’ to marry her,’ he exclaimed excitedly, ‘and I’m doing the
right thing! I respect her more than all the women as never went wrong
because they never had occasion to. I’m goin’ to put her as a mother
over my children, and I’m goin’ to make a happier life for her. She’s a
good girl, I tell you. I’ve seen her nearly every day this fortnight; I
know all about her. She wouldn’t have me when I first asked her—that
was a week ago. She said no; she’d disgrace me. If you can’t respect
her as you would any other woman, never come into my lodging!’

Sidney was warm with generous glow. He wrung Hewett’s hand and
stammered incoherent words.

John took new lodgings in an obscure part of Clerkenwell, and seemed to
have become a young man once more. His complaints ceased; the energy
with which he went about his work was remarkable. He said his wife was
the salvation of him. And then befell one of those happy chances which
supply mankind with instances for its pathetic faith that a good deed
will not fail of reward. John’s brother died, and bequeathed to him
some four hundred pounds. Hereupon, what must the poor fellow do but
open workshops on his own account, engage men, go about crying that his
opportunity had come at last. Here was the bit of rock by means of
which he could save himself from the sea of competition that had so
nearly whelmed him! Little Clara, now eleven years old, could go on
steadily at school; no need to think of how the poor child should earn
a wretched living. Bob, now thirteen, should shortly be apprenticed to
some better kind of trade. New rooms were taken and well furnished.
Maggie, the wife, could have good food, such as she needed in her
constant ailing, alas! The baby just born was no longer a cause of
anxious thought, but a joy in the home. And Sidney Kirkwood came to
supper as soon as the new rooms were in order, and his bright, manly
face did everyone good to look at. He still took little Clara upon his
knee. Ha! there would come a day before long when he would not venture
to do that, and then perhaps—perhaps! What a supper that was, and how
smoothly went the great wheels of the world that evening!

One baby, two babies, three babies; before the birth of the third,
John’s brow was again clouded, again he had begun to rail and fume at
the unfitness of things. His business was a failure, partly because he
dealt with a too rigid honesty, partly because of his unstable nature,
which left him at the mercy of whims and obstinacies and airy projects.
He did not risk the ordinary kind of bankruptcy, but came down and
down, until at length he was the only workman in his own shop; then the
shop itself had to be abandoned; then he was searching for someone who
would employ him.

Bob had been put to the die-sinker’s craft; Clara was still going to
school, and had no thought of earning a livelihood—ominous state of
things, When it shortly became clear even to John Hewett that he would
wrong the girl if he did not provide her with some means of supporting
herself, she was sent to learn ‘stamping’ with the same employer for
whom her brother worked. The work was light; it would soon bring in a
little money. John declared with fierceness that his daughter should
never be set to the usual needle-slavery, and indeed it seemed very
unlikely that Clara would ever be fit for that employment, as she could
not do the simplest kind of sewing. In the meantime the family kept
changing their abode, till at length they settled in Mrs. Peckover’s
house. All the best of their furniture was by this time sold; but for
the two eldest children, there would probably have been no home at all.
Bob, aged nineteen, earned at this present time a pound weekly; his
sister, an average of thirteen shillings. Mrs. Hewett’s constant
ill-health (the result, doubtless, of semi-starvation through the years
of her girlhood), would have excused defects of housekeeping; but
indeed the poor woman was under any circumstances incapable of domestic
management, and therein represented her class. The money she received
was wasted in comparison with what might have been done with it. I
suppose she must not be blamed for bringing children into the world
when those already born to her were but half-clothed, half-fed; she
increased the sum total of the world’s misery in obedience to the laws
of the Book of Genesis. And one virtue she had which compensated for
all that was lacking—a virtue merely negative among the refined, but in
that other world the rarest and most precious of moral distinctions—she
resisted the temptations of the public-house.

This was the story present in Sidney Kirkwood’s mind as often as he
climbed the staircase in Clerkenwell Close. By contrast, his own life
seemed one of unbroken ease. Outwardly it was smooth enough. He had no
liking for his craft, and being always employed upon the meaningless
work which is demanded by the rich vulgar, he felt such work to be
paltry and ignoble; but there seemed no hope of obtaining better, and
he made no audible complaint. His wages were considerably more than he
needed, and systematically he put money aside each week.

But this orderly existence concealed conflicts of heart and mind which
Sidney himself could not have explained, could not lucidly have
described. The moral shock which he experienced at his father’s death
put an end to the wanton play of his energies, but it could not ripen
him before due time; his nature was not of the sterile order common in
his world, and through passion, through conflict, through endurance, it
had to develop such maturity as fate should permit. Saved from
self-indulgence, he naturally turned into the way of political
enthusiasm; thither did his temper point him. With some help—mostly
negative—from Clerkenwell Green, he reached the stage of confident and
aspiring Radicalism, believing in the perfectibility of man, in human
brotherhood, in—anything you like that is the outcome of a noble heart
sheltered by ignorance. It had its turn, and passed.

To give place to nothing very satisfactory. It was not a mere
coincidence that Sidney was going through a period of mental and moral
confusion just in those years which brought Clara Hewett from childhood
to the state of woman. Among the acquaintances of Sidney’s boyhood
there was not one but had a chosen female companion from the age of
fifteen or earlier; he himself had been no exception to the rule in his
class, but at the time of meeting with Hewett he was companionless, and
remained so. The Hewetts became his closest friends; in their brief
prosperity he rejoiced with them, in their hardships he gave them all
the assistance to which John’s pride would consent; his name was never
spoken among them but with warmth and gratitude. And of course the day
came to which Hewett had looked forward—the day when Sidney could no
longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with
her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what
was in his friend’s mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he
felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be
his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him;
but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she
grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought of
Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love which at length he
recognised there blended a sense of fate fulfilling itself. His
enthusiasms, his purposes, never defined as education would have
defined them, were dissipated into utter vagueness. He lost his guiding
interests, and found himself returning to those of boyhood. The country
once more attracted him; he took out his old sketch-books, bought a new
one, revived the regret that he could not be a painter of landscape. A
visit to one or two picture-galleries, and then again profound
discouragement, recognition of the fact that he was a mechanic and
never could be anything else.

It was the end of his illusions. For him not even passionate love was
to preserve the power of idealising its object. He loved Clara with all
the desire of his being, but could no longer deceive himself in judging
her character. The same sad clearness of vision affected his judgment
of the world about him, of the activities in which he had once been
zealous, of the conditions which enveloped his life and the lives of
those dear to him. The spirit of revolt often enough stirred within
him, but no longer found utterance in the speech which brings relief;
he did his best to dispel the mood, mocking at it as folly. Consciously
he set himself the task of becoming a practical man, of learning to
make the best of life as he found it, of shunning as the fatal error
that habit of mind which kept John Hewett on the rack. Who was he that
he should look for pleasant things in his course through the world? ‘We
are the lower orders; we are the working classes,’ he said bitterly to
his friend, and that seemed the final answer to all his aspirations.

This was a dark day with him. The gold he handled stung him to hatred
and envy, and every feeling which he had resolved to combat as worse
than profitless. He could not speak to his fellow-workmen. From morning
to night it had rained. St. John’s Arch looked more broken-spirited
than ever, drenched in sooty moisture.

During the dinner-hour he walked over to the public-house of which Jane
had spoken, and obtained from the barman as full a description as
possible of the person he hoped to encounter. Both then and on his
return home in the evening he shunned the house where his friends
dwelt.

It came round to Monday. For the first time for many months he had
allowed Sunday to pass without visiting the Hewetts. He felt that to go
there at present would only be to increase the parents’ depression by
his own low spirits. Clara had left them now, however, and if he still
stayed away, his behaviour might be misinterpreted. On returning from
work, he washed, took a hurried meal, and was on the point of going out
when someone knocked at his door. He opened, and saw an old man who was
a stranger to him.




CHAPTER VII

MRS. BYASS’S LODGINGS


‘You are Mr. Kirkwood?’ said his visitor civilly. ‘My name is Snowdon.
I should be glad to speak a few words with you, if you could spare the
time.’

Sidney’s thoughts were instantly led into the right channel; he
identified the old man by his white hair and the cloak. The hat,
however, which had been described to him, was now exchanged for a soft
felt of a kind common enough; the guernsey, too, had been laid aside.
With ready goodwill he invited Mr. Snowdon to enter.

There was not much in the room to distinguish it from the dwelling of
any orderly mechanic. A small bed occupied one side; a small table
stood before the window; the toilet apparatus was, of course,
unconcealed; a half-open cupboard allowed a glimpse of crockery,
sundries, and a few books. The walls, it is true, were otherwise
ornamented than is usual; engravings, chromo-lithographs, and some
sketches of landscape in pencil, were suspended wherever light fell,
and the choice manifested in this collection was nowise akin to that
which ruled in Mrs. Peckover’s parlour, and probably in all the
parlours of Tysoe Street. To select for one’s chamber a woodcut after
Constable or Gainsborough is at all events to give proof of a capacity
for civilisation.

The visitor made a quick survey of these appearances; then he seated
himself on the chair Sidney offered. He was not entirely at his ease,
and looked up at the young man twice or thrice before he began to speak
again.

‘Mr. Kirkwood, were you ever acquainted with my son, by name Joseph
Snowdon?’

‘No; I never knew him,’ was the reply. ‘I have heard his name, and I
know where he once lived—not far from here.’

‘You’re wondering what has brought me to you. I have heard of you from
people a grandchild of mine is living with. I dare say it is the house
you mean—in Clerkenwell Close.’

‘So you have found it!’ exclaimed Sidney with pleasure. ‘I’ve been
looking about for you as I walked along the streets these last two or
three days.’

‘Looking for me?’ said the other, astonished.

Sidney supplied the explanation, but without remarking on the
circumstances which made Jane so anxious to discover a possible friend.
Snowdon listened attentively, and at length, with a slight smile; he
seemed to find pleasure in the young man’s way of expressing himself.
When silence ensued, he looked about absently for a moment; then,
meeting Sidney’s eyes, said in a grave voice:

‘That poor child is very ill.’

‘Ill? I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘The reason I’ve come to you, Mr. Kirkwood, is because she’s called out
your name so often. They don’t seem able to tell me how she came into
this state, but she’s had a fright of some kind, or she’s been living
very unhappily. She calls on your name, as if she wanted you to protect
her from harm. I didn’t know what to think about it at first. I’m a
stranger to everybody—I may tell you I’ve been abroad for several
years—and they don’t seem very ready to put trust in me; but I decided
at last that I’d come and speak to you. It’s my grandchild, and perhaps
the only one of my family left; nobody can give me news of her father
since he went away four or five years ago. She came to herself this
morning for a little, but I’m afraid she couldn’t understand what I
tried to tell her; then I mentioned your name, and I could see it did
her good at once. What I wish to ask of you is, would you come to her
bedside for a few minutes? She might know you, and I feel sure it would
be a kindness to her.’

Sidney appeared to hesitate. It was not, of course, that he dreamt of
refusing, but he was busy revolving all he knew of Jane’s life with the
Peckovers, and asking himself what it behoved him to tell, what to
withhold. Daily experience guarded him against the habit of gossip,
which is one of the innumerable curses of the uneducated (whether poor
or wealthy), and, notwithstanding the sympathy with which his visitor
inspired him, he quickly decided to maintain reserve until he
understood more of the situation.

‘Yes, yes; I’ll go with you at once,’ he made haste to reply, when he
perceived that his hesitancy was occasioning doubt and trouble. ‘In
fact, I was just starting to go and see the Hewetts when you knocked at
the door. They’re friends of mine—living in Mrs. Peckover’s house.
That’s how I came to know Jane. I haven’t been there for several days,
and when I last saw her, as I was saying, she seemed as well as usual.’

‘I’m afraid that wasn’t much to boast of,’ said Snowdon. ‘She’s a poor,
thin-looking child.’

Sidney was conscious that the old man did not give expression to all he
thought. This mutual exercise of tact seemed, however, to encourage a
good understanding between them rather than the reverse.

‘You remain in the house?’ Kirkwood asked as they went downstairs.

‘I stay with her through the night. I didn’t feel much confidence in
the doctor that was seeing her, so I made inquiries and found a better
man.’

When they reached the Close, the door was opened to them by Clem
Peckover. She glared haughtily at Sidney, but uttered no word. To
Kirkwood’s surprise, they went up to the Hewetts’ back-room. The
mattress that formerly lay upon the floor had been removed; the bed was
occupied by the sick girl, with whom at present Mrs. Peckover was
sitting. That benevolent person rose on seeing Sidney, and inclined her
head with stateliness.

‘She’s just fell asleep,’ was her whispered remark. ‘I shouldn’t say
myself as it was good to wake her up, but of course you know best.’

This was in keeping with the attitude Mrs. Peckover had adopted as soon
as she understood Snowdon’s resolve to neglect no precaution on the
child’s behalf. Her sour dignity was meant to express that she felt
hurt at the intervention of others where her affections were so nearly
concerned. Sidney could not help a certain fear when he saw this woman
installed as sick-nurse. It was of purpose that he caught her eye and
regarded her with a gravity she could scarcely fail to comprehend.

Jane awoke from her fitful slumber. She looked with but half-conscious
fearfulness at the figures darkening her view. Sidney moved so that his
face was in the light, and, bending near to her, asked if she
recognised him. A smile—slow-forming, but unmistakable at last—amply
justified what her grandfather had said. She made an effort to move her
hand towards him. Sidney responded to her wish, and again she smiled,
self-forgetfully, contentedly.

Snowdon turned to Mrs. Peckover, and, after a few words with regard to
the treatment that was being pursued, said that he would now relieve
her; she lingered, but shortly left the room. Sidney, sitting by the
bed, in a few minutes saw that Jane once more slept, or appeared to do
so. He whispered to Snowdon that he was going to see his friends in the
next room, and would look in again before leaving.

His tap at the door was answered by Amy, who at once looked back and
said:

‘Can Mr. Kirkwood come in, mother?’

‘Yes; I want to see him,’ was the answer.

Mrs. Hewett was lying in bed; she looked, if possible, more wretchedly
ill than four days ago. On the floor were two mattresses, covered to
make beds for the children. The baby, held in its mother’s arms, was
crying feebly.

‘Why, I hoped you were getting much better by now,’ said Sidney.

Mrs. Hewett told him that she had been to the hospital on Saturday, and
seemed to have caught cold. A common enough occurrence; hours of
waiting in an out-patients’ room frequently do more harm than the
doctor’s advice can remedy. She explained that Mrs. Peckover had
requested the use of the other room.

‘There’s too many of us to be livin’ an’ sleepin’ in this little
place,’ she said; ‘but, after all, it’s a savin’ of rent. It’s a good
thing Clara isn’t here. An’ you’ve heard as John’s got work?’

He had found a job at length with a cabinet-maker; to-night he would
probably be working till ten or eleven o’clock. Good news so far. Then
Mrs. Hewett began to speak with curiosity of the old man who claimed
Jane as his grandchild. Sidney told her what had just happened.

‘An’ what did you say about the girl?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I said as little as I could; I thought it wisest. Do you know what
made her ill?’

‘It was that Clem as did it,’ Mrs. Hewett replied, subduing her voice,
And she related what had befallen after Sidney’s last visit. ‘Mrs.
Peckover, she’s that afraid the truth should get out. Of course I don’t
want to make no bother, but I do feel that glad the poor thing’s got
somebody to look after her at last. I never told you half the things as
used to go on. That Clem’s no better than a wild-beast tiger; but then
what can you do? There’s never any good comes out of makin’ a bother
with other people’s business, is there? Fancy him comin’ to see you!
Mrs. Peckover’s afraid of him, I can see that, though she pretends she
isn’t goin’ to stand him interferin’. What do you think about him,
Sidney? He’s sent for a doctor out of Islington; wouldn’t have nothin’
to say to the other. He must have plenty of money, don’t you think?
Mrs. Peckover says he’s goin’ to pay the money owin’ to her for Jane’s
keep. As if the poor thing hadn’t more than paid for her bits of meals
an’ her bed in the kitchen! Do you think that woman ‘ud ever have kept
her if it wasn’t she could make her a servant with no wages? If Jane
‘ud been a boy, she’d a gone to the workhouse long ago. She’s been that
handy, poor little mite! I’ve always done what I could for her; you
know that, Sidney. I do hope she’ll get over it. If anything happens,
mind my word, there’ll be a nice to-do! Clara says she’ll go to a
magistrate an’ let it all out, if nobody else will. She hates the
Peckovers, Clara does.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ said Sidney. ‘I can see the old man’ll take
her away as soon as possible. He may have a little money; he’s just
come back from Australia. I like the look of him myself.’

He began to talk of other subjects; waxed wrath at the misery of this
housing to which the family had shrunk; urged a removal from the vile
den as soon as ever it could be managed. Sidney always lost control of
himself when he talked with the Hewetts of their difficulties; the
people were, from his point of view, so lacking in resource, so
stubbornly rooted in profitless habit. Over and over again he had
implored them to take a rational view of the case, to borrow a few
pounds of him, to make a new beginning on clean soil. It was like
contending with some hostile force of nature; he spent himself in vain.

As Hewett did not return, he at length took his leave, and went into
the back-room for a moment.

‘She’s asleep,’ said Snowdon, rising from the chair where he had been
sitting deep in thought. ‘It’s a good sign.’

Sidney just looked towards the bed, and nodded with satisfaction. The
old man gave him a warm pressure of the hand, and he departed. All the
way home, he thought with singular interest of the bare sick-room, of
the white-headed man watching through the night; the picture impressed
him in a way that could not be explained by its natural pathos merely;
it kept suggesting all sorts of fanciful ideas, due in a measure,
possibly, to Mrs. Hewett’s speculations. For an hour he was so lost in
musing on the subject that he even rested from the misery of his
ceaseless thought of Clara.

He allowed three days to pass, then went to inquire about Jane’s
progress. It had been satisfactory. Subsequent visits brought him to
terms of a certain intimacy with Snowdon. The latter mentioned at
length that he was looking for two rooms, suitable for himself and
Jane. He wished them to be in a decent house, somewhere in Clerkenwell,
and the rent was not to be more than a working man could afford.

‘You don’t know of anything in your street?’ he asked diffidently.

Something in the tone struck Sidney. It half expressed a wish to live
in his neighbourhood if possible. He looked at his companion (they were
walking together), and was met in return with a glance of calm
friendliness; it gratified him, strengthened the feeling of respect and
attachment which had already grown out of this intercourse. In Tysoe
Street, however, no accommodation could be found. Sidney had another
project in his thoughts; pursuing it, he paid a visit the next evening
to certain acquaintances of his named Byass, who had a house in Hanover
Street, Islington, and let lodgings. Hanover Street lies to the north
of City Road; it is a quiet byway, of curving form, and consists of
dwellings only. Squalor is here kept at arm’s length; compared with
regions close at hand, this and the contiguous streets have something
of a suburban aspect.

Three or four steps led up to the house-door. Sidney’s knock summoned a
young, healthy-faced, comely woman, who evinced hearty pleasure on
seeing who her visitor was. She brought him at once into a parlour on
the ground floor.

‘Well, an’ I was only this mornin’ tellin’ Sam to go an’ look after
you, or write a note, or somethin’! Why can’t you come round oftener?
I’ve no patience with you! You just sit at ’ome an’ get humped, an’
what’s the good o’ that, I should like to know? I thought you’d took
offence with me, an’ so I told Sam. Do you want to know how baby is?
Why don’t you ask, then, as you ought to do the first thing? He’s a
good deal better than he deserves to be, young rascal—all the trouble
he gives me! He’s fast asleep, I’m glad to say, so you can’t see him.
Sam’ll be back in a few minutes; at least I expect him, but there’s no
knowin’ nowadays when he can leave the warehouse. What’s brought you
to-night, I wonder? You needn’t tell me anything about the Upper Street
business; _I_ know all about _that_!’

‘Oh, do you? From Clara herself?’

‘Yes. Don’t talk to me about her! There! I’m sick an tired of her—an’
so are you, I should think, if you’ve any sense left. Her an’ me can’t
get along, an’ that’s the truth. Why, when I met her on Sunday
afternoon, she was that patronisin’ you’d have thought she’d got a
place in Windsor Castle. Would she come an’ have a cup of tea? Oh dear,
no! Hadn’t time! The Princess of Wales, I suppose, was waitin’ round
the corner!’

Having so relieved her mind, Mrs. Byass laughed with a genuine gaiety
which proved how little malice there was in her satire. Sidney could
not refuse a smile, but it was a gloomy one.

‘I’m not sure you’ve done all you might have to keep her friends with
you,’ he said seriously, but with a good-natured look.

‘There you go!’ exclaimed Mrs. Byass, throwing back her head. ‘Of
course everybody must be in fault sooner than _her_! She’s an angel is
Miss Hewett! Poor dear! to think how shameful she’s been used! Now I do
wonder how you’ve the face to say such things, Mr. Kirkwood! Why,
there’s nobody else livin’ would have been as patient with her as I
always was. I’m not bad-tempered, I will say that for myself, an’ I’ve
put up with all sorts of things (me, a married woman), when anyone else
would have boxed her ears and told her she was a conceited minx. I used
to be fond of Clara; you know I did. But she’s got beyond all bearin’;
and if you wasn’t just as foolish as men always are, you’d see her in
her true colours. Do shake yourself a bit, do! Oh, you silly, silly
man!’

Again she burst into ringing laughter, throwing herself backwards and
forwards, and at last covering her face with her hands. Sidney looked
annoyed, but the contagion of such spontaneous merriment in the end
brought another smile to his face. He moved his head in sign of giving
up the argument, and, as soon as there was silence, turned to the
object of his visit.

‘I see you’ve still got the card in the window. I shouldn’t wonder if I
could find you a lodger for those top-rooms.’

‘And who’s that? No children, mind.’

Sidney told her what he could of the old man. Of Jane he only said that
she had hitherto lived with the Hewetts’ landlady, and was now going to
be removed by her grandfather, having just got through an illness. Dire
visions of infection at once assailed Mrs. Byass; impossible to admit
under the same roof with her baby a person who had just been ill. This
scruple was, however, overcome; the two rooms at the top of the
house—unfurnished—had been long vacant, owing to fastidiousness in Mr.
and Mrs. Byass, since their last lodger, after a fortnight of
continuous drunkenness, broke the windows, ripped the paper off the
walls, and ended by trying to set fire to the house. Sidney was
entrusted with an outline treaty, to be communicated to Mr. Snowdon.

This discussion was just concluded when Mr. Samuel Byass presented
himself—a slender, large-headed young man, with very light hair cropped
close upon the scalp, and a foolish face screwed into an expression of
facetiousness. He was employed in some clerkly capacity at a wholesale
stationer’s in City Road. Having stepped into the room, he removed a
very brown silk hat and laid it on a chair, winking the while at Sidney
with his right eye; then he removed his overcoat, winking with the left
eye. Thus disembarrassed, he strode gravely to the fireplace, took up
the poker, held it in the manner of a weapon upright against his
shoulder, and exclaimed in a severe voice, ‘Eyes right!’ Then,
converting the poker into a sword, he drew near to Sidney and affected
to practise upon him the military cuts, his features distorted into
grotesque ferocity. Finally, assuming the attitude of a juggler, he
made an attempt to balance the poker perpendicularly upon his nose,
until it fell with a crash, just missing the ornaments on the
mantel-piece. All this time Mrs. Byass shrieked with laughter, with
difficulty keeping her chair.

‘Oh, Sam,’ she panted forth, her handkerchief at her eyes, ‘what a fool
you are! Do stop, or you’ll kill me!’

Vastly gratified, Samuel advanced with ludicrous gestures towards the
visitor, held out his hand, and said with affected nasality, ‘How do
you do, sir? It’s some time since I had the pleasure of seeing you,
sir. I hope you have been pretty tolerable.’

‘_Isn’t_ he a fool, Mr. Kirkwood?’ cried the delighted wife. ‘Do just
give him a smack on the side of the head, to please me! Sam, go an’
wash, an’ we’ll have supper. What do you mean by being so late
to-night?’

‘Where’s the infant?’ asked Mr. Byass, thrusting his hands into his
waistcoat pockets and peering about the room. ‘Bring forth the infant!
Let a fond parent look upon his child.’

‘Go an’ wash, or I’ll throw something at you. Baby’s in bed, and mind,
you wake him if you dare!’

Sidney would have taken his leave, but found it impossible. Mrs. Byass
declared that if he would not stay to supper he should never enter the
house again.

‘Let’s make a night of it!’ cried Sam, standing in the doorway. ‘Let’s
have three pots of six ale and a bottle of old Tom! Let us be
reckless!’

His wife caught up the pillow from the sofa and hurled it at him.
Samuel escaped just in time. The next moment his head was again thrust
forward.

‘Let’s send to the High Street for three cold roast fowls and a
beef-steak pie! Let’s get custards and cheese-cakes and French pastry!
Let’s have a pine-apple and preserved ginger! Who says, Go it for
once?’

Mrs. Byass caught up the poker and sprang after him. From the passage
came sounds of scuffling and screaming, and in the end of something
produced by the lips. Mrs. Byass then showed a very red face at the
door, and said:

‘_Isn’t_ he a fool? Just wait a minute while I get the table laid.’

Supper was soon ready in the comfortable kitchen. A cold shoulder of
mutton, a piece of cheese, pickled beetroot, a seed-cake, and raspberry
jam; such was the fare to which Bessie Byass invited her husband and
her guest. On a side-table were some open cardboard boxes containing
artificial flowers and leaves; for Bessie had now and then a little
‘mounting’ to do for a shop in Upper Street, and in that way aided the
income of the family. She was in even better spirits than usual at the
prospect of letting her top-rooms. On hearing that piece of news,
Samuel, who had just come from the nearest public-house with a foaming
jug, executed a wild dance round the room and inadvertently knocked two
plates from the dresser. This accident made his wife wrathful, but only
for a moment; presently she was laughing as unrestrainedly as ever, and
bestowing upon the repentant young man her familiar flattery.

At eleven o’clock Sidney left them, and mused with smiles on his way
home. This was not exactly his ideal of domestic happiness, yet it was
better than the life led by the Hewetts—better than that of other
households with which he was acquainted—better far, it seemed to him,
than the aspirations which were threatening to lead poor Clara—who knew
whither? A temptation beset him to walk round into Upper Street and
pass Mrs. Tubbs’s bar. He resisted it, knowing that the result would
only be a night of sleepless anger and misery.

The next day he again saw Snowdon, and spoke to him of Mrs. Byass’s
rooms. The old man seemed at first indisposed to go so far; but when he
had seen the interior of the house and talked with the landlady, his
objections disappeared. Before another week had passed the two rooms
were furnished in the simplest possible way, and Snowdon brought Jane
from Clerkenwell Close.

Kirkwood came by invitation as soon as the two were fairly established
in their home. He found Jane sitting by the fire in her grandfather’s
room; a very little exertion still out-wearied her, and the strange
things that had come to pass had made her habitually silent. She looked
about her wonderingly, seemed unable to realise her position, was
painfully conscious of her new clothes, ever and again started as if in
fear.

‘Well, what did I say that night?’ was Sidney’s greeting. ‘Didn’t I
tell you it would be all right soon?’

Jane made no answer in words, but locked at him timidly; and then a
smile came upon her face, an expression of joy that could not trust
itself, that seemed to her too boldly at variance with all she had yet
known of life.




CHAPTER VIII

PENNYLOAF CANDY


In the social classification of the nether world—a subject which so
eminently adapts itself to the sportive and gracefully picturesque mode
of treatment—it will be convenient to distinguish broadly, and with
reference to males alone, the two great sections of those who do, and
those who do not, wear collars. Each of these orders would, it is
obvious, offer much scope to an analyst delighting in subtle gradation.
Taking the collarless, how shrewdly might one discriminate between the
many kinds of neckcloth which our climate renders necessary as a
substitute for the nobler article of attire! The navvy, the scaffolder,
the costermonger, the cab-tout—innumerable would be the varieties of
texture, of fold, of knot, observed in the ranks of unskilled labour.
And among these whose higher station is indicated by the linen or paper
symbol, what a gap between the mechanic with collar attached to a
flannel shirt, and just visible along the top of a black tie, and the
shopman whose pride it is to adorn himself with the very ugliest
neck-encloser put in vogue by aristocratic sanction. For such
attractive disquisition I have, unfortunately, no space; it must
suffice that I indicate the two genera. And I was led to do so in
thinking of Bob Hewett.

Bob wore a collar. In the die-sinking establishment which employed him
there were, it is true, two men who belonged to the collarless; but
their business was down in the basement of the building, where they
kept up a furnace, worked huge stamping-machines, and so on. Bob’s
workshop was upstairs, and the companions with whom he sat, without
exception, had something white and stiff round their necks; in fact,
they were every bit as respectable as Sidney Kirkwood, and such as he,
who bent over a jeweller’s table. To John Hewett it was no slight
gratification that he had been able to apprentice his son to a craft
which permitted him always to wear a collar. I would not imply that
John thought of the matter in these terms, but his reflections bore
this significance. Bob was raised for ever above the rank of those who
depend merely upon their muscles, even as Clara was saved from the
dismal destiny of the women who can do nothing but sew.

There was, on the whole, some reason why John Hewett should feel pride
in his eldest son. Like Sidney Kirkwood, Bob had early shown a faculty
for draughtsmanship; when at school, he made decidedly clever
caricatures of such persons as displeased him, and he drew such
wonderful horses (on the race-course or pulling cabs), such laughable
donkeys in costers’ carts, such perfect dogs, that on several occasions
some friend had purchased with a veritable shilling a specimen of his
work. ‘Put him to the die-sinking,’ said an acquaintance of the family,
himself so employed; ‘he’ll find a use for this kind of thing some
day.’ Die-sinking is not the craft it once was; cheap methods,
vulgarising here as everywhere, have diminished the opportunities of
capable men; but a fair living was promised the lad if he stuck to his
work, and at the age of nineteen he was already earning his pound a
week. Then he was clever in a good many other ways. He had an ear for
music, played (nothing else was within his reach) the concertina, sang
a lively song with uncommon melodiousness—a gift much appreciated at
the meetings of a certain Mutual Benefit Club, to which his father had
paid a weekly subscription, without fail, through all adversities. In
the regular departments of learning Bob had never shown any particular
aptitude; he wrote and read decently, but his speech, as you have had
occasion for observing, was not marked by refinement, and for books he
had no liking. His father, unfortunately, had spoilt him, just as he
had spoilt Clara. Being of the nobly independent sex, between fifteen
and sixteen he practically freed himself from parental control. The use
he made of his liberty was not altogether pleasing to John, but the
time for restraint and training had hopelessly gone by. The lad was
selfish, that there was no denying; he grudged the money demanded of
him for his support; but in other matters he always showed himself so
easy-tempered, so disposed to a genial understanding, that the great
fault had to be blinked. Many failings might have been forgiven him in
consideration of the fact that he had never yet drunk too much, and
indeed cared little for liquor.

Men of talent, as you are aware, not seldom exhibit low tastes in their
choice of companionship. Bob was a case in point; he did not
sufficiently appreciate social distinctions. He, who wore a collar,
seemed to prefer associating with the collarless. There was Jack—more
properly ‘Jeck’—Bartley, for instance, his bosom friend until they
began to cool in consequence of a common interest in Miss Peckover.
Jack never wore a collar in his life, not even on Sundays, and was
closely allied with all sorts of blackguards, who somehow made a living
on the outskirts of turf-land. And there was Eli Snape, compared with
whom Jack was a person of refinement and culture. Eli dealt
surreptitiously in dogs and rats, and the mere odour of him was
intolerable to ordinary nostrils; yet he was a species of hero in Bob’s
regard, such invaluable information could he supply with regard to
‘events’ in which young Hewett took a profound interest. Perhaps a more
serious aspect of Bob’s disregard for social standing was revealed in
his relations with the other sex. Susceptible from his tender youth, he
showed no ambition in the bestowal of his amorous homage. At the age of
sixteen did he not declare his resolve to wed the daughter of old Sally
Budge, who went about selling watercress? and was there not a desperate
conflict at home before this project could be driven from his head? It
was but the first of many such instances. Had he been left to his own
devices, he would already, like numbers of his coevals, have been
supporting (or declining to support) a wife and two or three children.
At present he was ‘engaged’ to Clem Peckover; that was an understood
thing. His father did not approve it, but this connection was
undeniably better than those he had previously declared or concealed.
Bob, it seemed evident, was fated to make a _mesalliance_—a pity,
seeing his parts and prospects. He might have aspired to a wife who had
scarcely any difficulty with her _h_’s; whose bringing-up enabled her
to look with compassion on girls who could not play the piano; who
counted among her relatives not one collarless individual.

Clem, as we have seen, had already found, or imagined, cause for
dissatisfaction with her betrothed. She was well enough acquainted with
Bob’s repute, and her temper made it improbable, to say the least, that
the course of wooing would in this case run very smoothly. At present,
various little signs were beginning to convince her that she had a
rival, and the hints of her rejected admirer, Jack Bartley, fixed her
suspicions upon an acquaintance whom she had hitherto regarded merely
with contempt. This was Pennyloaf Candy, formerly, with her parents, a
lodger in Mrs. Peckover’s house. The family had been ousted some
eighteen months ago on account of failure to pay their rent and of the
frequent intoxication of Mrs. Candy. Pennyloaf’s legal name was
Penelope, which, being pronounced as a trisyllable, transformed itself
by further corruption into a sound at all events conveying some
meaning. Applied in the first instance jocosely, the title grew
inseparable from her, and was the one she herself always used. Her
employment was the making of shirts for export; she earned on an
average tenpence a day, and frequently worked fifteen hours between
leaving and returning to her home. That Bob Hewett could interest
himself, with whatever motive, in a person of this description, Miss
Peckover at first declined to believe. A hint, however, was quite
enough to excite her jealous temperament; as proof accumulated, cunning
and ferocity wrought in her for the devising of such a declaration of
war as should speedily scare Pennyloaf from the field. Jane Snowdon’s
removal had caused her no little irritation; the hours of evening were
heavy on her hands, and this new emotion was not unwelcome as a
temporary resource.

As he came home from work one Monday towards the end of April, Bob
encountered Pennyloaf; she had a bundle in her hands and was walking
hurriedly.

‘Hallo! that you?’ he exclaimed, catching her by the arm. ‘Where are
you going?’

‘I can’t stop now. I’ve got some things to put away, an’ it’s nearly
eight.’

‘Come round to the Passage to-night. Be there at ten.’

‘I can’t give no promise. There’s been such rows at ’ome. You know
mother summonsed father this mornin’?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard. All right! come if you can; I’ll be there.’

Pennyloaf hastened on. She was a meagre, hollow-eyed, bloodless girl of
seventeen, yet her features had a certain charm—that dolorous kind of
prettiness which is often enough seen in the London needle-slave. Her
habitual look was one of meaningless surprise; whatever she gazed upon
seemed a source of astonishment to her, and when she laughed, which was
not very often, her eyes grew wider than ever. Her attire was
miserable, but there were signs that she tried to keep it in order; the
boots upon her feet were sewn and patched into shapelessness; her limp
straw hat had just received a new binding.

By saying that she had things ‘to put away,’ she meant that her
business was with the pawnbroker, who could not receive pledges after
eight o’clock. It wanted some ten minutes of the hour when she entered
a side-doorway, and, by an inner door, passed into one of a series of
compartments constructed before the pawnbroker’s counter. She deposited
her bundle, and looked about for someone to attend to her. Two young
men were in sight, both transacting business; one was conversing
facetiously with a customer on the subject of a pledge. Two or three
gas-jets lighted the interior of the shop, but the boxes were in
shadow. There was a strong musty odour; the gloom, the narrow
compartments, the low tones of conversation, suggested stealth and
shame.

Pennyloaf waited with many signs of impatience, until one of the
assistants approached, a smartly attired youth, with black hair greased
into the discipline he deemed becoming, with an aquiline nose, a coarse
mouth, a large horseshoe pin adorning his necktie, and rings on his
fingers. He caught hold of the packet and threw it open; it consisted
of a petticoat and the skirt of an old dress.

‘Well, what is it?’ he asked, rubbing his tongue along his upper lip
before and after speaking.

‘Three an’ six, please, sir.’

He rolled the things up again with a practised turn of the hand, and
said indifferently, glancing towards another box, ‘Eighteenpence.’

‘Oh, sir, we had two shillin’s on the skirt not so long ago,’ pleaded
Pennyloaf, with a subservient voice. ‘Make it two shillin’s—please do,
sir!

The young man paid no attention; he was curling his moustache and
exchanging a smile of intelligence with his counter-companion with
respect to a piece of business the latter had in hand. Of a sudden he
turned and said sharply:

‘Well, are you goin’ to take it or not?’

Pennyloaf sighed and nodded.

‘Got a ‘apenny?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He fetched a cloth, rolled the articles in it very tightly, and pinned
them up; then he made out ticket and duplicate, handling his pen with
facile flourish, and having blotted the little piece of card on a box
of sand (a custom which survives in this conservative profession), he
threw it to the customer. Lastly, he counted out one shilling and five
pence halfpenny. The coins were sandy, greasy, and of scratched
surface.

Pennyloaf sped homewards. She lived in Shooter’s Gardens, a picturesque
locality which demolition and rebuilding have of late transformed. It
was a winding alley, with paving raised a foot above the level of the
street whence was its main approach. To enter from the obscurer end,
you descended a flight of steps, under a low archway, in a court itself
not easily discovered. From without, only a glimpse of the Gardens was
obtainable; the houses curved out of sight after the first few yards,
and left surmise to busy itself with the characteristics of the hidden
portion. A stranger bold enough to explore would have discovered that
the Gardens had a blind offshoot, known simply as ‘The Court.’ Needless
to burden description with further detail; the slum was like any other
slum; filth, rottenness, evil odours, possessed these dens of
superfluous mankind and made them gruesome to the peering imagination.
The inhabitants of course felt nothing of the sort; a room in Shooter’s
Gardens was the only kind of home that most of them knew or desired.
The majority preferred it, on all grounds, to that offered them in a
block of model lodgings not very far away; here was independence, that
is to say, the liberty to be as vile as they pleased. How they came to
love vileness, well, that is quite another matter, and shall not for
the present concern us.

Pennyloaf ran into the jaws of this black horror with the indifference
of habit; it had never occurred to her that the Gardens were fearful in
the night’s gloom, nor even that better lighting would have been a
convenience. Did it happen that she awoke from her first sleep with the
ring of ghastly shrieking in her ears, that was an incident of too
common occurrence to cause her more than a brief curiosity; she could
wait till the morning to hear who had half-killed whom. Four days ago
it was her own mother’s turn to be pounded into insensibility; her
father (a journeyman baker, often working nineteen hours out of the
twenty-four, which probably did not improve his temper), maddened by
his wife’s persistent drunkenness, was stopped just on the safe side of
murder. To the amazement and indignation of the Gardens, Mrs. Candy
prosecuted her sovereign lord; the case had been heard to-day, and
Candy had been cast in a fine. The money was paid, and the baker went
his way, remarking that his family were to ‘expect him back when they
saw him.’ Mrs. Candy, on her return, was hooted through all the length
of the Gardens, a demonstration of public feeling probably rather of
base than of worthy significance.

As Pennyloaf drew near to the house, a wild, discordant voice suddenly
broke forth somewhere in the darkness, singing in a high key, ‘All ye
works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for
ever!’ It was Mad Jack, who had his dwelling in the Court, and at all
hours was wont to practise the psalmody which made him notorious
throughout Clerkenwell. A burst of laughter followed from a group of
men and boys gathered near the archway. Unheeding, the girl passed in
at an open door and felt her way up a staircase; the air was noisome,
notwithstanding a fierce draught which swept down the stairs. She
entered a room lighted by a small metal lamp hanging on the wall—a
precaution of Pennyloaf’s own contrivance. There was no bed, but one
mattress lay with a few rags of bed-clothing spread upon it, and two
others were rolled up in a corner. This chamber accommodated, under
ordinary circumstances, four persons: Mr. and Mrs. Candy, Pennyloaf,
and a son named Stephen, whose years were eighteen. (Stephen pursued
the occupation of a potman; his hours were from eight in the morning
till midnight on week-days, and on Sunday the time during which a
public-house is permitted to be open; once a month he was allowed
freedom after six o’clock.) Against the window was hung an old shawl
pierced with many rents. By the fire sat Mrs. Candy; she leaned
forward, her head, which was bound in linen swathes, resting upon her
hands.

‘What have you got?’ she asked, in the thick voice of a drunkard,
without moving.

‘Eighteenpence; it’s all they’d give me.’

The woman cursed in her throat, but exhibited no anger with Pennyloaf.

‘Go an’ get some tea an’ milk,’ she said, after a pause. ‘There is
sugar. An’ bring seven o’ coals; there’s only a dust.’

She pointed to a deal box which stood by the hearth. Pennyloaf went out
again.

Over the fireplace, the stained wall bore certain singular ornaments.
These were five coloured cards, such as are signed by one who takes a
pledge of total abstinence; each presented the signature, ‘Maria
Candy,’ and it was noticeable that at each progressive date the
handwriting had become more unsteady. Yes, five times had Maria Candy
promised, with the help of God, to abstain,’ &c. &c.; each time she was
in earnest. But it appeared that the help of God availed little against
the views of one Mrs. Green, who kept the beer-shop in Rosoman Street,
once Mrs. Peckover’s, and who could on no account afford to lose so
good a customer. For many years that house, licensed for the sale of
non-spirituous liquors, had been working Mrs. Candy’s ruin; not a
particle of her frame but was vitiated by the drugs retailed there
under the approving smile of civilisation. Spirits would have been
harmless in comparison. The advantage of Mrs. Green’s ale was that the
very first half-pint gave conscience its bemuddling sop; for a penny
you forgot all the cares of existence; for threepence you became a
yelling maniac.

Poor, poor creature. She was sober to-night, sitting over the fire with
her face battered into shapelessness; and now that her fury had had its
way, she bitterly repented invoking the help of the law against her
husband. What use? what use? Perhaps he had now abandoned her for good,
and it was certain that the fear of him was the only thing that ever
checked her on the ruinous road she would so willingly have quitted.
But for the harm to himself, the only pity was he had not taken her
life outright. She knew all the hatefulness of her existence; she knew
also that only the grave would rescue her from it. The struggle was too
unequal between Mrs. Candy with her appeal to Providence, and Mrs.
Green with the forces of civilisation at her back.

Pennyloaf speedily returned with a ha’p’orth of milk, a pennyworth of
tea, and seven pounds (also price one penny) of coals in an apron. It
was very seldom indeed that the Candys had more of anything in their
room than would last them for the current day. There being no kettle,
water was put on to boil in a tin saucepan; the tea was made in a jug.
Pennyloaf had always been a good girl to her mother; she tended her as
well as she could to-night; but there was no word of affection from
either. Kindly speech was stifled by the atmosphere of Shooter’s
Gardens.

Having drunk her tea, Mrs. Candy lay down, as she was, on the already
extended mattress, and drew the ragged coverings about her. In half an
hour she slept.

Pennyloaf then put on her hat and jacket again and left the house. She
walked away from the denser regions of Clerkenwell, came to Sadler’s
Wells Theatre (gloomy in its profitless recollection of the last worthy
manager that London knew), and there turned into Myddelton Passage. It
is a narrow paved walk between brick walls seven feet high; on the one
hand lies the New River Head, on the other are small gardens behind
Myddelton Square. The branches of a few trees hang over; there are
doors, seemingly never opened, belonging one to each garden; a couple
of gas-lamps shed feeble light. Pennyloaf paced the length of the
Passage several times, meeting no one. Then a policeman came along with
echoing tread, and eyed her suspiciously. She had to wait more than a
quarter of an hour before Bob Hewett made his appearance. Greeting her
with a nod and a laugh, he took up a leaning position against the wall,
and began to put questions concerning the state of things at her home.

‘And what’ll your mother do if the old man don’t give her nothing to
live on?’ he inquired, when he had listened good-naturedly to the
recital of domestic difficulties.

‘Don’t know,’ replied the girl, shaking her head, the habitual surprise
of her countenance becoming a blank interrogation of destiny.

Bob kept kicking the wall, first with one heel, then with the other. He
whistled a few bars of the last song he had learnt at the music-hall.

‘Say, Penny,’ he remarked at length, with something of shamefacedness,
‘there’s a namesake of mine here as I shan’t miss, if you can do any
good with it.’

He held a shilling towards her under his hand. Pennyloaf turned away,
casting down her eyes and looking troubled.

‘We can get on for a bit,’ she said indistinctly.

Bob returned the coin to his pocket. He whistled again for a moment,
then asked abruptly:

‘Say! have you seen Clem again?’

‘No,’ replied the girl, examining him with sudden acuteness. ‘What
about her?’

‘Nothing much. She’s got her back up a bit, that’s all.’

‘About me?’ Pennyloaf asked anxiously.

Bob nodded. As he was making some further remarks on the subject, a
man’s figure appeared at a little distance, and almost immediately
withdrew again round a winding of the Passage. A moment after there
sounded from that direction a shrill whistle. Bob and the girl regarded
each other.

‘Who was that?’ said the former suspiciously. ‘I half believe it was
Jeck Bartley. If Jeck is up to any of his larks, I’ll make him remember
it. You wait here a minute!’

He walked at a sharp pace towards the suspected quarter. Scarcely had
he gone half a dozen yards, when there came running from the other end
of the Passage a girl whom Pennyloaf at once recognised. It was Clem
Peckover; with some friend’s assistance she had evidently tracked the
couple and was now springing out of ambush. She rushed upon Pennyloaf,
who for very alarm could not flee, and attacked her with clenched
fists. A scream of terror and pain caused Bob to turn and run back.
Pennyloaf could not even ward off the blows that descended upon her
head; she was pinned against the wall, her hat was torn away, her hair
began to fly in disorder. But Bob effected a speedy rescue. He gripped
Clem’s muscular arms, and forced them behind her back as if he meant to
dismember her. Even then it was with no slight effort that he
restrained the girl’s fury.

‘You run off ’ome!’ he shouted to Pennyloaf. ‘If she tries this on
again, I’ll murder her!’

Pennyloaf’s hysterical cries and the frantic invectives of her
assailant made the Passage ring. Again Bob roared to the former to be
off, and was at length obeyed. When Pennyloaf was out of sight he
released Clem. Her twisted arms caused her such pain that she threw
herself against the wall, mingling maledictions with groans. Bob burst
into scornful laughter.

Clem went home vowing vengeance. In the nether world this trifling
dissension might have been expected to bear its crop of violent
language and straightway pass into oblivion; but Miss Peckover’s
malevolence was of no common stamp, and the scene of to-night
originated a feud which in the end concerned many more people than
those immediately interested.




CHAPTER IX

PATHOLOGICAL


Through the day and through the evening Clara Hewett had her place
behind Mrs. Tubbs’s bar. For daylight wear, the dress which had
formerly been her best was deemed sufficient; it was simple, but not
badly made, and became her figure. Her evening attire was provided by
Mrs. Tubbs, who recouped herself by withholding the promised wages for
a certain number of weeks. When Clara had surveyed this garment in the
bar mirror, she turned away contemptuously; the material was cheap, the
mode vulgar. It must be borne with for the present, like other
indignities which she found to be inseparable from her position. As
soon as her employer’s claim was satisfied, and the weekly five
shillings began to be paid, Clara remembered the promise she had
volunteered to her father. But John was once more at work; for the
present there really seemed no need to give him any of her money, and
she herself, on the other hand, lacked so many things. This dress
plainly would not be suitable for the better kind of engagement she had
in view; it behoved her first of all to have one made in accordance
with her own taste. A mantle, too, a silk umbrella, gloves—It would be
unjust to herself to share her scanty earnings with those at home.

Yes; but you must try to understand this girl of the people, with her
unfortunate endowment of brains and defect of tenderness. That smile of
hers, which touched and fascinated and made thoughtful, had of course a
significance discoverable by study of her life and character. It was no
mere affectation; she was not conscious, in smiling, of the expression
upon her face. Moreover, there was justice in the sense of wrong
discernible upon her features when the very self looked forth from
them. All through his life John Hewett had suffered from the same
impulse of revolt; less sensitively constructed than his daughter,
uncalculating, inarticulate, he fumed and fretted away his energies in
a conflict with forces ludicrously personified. In the matter of his
second marriage he was seen at his best, generously defiant of social
cruelties; but self-knowledge was denied him, and circumstances
condemned his life to futility. Clara inherited his temperament;
transferred to her more complex nature, it gained in subtlety and in
power of self-direction, but lost in its nobler elements. Her mother
was a capable and ambitious woman, one in whom active characteristics
were more prominent than the emotional. With such parents, every
probability told against her patient acceptance of a lot which allowed
her faculties no scope. And the circumstances of her childhood were
such as added a peculiar bitterness to the trials waiting upon her
maturity.

Clara, you remember, had reached her eleventh year when her father’s
brother died and left the legacy of which came so little profit. That
was in 1878. State education had recently made a show of establishing
itself, and in the Hewetts’ world much argument was going on with
reference to the new Board schools, and their advantages or
disadvantages when compared with those in which working-folk’s children
had hitherto been taught. Clara went to a Church school, and the
expense was greater than the new system rendered necessary. Her
father’s principles naturally favoured education on an independent
basis, but a prejudice then (and still) common among workpeople of
decent habits made him hesitate about sending his girl to sit side by
side with the children of the street; and he was confirmed by Clara’s
own view of the matter. She spoke with much contempt of Board schools,
and gave it to be understood that her religious convictions would not
suffer her to be taught by those who made light of orthodoxy. This
attitude was intelligible enough in a child of sharp wit and abundant
self-esteem. Notwithstanding her father’s indifferentism, little Clara
perceived that a regard for religion gave her a certain distinction at
home, and elsewhere placed her apart from ‘common girls.’ She was
subject also to special influences: on the one hand, from her favourite
teacher, Miss Harrop; on the other, from a school-friend, Grace Rudd.

Miss Harrop was a good, warm-hearted woman of about thirty, one of
those unhappy persons who are made for domestic life, but condemned by
fate to school-celibacy. Lonely and impulsive, she drew to herself the
most interesting girl in her classes, and, with complete indiscretion,
made a familiar, a pet, a prodigy of one whose especial need was
discipline. By her confidences and her flatteries she set Clara aflame
with spiritual pride. Ceaselessly she excited her to ambition, remarked
on her gifts, made dazzling forecast of her future. Clara was to be a
teacher first of all, but only that she might be introduced to the
notice of people who would aid her to better things. And the child came
to regard this as the course inevitably before her. Had she not already
received school-prizes, among them a much-gilded little volume ‘for
religious knowledge’? Did she not win universal applause when she
recited a piece of verse on prize-day—Miss Harrop (disastrous
kindness!) even saying that the delivery reminded her of Mrs. ——, the
celebrated actress!

Grace Rudd was busy in the same fatal work. Four years older than
Clara, weakly pretty, sentimental, conceited, she had a fancy for
patronising the clever child, to the end that she might receive homage
in return. Poor Grace! She left school, spent a year or two at home
with parents as foolish as herself, and—disappeared. Prior to that,
Miss Harrop had also passed out of Clara’s ken, driven by restlessness
to try another school, away from London.

These losses appeared to affect Clara unfavourably. She began to
neglect her books, to be insubordinate, to exhibit arrogance, which
brought down upon her plenty of wholesome reproof. Her father was not
without a share in the responsibility for it all. Entering upon his
four hundred pounds, one of the first things John did was to hire a
piano, that his child might be taught to play. Pity that Sidney
Kirkwood could not then cry with effective emphasis, ‘We are the
working classes! we are the lower orders!’ It was exactly what Hewett
would not bring himself to understand. What! His Clara must be robbed
of chances just because her birth was not that of a young lady? Nay, by
all the unintelligible Powers, she should enjoy every help that he
could possibly afford her. Bless her bright face and her clever tongue!
Yes, it was now a settled thing that she should be trained for a
schoolteacher. An atmosphere of refinement must be made for her; she
must be better dressed, more delicately fed.

The bitter injustice of it! In the outcome you are already instructed.
Long before Clara was anything like ready to enter upon a teacher’s
career, her father’s ill-luck once more darkened over the home. Clara
had made no progress since Miss Harrop’s day. The authorities directing
her school might have come forward with aid of some kind, had it
appeared to them that the girl would repay such trouble; but they had
their forebodings about her. Whenever she chose, she could learn in
five minutes what another girl could scarcely commit to memory in
twenty; but it was obviously for the sake of display. The teachers
disliked her; among the pupils she had no friends. So at length there
came the farewell to school and the beginning of practical life, which
took the shape of learning to stamp crests and addresses on note-paper.
There was hope that before long Clara might earn thirteen shillings a
week.

The bitter injustice of it! Clara was seventeen now, and understood the
folly of which she had been guilty a few years ago, but at the same
time she felt in her inmost heart the tyranny of a world which takes
revenge for errors that are inevitable, which misleads a helpless child
and then condemns it for being found astray. She could judge herself,
yes, better than Sidney Kirkwood could judge her. She knew her defects,
knew her vices, and a feud with fate caused her to accept them
defiantly. Many a time had she sobbed out to herself, ‘I wish I could
neither read nor write! I wish I had never been told that there is
anything better than to work with one’s hands and earn daily bread!’
But she could not renounce the claims that Nature had planted in her,
that her guardians had fostered. The better she understood how
difficult was every way of advancement, the more fiercely resolute was
she to conquer satisfactions which seemed beyond the sphere of her
destiny.

Of late she had thought much of her childish successes in reciting
poetry. It was not often that she visited a theatre (her father had
always refused to let her go with any one save himself or Sidney), but
on the rare occasions when her wish was gratified, she had watched each
actress with devouring interest, with burning envy, and had said to
herself, ‘Couldn’t I soon learn to do as well as that? Can’t I see
where it might be made more lifelike? Why should it be impossible for
me to go on the stage?’ In passing a shop-window where photographs were
exposed, she looked for those of actresses, and gazed at them with
terrible intensity. ‘I am as good-looking as she is. Why shouldn’t _my_
portrait be seen some day in the windows?’ And then her heart throbbed,
smitten with passionate desire. As she walked on there was a turbid
gloom about her, and in her ears the echoing of a dread temptation. Of
all this she spoke to nobody.

For she had no friends. A couple of years ago something like an
intimacy had sprung up between her and Bessie Jones (since married and
become Bessie Byass), seemingly on the principle of contrast in
association. Bessie, like most London work-girls, was fond of the
theatre, and her talk helped to nourish the ambition which was secretly
developing in Clara. But the two could not long harmonise. Bessie, just
after her marriage, ventured to speak with friendly reproof of Clara’s
behaviour to Sidney Kirkwood. Clara was not disposed to admit freedoms
of that kind; she half gave it to be understood that, though others
might be easily satisfied, she had views of her own on such subjects.
Thereafter Mrs. Byass grew decidedly cool. The other girls with whom
Clara had formal intercourse showed no desire to win her confidence;
they were kept aloof by her reticent civility.

As for Sidney himself, it was not without reason that he had seen
encouragement in the girl’s first reply to his advances. At sixteen,
Clara found it agreeable to have her good graces sought by the one man
in whom she recognised superiority of mind and purpose. Of all the
unbetrothed girls she knew not one but would have felt flattered had
Kirkwood thus distinguished her. Nothing common adhered to his
demeanour, to his character; he had the look of one who will hold his
own in life; his word had the ring of truth. Of his generosity she had
innumerable proofs, and it contrasted nobly with the selfishness of
young men as she knew them; she appreciated it all the more because her
own frequent desire to be unselfish was so fruitless. Of awakening
tenderness towards him she knew nothing, but she gave him smiles and
words which might mean little or much, just for the pleasure of
completing a conquest. Nor did she, in truth, then regard it as
impossible that, sooner or later, she might become his wife. If she
_must_ marry a workman, assuredly it should be Sidney. He thought so
highly of her, he understood things in her to which the ordinary
artisan would have been dead; he had little delicacies of homage which
gave her keen pleasure. And yet—well, time enough!

Time went very quickly, and changed both herself and Sidney in ways she
could not foresee. It was true, all he said to her in anger that night
by the prison wall—true and deserved every word of it. Even in
acknowledging that, she hardened herself against him implacably. Since
he chose to take this tone with her, to throw aside all his graceful
blindness to her faults, he had only himself to blame if she considered
everything at an end between them. She tried to believe herself glad
this had happened; it relieved her from an embarrassment, and made her
absolutely free to pursue the ambitions which now gave her no rest. For
all that, she could not dismiss Sidney from her mind; indeed,
throughout the week that followed their parting, she thought of him
more persistently than for many months. That he would before long seek
pardon for his rudeness she felt certain, she felt also that such
submission would gratify her in a high degree. But the weeks were
passing and no letter came; in vain she glanced from the window of the
bar at the faces which moved by. Even on Sunday, when she went home for
an hour or two, she neither saw nor heard of Kirkwood. She could not
bring herself to ask a question.

Under any circumstances Clara would ill have borne a suspense that
irritated her pride, and at present she lived amid conditions so
repugnant, that her nerves were ceaselessly strung almost beyond
endurance. Before entering upon this engagement she had formed but an
imperfect notion of what would be demanded of her. To begin with, Mrs.
Tubbs belonged to the order of women who are by nature slave-drivers;
though it was her interest to secure Clara for a permanency, she began
by exacting from the girl as much labour as could possibly be included
in their agreement. The hours were insufferably long; by nine o’clock
each evening Clara was so outworn that with difficulty she remained
standing, yet not until midnight was she released. The unchanging
odours of the place sickened her, made her head ache, and robbed her of
all appetite. Many of the duties were menial, and to perform them
fevered her with indignation. Then the mere waiting upon such men as
formed the majority of the customers, vulgarly familiar, when not
insolent, in their speech to her, was hateful beyond anything she had
conceived. Had there been no one to face but her father, she would have
returned home and resumed her old occupation at the end of the first
fortnight, so extreme was her suffering in mind and body; but rather
than give Sidney Kirkwood such a triumph, she would work on, and
breathe no word of what she underwent. Even in her anger against him,
the knowledge of his forgiving disposition, of the sincerity of his
love, was an unavowed support. She knew he could not utterly desert
her; when some day he sought a reconciliation, the renewal of conflict
between his pride and her own would, she felt, supply her with new
courage.

Early one Saturday afternoon she was standing by the windows, partly
from heavy idleness of thought, partly on the chance that Kirkwood
might go by, when a young, well-dressed man, who happened to be passing
at a slow walk, turned his head and looked at her. He went on, but in a
few moments Clara, who had moved back into the shop, saw him enter and
come forwards. He took a seat at the counter and ordered a luncheon.
Clara waited upon him with her customary cold reserve, and he made no
remark until she returned him change out of the coin he offered.

Then he said with an apologetic smile:

‘We are old acquaintances, Miss Hewett, but I’m afraid you’ve forgotten
me.’

Clara regarded him in astonishment. His age seemed to be something
short of thirty; he had a long, grave, intelligent face, smiled
enigmatically, spoke in a rather slow voice. His silk hat, sober
necktie drawn through a gold ring, and dark morning-coat, made it
probable that he was ‘in the City.’

‘We used to know each other very well about five years ago,’ he
pursued, pocketing his change carelessly. ‘Don’t you remember a Mr.
Scawthorne, who used to be a lodger with some friends of yours called
Rudd?’

On the instant memory revived in Clara. In her schooldays she often
spent a Sunday afternoon with Grace Rudd, and this Mr. Scawthorne was
generally at the tea-table. Mr. and Mrs. Rudd made much of him, said
that he held a most important post in a lawyer’s office, doubtless had
private designs concerning him and their daughter. Thus aided, she even
recognised his features.

‘And you knew me again after all this time?’

‘Yours isn’t an easy face to forget,’ replied Mr. Scawthorne, with the
subdued polite smile which naturally accompanied his tone of
unemotional intimacy. ‘To tell you the whole truth, however, I happened
to hear news of you a few days ago. I met Grace Rudd; she told me you
were here. Some old friend had told _her_.’

Grace’s name awoke keen interest in Clara. She was startled to hear it,
and did not venture to make the inquiry her mind at once suggested. Mr.
Scawthorne observed her for an instant, then proceeded to satisfy her
curiosity. Grace Rudd was on the stage; she had been acting in
provincial theatres under the name of Miss Danvers, and was now waiting
for a promised engagement at a minor London theatre.

‘Do you often go to the theatre?’ he added carelessly. ‘I have a great
many acquaintances connected with the stage in one way or another. If
you would like, I should be very glad to send you tickets now and then.
I always have more given me than I can well use.’

Clara thanked him rather coldly, and said that she was very seldom free
in the evening. Thereupon Mr. Scawthorne again smiled, raised his hat,
and departed.

Possibly he had some consciousness of the effect of his words, but it
needed a subtler insight, a finer imagination than his, to interpret
the pale, beautiful, harassed face which studiously avoided looking
towards him as he paused before stepping out on to the pavement. The
rest of the evening, the hours of night that followed, passed for Clara
in hot tumult of heart and brain. The news of Grace Rudd had flashed
upon her as revelation of a clear possibility where hitherto she had
seen only mocking phantoms of futile desire. Grace was an actress; no
matter by what course, to this she had attained. This man, Scawthorne,
spoke of the theatrical life as one to whom all its details were
familiar; acquaintance with him of a sudden bridged over the chasm
which had seemed impassable. Would he come again to see her? Had her
involuntary reserve put an end to any interest he might have felt in
her? Of him personally she thought not at all; she could not have
recalled his features; he was a mere abstraction, the representative of
a wild hope which his conversation had inspired.

From that day the character of her suffering was altered; it became
less womanly, it defied weakness and grew to a fever of fierce,
unscrupulous rebellion. Whenever she thought of Sidney Kirkwood, the
injury he was inflicting upon her pride rankled into bitter resentment,
unsoftened by the despairing thought of self-subdual which had at times
visited her sick weariness. She bore her degradations with the sullen
indifference of one who is supported by the hope of a future revenge.
The disease inherent in her being, that deadly outcome of social
tyranny which perverts the generous elements of youth into mere seeds
of destruction, developed day by day, blighting her heart, corrupting
her moral sense, even setting marks of evil upon the beauty of her
countenance. A passionate desire of se

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