George Gissing
The Nether World
CHAPTER XIII
THE BRINGER OF ILL NEWS
Knowing the likelihood that Clara Hewett would go from home for Bank-holiday, Sidney made it his request before he left Hanover Street on Sunday night that Jane might be despatched on her errand at an early hour next morning. At eight o'clock, accordingly, Snowdon went forth with his granddaughter, and, having discovered the street to which Sidney had directed him, he waited at a distance whilst Jane went to make her inquiries. In a few minutes the girl rejoined him.
'Miss Hewett has gone away,' she reported.
'To spend the day, do you mean?' was Snowdon's troubled question.
'No, she has left the house. She went yesterday, in the afternoon. It was very sudden, the landlady says, and she doesn't know where she's gone to.'
Jane had no understanding of what her information implied; seeing that it was received as grave news, she stood regarding her grandfather anxiously. Though Clara had passed out of her world since those first days of illness, Jane held her in a memory which knew no motive of retention so strong as gratitude. The thought of harm or sorrow coming upon her protector had a twofold painfulness. Instantly she divined that Clara was in some way the cause of Sidney Kirkwood's inability to go into the country to-day. For a long time the two had been closely linked in her reflections; Mrs. Peckover and Clem used constantly to exchange remarks which made this inevitable. But not until now had Jane really felt the significance of the bond. Of a sudden she had a throbbing at her heart, and a confusion of mind which would not allow her to pursue the direct train of thought naturally provoked by the visit she had just paid. A turbid flood of ideas, of vague surmises, of apprehensions, of forecasts, swept across her consciousness. The blood forsook her cheeks. But that the old man began to move away, she could have remained thus for many minutes, struggling with that new, half-understood thing which was taking possession of her life.
The disappointment of the day was no longer simple, and such as a child experiences. Nor ever from this hour onwards would Jane regard things as she had been wont to do, with the simple feelings of childhood.
Snowdon walked on in silence until the street they had visited was far behind them. Jane was accustomed to his long fits of musing, but now she with difficulty refrained from questioning him. He said at length:
'Jane, I'm afraid we shall have to give up our day in the country.'
She assented readily, gladly; all the joy had gone out of the proposed excursion, and she wished Dow to be by herself in quietness.
'I think I'll let you go home alone,' Snowdon continued. 'I want to see Mr. Kirkwood, and I dare say I shall find him in, if I walk on at once.'
They went in different directions, and Snowdon made what speed he could to Tysoe Street. Sidney had already been out, walking restlessly and aimlessly for two or three hours. The news he now heard was the half-incredible fulfilment of a dread that had been torturing him through the night. No calamity is so difficult to realise when it befalls as one which has haunted us in imagination.
'That means nothing!' he exclaimed, as if resentfully. 'She was dissatisfied with the lodging, that's all. Perhaps she's already got a place. I dare say there's a note from her at home this morning.'
'Shall you go and see if there is?' asked Snowdon, allowing, as usual, a moment's silence to intervene.
Sidney hesitated, avoiding the other's look.
'I shall go to that house first of all, I think. Of course I shall hear no more than they told Jane; but—'
He took a deep breath.
'Yes, go there,' said Snowdon; 'but afterwards go to the Hewetts'. If she hasn't written to them, or let them have news of any kind, her father oughtn't to be kept in ignorance for another hour.'
'He ought to have been told before this,' replied Sidney ill a thick under-voice. 'He ought to have been told on Saturday. And the blame'll be mine.'
It is an experience familiar to impulsive and self-confident men that a moment's crisis may render scarcely intelligible a mode of thought or course of action which till then one had deemed perfectly rational. Sidney, hopeless in spite of the pretences he made, stood aghast at the responsibility he had taken upon himself. It was so obvious to him now that he ought to have communicated to John Hewett without loss of time the news which Mrs. Hewett brought on Saturday morning. But could he be sure that John was still in ignorance of Clara's movements? Was it not all but certain that Mrs. Hewett must have broken the news before this? If not, there lay before him a terrible duty.
The two went forth together, and another visit was paid to the lodging-house. After that Sidney called upon Mrs. Tubbs, and made a simple inquiry for Clara, with the anticipated result.
'You won't find her in this part of London, it's my belief,' said the woman significantly. 'She's left the lodgings as she took—so much I know. Never meant to stay there, not she! You're a friend of her father's, mister?'
Sidney could not trust himself to make a reply. He rejoined Snowdon at a little distance, and expressed his intention of going at once to Clerkenwell Close.
'Let me see you again to-day,' said the old man sadly.
Sidney promised, and they took leave of each other. It was now nearing ten o'clock. In the Close an organ was giving delight to a great crowd of children, some of them wearing holiday garb, but most clad in the native rags which served them for all seasons and all days. The volume of clanging melody fell with torture upon Kirkwood's ear, and when he saw that the instrument was immediately before Mrs. Peckover's house, he stood aside in gloomy impatience, waiting till it should move away. This happened in a few minutes. The house door being open, he walked straight upstairs.
On the landing he confronted Mrs. Hewett; she started on seeing him, and whispered a question. The exchange of a few words apprised Sidney that Hewett did not even know of Clara's having quitted Mrs. Tubbs'.
'Then I must tell him everything,' he said. To put the task upon the poor woman would have been simple cowardice. Merely in hearing his news she was blanched with dread. She could only point to the door of the front room—the only one rented by the family since Jane Snowdon's occupation of the other had taught them to be as economical in this respect as their neighbours were.
Sidney knocked and entered. Two months had passed since his latest visit, and he observed that in the meantime everything had become more squalid. The floor, the window, the furniture, were not kept so clean as formerly—inevitable result of the overcrowding of a room; the air was bad, the children looked untidy. The large bed had not been set in order since last night; in it lay the baby, crying as always, ailing as it had done from the day of its birth. John Hewett was engaged in mending one of the chairs, of which the legs had become loose. He looked with surprise at the visitor, and at once averted his face sullenly.
'Mr. Hewett,' Kirkwood began, without form of greeting, 'on Saturday morning I heard something that I believe I ought to have let you know at once. I felt, though, that it was hardly my business; and somehow we haven't been quite so open with each other just lately as we used to be.'
His voice sank. Hewett had risen from his crouching attitude, and was looking him full in the face with eyes which grew momentarily darker and more hostile.
'Well? Why are you stopping? What have you got to say?'
The words came from a dry throat; the effort to pronounce them clearly made the last all but violent.
'On Friday night,' Sidney resumed, his own utterance uncertain, 'Clara left her place. She took a room not far from Upper Street, and I saw her, spoke to her. She'd quarrelled with Mrs. Tubbs. I urged her to come home, but she wouldn't listen to me. This morning I've been to try and see her again, but they tell me she went away yesterday afternoon. I can't find where she's living now.'
Hewett took a step forward. His face was so distorted, so fierce, that Sidney involuntarily raised an arm, as if to defend himself.
'An' it's you as comes tellin' me this!' John exclaimed, a note of anguish blending with his fury. 'You have the face to stand there an' speak like that to me, when you know it's all your own doing! Who was the cause as the girl went away from 'ome? Who was it, I say? Haven't been as friendly as we used to be, haven't we? An' why? Haven't I seen it plainer an' plainer what you was thinkin' when you told me to let her have her own way? I spoke the truth then—'cause I felt it; an' I was fool enough, for all that, to try an' believe I was in the wrong. Now you come an' stand before me—why, I couldn't a' thought there was a man had so little shame in him!'
Mrs. Hewett entered the room; the loud angry voice had reached her ears, and in spite of terror she came to interpose between the two men.
'Do you know what he's come to tell me?' cried her husband. 'Oh, you do! He's been tryin' to talk you over, has he? You just answer to me, an' tell the truth. Who was it persuaded me to let Clara go from 'ome? Who was it come here an' talked an' talked till he got his way? He knew what 'ud be the end of it—he knew, I tell you,—an' it's just what he wanted. Hasn't he been drawin' away from us ever since the girl left? I saw it all that night when he came here persuadin' me, an' I told it him plain. He wanted to 'a done with her, and to a' done with us. Am I speakin' the truth or not?'
'Why should he think that way, John?' pleaded the woman faintly. 'You know very well as Clara 'ud never listen to him. What need had he to do such things?'
'Oh yes, I'm wrong! Of course I'm wrong! You always did go against me when there was anything to do with Clara. She'd never listen to him? No, of course she wouldn't, an' he couldn't rest until he saw her come to harm. What do you care either? She's no child of yours. But I tell you I'd see you an' all your children beg an' die in the streets rather than a hair of my own girl's head should be touched!'
Indulgence of his passion was making a madman of him. Never till now had he uttered an unfeeling word to his wife, but the look with which lie accompanied this brutal speech was one of fiery hatred.
'Don't turn on her!' cried Sidney, with bitterness. 'Say what you like to me, and believe the worst you can of me; I shouldn't have come here if I hadn't been ready to bear everything. It's no good speaking reason to you now, but maybe you'll understand some day.'
'Who know's as she's come to harm?' urged Mrs. Hewett. 'Nobody can say it of her for certain, yet.'
'I'd have told him that, if he'd only listened to me and given me credit for honesty,' said Kirkwood. 'It is as likely as not she's gone away just because I angered her on Saturday. Perhaps she said to herself she'd have done with me once for all. It would be just her way.'
'Speak another word against my girl,' Hewett shouted, misinterpreting the last phrase, 'an' I'll do more than say what I think of you—old man though they call me! Take yourself out of this room; it was the worst day of my life that ever you came into it. Never let me an' you come across each other again. I hate the sight of you, an' I hate the sound of your voice!'
The animal in Sidney Kirkwood made it a terrible minute for him as he turned away in silence before this savage injustice. The veins upon his forehead were swollen; his clenched teeth gave an appearance of ferocity to his spirited features. With head bent, and shoulders quivering as if in supreme muscular exertion, he left the room without another word.
In a few minutes Hewett also quitted the house. He went to the luncheon-bar in Upper Street, and heard for the first time Mrs. Tubbs's rancorous surmises. He went to Clara's recent lodgings; a girl of ten was the only person in the house, and she could say nothing more than that Miss Hewett no longer lived there. Till midway in the afternoon John walked about the streets of Islington, Highbury, Hoxton, Clerkenwell, impelled by the unreasoning hope that he might see Clara, but also because he could not rest in any place. He was half-conscious now of the madness of his behaviour to Kirkwood, but this only confirmed him in hostility to the young man; the thought of losing Clara was anguish intolerable, yet with it mingled a bitter resentment of the girl's cruelty to him. And all these sources of misery swelled the current of rebellious feeling which had so often threatened to sweep his life into wreckage. He was Clara's father, and the same impulse of furious revolt which had driven the girl to recklessness now inflamed him with the rage of despair.
On a Bank-holiday only a few insignificant shops remain open even in the poor districts of London; sweets you can purchase, and tobacco, but not much else that is sold across an ordinary counter. The more noticeable becomes the brisk trade of public-houses. At the gin-shop centres the life of each street; here is a wide door and a noisy welcome, the more attractive by contrast with the stretch of closed shutters on either hand. At such a door, midway in the sultry afternoon, John Hewett paused. To look at his stooping shoulders, his uncertain swaying this way and that, his flushed, perspiring face, you might have taken him for one who had already been drinking. No; it was only a struggle between his despairing wretchedness and a lifelong habit of mind. Not difficult to foresee which would prevail; the public-house always has its doors open in expectation of such instances. With a gesture which made him yet more like a drunken man he turned from the pavement and entered. . . .
About nine o'clock in the evening, just when Mrs. Hewett had put the unwilling children to bed, and had given her baby a sleeping-dose—it had cried incessantly for eighteen hours,—the door of the room was pushed open. Her husband came in. She stood looking at him—unable to credit the evidence of her eyes.
'John!'
She laid her hand upon him and stared into his face. The man shook her off, without speaking, and moved staggeringly forward. Then he turned round, waved his arm, and shouted:
'Let her go to the devil. She cares nothing for her father.'
He threw himself upon the bed, and soon sank into drunken sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
A WELCOME GUEST
The bells of St. James's, Clerkenwell, ring melodies in intervals of the pealing for service-time. One morning of spring their music, like the rain that fell intermittently, was flung westwards by the boisterous wind, away over Clerkenwell Close, until the notes failed one by one, or were clashed out of existence by the clamour of a less civilised steeple. Had the wind been under mortal control it would doubtless have blown thus violently and in this quarter in order that the inhabitants of the House of Detention might derive no solace from the melody. Yet I know not; just now the bells were playing 'There is a happy land, far, far away,' and that hymn makes too great a demand upon the imagination to soothe amid instant miseries.
In Mrs. Peckover's kitchen the music was audible in bursts. Clem and her mother, however, it neither summoned to prepare for church, nor lulled into a mood of restful reverie. The two were sitting very close together before the fire, and holding intimate converse; their voices kept a low murmur, as if; though the door was shut, they felt it necessary to use every precaution against being overheard. Three years have come and gone since we saw these persons. On the elder time has made little impression; but Clem has developed noticeably. The girl is now in the very prime of her ferocious beauty. She has grown taller and somewhat stouter; her shoulders spread like those of a caryatid; the arm with which she props her head is as strong as a carter's and magnificently moulded. The head itself looks immense with its pile of glossy hair. Reddened by the rays of the fire, her features had a splendid savagery which seemed strangely at discord with the paltry surroundings amid which she sat; her eyes just now were gleaming with a crafty and cruel speculation which would have become those of a barbarian in ambush. I wonder how it came about that her strain, after passing through the basest conditions of modern life, had thus reverted to a type of ancestral exuberance.
'If only he doesn't hear about the old man or the girl from somebody!' said Mrs. Peckover. 'I've been afraid of it ever since he come into the 'ouse. There's so many people might tell him. You'll have to come round him sharp, Clem.'
The mother was dressed as her kind are wont to be on Sunday morning—that is to say, not dressed at all, but hung about with coarse garments, her hair in unbeautiful disarray. Clem, on the other hand, seemed to have devoted much attention to her morning toilet; she wore a dark dress trimmed with velveteen, and a metal ornament of primitive taste gleamed amid her hair.
'There ain't no mistake?' she asked, after a pause. 'You're jolly sure of that?'
'Mistake? What a blessed fool you must be! Didn't they advertise in the papers for him? Didn't the lawyers themselves say as it was something to his advantage? Don't you say yourself as Jane says her grandfather's often spoke about him and wished he could find him? How can it be a mistake? If it was only Bill's letter we had to go on, you might talk; but—there, don't be a ijiot!'
'If it turned out as he hadn't nothing,' remarked Clem resolutely, 'I'd leave him, if I was married fifty times.'
Her mother uttered a contemptuous sound. At the same time she moved her head as if listening; some one was, in fact, descending the stairs.
'Here he comes,' she whispered. 'Get the eggs ready, an' I'll make the corffee.'
A tap at the door, then entered a tallish man of perhaps forty, though he might be a year or two younger. His face was clean-shaven, harsh-featured, unwholesome of complexion; its chief peculiarity was the protuberance of the bone in front of each temple, which gave him a curiously animal aspect. His lower lip hung and jutted forward; when he smiled, as now in advancing to the fire, it slightly overlapped the one above. His hair was very sparse; he looked, indeed, like one who has received the tonsure. The movement of his limbs betokened excessive indolence; he dragged his feet rather than walked. His attire was equally suggestive; not only had it fallen into the last degree of shabbiness (having originally been such as is worn by a man above the mechanic ranks), but it was patched with dirt of many kinds, and held together by a most inadequate supply of buttons. At present he wore no collar, and his waistcoat, half-open, exposed a red shirt.
'Why, you're all a-blowin' and a-growin' this morning, Peckover,' was his first observation, as he dropped heavily into a wooden arm-chair. 'I shall begin to think that colour of yours ain't natural. Dare you let me rub it with a handkerchief?'
'Course I dare,' replied Clem, tossing her head. 'Don't be so forward, Mr. Snowdon.'
'Forward? Not I. I'm behind time if anything. I hope I haven't kept you from church.'
He chuckled at his double joke. Mother and daughter laughed appreciatively.
'Will you take your eggs boiled or fried?' inquired Mrs. Peckover.
'Going to give me eggs, are you? Well, I've no objection, I assure you. And I think I'll have them fried, Mrs. Peckover. But, I say, you mustn't be running up too big a bill. The Lord only knows when I shall get anything to do, and it ain't very likely to be a thousand a year when it does come.'
'Oh, that's all right,' replied the landlady, as if sordid calculation were a thing impossible to her. 'I can't say as you behaved quite straightforward years ago, Mr. Snowdon, but I ain't one to make a row about bygones, an' as you say you'll put it all straight as soon as you can, well, I won't refuse to trust you once more.'
Mr. Snowdon lay back in the chair, his hands in his waistcoat pockets, his legs outstretched upon the fender. He was smiling placidly, now at the preparing breakfast, now at Clem. The latter he plainly regarded with much admiration, and cared not to conceal it. When, in a few minutes, it was announced to him that the meal was ready, he dragged his chair up to the table and reseated himself with a sigh of satisfaction. A dish of excellent ham, and eggs as nearly fresh as can be obtained in Clerkenwell, invited him with appetising odour; a large cup of what is known to the generality of English people as coffee steamed at his right hand; slices of new bread lay ready cut upon a plate; a slab of the most expensive substitute for butter caught his eye with yellow promise; vinegar and mustard appealed to the refinements of his taste.
'I've got a couple more eggs, if you'd like them doin',' said Mrs. Peckover, when she had watched the beginning of his attack upon the viands.
'I think I shall manage pretty well with this supply,' returned Mr. Snowdon.
As he ate he kept silence, partly because it was his habit, partly in consequence of the activity of his mind. He was, in fact, musing upon a question which he found it very difficult to answer in any satisfactory way. 'What's the meaning of all this?' he asked himself, and not for the first time. 'What makes them treat me in this fashion? A week ago I came here to look up Mrs. Peckover, just because I'd run down to my last penny, and I didn't know where to find a night's lodging. I'd got an idea, too, that I should like to find out what had become of my child, whom I left here nine or ten years ago; possibly she was still alive, and might welcome the duty of supporting her parent. The chance was, to be sure, that the girl had long since been in her grave, and that Mrs. Peckover no longer lived in the old quarters; if I discovered the woman, on the other hand, she was not very likely to give me an affectionate reception, seeing that I found it inconvenient to keep sending her money for Jane's keep in the old days. The queer thing is, that everything turned out exactly the opposite of what I had expected. Mrs. Peckover had rather a sour face at first, but after a little talk she began to seem quite glad to see me. She put me into a room, undertook to board me for a while—till I find work, and I wonder when that'll be?—and blest if this strapping daughter of hers doesn't seem to have fallen in love with me from the first go off! As for my girl, I'm told she was carried off by her grandfather, my old dad, three years ago, and where they went nobody knows. Very puzzling all this. How on earth came it that Mrs. Peckover kept the child so long, and didn't send her to the workhouse? If I'm to believe her, she took a motherly kindness for the poor brat. But that won't exactly go down with J. J. Snowdon; he's seen a bit too much in his knocking about the world, Still, what if I'm making a mistake about the old woman? There are some people do things of that sort; upon my soul, I've known people be kind even to me, without a chance of being paid back! You may think you know a man or a woman, and then all at once they'll go and do something you'd have taken your davy couldn't possibly happen. I'd have sworn she was nothing but a skinflint and a lying old witch. And so she maybe; the chances are there's some game going on that I can't see through. Make inquiries? Why, so I have done, as far as I know how. I've only been able to hit on one person who knows anything about the matter, and he tells me it's true enough the girl was taken away about three years ago, but he's no idea where she went to. Surely the old man must be dead b now, though he was tough. Well, the fact of the matter is, I've got a good berth, and I'm a precious sight too lazy to go on the private detective job. Here's this girl Clem, the finest bit of flesh I've seen for a long time; I've more than half a mind to see if she won't be fool enough to marry me. I'm not a bad-looking fellow, that's the truth, and she may have taken a real liking to me. Seems to me that I should have come in for a Comfortable thing in my old age; if I haven't a daughter to provide for my needs, at all events I shall have a wife who can be persuaded into doing so. When the old woman gets out of the way I must have a little quiet talk with Clem.'
The opportunity he desired was not long in offering itself. Having made an excellent breakfast, he dragged his chair up to the fender again, and reached a pipe from the mantel-piece, where he had left it last night. Tobacco he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket; it came forth in the form of yellowish dust, intermingled with all sorts of alien scraps. When he had lit his pipe, he poised the chair on its hind-legs, clasped his hands over his bald crown, and continued his musing with an air of amiable calm. Smoke curled up from the corner of his loose lips, and occasionally, removing his pipe for an instant, he spat skilfully between the bars of the grate. Assured of his comfort, Mrs. Peckover said she must go and look after certain domestic duties. Her daughter had begun to clean some vegetables that would be cooked for dinner.
'How old may you be, Clem?' Mr. Snowdon inquired genially, when they had been alone together for a few minutes.
'What's that to you? Guess.'
'Why, let me see; you was not much more than a baby when I went away. You'll be eighteen or nineteen, I suppose.'
'Yes, I'm nineteen—last sixth of February. Pity you come too late to give me a birthday present, ain't it?'
'Ah! And who'd have thought you'd have grown up such a beauty! I say, Clem, how many of the young chaps about here have been wanting to marry you, eh?'
'A dozen or two, I dessay,' Clem replied, shrugging her shoulders scornfully.
Mr. Snowdon laughed, and then spat into the fire.
'Tell me about some o' them, will you? Who is it you're keeping company with now?'
'Who, indeed? Why, there isn't one I'd look at! Several of 'em's took to drinking 'cause I won't have nothing to do with 'em.'
This excited Mr. Snowdon's mirth in a high degree; he rolled on his chair, and almost pitched backwards.
'I suppose you give one or other a bit of encouragement now and then, just to make a fool of him, eh?'
'Course I do. There was Bob Hewett; he used to lodge here, but that was after your time. I kep' him off an' on till he couldn't bear it no longer; then he went an' married a common slut of a thing, just because he thought it 'ud make me mad. Ha, ha! I believe he'd give her poison an' risk it any day, if only I promised to marry him afterwards. Then there was a feller called Jeck Bartley. I set him an' Bob fightin' one Bank-holiday—you should a' seen 'em go at it! Jack went an' got married a year ago to a girl called Suke Jollop; her mother forced him. How I did laugh! Last Christmas Day they smashed up their 'ome an' threw the bits out into the street. Jack got one of his eyes knocked out—I thought I should a' died o' laughin' when I saw him next mornin'.'
The hearer became uproarious in merriment.
'Tell you what it is, Clem,' he cried, 'you're something like a girl! Darn me if I don't like you! I say, I wonder what my daughter's grown up? Like her mother, I suppose. You an' she was sort of sisters, wasn't you?'
He observed her closely. Clem laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
'Queer sort o' sisters. She was a bit too quiet-like for me. There never was no fun in her.'
'Aye, like her mother. And where did you say she went to with the old man?'
'Where she went to?' repeated Clem, regarding him steadily with her big eyes, 'I never said nothing about it, 'cause I didn't know.'
'Well, I shan't cry about her, and I don't suppose she misses me much, wherever she is. All the same, Clem, I'm a domesticated sort of man; you can see that, can't you? I shouldn't wonder if I marry again one of these first days. Just tell me where to find a girl of the right sort. I dare say you know heaps.'
'Dessay I do. What sort do you want?'
'Oh, a littlish girl—yellow hair, you know—one of them that look as if they didn't weigh half-a-stone.'
'I'll throw this parsnip at you, Mr. Snowdon!'
'What's up now. You don't Call yourself littlish, do you?'
Clem snapped the small end off the vegetable she was paring, and aimed it at his head. He ducked just in time. Then there was an outburst of laughter from both.
'Say, Clem, you haven't got a glass of beer in the house?'
'You'll have to wait till openin' time,' replied the girl sourly, going away to the far end of the room.
'Have I offended you, Clem?'
'Offended, indeed. As if I cared what you say!'
'Do you care what I think?'
'Not I!'
'That means you do. Say, Clem, just come here; I've something to tell you.'
'You're a nuisance. Let me get on with my work, can't you?'
'No, I can't. You just come here. You'd better not give me the trouble of fetching you!'
The girl obeyed him. Her cheeks were very hot, and the danger-signal was flashing in her eyes. Ten minutes later she went upstairs, and had a vivacious dialogue of whispers with Mrs. Peckover.
