The Nether World

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One of the livelier groups is surging hitherwards; here we have
frolic, here we have humour. The young man who leads them has been
going about all day with the lining of his hat turned down over his
forehead; for the thousandth time those girls are screaming with
laughter at the sight of him. Ha, ha! He has slipped and fallen upon
the floor, and makes an obstruction; his companions treat him like a
horse that is 'down' in the street. 'Look out for his 'eels!' cries
one; and another, 'Sit on his 'ed!' If this doesn't come to an end
we shall die of laughter. Lot one of the funniest of the party is
wearing a gigantic cardboard nose and flame-coloured whiskers.
There, the stumbler is on his feet again. ''Ere he comes up
smilin'!' cries his friend of the cardboard nose, and we shake our
diaphragms with mirth. One of the party is an unusually tall man.
'When are you comin' down to have a look at us?' cries a pert lass
as she skips by him.

A great review of the People. Since man came into being did the
world ever exhibit a sadder spectacle?

Evening advances; the great ugly building will presently be lighted
with innumerable lamps. Away to the west yonder the heavens are
afire with sunset, but at that we do not care to look; never in our
lives did we regard it. We know not what is meant by beauty or
grandeur. Here under the glass roof stand white forms of undraped
men and women--casts of antique statues--but we care as little
for the glory of art as for that of nature; we have a vague feeling
that, for some reason or other, antiquity excuses the indecent, but
further than that we do not get.

As the dusk descends there is a general setting of the throng
towards the open air; all the pathways swarm with groups which have
a tendency to disintegrate into couples; universal is the protecting
arm. Relief from the sweltering atmosphere of the hours of sunshine
causes a revival of hilarity; those who have hitherto only bemused
themselves with liquor now pass into the stage of jovial
recklessness, and others, determined to prolong a flagging
merriment, begin to depend upon their companions for guidance. On
the terraces dancing has commenced; the players of violins,
concertinas, and penny-whistles do a brisk trade among the groups
eager for a rough-and-tumble valse; so do the pickpockets. Vigorous
and varied is the jollity that occupies the external galleries,
filling now in expectation of the fireworks; indescribable the
mingled tumult that roars heavenwards. Girls linked by the
half-dozen arm-in-arm leap along with shrieks like grotesque
maenads; a rougher horseplay finds favour among the youths,
occasionally leading to fisticuffs. Thick voices bellow in
fragmentary chorus; from every side comes the yell, the eat-call,
the ear-rending whistle; and as the bass, the never-ceasing
accompaniment, sounds myriad-footed tramp, tramp along the wooden
flooring. A fight, a scene of bestial drunkenness, a tender
whispering between two lovers, proceed concurrently in a space of
five square yards.--Above them glimmers the dawn of starlight.

For perhaps the first time in his life Bob Hewett has drunk more
than he can well carry. To Pennyloaf's remonstrances he answers more
and more impatiently: 'Why does she talk like a bloomin' fool?--
one doesn't get married every day.' He is on the look-out for Jack
Bartley now; only let him meet Jack, and it shall be seen who is the
better man. Pennyloaf rejoices that the hostile party are nowhere
discoverable. She is persuaded to join in a dance, though every
moment it seems to her that she must sink to the ground in uttermost
exhaustion. Naturally she does not dance with sufficient liveliness
to please Bob; he seizes another girl, a stranger, and whirls round
the six-foot circle with a laugh of triumph. Pennyloaf's misery is
relieved by the beginning of the fireworks. Up shoot the rockets,
and all the reeking multitude utters a huge 'Oh' of idiot
admiration.

Now at length must we think of tearing ourselves away from these
delights. Already the more prudent people are hurrying to the
railway, knowing by dire experience what it means to linger until
the last cargoes. Pennyloaf has hard work to get her husband as far
as the station; Bob is not quite steady upon his feet, and the
hustling of the crowd perpetually excites him to bellicose
challenges. They reach the platform somehow; they stand wedged amid
a throng which roars persistently as a substitute for the activity
of limb Row become impossible. A train is drawing up slowly; the
danger is lest people in the front row should be pushed over the
edge of the platform, but porters exert themselves with success. A
rush, a tumble, curses, blows, laughter, screams of pain--and we
are in a carriage. Pennyloaf has to be dragged up from under the
seat, and all her indignation cannot free her from the jovial
embrace of a man who insists that there is plenty of room on his
knee. Off we go! It is a long third-class coach, and already five or
six musical instruments have struck up. We smoke and sing at the
same time; we quarrel and make love--the latter in somewhat
primitive fashion; we roll about with the rolling of the train; we
nod into hoggish sleep.

The platform at Holborn Viaduct; and there, to Pennyloaf's terror,
it is seen that Clem Peckover and her satellites have come by the
same train. She does her best to get Bob quickly away, but Clem
keeps close in their neighbourhood. Just as they issue from the
station Pennyloaf feels herself bespattered from head to foot with
some kind of fluid; turning, she is aware that all her enemies have
squirts in their hands, and are preparing for a second discharge of
filthy water. Anguish for the ruin of her dress overcomes all other
fear; she calls upon Bob to defend her.

But an immediate conflict was not Jack Bartley's intention. He and
those with him made off at a run, Bob pursuing as closely as his
unsteadiness would permit. In this way they all traversed the short
distance to Clerkenwell Green, either party echoing the other's
objurgations along the thinly-peopled streets. At length arrived the
suitable moment. Near St. James's Church Jack Bartley made a stand,
and defied his enemy to come on. Bob responded with furious
eagerness; amid a press of delighted spectators, swelled by people
just turned out of the public-houses, the two lads fought like wild
animals. Nor were they the only combatants. Exasperated by the
certainty that her hat and dolman were ruined, Pennyloaf flew with
erected nails at Clem Peckover. It was just what the latter desired.
In an instant she had rent half Pennyloaf's garments off her back,
and was tearing her face till the blood streamed. Inconsolable was
the grief of the crowd when a couple of stalwart policemen came
hustling forward, thrusting to left and right, irresistibly clearing
the corner. There was no question of making arrests; it was the
night of Bank-holiday, and the capacity of police-cells is limited.
Enough that the fight perforce came to an end. Amid frenzied
blasphemy Bob and Jack went their several ways; so did Clem and
Pennyloaf.

Poor Pennyloaf! Arrived at Shooter's Gardens, and having groped her
way blindly up to the black hole which was her wedding-chamber, she
just managed to light a candle, then sank down upon the bare floor
and wept. You could not have recognised her; her pretty face was all
blood and dirt. She held in her hand the fragment of a hat, and her
dolman had disappeared. Her husband was not in much better plight;
his waistcoat and shirt were rent open, his coat was filth-smeared,
and it seemed likely that he had lost the sight of one eye. Sitting
there in drunken lassitude, he breathed nothing but threats of
future vengeance.

An hour later noises of a familiar kind sounded beneath the window.
A woman's voice was raised in the fury of mad drunkenness, and a man
answered her with threats and blows.

'That's mother,' sobbed Pennyloaf. 'I knew she wouldn't get over
to-day. She never did get over a Bank-holiday.'

Mrs. Candy had taken the pledge when her husband consented to return
and live with her. Unfortunately she did not at the same time
transfer herself to a country where there are no beer-shops and no
Bank-holidays. Short of such decisive change, what hope for her?

Bob was already asleep, breathing stertorously. As for Pennyloaf,
she was so overwearied that hours passed before oblivion fell upon
her aching eyelids. She was thinking all the time that on the morrow
it would be necessary to pawn her wedding-ring.

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-under. stood 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. lie 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.

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