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The Nether World

G >> George Gissing >> The Nether World




Danbury Hill, rising thick-wooded to the village church, which is
visible for miles around, with stretches of heath about its lower
slopes, with its far prospects over the sunny country, was the
pleasant end of a pleasant drive. Mrs. Pammenter and her children
(seven of them, unhappily) gave the party a rough, warm-hearted
welcome. Ha! how good it was to smell the rooms through which the
pure air breathed freely! All the front of the house was draped with
purple clematis; in the garden were sun-flowers and hollyhocks and
lowly plants innumerable; on the red and lichened tiles pigeons were
cooing themselves into a doze; the horse's hoofs rang with a
pleasant clearness on the stones as he was led to his cool stable.
Her heart throbbing with excess of delight, Jane pushed back the
diamond-paned casement of her bedroom, the same room she had
occupied last year and the year before, and buried her face in
clematis. Then the tea that Mrs. Pammenter had made ready;--how
delicious everything tasted! how white the cloth was! how fragrant
the cut flowers in the brown jug!

But Michael had found the journey a greater tax upon his strength
than he anticipated. Whilst Sidney and Jane talked merrily over the
tea-table the old man was thinking. 'Another year they will come
without me,' and he smiled just to hide his thoughts. In the evening
he smoked his pipe on a garden-seat, for the most part silent, and
at sunset he was glad to go up to his chamber.

Jane was renewing her friendship with the Pammenters' eldest girl,
an apple-checked, red-haired, ungraceful, but good-natured lass of
sixteen. Their voices sounded from all parts of the garden and the
farm-yard, Jane's clear-throated laugh contrasting with the rougher
utterance of her companion. After supper, in the falling of the
dusk, Sidney strolled away from the gossiping circle within-doors,
and found a corner of the garden whence there was a view of wooded
hillside against the late glow of the heavens. Presently he heard
footsteps, and through the leafage of a tree that shadowed him he
saw Jane looking this way and that, as if she sought some one. Her
dress was a light calico, and she held in her hand a rough garden
hat, the property of Miss Pammenter. Sidney regarded her for some
moments, then called her by name. She could not see him at first,
and looked about anxiously. He moved a branch of the tree and again
called her; whereupon she ran forward.

'I thought perhaps you'd gone up the hill,' she said, resting her
arms on the wall by which he was standing.

Then they kept silence, enjoying the sweetness of the hour.
Differently, it is true; for Kirkwood's natural sensitiveness had
been developed and refined by studies of which Jane had no
conception. Imperfect as his instruction remained, the sources of
spiritual enjoyment were open to him, and with all his feeling there
blended that reflective bitterness which is the sad privilege of
such as he. Jane's delight was as simple as the language in which
she was wont to express herself. She felt infinitely more than
Pennyloaf, for instance, would have done under the circumstances;
but her joy consisted, in the main, of a satisfaction of pure
instincts and a deep sense of gratitude to those who made her life
what it was. She could as little have understood Sidney's mind at
this moment as she could have given an analytic account of her own
sensations. For all that, the two were in profound sympathy; how
different soever the ways in which they were affected, the result,
as they stood side by side, was identical in the hearts of both.

Sidney began to speak of Michael Snowdon, keeping his voice low, as
if in fear of breaking those subtle harmonies wherewith the night
descended.

'We must be careful not to over-tire him, He looked very pale when
he went upstairs. I've thought lately that he must suffer more than
he tells us.'

'Yes, I'm afraid he often does,' Jane assented, as if relieved to
speak of it. 'Yet he always says it's nothing to trouble about,
nothing but what is natural at his age. He's altered a great deal
since father came,' she added, regarding him diffidently.

'I hope it isn't because he thinks your father may be wanting to
take you away?'

'Oh, it can't be that! Oh, he knows I wouldn't leave him! Mr.
Kirkwood, you don't think my father will give us any trouble?'

She revealed an anxiety which delicacy of feeling had hitherto
prevented her expressing. Sidney at once spoke reassuringly, though
he had in fact no little suspicion of Joseph Snowdon's tactics.

'It's my grandfather that I ought to think most of,' pursued Jane
earnestly. 'I can't feel to my father as I do to _him_. What should
I have been now if--'

Something caused her to leave the speech unfinished, and for a few
moments there was silence. From the ground exhaled a sweet fresh
odour, soothing to the senses, and at times a breath of air brought
subtler perfume from the alleys of the garden. In the branches above
them rustled a bird's wing. At a distance on the country road
sounded the trotting of a horse.

'I feel ashamed and angry with myself,' said Sidney, in a tone of
emotion, 'when I think now of t hose times. I might have done
something, Jane. I had no right to know what you were suffering and
just go by as if it didn't matter!'

'Oh, but you didn't!' came eagerly from the girl's lips. 'You've
forgotten, but I can't. You were very kind to me--you helped me
more than you can think--you never saw me without speaking kindly.
Don't you remember that night when I came to fetch you from the
workshop, and you took off your coat and put it over me, because it
was cold and raining?'

'Jane, what a long, long time ago that seems!'

'As long as I live I shall never forget it--never! You were the
only friend I had then.'

'No; there was some one else who took thought for you,' said Sidney,
regarding her gravely.

Jane met his look for an instant--they could just read each
other's features in the pale light--then dropped her eyes.

'I don't think you've forgotten that either,' he added, in the same
unusual voice.

'No,' said Jane, below her breath.

'Say who it is I mean.'

'You mean Miss Hewett,' was the reply, after a troubled moment.

'I wanted you to say her name. You remember one evening not long
ago, when your grandfather was away? I had the same wish then. Why
shouldn't we speak of her? She was a friend to you when you needed
one badly, and it's right that you should remember her with
gratitude. I think of her just like we do of people that are dead.'

Jane stood with one hand on the low wall, half-turned to him, hut
her face bent downwards. Regarding her for what seemed a long time,
Sidney felt as though the fragrance of the earth and the flowers
were mingling with his blood and confusing him with emotions. At the
same his tongue was paralysed. Frequently of late he had known a
timidity in Jane's presence, which prevented him from meeting her
eyes, and now this tremor came upon him with painful intensity. He
knew to what his last words had tended; it was with consciousness of
a distinct purpose that he had led the conversation to Clara; but
now he was powerless to speak the words his heart prompted. Of a
sudden he experienced a kind of shame, the result of comparison
between himself and the simple girl who stood before him; she was so
young, and the memory of passions from which he had suffered years
ago affected him with a sense of unworthiness, almost of impurity.
Jane had come to be his ideal of maidenhood, but till this moment he
had not understood the full significance of the feeling with which
he regarded her. He could not transform with a word their relations
to each other. The temptation of the hour had hurried him towards an
end which he must approach with more thought, more preparation of
himself.

It was scarcely for ten heart-beats. Then Jane raised her eyes and
said in a voice that trembled:

'I've often wished I could see her again, and thank her for her
kindness that night.'

'That will help me to think with less pain of things that are long
since over and done with,' Sidney replied, forcing himself to speak
firmly. 'We can't alter the past, Jane, but we can try to remember
only the best part of it. You, I hope, very seldom look back at
all.'

'Grandfather wishes me never to forget it. He often says that.'

'Does he? I think I understand.'

Jane drew down a branch and laid the broad cool leaves against her
cheek; releasing it, she moved in the direction of the house. Her
companion followed with slow step, his head bent. Before they came
to the door Jane drew his attention to a bat that was sweeping
duskily above their heads; she began to speak with her wonted
cheerfulness.

'How I should like Pennyloaf to be here! I wonder what she'd think
of it?'

At the door they bade each other good night. Sidney took yet a few
turns in the garden before entering. But that it would have seemed
to the Pammenters a crazy proceeding, he would have gladly struck
away over the fields and walked for hours.





CHAPTER XX

A VISION OF NOBLE THINGS




He slept but for an hour or two, and even then with such disturbance
of fitful dreams that he could not be said to rest. At the earliest
sound of movements in the house he rose and went out into the
morning air. There had fallen a heavy shower just after sunrise, and
the glory of the east was still partly veiled with uncertain clouds.
Heedless of weather-signs, Sidney strode away at a great pace, urged
by his ungovernable thoughts. His state was that miserable one in
which a man repeats for the thousandth time something he has said,
and torments himself with devising possible and impossible
interpretations thereof. Through the night he had done nothing but
imagine what significance Jane might have attached to his words
about Clara Hewett. Why had he spoken of Clara at all? One moment he
understood his reasons, and approved them; the next he was at a loss
to account for such needless revival of a miserable story. How had
Jane interpreted him? And was it right or wrong to have paused when
on the point of confessing that he loved her?

Rain caught him at a distance from home, and he returned to
breakfast in rather a cheerless plight. He found that Michael was
not feeling quite himself, and would not rise till midday. Jane had
a look of anxiety, and he fancied she behaved to him with a
constraint hitherto unknown. The fancy was dispelled, however, when,
later in the morning, she persuaded him to bring out his
sketch-book, and suggested points of view for a drawing of the farm
that had been promised to Mr. Pammenter Himself unable to recover
the tone of calm intimacy which till yesterday had been natural
between them, Sidney found himself studying the girl, seeking to
surprise some proof that she too was no longer the same, and only
affected this unconsciousness of change. There was, perhaps, a
little less readiness in her eyes to meet his, but she talked as
naturally as ever, and the spontaneousness of her good-humour was
assuredly not feigned.

On Monday the farmer had business in Maldon. Occasionally when he
drove over to that town he took one or other of his children with
him to visit a relative, and to-day he proposed that Jane should be
of the party. They started after an early dinner. Michael and Sidney
stood together in the road, watching the vehicle as it rolled away;
then they walked in silence to a familiar spot where they could sit
in shadow. Sidney was glad of Jane's departure for the afternoon. He
found it impossible to escape the restlessness into which he had
fallen, and was resolved to seek relief by opening his mind to the
old man. There could be little doubt that Michael already understood
his thoughts, and no better opportunity for such a conversation was
likely to present itself. When they had been seated for a minute or
two, neither speaking, Sidney turned to his companion with a grave
look. At the same instant Michael also had raised his eyes and
seemed on the point of saying something of importance. They regarded
each other. The old man's face was set in an expression of profound
feeling, and his lips moved tremulously before words rose to them.

'What were you going to say, Sidney?' he asked, reading the other's
features.

'Something which I hope won't be displeasing to you. I was going to
speak of Jane. Since she has been living with you she has grown from
a child to a woman. When I was talking with her in the garden on
Saturday night I felt this change more distinctly than I had ever
done before. I understood that it had made a change in myself. I
love her, Mr. Snowdon, and it's my dearest hope that she may come to
feel the same for me.'

Michael was more agitated than the speaker; he raised a hand to his
forehead and closed his eyes as if the light pained them. But the
smile with which he speedily answered Sidney's look of trouble was
full of reassurance.

'You couldn't have said anything that would give me more pleasure,'
he replied, just above his breath. 'Does she know it? Did you speak
to her?'

'We were talking of years ago, and I mentioned Clara Hewett. I said
that I had forgotten all about her except that she'd befriended
Jane. But nothing more than that. I couldn't say what I was feeling
just then. Partly I thought that it was right to speak to you first;
and then--it seemed to me almost as if I should be treating her
unfairly. I'm so much older--she knows that it isn't the first
time I--and she's always thought of me just as a friend.'

'So much older?' repeated Michael, with a grave smile. 'Why, you're
both children to my sight. Wait and let me think a bit, Sidney. I
too have something I want to say. I'm glad you've spoken this
afternoon, when there's time for us to talk. Just wait a few
minutes, and let me think.'

Sidney had as good as forgotten that there was anything unusual in
his friend's circumstances; this last day or two he had thought of
nothing but Jane and his love for her. Now he recalled the
anticipation--originating he scarcely knew how--that some kind
of disclosure would before long be made to him. The trouble of' his
mind was heightened; he waited with all but dread for the next
words.

'I think I've told you,' Michael resumed at length, steadying his
voice, 'that Joseph is my youngest son, and that I had three others.
Three others: Michael, Edward, and Robert--all dead. Edward died
when he was a boy of fifteen; Robert was killed on the railway--he
was a porter--at three-and-twenty. The eldest went out to
Australia; he took a wife there, and had one child; the wife died
when they'd been married a year or two, and Michael and his boy were
drowned, both together. I was living with them at the time, as you
know. But what I've never spoken of' Sidney, is that my son had made
his fortune. He left a deal of land, and many thousands of pounds,
behind him. There was no finding any will; a lawyer in the nearest
town, a man that had known him a long time, said he felt sure
there'd been no will made. So, as things were, the law gave
everything to his father.'

He related it with subdued voice, in a solemn and agitated tone. The
effect of the news upon Sidney was a painful constriction of the
heart, a rush of confused thought, an involvement of all his
perceptions in a sense of fear. The pallor of his cheeks and the
pained parting of his lips bore witness to how little he was
prepared for such a story.

'I've begun with what ought by rights to have come last,' pursued
Michael, after drawing a deep sigh. 'But it does me good to get it
told; it's been burdening me this long while. Now you must listen,
Sidney, whilst I show you why I've kept this a secret. I've no fear
but _you_'ll understand me, though most people wouldn't. It's a
secret from everybody except a lawyer in London, who does business
for me; a right-hearted man he is, in most things, and I'm glad I
met with him, but he doesn't understand me as you will; he thinks
I'm making a mistake. My son knows nothing about it; at least, it's
my hope and belief he doesn't. He told me he hadn't heard of his
brother's death. I say I hope he doesn't know; it isn't selfishness,
that; I needn't tell you. I've never for a minute thought of myself
as a rich man, Sidney; I've never thought of the money as my own,
never; and if Joseph proves himself honest, I'm ready to give up to
him the share of his brother's property that it seems to me ought to
be rightly his, though the law for some reason looks at it in a
different way. I'm ready, but I must know that he's an honest man; I
must prove him first.'

The eagerness of his thought impelled him to repetitions and
emphasis. His voice fell upon a note of feebleness, and with an
effort he recovered the tone in which he had begun.

'As soon as I knew that all this wealth had fallen to me I decided
at once to come back to England. What could I do out there? I
decided to come to England, but I couldn't see farther ahead than
that. I sold all the land; I had the business done for me by that
lawyer I spoke of, that had known my son, and he recommended me to a
Mr. Percival in London. I came back, and I found little Jane, and
then bit by bit I began to understand what my duty was. It got clear
in my mind; I formed a purpose, a plan, and it's as strong in me now
as ever. Let me think again for a little, Sidney. I want to make it
as plain to you as it is to me. You'll understand me best if I go
back and tell you more than I have done yet about my life before I
left England. Let me think a while.'

He was overcome with a fear that he might not be able to convey with
sufficient force the design which had wholly possessed him. So
painful was the struggle in him between enthusiasm and a
consciousness of failing faculties, that Sidney grasped his hand and
begged him to speak simply, without effort.

'Have no fear about my understanding you. We've talked a great deal
together, and I know very well what your strongest motives are.
Trust me to sympathise with you.'

'I do! If I hadn't that trust, Sidney, I couldn't have felt the joy
I did when you spoke to me of my Jane. You'll help me to carry out
my plan; you and Jane will; you and Jane! I've got to be such an old
man all at once, as it seems, and I dursn't have waited much longer
without telling you what I had in my mind. See now, I'll go back to
when I was a boy, as far back as I can remember. You know I was born
in Clerkenwell, and I've told you a little now and then of the hard
times I went through. My poor father and mother came out of the
country, thinking to better themselves; instead of that, they found
nothing but cold and hunger, and toil and moil. They were both dead
by when I was between thirteen and fourteen. They died in the same
winter--a cruel winter. I used to go about begging bits of
firewood from the neighbours. There was a man in our house who kept
dogs, and I remember once catching hold of a bit of dirty meat--I
can't call it meat--that one of them had gnawed and left on the
stairs; and I ate it, as if I'd been a dog myself, I was that driven
with hunger. Why, I feel the cold and the hunger at this minute! It
was a cruel winter, that, and it left me alone. I had to get my own
living as best I could.

'No teaching. I was nineteen before I could read the signs over
shops, or write my own name. Between nineteen and twenty I got all
the education I ever was to have, paying a man with what I could
save out of my earnings. The blessing was I had health and strength,
and with hard struggling I got into a regular employment. At
five-and-twenty I could earn my pound a week, pretty certain. When
it got to five shillings more, I must needs have a wife to share it
with me. My poor girl came to live with me in a room in Hill Street.

I've never spoken to you of her, but you shall hear it all now, cost
me what it may in the telling. Of course she was out of a poor home,
and she'd known as well as me what it was to go cold and hungry. I
sometimes think, Sidney, I can see a look of her in Jane's face--
but she was prettier than Jane; yes, yes, prettier than Jane. And to
think a man could treat a poor little thing like her the way I
did!--you don't know what sort of a man Michael Snowdon was then; no,
you don't know what I was then. You're not to think I ill-used her
in the common way; I never raised my hand, thank God! and I never
spoke a word a man should be ashamed of. But I was a hard,
self-willed, stubborn fool How she came to like me and to marry me,
I don't know; we were so different in every way. Well, it was partly
my nature and partly what I'd gone through; we hadn't been married
more than a month or two when I began to find fault with her, and
from that day on she could never please me. I earned five-and-twenty
shillings a week, and I'd made up my mind that we must save out of
it. I wouldn't let _her_ work; no, what _she_ had to do was to keep
the home on as little as possible, and always have everything clean
and straight when I got back at night. But Jenny hadn't the same
ideas about things as I had. She couldn't pinch and pare, and our
plans of saving came to nothing. It grew worse as the children were
horn. The more need there was for carefulness, the more heedless
Jenny seemed to get. And it was my fault, mine from beginning to
end. Another man would have been gentle with her and showed her
kindly when she was wrong, and have been thankful for the love she
gave him, whatever her faults. That wasn't my way. I got angry, and
made her life a burden to her. I must have things done exactly as I
wished; if not, there was no end to my fault-finding. And yet, if
you'll believe it, I loved my wife as truly as man ever did. Jenny
couldn't understand that--and how should she? At last she began to
deceive me in all sorts of little things; she got into debt with
shop-people, she showed me false accounts, she pawned things without
my knowing. Last of all, she began to drink. Our fourth child was
born just at that time; Jenny had a bad illness, and I believe it
set her mind wrong. I lost all control of her, and she used to say
if it wasn't for the children she'd go and leave me. One morning we
quarrelled very badly, and I did as I'd threatened to--I walked
about the streets all the night that followed, never coming home. I
went to work next day, but at dinner-time I got frightened and ran
home just to speak a word. Little Mike, the eldest, was playing on
the stairs, and he said his mother was asleep. I went into the room,
and saw Jenny lying on the bed dressed. There was something queer in
the way her arms were stretched out. When I got near I saw she was
dead. She'd taken poison.

'And it was I had killed her, just as much as if I'd put the poison
to her lips. All because I thought myself such a wise fellow,
because I'd resolved to live more prudently than other men of my
kind did. I wanted to save money for the future--out of
five-and-twenty shillings a week. Many and many a day I starved
myself to try and make up for expenses of the home. Sidney, you
remember that man we once went to hear lecture, the man that talked
of nothing but the thriftlessness of the poor, and how it was their
own fault they suffered? I was very near telling you my story when
we came away that night. Why, look; I myself was just the kind of
poor man that would have suited that lecturer. And what came of it?
If I'd let my poor Jenny go her own way from the first, we should
have had hard times now and then, but there'd have been our love to
help us, and we should have been happy enough. They talk about
thriftiness, and it just means that poor people are expected to
practise a self-denial that the rich can't even imagine, much less
carry out You know now why this kind of talk always angers me.'

Michael brooded for a few moments, his eyes straying sadly over the
landscape before him.

'I was punished,' he continued, 'and in the fittest way. The two of
my boys who showed most love for me, Edward and Robert, died young.
The eldest and youngest were a constant trouble to me. Michael was
quick-tempered and self-willed, like myself; I took the wrong way
with him, just like I had with his mother, and there was no peace
till he left home. Joseph was still harder to deal with; but he's
the only one left alive, and there is no need to bring up things
against him. With him I wasn't to blame, unless I treated him too
kindly and spoilt him. He was my favourite, was Jo, and he repaid me
cruelly. When he married, I only heard of it from other people; we'd
been parted for a long time already. And just about then I had a
letter from Michael, asking me if I was willing to go out and live
with him in Australia. I hadn't heard from him more than two or
three times in twelve years, and when this letter came to me I was
living in Sheffield; I'd been there about five years. He wrote to
say he was doing well, and that he didn't like to think of me being
left to spend my old age alone. It was a kind letter, and it warmed
my heart. Lonely I was; as lonely and sorrowful a man as any in
England. I wrote back to say that I'd come to him gladly if he could
promise to put me in the way of earning my own living. He agreed to
that, and I left the old country, little thinking I should ever see
it again. I didn't see Joseph before I went. All I knew of him was,
that he lived in Clerkenwell Close, married; and that was all I had
to guide me when I tried to find him a few years after. I was bitter
against him, and went without trying to say good-bye.

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