The Nether World

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'My son's fortune seems to have been made chiefly out of
horse-dealing and what they call "land-grabbing"--buying
sheep-runs over the heads of squatters, to be bought out again at a
high profit. Well, you know what my opinion is of trading at the
best, and as far as I could understand it, it was trading at about
its worst that had filled Michael's pockets. He'd had a partner for
a time, and very ugly stories were told me about the man. However,
Michael gave me as kind a welcome as his letter promised; prosperity
had done him good, and he seemed only anxious to make up for the
years of unkindness that had gone by. Had I been willing, I might
have lived under his roof at my ease; but I held him to his bargain,
and worked like any other man who goes there without money. It's a
comfort to me to think of those few years spent in quiet and
goodwill with my eldest boy. His own lad would have given trouble,
I'm afraid, if he'd lived; Michael used to talk to me uneasily about
him, poor fellow! But they both came to their end before the world
had parted them.

'If I'd been a young man, I dare say I should have felt different
when they told me how rich I was; it gave me no pleasure at first,
and when I'd had time to think about it I only grew worried. I even
thought once or twice of getting rid of the burden by giving all the
money to a hospital in Sydney or Melbourne. But then I remembered
that the poor in the old country had more claim on me, and when I'd
got used to the idea of being a wealthy man, I found myself
recalling all sorts of fancies and wishes that used to come into my
head when I was working hard for a poor living. It took some time to
get all the lawyer's business finished, and by when it was done I
began to see a way before me. First of all I must find my son in
England, and see if he needed help. I hadn't made any change in my
way of living, and I came back from Australia as a steerage
passenger, wearing the same clothes that I'd worked in. The lawyer
laughed at me, but I'm sure I should have laughed at myself if I'd
dressed up as a gentleman and begun to play the fool in my old age.
The money wasn't to be used in that way. I'd got my ideas, and they
grew clearer during the voyage home.

'You know how I found Jane. Not long after, I put an advertisement
in the papers, asking my son, if he saw it, to communicate with Mr.
Percival--that's the lawyer I was recommended to in London. There
was no answer; Joseph was in America at that time. I hadn't much
reason to like Mrs. Peckover and her daughter, but I kept up
acquaintance with them because I thought they might hear of Jo some
day. And after a while I sent Jane to learn a business. Do you know
why I did that? Can you think why I brought up the child as if I'd
only had just enough to keep us both, and never gave a sign that I
could have made a rich lady of her?'

In asking the question, he bent forward and laid his hand on
Sidney's shoulder. His eyes gleamed with that light which betrays
the enthusiast, the idealist. As he approached the explanation to
which his story had tended, the signs of age and weakness
disappeared before the intensity of his feeling. Sidney understood
now why he had always been conscious of something in the man's mind
that was not revealed to him, of a life-controlling purpose but
vaguely indicated by the general tenor of Michael's opinions. The
latter's fervour affected him, and he replied with emotion:

'You wish Jane to think of this money as you do yourself--not to
regard it as wealth, but as the means of bringing help to the
miserable.'

'That is my thought, Sidney. It came to me in that form whilst I was
sitting by her bed, when she was ill at Mrs. Peckover's. I knew
nothing of her character then, and the idea I had might have come to
nothing through her turning out untrustworthy. But I thought to
myself: Suppose she grows up to be a good woman--suppose I can
teach her to look at things in the same way as I do myself, train
her to feel that no happiness could be greater than the power to put
an end to ever so little of the want and wretchedness about her--
suppose when I die I could have the certainty that all this money
was going to be used for the good of the poor by a woman who herself
belonged to the poor? You understand me? It would have been easy
enough to leave it among charities in the ordinary way; but my idea
went beyond that. I might have had Jane schooled and fashioned into
a lady, and still have hoped that she would use the money well; but
my idea went beyond _that_. There's plenty of ladies nowadays taking
an interest in the miserable, and spending their means unselfishly.
What I hoped was to raise up for the poor and the untaught a friend
out of their own midst, some one who had gone through all that they
_suffer_, who was accustomed to earn her own living by the work of
her hands as _they_ do, who had never thought herself their better,
who saw the world as they see it and knew all their wants. A lady
may do good, we know that; but she can't be the friend of the poor
as I understand it; there's too great a distance between her world
and theirs. Can you picture to yourself how anxiously I've watched
this child from the first day she came to live with me? I've
scarcely had a thought but about her. I saw very soon that she had
good feelings, and I set myself to encourage them. I wanted her to
be able to read and write, but there was no need of any more
education than that; it was the heart I cared about, not the mind.
Besides, I had always to keep saying to myself that perhaps, after
all, she wouldn't turn out the kind of woman I wished, and in that
case she mustn't be spoiled for an ordinary life. Sidney, it's this
money that has made me a weak old man when I might still have been
as strong as many at fifty; the care of it has worn me out; I
haven't slept quietly since it came into my hands. But the worst is
over. I shan't be disappointed. Jane will be the woman I've hoped
for, and however soon my own life comes to an end, I shall die
knowing that there's a true man by her side to help her to make my
idea a reality.

'I've mentioned Mr. Percival, the lawyer. He's an old man like
myself, and we've had many a long talk together. About a year and a
half ago I told him what I've told you now. Since I came back to
England he's been managing the money for me; he's paid me the little
we needed, and the rest of the income has been used in charity by
some people we could trust. Well, Mr. Percival doesn't go with me in
my plans for Jane. He thinks I'm making a mistake, that I ought to
have had the child educated to fit her to live with rich people.
It's no use; I can't get him to feel what a grand thing it'll be for
Jane to go about among her own people and help them as nobody ever
could. He said to me not long ago, "And isn't the girl ever to have
a husband?" It's my hope that she will, I told him. "And do you
suppose," he went on, "that whoever marries her will let her live in
the way you talk of? Where are you going to find a working man
that'll be content never to touch this money--to work on for his
weekly wages, when he might be living at his ease?" And I told him
that it wasn't as impossible as he thought. What do you think,
Sidney?'

The communication of a noble idea has the same effect upon the
brains of certain men--of one, let us say, in every hundred
thousand--as a wine that exalts and enraptures. As Sidney listened
to the old man telling of his wondrous vision, he became possessed
with ardour such as he had known but once or twice in his life.
Idealism such as Michael Snowdon had developed in these latter years
is a form of genius; given the susceptible hearer, it dazzles,
inspires, raises to heroic contempt of the facts of life. Had this
story been related to him of some unknown person, Sidney would have
admired, but as one admires the nobly impracticable; subject to the
electric influence of a man who was great enough to conceive and
direct his life by such a project, who could repose so supreme a
faith in those he loved, all the primitive nobleness of his
character asserted itself, and he could accept with a throbbing
heart the superb challenge addressed to him.

'If Jane can think me worthy to be her husband,' he replied, 'your
friend shall see that he has feared without cause.'

'I knew it, Sidney; I knew it!' exclaimed the old man. 'How much
younger I feel now that I have shared this burden with you!'

'And shall you now tell Jane?' the other inquired.

'Not yet; not just yet. She is very young; we must wait a little.
But there can be no reason why you shouldn't speak to her--of
yourself.'

Sidney was descending from the clouds. As the flush of his
humanitarian enthusiasm passed away, and he thought of his personal
relations to Jane, a misgiving, a scruple began to make itself heard
within him. Worldly and commonplace the thought, but--had he a
right to ask the girl to pledge herself to him under circumstances
such as these? To be sure, it was not as if Jane were an heiress in
the ordinary way; for all that, would it not be a proceeding of
doubtful justice to woo her when as yet she was wholly ignorant of
the most important item in her situation? His sincerity was
unassailable, but--suppose, in fact, he had to judge the conduct
of another man thus placed? Upon the heated pulsing of his blood
succeeded a coolness, almost a chill; he felt as though he had been
on the verge of a precipice, and had been warned to draw back only
just in time. Every second showed him more distinctly what his duty
was. He experienced a sensation of thankfulness that he had not
spoken definitely on Saturday evening. His instinct had guided him
aright; Jane was still too young to be called upon solemnly to
decide her whole future.

'That, too, had better wait, Mr. Snowdon,' he said, after a pause of
a minute. 'I should like her to know everything before I speak to
her in that way. In a year it will be time enough.'

Michael regarded him thoughtfully.

'Perhaps you are right. I wish you knew Mr. Percival; but there is
time, there is time. He still thinks I shall be persuaded to alter
my plans. That night you came to Hanover Street and found me away,
he took me to see a lady who works among the poor in Clerkenwell;
she knew me by name, because Mr. Percival had given her money from
me to use, but we'd never seen each other till then. He wants me to
ask her opinion about Jane.'

'Has he spoken of her to the lady, do you think?'

'Oh no!' replied the other, with perfect confidence. 'He has
promised me to keep all that a secret as long as I wish. The lady--
her name is Miss Lant--seemed all that my friend said she was, and
perhaps Jane might do well to make her acquaintance some day; but
that mustn't be till Jane knows and approves the purpose of my life
and hers. The one thing that troubles me still, Sidney, is--her
father. It's hard that I can't be sure whether my son will be a help
or a hindrance. I must wait, and try to know him better.'

The conversation had so wearied Michael, that in returning to the
house he had to lean on his companion's arm. Sidney was silent, and
yielded, he scarce knew why, to a mood of depression. When Jane
returned from Maldon in the evening, and he heard her happy voice as
the children ran out to welcome her, there was a heaviness at his
heart. Perhaps it came only of hope deferred.

CHAPTER XXI

DEATH THE RECONCILER

There is no accounting for tastes. Sidney Kirkwood, spending his
Sunday evening in a garden away there in the chaw-bacon regions of
Essex, where it was so deadly quiet that you could hear the flutter
of a bird's wing or the rustle of a leaf, not once only
congratulated himself on his good fortune; yet at that hour he might
have stood, as so often, listening to the eloquence, the wit, the
wisdom, that give proud distinction to the name of Clerkenwell
Green. Towards sundown, that modern Agora rang with the voices of
orators, swarmed with listeners, with disputants, with mockers, with
indifferent loungers. The circle closing about an agnostic lecturer
intersected with one gathered for a prayer-meeting; the roar of an
enthusiastic total-abstainer blended with the shriek of a Radical
politician. Innumerable were the little groups which had broken away
from the larger ones to hold semi-private debate on matters which
demanded calm consideration and the finer intellect. From the
doctrine of the Trinity to the question of cabbage _versus_ beef;
from Neo-Malthusianism to the grievance of compulsory
vaccination; not a subject which modernism has thrown out to the
multitude but here received its sufficient mauling. Above the crowd
floated wreaths of rank tobacco smoke.

Straying from circle to circle might have been seen Mr. Joseph
Snowdon, the baldness of his crown hidden by a most respectable silk
hat, on one hand a glove, in the other his walking-stick, a yellow
waistcoat enhancing his appearance of dignity, a white necktie
spotted with blue and a geranium in his button-hole correcting the
suspicion of age suggested by his countenance. As a listener to
harangues of the most various tendency, Mr. Snowdon exhibited an
impartial spirit; he smiled occasionally, but was never moved to any
expression of stronger feeling. His placid front revealed the
philosopher.

Yet at length something stirred him to a more pronounced interest.
He was on the edge of a dense throng which had just been delighted
by the rhetoric of a well-known Clerkenwell Radical; the topic under
discussion was Bent, and the last speaker had, in truth, put before
them certain noteworthy views of the subject as it affected the poor
of London. What attracted Mr. Snowdon's attention was the voice of
the speaker who next rose. Pressing a little nearer, he got a
glimpse of a lean, haggard, grey-headed man, shabbily dressed, no
bad example of a sufferer from the hardships he was beginning to
denounce. 'That's old Hewett,' remarked somebody close by. 'He's the
feller to let 'em 'ave it!' Yes, it was John Hewett, much older,
much more broken, yet much fiercer than when we last saw him. Though
it was evident that he spoke often at these meetings, he had no
command of his voice and no coherence of style; after the first few
words he seemed to be overcome by rage that was little short of
frenzy. Inarticulate screams and yells interrupted the torrent of
his invective; he raised both hands above his head and clenched them
in a gesture of frantic passion; his visage was frightfully
distorted, and in a few minutes there actually fell drops of blood
from his bitten lip. Rent!--it was a subject on which the poor
fellow could speak to some purpose. What was the root of the
difficulty a London workman found in making both ends meet? Wasn't
it that accursed law by which the owner of property can make him pay
a half, and often more, of his earnings or permission to put his
wife and children under a roof? And what sort of dwellings were
they, these in which the men who made the wealth of the country were
born and lived and died? What would happen to the landlords of
Clerkenwell if they got their due? Ay, what _shall_ happen, my boys,
and that before so very long? For fifteen or twenty minutes John
expended his fury, until, in fact, he was speechless. It was
terrible to look at him when at length he made his way out of the
crowd; his face was livid, his eyes bloodshot, a red slaver covered
his lips and beard; you might have taken him for a drunken man, so
feebly did his limbs support him, so shattered was he by the fit
through which he had passed.

Joseph followed him, and presently walked along at his side.

'That was about as good a speech as I've heard for a long time, Mr.
Hewett,' he began by observing. 'I like to hear a man speak as if he
meant it.'

John looked up with a leaden, rheumy eye, but the compliment pleased
him, and in a moment he smiled vacantly.

'I haven't said my last word yet,' he replied, with difficulty
making himself audible through his hoarseness.

'It takes it out of you, I'm afraid. Suppose we have a drop of
something at the corner here?'

'I don't mind, Mr. Snowdon. I thought of looking in at my club for a
quarter of an hour; perhaps you'd come round with me afterwards?'

They drank at the public-house, then Hewett led the way by back
streets to the quarters of the club of which he had been for many
years a member. The locality was not cheerful, and the house itself
stood in much need of repair. As they entered, John requested his
companion to sign his name in the visitors' book; Mr. Snowdon did so
with a flourish. They ascended to the first floor and passed into a
room where little could be seen but the gas-jets, and those dimly,
owing to the fume of pipes. The rattle of bones, the strumming of a
banjo, and a voice raised at intervals in a kind of whoop announced
that a nigger entertainment was in progress. Recreation of this kind
is not uncommon on Sunday evening at the workmen's clubs; you will
find it announced in the remarkable list of lectures, &c., printed
in certain Sunday newspapers. The company which was exerting itself
in the present instance had at all events an appreciative audience;
laughter and applause broke forth very frequently.

'I'd forgot it was this kind o' thing to-night,' said Hewett, when
he could discover no vacant seat. 'Do you care about it? No more
don't I; let's go down into the readin'-room.'

Downstairs they established themselves at their ease. John ordered
two half-pints of ale--the club supplied refreshment for the body
as well as for the mind--and presently he was more himself.

'How's your wife?' inquired Joseph. 'Better, I hope?'

'I wish I could say so,' answered the other, shaking his head. 'She
hasn't been up since Thursday. She's bad, poor woman! she's bad.'

Joseph murmured his sympathy between two draughts of ale.

'Seen young Kirkwood lately?' Hewett asked, averting his eyes and
assuming a tone of half-absent indifference.

'He's gone away for his holiday; gone into Essex somewhere. When was
it he was speaking of you? Why, one day last week, to be sure.'

'Speakin' about me, eh?' said John, turning his glass round and
round on the table. And as the other remained silent, he added, 'You
can tell him, if you like, that my wife's been very bad for a long
time. Him an' me don't have nothing to say to each other--but you
can tell him that, if you like.'

'So I will,' replied Mr. Snowdon, nodding with a confidential air.

He had noticed from the beginning of his acquaintance with Hewett
that the latter showed no disinclination to receive news of
Kirkwood. As Clem's husband, Joseph was understood to be perfectly
aware of the state of things between the Hewetts and their former
friend, and in a recent conversation with Mrs. Hewett he had assured
himself that she, at all events, would be glad if the estrangement
could come to an end. For reasons of his own, Joseph gave narrow
attention to these signs.

The talk was turning to other matters, when a man who had just
entered the room and stood looking about him with an uneasy
expression caught sight of Hewett and approached him. He was
middle-aged, coarse of feature, clad in the creased black which a
certain type of artisan wears on Sunday.

'I'd like a word with you, John,' he said, 'if your friend'll
excuse.'

Hewett rose from the table, and they walked together to an
unoccupied spot.

'Have you heard any talk about the Burial Club?' inquired the man,
in a low voice of suspicion, knitting his eyebrows.

'Heard anything? No. What?'

'Why, Dick Smales says he can't get the money for his boy, as died
last week.'

'Can't get it? Why not?'

'That's just what I want to know. Some o' the chaps is talkin' about
it upstairs. M'Cosh ain't been seen for four or five days. Somebody
had news as he was ill in bed, and now there's no findin' him. I've
got a notion there's something wrong, my boy.'

Hewett's eyes grew large and the muscles of his mouth contracted.

'Where's Jenkins?' he asked abruptly. 'I suppose he can explain it?'

'No, by God, he can't! He won't say nothing, but he's been runnin'
about all yesterday and to-day, lookin' precious queer,

Without paying any further attention to Snowdon, John left the room
with his companion, and they went upstairs. Most of the men present
were members of the Burial Club in question, an institution of some
fifteen years' standing and in connection with the club which met
here for social and political purposes; they were in the habit, like
John Hewett, of depositing their coppers weekly, thus insuring
themselves or their relatives for a sum payable at death. The rumour
that something was wrong, that the secretary M'Cosh could not be
found, began to create a disturbance; presently the nigger
entertainment came to an end, and the Burial Club was the sole topic
of conversation.

On the morrow it was an ascertained fact that one of the
catastrophes which occasionally befall the provident among
wage-earners had come to pass. Investigation showed that for a long
time there had been carelessness and mismanagement of funds, and
that fraud had completed the disaster. M'Cosh was wanted by the
police.

To John Hewett the blow was a terrible one. In spite of his poverty,
he had never fallen behind with those weekly payments. The thing he
dreaded supremely was, that his wife or one of the children should
die and he be unable to provide a decent burial. At the death of the
last child born to him the club had of course paid, and the
confidence he felt in it for the future was a sensible support under
the many miseries of his life, a support of which no idea can be
formed by one who has never foreseen the possibility of those dear
to him being carried to a pauper's grave. It was a touching fact
that he still kept up the payment for Clara; who could say but his
daughter might yet come back to him to die? To know that he had lost
that one stronghold against fate was a stroke that left him scarcely
strength to go about his daily work.

And he could not breathe a word of it to his wife. Oh that better
curse of poverty, which puts corrupting poison into the wounds
inflicted by nature, which outrages the spirit's tenderness, which
profanes with unutterable defilement the secret places of the
mourning heart! He could not, durst not, speak a word of this misery
to her whose gratitude and love had resisted every trial, who had
shared uncomplainingly all the evil of his lot, and had borne with
supreme patience those added sufferings of which he had no
conception. For she lay on her deathbed. The doctor told him so on
the very day when he learnt that it would be out of his power to
discharge the fitting pieties at her grave. So far from looking to
her for sympathy, it behoved him to keep from her as much as a
suspicion of what had happened.

Their home at this time was a kitchen in King's Cross Road. The
eldest child, Amy, was now between ten and eleven; Annie was nine;
Tom seven. These, of course, went to school every day, and were
being taught to appreciate the woefulness of their inheritance. Amy
was, on the whole, a good girl; she could make purchases as well as
her mother, and when in the mood, look carefully after her little
brother and sister; but already she had begun to display restiveness
under the hard discipline to which the domestic poverty subjected
her. Once she had played truant from school, and told falsehoods to
the teachers to explain her absence. It was discovered that she had
been tempted by other girls to go and see the Lord Mayor's show.
Annie and Tom threatened to be troublesome when they got a little
older; the boy could not be taught to speak the truth, and his
sister was constantly committing petty thefts of jam, sugar, even
coppers; and during the past year their mother was seldom able to
exert herself in correcting these faults. Only by dint of struggle
which cost her agonies could she discharge the simplest duties of
home. She made a brave fight against disease and penury and
incessant dread of the coming day, but month after month her
strength failed. Now at length she tried vainly to leave her bed.
The last reserve of energy was exhausted, and the end near.

After her death, what then? Through the nights of this week after
her doom had been spoken she lay questioning the future. She knew
that but for her unremitting efforts Hewett would have yielded to
the despair of a drunkard; the crucial moment was when he found
himself forsaken by his daughter, and no one but this poor woman
could know what force of loving will, what entreaties, what tears,
had drawn him back a little way from the edge of the gulf.
Throughout his life until that day of Clara's disappearance he had
seemed in no danger from the deadliest enemy of the poor; one taste
of the oblivion that could be bought at any street-corner, and it
was as though drinking had been a recognised habit with him. A year,
two years, and he still drank himself into forgetfulness as often as
his mental suffering waxed unendurable. On the morrow of every such
crime--interpret the word rightly--he hated himself for his
cruelty to that pale sufferer whose reproaches were only the
utterances of love. The third year saw an improvement, whether owing
to conscious self-control or to the fact that time was blunting his
affliction. Instead of the public-house, he frequented all places
where the woes of the nether world found fierce expression. He
became a constant speaker at the meetings on Clerkenwell Green and
at the Radical clubs. The effect upon him of this excitement was
evil enough, yet not so evil as the malady of drink. Mrs. Hewett was
thankful for the alternative. But when she was no longer at his
side--what then?

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