The Nether World

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The answer was something dashed violently in her face--something
fluid and fiery--something that ate into her flesh, that frenzied
her with pain, that drove her shrieking she knew not whither.

Late in the same night, a pointsman, walking along the railway a
little distance out of the town, came upon the body of a woman,
train-crushed, horrible to view. She wore the dress of a lady; a
shawl was still partly wrapped about her, and her hands were gloved.
Nothing discoverable upon her would have helped strangers in the
task of identification, and as for her face--But a missing woman
was already sought by the police, and when certain persons were
taken to view this body, they had no difficulty in pronouncing it
that of Grace Danver.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FAMILY HISTORY PROGRESSES

What could possess John Hewett that, after resting from the day's
work, he often left his comfortable room late in the evening and
rambled about the streets of that part of London which had surely
least interest for him, the streets which are thronged with idlers,
with carriages going homeward from the theatres, with those who can
only come forth to ply their business when darkness has fallen? Did
he seek food for his antagonism in observing the characteristics of
the world in which he was a stranger, the world which has its
garners full and takes its ease amid superfluity? It could scarcely
be that, for since his wife's death an indifference seemed to be
settling upon him; he no longer cared to visit the Green or his club
on Sunday, and seldom spoke on the subjects which formerly goaded
him to madness. He appeared to be drawn forth against his will, in
spite of weariness, and his look as he walked on was that of a man
who is in search of some one. Yet whom could he expect to meet in
these highways of the West End?

Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly, the Strand, the ways about
St. James's Park; John Hewett was not the only father who has come
forth after nightfall from an obscure home to look darkly at the
faces passing on these broad pavements. At times he would shrink
into a shadowed corner, and peer thence at those who went by under
the gaslight. When he moved forward, it was with the uneasy gait of
one who shuns observation; you would have thought, perchance, that
he watched an opportunity of begging and was shamefaced: it happened
now and then that he was regarded suspiciously. A rough-looking man,
with grizzled beard, with eyes generally bloodshot, his shoulders
stooping--naturally the miserable are always suspected where law
is conscious of its injustice.

Two years ago he was beset for a time with the same restlessness,
and took night-walks in the same directions; the habit wore away,
however. Now it possessed him even more strongly. Between ten and
eleven o'clock, when the children were in bed, he fell into
abstraction, and presently, with an unexpected movement, looked up
as if some one had spoken to him--just the look of one who hears a
familiar voice; then he sighed, and took his hat and went forth. It
happened sometimes when he was sitting with his friends Mr. and Mrs.
Eagles; in that case he would make some kind of excuse. The couple
suspected that his business would take him to the public-house, but
John never came back with a sign about him of having drunk; of that
failing he had broken himself. He went cautiously down the atone
stairs, averting his face if anyone met him; then by cross-ways he
reached Gray's Inn Road, and so westwards.

He had a well-ordered home, and his children were about him, but
these things did not compensate him for the greatest loss his life
had suffered. The children, in truth, had no very strong hold upon
his affections. Sometimes, when Amy sat and talked to him, he showed
a growing nervousness, an impatience, and at length turned away from
her as if to occupy himself in some manner. The voice was not that
which had ever power to soothe him when it spoke playfully. Memory
brought back the tones which had been so dear to him, and at times
something more than memory; he seemed really to hear them, as if
from a distance. And then it was that he went out to wander in the
streets.

Of Bob in the meantime he saw scarcely anything. That young man
presented himself one Sunday shortly after his father had become
settled in the new home, but practically he was a stranger. John and
he had no interests in common; there even existed a slight antipathy
on the father's part of late years. Strangely enough this feeling
expressed itself one day in the form of a rebuke to Bob for
neglecting Pennyloaf--Pennyloaf, whom John had always declined to
recognise.

'I hear no good of your goin's on,' remarked Hewett, on a casual
encounter in the street. 'A married man ought to give up the kind of
company as you keep.'

'I do no harm,' replied Bob bluntly. 'Has my wife been complaining
to you?'

'I've nothing to do with her; it's what I'm told.'

'By Kirkwood, I suppose? You'd better not have made up with him
again, if he's only making mischief.'

'No, I didn't mean Kirkwood.'

And John went his way. Odd thing, was it not, that this embittered
leveller should himself practise the very intolerance which he
reviled in people of the upper world. For his refusal to recognise
Pennyloaf he had absolutely no grounds, save--I use the words
advisedly--an aristocratic prejudice. Bob had married deplorably
beneath him; it was unpardonable, let the character of the girl be
what it might. Of course you recognise the item in John Hewett's
personality which serves to explain this singular attitude. But,
viewed generally, it was one of those bits of human inconsistency
over which the observer smiles, and which should be recommended to
good people in search of arguments for the equality of men.

After that little dialogue, Bob went home in a disagreeable temper.
To begin with, his mood had been ruffled, for the landlady at his
lodgings--the fourth to which he had removed this year--was
'nasty' about a week or two of unpaid rent, and a man on whom he had
counted this evening for the payment of a debt was keeping out of
his way. He found Pennyloaf sitting on the stairs with her two
children, as usual; poor Pennyloaf had not originality enough to
discover new expressions of misery, and that one bright idea of
donning her best dress was a single instance of ingenuity. In
obedience to Jane Snowdon, she kept herself and the babies and the
room tolerably clean, but everything was done in the most dispirited
way.

'What are you kicking about here for?' asked Bob impatiently.
'That's how that kid gets its cold--of course it is!--Ger out!'

The last remark was addressed to the elder child, who caught at his
legs as he strode past. Bob was not actively unkind to the little
wretches for whose being he was responsible; he simply occupied the
natural position of unsophisticated man to children of that age, one
of indifference, or impatience. The infants were a nuisance; no one
desired their coming, and the older they grew the more expensive
they were.

It was a cold evening of October; Pennyloaf had allowed the fire to
get very low (she knew not exactly where the next supply of coals
was to come from), and her husband growled as he made a vain
endeavour to warm his hands.

'Why haven't you got tea ready?' he asked,

'I couldn't be sure as you was comin', Bob; how could I? But I'll
soon get the kettle boilin'.'

'Couldn't be sure as I was coming? Why, I've been back every night
this week--except two or three.'

It was Thursday, but Bob meant nothing jocose.

'Look here!' he continued, fixing a surly eye upon her. 'What do you
mean by complaining about me to people? Just mind your own business.
When was that girl Jane Snowdon here last?'

'Yesterday, Bob.'

'I thought as much, Did she give you anything?' Ho made this inquiry
in rather a shamefaced way.

'No, she didn't.'

'Well, I tell you what it is. I'm not going to have her coming about
the place, so understand that. When she comes next, you'll just tell
her she needn't come again.'

Pennyloaf looked at him with dismay. For the delivery of this
command Bob had seated himself on the corner of the table and
crossed his arms. But for the touch of black-guardism in his
appearance, Bob would have been a very good-looking fellow; his face
was healthy, by no means commonplace in its mould, and had the
peculiar vividness which indicates ability--so impressive, because
so rarely seen, in men of his level. Unfortunately his hair was
cropped all but to the scalp, in the fashionable manner; it was
greased, too, and curled up on one side of his forehead with a
peculiarly offensive perkishness. Poor Pennyloaf was in a great
degree responsible for the ills of her married life; not only did
she believe Bob to be the handsomest man who walked the earth but in
her weakness she could not refrain from telling him as much. At the
present moment he was intensely self-conscious; with Pennyloaf's eye
upon him, he posed for effect. The idea of forbidding future
intercourse with Jane had come to him quite suddenly; it was by no
means his intention to make his order permanent, for Jane had now
and then brought little presents which were useful, but just now he
felt a satisfaction in asserting authority. Jane should understand
that he regarded her censure of him with high displeasure.

'You don't mean that, Bob?' murmured Pennyloaf.

'Of course I do. And let me catch you disobeying me! I should think
you might find better friends than a girl as used to be the
Peckovers' dirty little servant.'

Bob turned up his nose and sniffed the air. And Pennyloaf, in spite
of the keenest distress, actually felt that there was something in
the objection, thus framed! She herself had never been a servant--
never; she had never sunk below working with the needle for sixteen
hours a day for a payment of ninepence. The work-girl regards a
domestic slave as very distinctly her inferior.

'But that's a long while ago,' she ventured to urge, after
reflection.

'That makes no difference. Do as I tell you, and don't argue.'

It was not often that visitors sought Bob at his home of an evening,
but whilst this dialogue was still going on an acquaintance made his
arrival known by a knock at the door. It was a lank and hungry
individual, grimy of face and hands, his clothing such as in the
country would serve well for a scarecrow. Who could have recognised
in him the once spruce and spirited Mr. Jack Bartley, distinguished
by his chimney-pot hat at the Crystal Palace on Bob's wedding-day?
At the close of that same day, as you remember, he and Bob engaged
in terrific combat, the outcome of earlier rivalry for the favour of
Clem Peckover. Notwithstanding that memory, the two were now on very
friendly terms. You have heard from Clem's lips that Jack Bartley,
failing to win herself, ended by espousing Miss Susan Jollop; also
what was the result of that alliance. Mr. Bartley was an unhappy
man. His wife had a ferocious temper, was reckless with money, and
now drank steadily; the consequence was, that Jack had lost all
regular employment, and only earned occasional pence in the most
various ways. Broken in spirit, he himself first made advances to
his companion of former days, and Bob, flattered by the other's
humility, encouraged him as a hanger-on.--Really, we shall soon be
coming to a conclusion that the differences between the nether and
the upper world are purely superficial.

Whenever Jack came to spend an hour with Mr. and Mrs. Hewett, he was
sure sooner or later to indulge the misery that preyed upon him and
give way to sheer weeping. He did so this evening, almost as soon as
he entered.

'I ain't had a mouthful past my lips since last night, I ain't!' he
sobbed. 'It's 'ard on a feller as used to have his meals regular.
I'll murder Suke yet, see if I don't! I'll have her life! She met me
last night and gave me this black eye as you see--she did! It's
'ard on a feller.'

'You mean to say as she '_it_ you?' cried Pennyloaf.

Bob chuckled, thrust his hands into his pockets, spread himself out.
His own superiority was so gloriously manifest.

'Suppose _you_ try it on with _me_, Penny!' he cried.

'You'd give me something as I should remember,' she answered,
smirking, the good little slavey.

'Shouldn't wonder if I did,' assented Bob.

Mr. Bartley's pressing hunger was satisfied with some bread and
butter and a cup of tea. Whilst taking a share of the meal, Bob
brought a small box on to the table; it had a sliding lid, and
inside were certain specimens of artistic work with which he was
wont to amuse himself when tired of roaming the streets in jovial
company. Do you recollect that, when we first made Bob's
acquaintance, he showed Sidney Kirkwood a medal of his own design
and casting? His daily work at die-sinking had of course supplied
him with this suggestion, and he still found pleasure in work of the
same kind. In days before commercialism had divorced art and the
handicrafts, a man with Bob's distinct faculty would have found
encouragement to exercise it for serious ends; as it was, he
remained at the semi-conscious stage with regard to his own
aptitudes, and cast leaden medals just as a way of occupying his
hands when a couple of hours hung heavy on them. Partly with the
thought of amusing the dolorous Jack, yet more to win laudation, he
brought forth DOW a variety of casts and moulds and spread them on
the table. His latest piece of work was a medal in high relief
bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded
with a wreath. Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he
drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his
father foam at the mouth. True, he might have found subjects
artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, and the
English people.

Jack Bartley, having dried his eyes and swallowed his bread and
butter, considered the medal with much attention.

'I say,' he remarked at length, 'will you give me this, Bob?'

'I don't mind, You can take it if you like.'

'Thanks!'

Jack wrapped it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket, and before
long rose to take leave of his friends.

'I only wish I'd got a wife like you,' he observed at the door, as
he saw Pennyloaf bending over the two children, recently put to bed.

Pennyloaf's eyes gleamed at the compliment, and she turned them to
her husband.

'She's nothing to boast of,' said Bob, judicially and masculinely.
'All women are pretty much alike.'

And Pennyloaf tried to smile at the snub.

Having devoted one evening to domestic quietude, Bob naturally felt
himself free to dispose of the next in a manner more to his taste.
The pleasures which sufficed to keep him from home had the same
sordid monotony which characterises life in general for the lower
strata of society. If he had money, there was the music-hall; if he
had none, there were the streets. Being in the latter condition
to-night, he joined a company of male and female intimates, and with
them strolled aimlessly from one familiar rendezvous to another.
Would that it were possible to set down a literal report of the
conversation which passed during hours thus spent! Much of it, of
course, would be merely revolting, but for the most part it would
consist of such wearying, such incredible imbecilities as no human
patience could endure through five minutes' perusal. Realise it,
however, and you grasp the conditions of what is called the social
problem. As regards Robert Hewett in particular, it would help you
to understand the momentous change in his life which was just coming
to pass.

On his reaching home at eleven o'clock, Pennyloaf met him with the
news that Jack Bartley had looked in twice and seemed very anxious
to see him. To-morrow being Saturday, Jack would call again early in
the afternoon. When the time came, he presented himself, hungry and
dirty as ever, but with an unwonted liveliness in his eye.

'I've got something to say to you,' be began, in a low voice,
nodding significantly towards Pennyloaf.

'Go and buy what you want for to-morrow,' said Bob to his wife,
giving her some money out of his wages. 'Take the kids.'

Disappointed in being thus excluded from confidence, but obedient as
ever, Pennyloaf speedily prepared herself and the children, the
younger of whom she still had to carry. When she was gone Mr.
Bartley assumed a peculiar attitude and began to speak in an
undertone.

'You know that medal as you gave me the other night?'

'What about it?'

'I sold it for fourpence to a chap I know. It got me a bed at the
lodgings in Pentonville Road.'

'Oh, you did! Well, what else?'

Jack was writhing in the most unaccountable way, peering hither and
thither out of the corners of his eyes. seeming to have an
obstruction in his throat.

'It was in a public-house as I sold it--a chap I know. There was
another chap as I didn't know standing just by--see? He kep'
looking at the medal, and he kep' looking at me. When I went out the
chap as I didn't know followed behind me. I didn't see him at first,
but he come up with me just at the top of Rosoman Street--a
red-haired chap, looked like a corster. "Hollo!" says he. "Hollo!"
says I. "Got any more o' them medals?" he says, in a quiet way like.
"What do you want to know for?" I says--'cos you see he was a
bloke as I didn't know nothing about, and there's no good being
over-free with your talk. He got me to walk on a bit with him, and
kept talking. "You didn't buy that nowhere," he says, with a sort of
wink. "What if I didn't?" I says. "There's no harm as I know." Well,
he kept on with his sort o' winks, and then he says, "Got any
_queer_ to put round?"'

At this point Jack lowered his voice to a whisper and looked
timorously towards the door.

'You know what he meant, Bob?'

Bob nodded and became reflective.

'Well, I didn't say nothing.' pursued Bartley, 'but the chap stuck
to me. "A fair price for a fair article," he says. "You'll always
find me there of a Thursday night, if you've got any business going.
Give me a look round," he says. "It ain't in my line," I says. So he
gave a grin like, and kep' on talking. "If you want a _four-half
shiner_," he says, "you know where to come. Reasonable with them as
is reasonable. Thursday night," he says, and then he slung his hook
round the corner.'

'What's a four-half shiner?' inquired Bob, looking from under his
eyebrows.

'Well, I didn't know myself, just then: but I've found out. It's a
public-house pewter--see?'

A flash of intelligence shot across Bob's face.

When Pennyloaf returned she found her husband with his box of moulds
and medals on the table. He was turning over its contents,
meditatively. On the table there also lay a half crown and a florin,
as though Bob had been examining these products of the Royal Mint
with a view to improving the artistic quality of his amateur
workmanship. He took up the coins quietly as his wife entered and
put them in his pocket.

'Mrs. Rendal's been at me again, Bob,' Pennyloaf said, as she set
down her market-basket. 'You'll have to give her something to-day.'

He paid no attention, and Pennyloaf had a difficulty in bringing him
to discuss the subject of the landlady's demands. Ultimately.
however, he admitted with discontent the advisability of letting
Mrs. Rendal have something on account. Though it was Saturday night,
he let hour after hour go by and showed no disposition to leave
home; to Pennyloaf's surprise, he sat almost without moving by the
fire, absorbed in thought.

Genuine respect for law is the result of possessing something which
the law exerts itself to guard. Should it happen that you possess
nothing. and that your education in metaphysics has been grievously
neglected, the strong probability is, that your mind will reduce the
principle of society to its naked formula: Get, by whatever means,
so long as with impunity. On that formula Bob Hewett was brooding;
in the hours of this Saturday evening he exerted his mind more
strenuously than ever before in the course of his life. And to a
foregone result. Here is a man with no moral convictions, with no
conscious relations to society save those which are hostile, with no
personal affections; at the same time, vaguely aware of certain
faculties in himself for which life affords no scope and encouraged
in various kinds of conceit by the crass stupidity of all with whom
he associates. It is suggested to him all at once that there is a
very easy way of improving his circumstances, and that by exercise
of a certain craft with which he is perfectly familiar; only, the
method happens to be criminal. 'Men who do this kind of thing are
constantly being caught and severely punished. Yes; men of a certain
kind; not Robert Hewett. Robert Hewett is altogether an exceptional
being; he is head and shoulders above the men with whom he mixes; he
is clever, he is remarkably good-looking. If anyone in this world,
of a truth Robert Hewett may reckon on impunity when he sets his
wits against the law. Why, his arrest and punishment is an
altogether inconceivable thing; he never in his life had a charge
brought against him.'

Again and again it came back to that. Every novice in unimpassioned
crime has that thought, and the more self-conscious the man, the
more impressed with a sense of his own importance, so much the
weightier is its effect with him.

We know in what spirit John Hewett regarded rebels against the law.
Do not imagine that any impulse of that nature actuated his son.
Clara alone had inherited her father's instinct of revolt. Bob's
temperament was, in a certain measure, that of the artist; he felt
without reasoning; he let himself go whither his moods propelled
him. Not a man of evil propensities; entertain no such thought for a
moment. Society produces many a monster, but the mass of those whom,
after creating them, it pronounces bad are merely bad from the
conventional point of view; they are guilty of weaknesses, not of
crimes. Bob was not incapable of generosity; his marriage had, in
fact, implied more of that quality than you in the upper world can
at all appreciate. He neglected his wife, of course, for he had
never loved her, and the burden of her support was too great a trial
for his selfishness. Weakness, vanity, a sense that he has not
satisfactions proportionate to his desert, a strong temptation--
here are the data which, in ordinary cases, explain a man's
deliberate attempt to profit by criminality.

In a short time Pennyloaf began to be aware of peculiarities of
behaviour in her husband for which she could not account. Though
there appeared no necessity for the step, he insisted on their once
more seeking new lodgings, and, before the removal, he destroyed all
his medals and moulds.

'What's that for, Bob?' Pennyloaf inquired.

'I'll tell you, and mind you hold your tongue about it. Somebody's
been saying as these things might get me into trouble. Just you be
careful not to mention to people that I used to make these kind of
things.'

'But why should it get you into trouble?'

'Mind what I tell you, and don't ask questions. You're always too
ready at talking.'

His absences of an evening were nothing new, but his manner on
returning was such as Pennyloaf had never seen in him. He appeared
to be suffering from some intense excitement; his hands were
unsteady; he showed the strangest nervousness if there were any
unusual sounds in the house. Then he certainly obtained money of
which his wife did not know the source; he bought new articles of
clothing, and in explanation said that he had won bets. Pennyloaf
remarked these things with uneasiness; she had a fear during her
lonely evenings for which she could give no reason. Poor slowwitted
mortal though she was, a devoted fidelity attached her to her
husband, and quickened wonderfully her apprehension in everything
that concerned him.

'Miss Snowdon came to-day, Bob,' she had said, about a week after
his order with regard to Jane.

'Oh, she did? And did you tell her she'd better keep away?'

'Yes,' was the dispirited answer.

'Glad to hear it.'

As for Jack Bartley, he never showed himself at the new lodgings.

Bob shortly became less regular in his attendance at the workshop.
An occasional Monday he had, to be sure, been in the habit of
allowing himself, but as the winter wore on he was more than once
found straying about the streets in midweek. One morning towards the
end of November, as he strolled along High Holborn, a hand checked
his progress; he gave almost a leap, and turned a face of terror
upon the person who stopped him. It was Clem--Mrs. Snowdon. They
had, of course, met casually since Bob's marriage, and in progress
of time the ferocious glances they were wont to exchange had
softened into a grin of half-friendly recognition; Clem's behaviour
at present was an unexpected revival of familiarity. When he had got
over his shock Bob felt surprised, and expressed the feeling in a--
'Well, what have _you_ got to say for yourself?'

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