The Nether World

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Hour after hour she sat with her face buried in her hands. She did
not weep; tears were trivial before a destiny such as this. But
groans and smothered cries often broke the silence of her solitude--cries
of frenzied revolt, wordless curses. Once she rose up
suddenly, passed through the middle room, and out on to the
staircase; there a gap in the wall, guarded by iron railings
breast-high, looked down upon the courtyard. She leaned forward over
the bar and measured the distance that separated her from the
ground; a ghastly height! Surely one would not feel much after such
a fall? In any case, the crashing agony of but an instant. Had not
this place tempted other people before now?

Some one coming upstairs made her shrink back into her room, She had
felt the horrible fascination of that sheer depth, and thought of it
for days, thought of it until she dreaded to quit the tenement, lest
a power distinct from will should seize and hurl her to destruction.
She knew that that must not happen here; for all her
self-absorption, she could not visit with such cruelty the one heart
that loved her. And thinking of him, she understood that her
father's tenderness was not wholly the idle thing that it had been
to her at first; her love could never equal his, had never done so
in her childhood, but she grew conscious of a soothing power in the
gentle and timid devotion with which he tended her. His appearance
of an evening was something more than a relief after the waste of
hours which made her day. The rough, passionate man made himself as
quiet and sympathetic as a girl when he took his place by her.
Compared with her, his other children were as nothing to him.
Impossible that Clara should not be touched by the sense that he who
had everything to forgive, whom she had despised and abandoned,
behaved now as one whose part it is to beseech forgiveness. She
became less impatient when he tried to draw her into conversation;
when he hold her thin soft hand in those rude ones of his, she knew
a solace in which there was something of gratitude.

Yet it was John who revived her misery in its worst form. Pitying
her unoccupied loneliness, he brought home one day a book that he
had purchased from a stall in Farringdon Street; it was a novel
(with a picture on the cover which seemed designed to repel any
person not wholly without taste), and might perhaps serve the end of
averting her thoughts from their one subject. Clara viewed it
contemptuously, but made a show of being thankful, and on the next
day she did glance at its pages. The story was better than its
illustration; it took a hold upon her; she read all day long. But
when she returned to herself, it was to find that she had been
exasperating her heart's malady. The book dealt with people of
wealth and refinement, with the world to which she had all her life
been aspiring, and to which she might have attained. The meanness of
her surroundings became in comparison more mean, the bitterness of
her fate more bitter. You must not lose sight of the fact that since
abandoning her work-girl existence Clara had been constantly
educating herself, not only by direct study of books, but through
her association with people, her growth in experience. Where in the
old days of rebellion she had only an instinct, a divination to
guide her, there was now just enough of knowledge to give occupation
to her developed intellect and taste. Far keener was her sense of
the loss she had suffered than her former longing for what she knew
only in dream. The activity of her mind received a new impulse when
she broke free from Scawthorne and began her upward struggle in
independence. Whatever books were obtainable she read greedily; she
purchased numbers of plays in the acting-editions, and studied with
the utmost earnestness such parts as she knew by repute; no actress
entertained a more superb ambition, none was more vividly conscious
of power. But it was not only at stage-triumph that Clara aimed;
glorious in itself, this was also to serve her as a means of
becoming nationalised among that race of beings whom birth and
breeding exalt above the multitude. A notable illusion; pathetic to
dwell upon. As a work-girl, she nourished envious hatred of those
the world taught her to call superiors; they were then as remote and
unknown to her as gods on Olympus. From her place behind the
footlights she surveyed the occupants of boxes and stalls in a
changed spirit; the distance was no longer insuperable; she heard of
fortunate players who mingled on equal terms with men and women of
refinement. There, she imagined, was her ultimate goal. 'It is to
_them_ that I belong! Be my origin what it may, I have the
intelligence and the desires of one born to freedom, Nothing in me,
nothing, is akin to that gross world from which I have escaped!' So
she thought--with every drop of her heart's blood crying its
source from that red fountain of revolt whereon never yet did the
upper daylight gleam! Brain and pulses such as hers belong not to
the mild breed of mortals fostered in sunshine. But for the stroke
of fate, she might have won that reception which was in her dream,
and with what self-mockery when experience had matured itself! Never
yet did true rebel, who has burst the barriers of social limitation,
find aught but _ennui_ in the trim gardens beyond.

When John asked if the book had given her amusement, she said that
reading made her eyes ache. He noticed that her hand felt feverish,
and that the dark mood had fallen upon her as badly as ever
to-night.

'It's just what I said,' she exclaimed with abruptness, after long
refusal to speak. 'I knew your friend would never come as long as I
was here.'

John regarded her anxiously. The phrase 'your friend' had a peculiar
sound that disturbed him. It made him aware that she had been
thinking often of Sidney Kirkwood since his name had been dismissed
from their conversation. He, too, had often turned his mind uneasily
in the same direction, wondering whether he ought to have spoken of
Sidney so freely. At the time it seemed best, indeed almost
inevitable; but habit and the force of affection were changing his
view of Clara in several respects. He recognised the impossibility
of her continuing to live as now, yet it was as difficult as ever to
conceive a means of aiding her. Unavoidably he kept glancing towards
Kirkwood. He knew that Sidney was no longer a free man; he knew
that, even had it been otherwise, Clara could be nothing to him. In
spite of facts, the father kept brooding on what might have been.
His own love was perdurable; how could it other than intensify when
its object was so unhappy? His hot, illogical mood all but brought
about a revival of the old resentment against Sidney.

'I haven't seen him for a week or two,' he replied, in an
embarrassed way.

'Did he tell you be shouldn't come?'

'No. After we'd talked about it, you know--when you told me you
didn't mind--I just said a word or two; and he nodded, that was
all.'

She became silent. John. racked by doubts as to whether he should
say more of Sidney or still hold his peace, sat rubbing the back of
one hand with the other and looking about the room.

'Father,' Clara resumed presently, 'what became of that child at
Mrs. Peckover's, that her grandfather came and took away? Snowdon;
yes, that was her name; Jane Snowdon.'

'You remember they went to live with somebody you used to know,'
John replied, with hesitation. 'They're still in the same house.'

'So she's grown up. Did you ever hear about that old man having a
lot of money?'

'Why, my dear, I never heard nothing but what them Peckovers talked
at the time. But there was a son of his turned up as seemed to have
some money. He married Mrs. Peckover's daughter.'

Clara expressed surprise.

'A son of his? Not the girl's father?

'Yes; her father. I don't know nothing about his history. It's for
him, or partly for him, as I'm workin' now, Clara. The firm's Lake,
Snowdon & Go.'

'Why didn't you mention it before?'

'I don't hardly know, my dear.'

She looked at him, aware that something was being kept back.

'Tell me about the girl. What does she do?'

'She goes to work, I believe; but I haven't heard much about her
since a good time. Sidney Kirkwood's a friend of her grandfather. He
often goes there, I believe.'

'What is she like?' Clara asked, after a pause. 'She used to be such
a weak, ailing thing, I never thought she'd grow up. What's she like
to look at?'

'I can't tell you, my dear. I don't know as ever I see her since
those times.'

Again a silence.

'Then it's Mr. Kirkwood that has told you what you know of her?'

'Why, no. It was chiefly Mrs. Peckover told me. She did say,
Clara--but then I can't tell whether it's true or not--she did say
something about Sidney and her.'

He spoke with difficulty, feeling constrained to make the
disclosure, but anxious as to its result. Clara made no movement,
seemed to have heard with indifference.

'It's maybe partly 'cause of that,' added John, in a low voice,
'that he doesn't like to come here.'

'Yes; I understand.'

They spoke no more on the subject.

CHAPTER XXXI

WOMAN AND ACTRESS

In a tenement on the same staircase, two floors below, lived a
family with whom John Hewett was on friendly terms. Necessity
calling these people out of London for a few days, they had left
with John the key of their front door; a letter of some moment might
arrive in their absence, and John undertook to re-post it to them.
The key was hung on a nail in Clara's room.

'I'll just go down and see if the postman's left anything at
Holland's this morning,' said Amy Hewett, coming in between
breakfast and the time of starting for school.

She reached up to the key, but Clara, who sat by the fire with a cup
of tea on her lap, the only breakfast she ever took, surprised her
by saying, 'You needn't trouble, Amy. I shall be going out soon, and
I'll look in as I pass.'

The girl was disappointed, for she liked this private incursion into
the abode of other people, but the expression of a purpose by her
sister was so unusual that, after a moment's hesitating, she said,
'Very well,' and left the room again.

When silence informed Clara that the children were gone, Mrs. Eagles
being the only person besides herself who remained in the tenement,
she put on her hat, drew down the veil which was always attached to
it, and with the key in her hand descended to the Hollands' rooms.
Had a letter been delivered that morning, it would have been--in
default of box--just inside the door; there was none, but Clara
seemed to have another purpose in view. She closed the door and
walked forward into the nearest room; the blind was down, but the
dusk thus produced was familiar to her in consequence of her own
habit, and, her veil thrown back, she examined the chamber
thoughtfully. It was a sitting-room, ugly, orderly; the air felt
damp, and even in semi-darkness she was conscious of the layers of
London dust which had softly deposited themselves since the family
went away forty-eight hours ago. A fire was laid ready for lighting,
and the smell of moist soot spread from the grate. Having stood on
one spot for nearly ten minutes, Clara made a quick movement and
withdrew; she latched the front door with as little noise as
possible, ran upstairs and shut herself again in her own room.

Presently she was standing at her window, the blind partly raised.
On a clear day the view from this room was of wide extent, embracing
a great part of the City; seen under a low, blurred, dripping sky,
through the ragged patches of smoke from chimneys innumerable, it
had a gloomy impressiveness well in keeping with the mind of her who
brooded over it. Directly in front, rising mist-detached from the
lower masses of building, stood in black majesty the dome of St.
Paul's; its vastness suffered no diminution from this high outlook,
rather was exaggerated by the flying scraps of mirky vapour which
softened its outline and at times gave it the appearance of floating
on a vague troubled sea. Somewhat nearer, amid many spires and
steeples, lay the surly bulk of Newgate, the lines of its
construction shown plan-wise; its little windows multiplied for
points of torment to the vision. Nearer again, the markets of
Smithfield, Bartholomew's Hospital, the tract of modern deformity,
cleft by a gulf of railway, which spreads between Clerkenwell Road
and Charterhouse Street. Down in Farringdon Street the carts,
waggons, vans, cabs, omnibuses, crossed and intermingled in a
steaming splash-bath of mud; human beings, reduced to their due
paltriness, seemed to toil in exasperation along the strips of
pavement, bound on errands, which were a mockery, driven
automaton-like by forces they neither understood nor could resist.

'Can I go out into a world like that--alone?' was the thought
which made Clara's spirit fail as she stood gazing. 'Can I face life
as it is for women who grow old in earning bare daily bread among
those terrible streets? Year after year to go in and out from some
wretched garret that I call home, with my face hidden, my heart
stabbed with misery till it is cold and bloodless!

Then her eye fell upon the spire of St. James's Church, on
Clerkenwell Green, whose bells used to be so familiar to her. The
memory was only of discontent and futile aspiration, but--Oh, if
it were possible to be again as she was then, and yet keep the
experience with which life had since endowed her! With no moral
condemnation did she view the records of her rebellion; but how easy
to see now that ignorance had been one of the worst obstacles in her
path, and that, like all unadvised purchasers, she had paid a price
that might well have been spared. A little more craft, a little more
patience--it is with these that the world is conquered. The world
was her enemy, and had proved too strong; woman though she was--
only a girl striving to attain the place for which birth adapted
her--pursuing only her irrepressible instincts--fate flung her to
the ground pitilessly, and bade her live out the rest of her time in
wretchedness.

No! There remained one more endeavour that was possible to her, one
bare hope of saving herself from the extremity which only now she
estimated at its full horror. If that failed, why, then, there was a
way to cure all ills.

From her box, that in which were hidden away many heart-breaking
mementoes of her life as an actress, she took out a sheet of
notepaper and an envelope. Without much thought, she wrote nearly
three pages, folded the letter, addressed it with a name only 'Mr.
Kirkwood.' Sidney's address she did not know; her father had
mentioned Red Lion Street, that was all. She did not even know
whether he still worked at the old place, but in that way she must
try to find him. She cloaked herself, took her umbrella, and went
out.

At a corner of St. John's Square she soon found an urchin who would
run an errand for her. He was to take this note to a house that she
indicated, and to ask if Mr. Kirkwood was working there. She
scarcely durst hope to see the messenger returning with empty hands,
but he did so. A terrible throbbing at her heart, she went home
again.

In the evening, when her father returned, she surprised him by
saying that she expected a visitor.

'Do you want me to go out of the way?' he asked, eager to submit to
her in everything.

'No. I've asked my friend to come to Mrs. Hollsnd's. I thought there
would be no great harm. I shall go down just before nine o'clock.'

'Oh no, there's no harm,' conceded her father. 'It's only if the
neighbours opposite got talkin' to them when they come back.'

'I can't help it. They won't mind. I can't help it.'

John noticed her agitated repetition, the impatience with which she
flung aside difficulties.

'Clara--it ain't anything about work, my dear?'

'No, father. I wouldn't do anything without telling you; I've
promised.'

'Then I don't care; it's all right.'

She had begun to speak immediately on his entering the room, and so
it happened that he had not kissed her as he always did at
home-coming. When she had sat down, he came with awkwardness and
timidity and bent his face to hers.

'What a hot cheek it is to-night, my little girl!' he murmured. 'I
don't like it; you've got a bit of fever hangin' about you.'

She wished to be alone; the children must not come into the room
until she had gone downstairs. When her father had left her, she
seated herself before the looking-glass, abhorrent as it was to her
to look thus in her own face, and began dressing her hair with quite
unusual attention. This beauty at least remained to her; arranged as
she had learned to do it for the stage, the dark abundance of her
tresses crowned nobly the head which once held itself with such
defiant grace. She did not change her dress, which, though it had
suffered from wear, was well-fitting and of better material than
Farringdon Road Buildings were wont to see; a sober draping which
became her tall elegance as she moved. At a quarter to nine she
arranged the veil upon her head so that she could throw her hat
aside without disturbing it; then, taking the lamp in her hand, and
the key of the Hollands' door, she went forth.

No one met her on the stairs. She was safe in the cold deserted
parlour where she had stood this morning. Cold, doubtless, but she
could not be conscious of it; in her veins there seemed rather to be
fire than blood. Her brain was clear, but in an unnatural way; the
throbbing at her temples ought to have been painful, but only
excited her with a strange intensity of thought. And she felt, amid
it all, a dread of what was before her; only the fever, to which she
abandoned herself with a sort of reckless confidence, a faith that
it would continue till this interview was over, overcame an impulse
to rush back into her hiding-place, to bury herself in shame, or
desperately whelm her wretchedness in the final oblivion. . . .

He was very punctual. The heavy bell of St. Paul's had not reached
its ninth stroke when she heard his knock at the door.

He came in without speaking, and stood as if afraid to look at her.
The lamp, placed on a side-table, barely disclosed all the objects
within the four walls; it illumined Sidney's face, but Clara moved
so that she was in shadow. She began to speak.

'You understood my note? The people who live here are away, and I
have ventured to borrow their room. They are friends of my
father's.'

At the first word, he was surprised by the change in her voice and
accentuation. Her speech was that of an educated woman; the melody
which always had such a charm for him had gained wonderfully in
richness. Yet it was with difficulty that she commanded utterance,
and her agitation touched him in a way quite other than he was
prepared for. In truth, he knew not what experience he had
anticipated, but the reality, now that it came, this unimaginable
blending of memory with the unfamiliar, this refinement of something
that he had loved, this note of pity struck within him by such
subtle means, affected his inmost self. Immediately he laid stern
control upon his feelings, but all the words which he had designed
to speak were driven from memory. He could say nothing, could only
glance at her veiled face and await what she had to ask of him.

'Will you sit down? I shall feel grateful if you can spare me a few
minutes. I have asked you to see me because--indeed, because I am
sadly in want of the kind of help a friend might give me. I don't
venture to call you that, but I thought of you; I hoped you wouldn't
refuse to let me speak to you. I am in such difficulties--such a
hard position--'

'You may be very sure I will do anything I can to be of use to you,'
Sidney replied, his thick voice contrasting so strongly with that
which had just failed into silence that he coughed and lowered his
tone after the first few syllables. He meant to express himself
without a hint of emotion, but it was beyond his power. The words in
which she spoke of her calamity seemed so pathetically simple that
they went to his heart. Clara had recovered all her faculties. The
fever and the anguish and the dread were no whit diminished, but
they helped instead of checking her. An actress improvising her
part, she regulated every tone with perfect skill, with inspiration;
the very attitude in which she seated herself was a triumph of the
artist's felicity.

'I just said a word or two in my note,' she resumed, 'that you might
have replied if you thought nothing could be gained by my speaking
to you. I couldn't explain fully what I had in mind. I don't know
that I've anything very clear to say even now, but--you know what
has happened to me; you know that I have nothing to look forward to,
that I can only hope to keep from being & burden to my father. I am
getting stronger; it's time I tried to find something to do. But I--'

Her voice failed again. Sidney gazed at her, and saw the dull
lamplight just glisten on her hair. She was bending forward a
little, her hands joined and resting on her knee.

'Have you thought what kind of--of work would be best for you?'
Sidney asked. The 'work' stuck in his throat, and he seemed to
himself brutal in his way of uttering it. But he was glad when he
had put the question thus directly; one at least of his resolves was
carried out.

'I know I've no right to choose, when there's necessity,' she
answered, in a very low tone. 'Most women would naturally think of
needlework; but I know so little of it; I scarcely ever did any. If
I could--I might perhaps do that at home, and I feel--if I could
only avoid--if I could only be spared going among strangers--'

Her faltering voice sank lower and lower; she seemed as if she would
have hidden her face even under its veil.

'I feel sure you will have no difficulty,' Sidney hastened to reply,
his own voice unsteady. 'Certainly you can get work at home. Why do
you trouble yourself with the thought of going among strangers?
There'll never be the least need for that; I'm sure there won't.
Haven't you spoken about it to your father?'

'Yes. But he is so kind to me that he won't hear of work at all. It
was partly on that account that I took the step of appealing to you.
He doesn't know who I am meeting here to-night. Would you--I don't
know whether I ought to ask--but perhaps if you spoke to him in a
day or two, and made him understand how strong my wish is. He dreads
lest we should be parted, but I hope I shall never have to leave
him. And then, of course, father is not very well able to advise
me--about work, I mean. You have more experience. I am so helpless.
Oh, if you knew how helpless I feel!'

'If you really wish it, I will talk with your father--'

'Indeed, I do wish it. My coming to live here has made everything so
uncomfortable for him and the children. Even his friends can't visit
him as they would; I feel that, though he won't admit that it's made
any difference.'

Sidney looked to the ground. He heard her voice falter as it
continued.

'If I'm to live here still, it mustn't be at the cost of all his
comfort. I keep almost always in the one room. I shouldn't be in the
way if anyone came. I've been afraid, Mr. Kirkwood, that perhaps you
feared to come lest, whilst I was not very well, it might have been
an inconvenience to us. Please don't think that. I shall never--
see either friends or strangers unless it is absolutely needful.'

There was silence.

'You do feel much better, I hope?' fell from Sidney's lips.

'Much stronger. It's only my mind; everything is so dark to me. You
know how little patience I always had. It was enough if any one
said, 'You _must_ do this,' or 'You _must_ put up with that'--at
once I resisted. It was my nature; I couldn't bear the feeling of
control. That's what I've had to struggle with since I recovered
from my delirium at the hospital, and hadn't even the hope of dying.
Can you put yourself in my place, and imagine what I have suffered?'

Sidney was silent. His own life had not been without its passionate
miseries, but the modulations of this voice which had no light of
countenance to aid it raised him above the plane of common
experience and made actual to him the feelings he knew only in
romantic story. He could not stir, lest the slightest sound should
jar on her speaking. His breath rose visibly upon the chill air, but
the discomfort of the room was as indifferent to him as to his
companion. Clara rose, as it impelled by mental anguish; she
stretched out her band to the mantel-piece, and so stood, between
him and the light, her admirable figure designed on a glimmering
background.

'I know why you say nothing,' she continued, abruptly but without
resentment. 'You cannot use words of sympathy which would be
anything but formal, and you prefer to let me understand that. It is
like you. Oh, you mustn't think I mean the phrase as a reproach.
Anything but that. I mean that you were always honest, and time
hasn't changed you--in that.' A slight, very slight, tremor on the
close. 'I'd rather you behaved to me like your old self. A sham
sympathy would drive me mad.'

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