The Nether World

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'Oh, Sam,' she panted forth, her handkerchief at her eyes, 'what a
fool you are! Do stop, or you'll kill me!'

Vastly gratified, Samuel advanced with ludicrous gestures towards
the visitor, held out his hand, and said with affected nasality,
'How do you do, sir? It's some time since I had the pleasure of
seeing you, sir. I hope you have been pretty tolerable.'

'_Isn't_ he a fool, Mr. Kirkwood?' cried the delighted wife. 'Do
just give him a smack on the side of the head, to please me! Sam, go
an' wash, an' we'll have supper. What do you mean by being so late
to-night?'

'Where's the infant?' asked Mr. Byass, thrusting his hands into his
waistcoat pockets and peering about the room. 'Bring forth the
infant! Let a fond parent look upon his child.'

'Go an' wash, or I'll throw something at you. Baby's in bed, and
mind, you wake him if you dare!'

Sidney would have taken his leave, but found it impossible. Mrs.
Byass declared that if he would not stay to supper he should never
enter the house again.

'Let's make a night of it!' cried Sam, standing in the doorway.
'Let's have three pots of six ale and a bottle of old Tom! Let us be
reckless!'

His wife caught up the pillow from the sofa and hurled it at him.
Samuel escaped just in time. The next moment his head was again
thrust forward.

'Let's send to the High Street for three cold roast fowls and a
beef-steak pie! Let's get custards and cheese-cakes and French
pastry! Let's have a pine-apple and preserved ginger! Who says, Go
it for once?'

Mrs. Byass caught up the poker and sprang after him. From the
passage came sounds of scuffling and screaming, and in the end of
something produced by the lips. Mrs. Byass then showed a very red
face at the door, and said:

'_Isn't_ he a fool? Just wait a minute while I get the table laid.'

Supper was soon ready in the comfortable kitchen. A cold shoulder of
mutton, a piece of cheese, pickled beetroot, a seed-cake, and
raspberry jam; such was the fare to which Bessie Byass invited her
husband and her guest. On a side-table were some open cardboard
boxes containing artificial flowers and leaves; for Bessie had now
and then a little 'mounting' to do for a shop in Upper Street, and
in that way aided the income of the family. She was in even better
spirits than usual at the prospect of letting her top-rooms. On
hearing that piece of news, Samuel, who had just come from the
nearest public-house with a foaming jug, executed a wild dance round
the room and inadvertently knocked two plates from the dresser. This
accident made his wife wrathful, but only for a moment; presently
she was laughing as unrestrainedly as ever, and bestowing upon the
repentant young man her familiar flattery.

At eleven o'clock Sidney left them, and mused with smiles on his way
home. This was not exactly his ideal of domestic happiness, yet it
was better than the life led by the Hewetts--better than that of
other households with which he was acquainted--better far, it
seemed to him, than the aspirations which were threatening to lead
poor Clara--who knew whither? A temptation beset him to walk round
into Upper Street and pass Mrs. Tubbs's bar. He resisted it, knowing
that the result would only be a night of sleepless anger and misery.

The next day he again saw Snowdon, and spoke to him of Mrs. Byass's
rooms. The old man seemed at first indisposed to go so far; but when
he had seen the interior of the house and talked with the landlady,
his objections disappeared. Before another week had passed the two
rooms were furnished in the simplest possible way, and Snowdon
brought Jane from Clerkenwell Close.

Kirkwood came by invitation as soon as the two were fairly
established in their home. He found Jane sitting by the fire in her
grandfather's room; a very little exertion still out-wearied her,
and the strange things that had come to pass had made her habitually
silent. She looked about her wonderingly, seemed unable to realise
her position, was painfully conscious of her new clothes, ever and
again started as if in fear.

'Well, what did I say that night?' was Sidney's greeting. 'Didn't I
tell you it would be all right soon?'

Jane made no answer in words, but locked at him timidly; and then a
smile came upon her face, an expression of joy that could not trust
itself, that seemed to her too boldly at variance with all she had
yet known of life.

CHAPTER VIII

PENNYLOAF CANDY

In the social classification of the nether world--a subject which
so eminently adapts itself to the sportive and gracefully
picturesque mode of treatment--it will be convenient to
distinguish broadly, and with reference to males alone, the two
great sections of those who do, and those who do not, wear collars.
Each of these orders would, it is obvious, offer much scope to an
analyst delighting in subtle gradation. Taking the collarless, bow
shrewdly might one discriminate between the many kinds of neckcloth
which our climate renders necessary as a substitute for the nobler
article of attire! The navvy, the scaffolder, the costermonger, the
cab-tout--innumerable would be the varieties of texture, of fold,
of knot, observed in the ranks of unskilled labour. And among these
whose higher station is indicated by the linen or paper symbol, what
a gap between the mechanic with collar attached to a flannel shirt,
and just visible along the top of a black tie, and the shopman whose
pride it is to adorn himself with the very ugliest neck-encloser put
in vogue by aristocratic sanction For such attractive disquisition I
have, unfortunately, no space; it must suffice that I indicate the
two genera. And I was led to do so in thinking of Bob Hewett.

Bob wore a collar. In the die-sinking establishment which employed
him there were, it is true, two men who belonged to the collarless;
but their business was down in the basement of the building, where
they kept up a furnace, worked huge stamping-machines, and so on.
Bob's workshop was upstairs, and the companions with whom he sat,
without exception, had something white and stiff round their necks;
in fact, they were every bit as respectable as Sidney Kirkwood, and
such as he, who bent over a jeweller's table. To John Hewett it was
no slight gratification that he had been able to apprentice his son
to a craft which permitted him always to wear a collar. I would not
imply that John thought of the matter in these terms, but his
reflections bore this significance. Bob was raised for ever above
the rank of those who depend merely upon their muscles, even as
Clara was saved from the dismal destiny of the women who can do
nothing but sew.

There was, on the whole, some reason why John Hewett should feel
pride in his eldest son. Like Sidney Kirkwood, Bob had early shown a
faculty for draughtsmansbip; when at school, he made decidedly
clever caricatures of such persons as displeased him, and he drew
such wonderful horses (on the race-course or pulling cabs), such
laughable donkeys in costers' carts, such perfect dogs, that on
several occasions some friend had purchased with a veritable
shilling a specimen of his work. 'Put him to the die-sinking,' said
an acquaintance of the family, himself so employed; 'he'll find a
use for this kind of thing some day.' Die-sinking is not the craft
it once was; cheap methods, vulgarising here as everywhere, have
diminished the opportunities of capable men; but a fair living was
promised the lad if he stuck to his work, and at the age of nineteen
he was already earning his pound a week. Then he was clever in a
good many other ways. He had an car for music, played (nothing else
was within his reach) the concertina, sang a lively song with
uncommon melodiousness--a gift much appreciated at the meetings of
a certain Mutual Benefit Club, to which his father had paid a weekly
subscription, without fail, through all adversities. In the regular
departments of learning Bob had never shown any particular aptitude;
he wrote and read decently, but his speech, as you have had occasion
for observing, was not marked by refinement, and for books he had no
liking. His father, unfortunately, had spoilt him, just as he had
spoilt Clara. Being of the nobly independent sex, between fifteen
and sixteen he practically free himself from parental control. The
use he made of his liberty was not altogether pleasing to John, but
the time for restraint and training had hopelessly gone by. The lad
was selfish, that there was no denying; he grudged the money
demanded of him for his support; but in other matters he always
showed himself so easy-tempered, so disposed to a genial
understanding, that the great fault had to be blinked. Many failings
might have been forgiven him in consideration of the fact that he
had never yet drunk too much, and indeed cared little for liquor.

Men of talent, as you are aware, not seldom exhibit low tastes in
their choice of companionship. Bob was a case in point; he did not
sufficiently appreciate social distinctions. He, who wore a collar,
seemed to prefer associating with the collarless. There was Jack--
more properly 'Jeck'--Bartley, for instance, his bosom friend
until they began to cool in consequence of a common interest in Miss
Peckover. Jack never wore a collar in his life, not even on Sundays,
and was closely allied with all sorts of blackguards, who somehow
made a living on the outskirts of turf-land. And there was Eli
Snape, compared with whom Jack was a person of refinement and
culture. Eli dealt surreptitiously in dogs and rats, and the mere
odour of him was intolerable to ordinary nostrils; yet he was a
species of hero in Bob's regard, such invaluable information could
he supply with regard to 'events' in which young Hewett took a
profound interest. Perhaps a more serious aspect of Bob's disregard
for social standing was revealed in his relations with the other
sex. Susceptible from his tender youth, he showed no ambition in the
bestowal of his amorous homage. At the age of sixteen did he not
declare his resolve to wed the daughter of old Sally Budge, who went
about selling watercress? and was there not a desperate conflict at
home before this project could be driven from his head? It was but
the first of many such instances. Had he been left to his own
devices, he would already, like numbers of his coevals, have been
supporting (or declining to support) a wife and two or three
children. At present he was 'engaged' to Clem Peckover; that was an
understood thing. His father did not approve it, but this connection
was undeniably better than those he had previously declared or
concealed. Bob, it seemed evident, was fated to make a
_mesalliance_--a pity, seeing his parts and prospects. He
might have aspired to a wife who had scarcely any difficulty with
her _h_'s; whose bringing-up enabled her to look with compassion on
girls who could not play the piano; who counted among her relatives
not one collarless individual.

Clem, as we have seen, had already found, or imagined, cause for
dissatisfaction with her betrothed. She was well enough acquainted
with Bob's repute, and her temper made it improbable, to say the
least, that the course of wooing would in this case run very
smoothly. At present, various little signs were beginning to
convince her that she had a rival, and the hints of her rejected
admirer, Jack Bartley, fixed her suspicions upon an acquaintance
whom she had hitherto regarded merely with contempt. This was
Pennyloaf Candy, formerly, with her parents, a lodger in Mrs.
Peckover's house. The family had been ousted some eighteen months
ago on account of failure to pay their rent and of the frequent
intoxication of Mrs. Candy. Pennyloaf's legal name was Penelope,
which, being pronounced as a trisyllable, transformed itself by
further corruption into a sound at all events conveying some
meaning. Applied in the first instance jocosely, the title grew
inseparable from her, and was the one she herself always used. Her
employment was the making of shirts for export; she earned on an
average tenpence a day, and frequently worked fifteen hours between
leaving and returning to her home. That Bob Hewett could interest
himself, with whatever motive, in a person of this description, Miss
Peckover at first declined to believe. A hint, however, was quite
enough to excite her jealous temperament; as proof accumulated,
cunning and ferocity wrought in her for the devising of such a
declaration of war as should speedily scare Pennyloaf from the
field. Jane Snowdon's removal had caused her no little irritation;
the hours of evening were heavy on her hands, and this new emotion
was not unwelcome as a temporary resource.

As he came home from work one Monday towards the end of April, Bob
encountered Pennyloaf; she had a bundle in her hands and was walking
hurriedly.

'Hallo! that you?' ho exclaimed, catching her by the arm. 'Where are
you going?'

'I can't stop now. I've got some things to put away, an' it's nearly
eight.'

'Come round to the Passage to-night. Be there at ten.'

'I can't give no promise. There's been such rows at 'ome. You know
mother summonsed father this mornin'?'

'Yes, I've heard. All right! come if you can; I'll ho there.'

Pennyloaf hastened on. She was a meagre, hollow-eyed, bloodless girl
of seventeen, yet her features had a certain charm--that dolorous
kind of prettiness which is often enough seen in the London
needle-slave. Her habitual look was one of meaningless surprise;
whatever she gazed upon seemed a source of astonishment to her, and
when she laughed, which was not very often, her eyes grew wider than
ever. Her attire was miserable, but there were signs that she tried
to keep it in order; the boots upon her feet were sewn and patched
into shapelessness; her limp straw hat had just received a new
binding.

By saying that she had things 'to put away,' she meant that her
business was with the pawnbroker, who could not receive pledges
after eight o'clock. It wanted some ten minutes of the hour when she
entered a side-doorway, and, by an inner door, passed into one of a
series of compartments constructed before the pawnbroker's counter.
She deposited her bundle, and looked about for someone to attend to
her. Two young men were in sight, both transacting business; one was
conversing facetiously with a customer on the subject of a pledge.
Two or three gas-jets lighted the interior of the shop, but the
boxes were in shadow. There was a strong musty odour; the gloom, the
narrow compartments, the low tones of conversation, suggested
stealth and shame.

Pennyloaf waited with many signs of impatience, until one of the
assistants approached, a smartly attired youth, with black hair
greased into the discipline he deemed becoming, with an aquiline
nose, a coarse mouth, a large horseshoe pin adorning his necktie,
and rings on his fingers. He caught hold of the packet and threw it
open; it consisted of a petticoat and the skirt of an old dress.

'Well, what is it?' he asked, rubbing his tongue along his upper lip
before and after speaking.

'Three an' six, please, sir.'

He rolled the things up again with a practised turn of the hand, and
said indifferently, glancing towards another box, 'Eighteenpence.'

'Oh, sir, we had two shillin's on the skirt not so long ago,' pleaded
Pennyloaf, with a subservient voice. 'Make it twoshillin's--please
do, sir!

The young man paid no attention; he was curling his moustache and
exchanging a smile of intelligence with his counter-companion with
respect to a piece of business the latter had in hand. Of a sudden
he turned and said sharply:

'Well, are you goin' to take it or not?'

Pennyloaf sighed and nodded.

'Got a 'apenny?' he asked.

'No.'

He fetched a cloth, rolled the articles in it very tightly, and
pinned them up; then he made out ticket and duplicate, handling his
pen with facile flourish, and having blotted the little piece of
card on a box of sand (a custom which survives in this conservative
profession), he threw it to the customer. Lastly, he counted out one
shilling and fivepenee halfpenny. The coins were sandy, greasy, and
of scratched surface.

Pennyloaf sped homewards. She lived in Shooter's Gardens, a
picturesque locality which demolition and rebuilding have of late
transformed. It was a winding alley, with paving raised a foot above
the level of the street whence was its main approach. To enter from
the obscurer end, you descended a flight of steps, under a low
archway, in a court itself not easily discovered. From without, only
a glimpse of the Gardens was obtainable; the houses curved out of
sight after the first few yards, and left surmise to busy itself
with the characteristics of the hidden portion. A stranger bold
enough to explore would have discovered that the Gardens had a blind
offshoot, known simply as 'The Court.' Needless to burden
description with further detail; the slum was like any other slum;
filth, rottenness, evil odours, possessed these dens of superfluous
mankind and made them gruesome to the peering imagination. The
inhabitants of course felt nothing of the sort; a room in Shooter's
Gardens was the only kind of home that most of them knew or desired.
The majority preferred it, on all grounds, to that offered them in a
block of model lodgings not very far away; here was independence,
that is to say, the liberty to be as vile as they pleased. How they
came to love vileness, well, that is quite another matter, and shall
not for the present concern us.

Pennyloaf ran into the jaws of this black horror with the
indifference of habit; it had never occurred to her that the Gardens
were fearful in the night's gloom, nor even that better lighting
would have been a convenience. Did it happen that she awoke from her
first sleep with the ring of ghastly shrieking in her ears, that was
an incident of too common occurrence to cause her more than a brief
curiosity; she could wait till the morning to hear who had
half-killed whom. Four days ago it was her own mother's turn to be
pounded into insensibility; her father (a journeyman baker, often
working nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, which probably did
not improve his temper), maddened by his wife's persistent
drunkenness, was stopped just on the safe side of murder. To the
amazement and indignation of the Gardens, Mrs. Candy prosecuted her
sovereign lord; the case had been heard to-day, and Candy had been
east in a fine. The money was paid, and the baker went his way,
remarking that his family were to 'expect him back when they saw
him.' Mrs. Candy, on her return, was hooted through all the length
of the Gardens, a demonstration of public feeling probably rather of
base than of worthy significance.

As Pennyloaf drew near to the house, a wild, discordant voice
suddenly broke forth somewhere in the darkness, singing n a high
key, 'All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and
magnify Him for ever!' It was Mad Jack, who had his dwelling in the
Court, and at all hours was wont to practise the psalmody which made
him notorious throughout Clerkenwell. A burst of laughter followed
from a group of men and boys gathered near the archway. Unheeding,
the girl passed in at an open door and felt her way up a staircase;
the air was noisome, notwithstanding a fierce draught which swept
down the stairs. She entered a room lighted by a small metal lamp
hanging on the wall--a precaution of Pennyloaf's own contrivance.
There was no bed, but one mattress lay with a few rags of
bed-clothing spread upon it, and two others were rolled up in a
corner. This chamber accommodated, under ordinary circumstances,
four persons: Mr. and Mrs. Candy, Pennyloaf, and a son named
Stephen, whose years were eighteen. (Stephen pursued the occupation
of a potman; his hours were from eight in the morning till midnight
on week-days, and on Sunday the time during which a public-house is
permitted to be open; once a month he was allowed freedom after six
o'clock.) Against the window was hung an old shawl pierced with many
rents. By the fire sat Mrs. Candy; she leaned forward, her head,
which was bound in linen swathes, resting upon her hands.

'What have you got?' she asked, in the thick voice of a drunkard,
without moving.

'Eighteenpence; it's all they'd give me.'

The woman cursed in her throat, but exhibited no anger with
Pennyloaf.

'Go an' get some tea an' milk,' she said, after a pause. 'There is
sugar. An' bring seven o' coals; there's only a dust.'

She pointed to a deal box which stood by the hearth. Pennyloaf went
out again.

Over the fireplace, the stained wall bore certain singular
ornaments. These were five coloured cards, such as are signed by one
who takes a pledge of total abstinence; each presented the
signature, 'Maria Candy,' and it was noticeable that at each
progressive date the handwriting had become more unsteady. Yes, five
times had Maria Candy promised, with the help of God, to abstain,'
&c. &c.; each time she was in earnest. But it appeared that the help
of God availed little against the views of one Mrs. Green, who kept
the beer-shop in Rosoman Street, once Mrs. Peckover's, and who could
on no account afford to lose so good a customer. For many years that
house, licensed for the sale of non-spirituous liquors, had been
working Mrs. Candy's ruin; not a particle of her frame but was
vitiated by the drugs retailed there under the approving smile of
civilisation. Spirits would have been harmless in comparison. The
advantage of Mrs. Green's ale was that the very first half-pint gave
conscience its bemuddling sop; for a penny you forgot all the cares
of existence; for threepence you became a yelling maniac.

Poor, poor creature She was sober to-night, sitting over the fire
with her face battered into shapelessness; and now that her fury had
had its way, she bitterly repented invoking the help of the law
against her husband. What use? what use? Perhaps he had now
abandoned her for good, and it was certain that the fear of him was
the only thing that ever checked her on the ruinous road she would
so willingly have quitted. But for the harm to himself, the only
pity was he had not taken her life outright. She knew all the
hatefulness of her existence; she knew also that only the grave
would rescue her from it. The struggle was too unequal between Mrs.
Candy with her appeal to Providence, and Mrs. Green with the forces
of civilisation at her back.

Pennyloaf speedily returned with a ha'p'orth of milk, a pennyworth
of tea, and seven pounds (also price one penny) of coals in an
apron. It was very seldom indeed that the Candys had more of
anything in their room than would last them for the current day.
There being no kettle, water was put on to boil in a tin saucepan;
the tea was made in a jug. Pennyloaf had always been a good girl to
her mother; she tended her as well as she could to-night; but there
was no word of affection from either. Kindly speech was stifled by
the atmosphere of Shooter's Gardens.

Having drunk her tea, Mrs. Candy lay down, as she was, on the
already extended mattress, and drew the ragged coverings about her.
In half an hour she slept.

Pennyloaf then put on her hat and jacket again and left the house.
She walked away from the denser regions of Clerkenwell, came to
Sadler's Wells Theatre (gloomy in its profitless recollection of the
last worthy manager that London knew), and there turned into
Myddelton Passage. It is a narrow paved walk between brick walls
seven feet high; on the one hand lies the New River Head, on the
other are small gardens behind Myddelton Square. The branches of a
few trees hang over; there are doors, seemingly never opened,
belonging one to each garden; a couple of gas-lamps shed feeble
light. Pennyloaf paced the length of the Passage several times,
meeting no one. Then a policeman came along with echoing tread, and
eyed her suspiciously. She had to wait more than a quarter of an
hour before Bob Hewett made his appearance. Greeting her with a nod
and a laugh, he took up a leaning position against the wall, and
began to put questions concerning the state of things at her home.

'And what'll your mother do if the old man don't give her nothing to
live on?' he inquired, when he had listened good-naturedly to the
recital of domestic difficulties.

'Don't knew,' replied the girl, shaking her head, the habitual
surprise of her countenance becoming a blank interrogation of
destiny.

Bob kept kicking the wall, first with one heel, then with the other.
He whistled a few bars of the last song he had learnt at the
music-hall.

'Say, Penny,' he remarked at length, with something of
shamefacedness, 'there's a namesake of mine here as I shan't miss,
if you can do any good with it.'

He held a shilling towards her under his hand. Pennyloaf turned
away, casting down her eyes and looking troubled.

'We can get on for a bit,' she said indistinctly.

Bob returned the coin to his pocket. He whistled again for a moment,
then asked abruptly:

'Say! have you seen Clem again?'

'No,' replied the girl, examining him with sudden acuteness. 'What
about her?'

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