The Nether World

'Waiting for him to come home, Pennyloaf?' said Jane.

'Oh, is that you, Miss Snowdon!' exclaimed the other, returning to consciousness and manifesting some shame at being discovered in this position. Hastily she drew together the front of her dress, which for the baby's sake had been wide open, and rose to her feet. Pennyloaf was not a bit more womanly in figure than on the day of her marriage; her voice was still an immature treble; the same rueful irresponsibility marked her features; but all her poor prettiness was wasted under the disfigurement of pains and cares, Incongruously enough, she wore a gown of bright-patterned calico, and about her neck had a collar of pretentious lace; her hair was dressed as if for a holiday, and a daub recently made on her cheeks by the baby's fingers lent emphasis to the fact that she had but a little while ago washed herself with much care.

'I can't stop,' said Jane, 'but I thought I'd just look in and speak a word. How have you been getting on?'

'Oh, do come in for just a minute!' pleaded Pennyloaf, moving backwards to an open door, whither Jane followed. They entered a room—much like other rooms that we have looked into from time to time. Following the nomadic custom of their kind, Bob Hewett and his wife had lived in six or seven different lodgings since their honeymoon in Shooter's Gardens. Mrs. Candy first of all made a change necessary, as might have been anticipated, and the restlessness of domestic ill-being subsequently drove them from place to place. 'Come in 'ere, Johnny,' she Called to the child lying on the landing. 'What's the good o' washin' you, I'd like to know? Just see, Miss Snowdon, he's made his face all white with the milk as the boy spilt on the stairs! Take this brush an' play with it, do! I can't keep 'em clean, Miss Snowdon, so it's no use talkin'.'

'Are you going somewhere to-night?' Jane inquired, with a glance at the strange costume.

Pennyloaf looked up and down in a shamefaced way.

'I only did it just because I thought he might like to see me. He promised me faithful as he'd come 'ome to-night, and I thought—it's only somethink as got into my 'ed to-day, Miss Snowdon.'

'But hasn't he been coming home since I saw you last?'

'He did just once, an' then it was all the old ways again. I did what you told me; I did, as sure as I'm a-standin' 'ere! I made the room so clean you wouldn't have believed; I scrubbed the floor an' the table, an' I washed the winders—you can see they ain't dirty yet. An' he'd never a' paid a bit o' notice if I hadn't told him, He was jolly enough for one night, just like he can be when he likes. But I knew as it wouldn't last, an' the next night he was off with a lot o' fellers an' girls, same as ever. I didn't make no row when he came 'ome; I wish I may die if I said a word to set his back up! An' I've gone on just the same all the week; we haven't had not the least bit of a row; so you see I kep' my promise. But it's no good; he won't come 'ome; he's always got fellers an' girls to go round with. He took his hoath as he'd come back to-night, an' then it come into my 'ed as I'd put my best things on, just to—you know what I mean, Miss Snowdon. But he won't come before twelve o'clock; I know he won't. An' I get that low sittin' 'ere, you can't think I can't go nowhere, because o' the children. If it wasn't for them I could go to work again, an' I'd be that glad; I feel as if my 'ed would drop off sometimes! I ham so glad you just come in!'

Jane had tried so many forms of encouragement, of consolation, on previous occasions that she knew not how to repeat herself. She was ashamed to speak words which sounded so hollow and profitless. This silence was only too significant to Pennyloaf, and in a moment she exclaimed with querulous energy:

'I know what'll be the bend of it! I'll go an' do like mother does—I will! I will! I'll put my ring away, an' I'll go an' sit all night in the public-'ouse! It's what all the others does, an' I'll do the same. I often feel I'm a fool to go on like this. I don't know what I live for, P'r'aps he'll be sorry when I get run in like mother.'

'Don't talk like that, Pennyloaf!' cried Jane, stamping her foot, (It was odd how completely difference of character had reversed their natural relations to each other; Pennyloaf was the child, Jane the mature woman.) 'You know better, and you've no right to give way to such thoughts. I was going to say I'd come and be with you all Saturday afternoon, but I don't know whether I shall now. And I'd been thinking you might like to come and see me on Sunday, but I can't have people that go to the public-house, so we won't say anything more about it. I shall have to be off; good-bye!'

She stepped to the door.

'Miss Snowdon!'

Jane turned, and after an instant of mock severity, broke into a laugh which seemed to fill the wretched den with sunlight. Words, too, she found; words of soothing influence such as leap from the heart to the tongue in spite of the heavy thoughts that try to check them. Pennyloaf was learning to depend upon these words for strength in her desolation. They did not excite her to much hopefulness, but there was a sustaining power in their sweet sincerity which made all the difference between despair tending to evil and the sigh of renewed effort. 'I don't care,' Pennyloaf had got into the habit of thinking, after her friend's departure, 'I won't give up as long as she looks in now and then.'

Out from the swarm of babies Jane hurried homewards. She had a reason for wishing to be back in good time to-night; it was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evening there was wont to come a visitor, who sat for a couple of hours in her grandfather's room and talked, talked—the most interesting talk Jane had ever heard or could imagine. A latch-key admitted her; she ran up to the second floor. A voice from the front-room caught her ear; certainly not his voice—it was too early—but that of some unusual visitor. She was on the point of entering her own chamber, when the other door opened, and somebody exclaimed, 'Ah, here she is!'

The speaker was an old gentleman, dressed in black, bald, with small and rather rugged features; his voice was pleasant. A gold chain and a bunch of seals shone against his waistcoat, also a pair of eye-glasses. A professional man, obviously. Jane remembered that she had seen him once before, about a year ago, when he had talked with her for a few minutes, very kindly.

'Will you come in here, Jane?' her grandfather's voice called to her.

Snowdon had changed much. Old age was heavy upon his shoulders, and had even produced a slight tremulousness in his hands; his voice told the same story of enfeeblement. Even more noticeable was the ageing of his countenance. Something more, however, than the progress of time seemed to be here at work. He looked strangely careworn; his forehead was set in lines of anxiety; his mouth expressed a nervousness of which formerly there had been no trace. One would have said that some harassing preoccupation must have seized his mind. His eyes were no longer merely sad and absent, but restless with fatiguing thought. As Jane entered the room he fixed his gaze upon her—a gaze that appeared to reveal worrying apprehension.

'You remember Mr. Percival, Jane,' he said.

The old gentleman thus presented held out his hand with something of fatherly geniality.

'Miss Snowdon, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again before long, but just now I am carrying off your grandfather for a couple of hours, and indeed we mustn't linger that number of minutes. You look well, I think?'

He stood and examined her intently, then cried:

'Come, my dear sir, come! we shall be late.'

Snowdon was already prepared for walking. He spoke a few words to Jane, then followed Mr. Percival downstairs.

Flurried by the encounter, Jane stood looking about her. Then came a rush of disappointment as she reflected that the visitor of Wednesday evenings would call in vain. Hearing that her grandfather was absent, doubtless he would take his leave at once. Or, would he—

In a minute or two she ran downstairs to exchange a word with Mrs. Byass. On entering the kitchen she was surprised to see Bessie sitting idly by the fire. At this hour it was usual for Mr. Byass to have returned, and there was generally an uproar of laughing talk. This evening, dead silence, and a noticeable something in the air which told of trouble. The baby—of course a new baby—lay in a bassinette near its mother, seemingly asleep; the other child was sitting in a high chair by the table, clattering 'bricks.'

Bessie did not even look round.

'Is Mr. Byass late?' inquired Jane, in an apprehensive voice.

'He's somewhere in the house, I believe,' was the answer, in monotone.

'Oh dear!' Jane recognised a situation which had already come under her notice once or twice during the last six months. She drew near, and asked in a low voice:

'What's happened, Mrs. Byass?'

'He's a beast! If he doesn't mind I shall go and leave him. I mean it!'

Bessie was in a genuine fit of sullenness. One of her hands was clenched below her chin; her pretty lips were not pretty at all; her brow was rumpled. Jane began to seek for the cause of dissension, to put affectionate questions, to use her voice soothingly.

'He's a beast!' was Bessie's reiterated observation; but by degrees she added phrases more explanatory. 'How can I help it if he cuts himself when he's shaving?—Serve him right!—What for? Why, for saying that babies was nothing but a nuisance, and that my baby was the ugliest and noisiest ever born!'

'Did she cry in the night?' inquired Jane, with sympathy.

'Of course she did! Hasn't she a right to?'

'And then Mr. Byass cut himself with his razor?'

'Yes. And he said it was because he was woke so often, and it made him nervous, and his hand shook. And then I told him he'd better cut himself on the other side, and it wouldn't matter. And then he complained because he had to wait for breakfast. And he said there'd been no comfort in the house since we'd had children. And I cared nothing about him, he said, and only about the baby and Ernest. And he went on like a beast, as he is! I hate him!'

'Oh no, not a bit of it!' said Jane, seeing the opportunity for a transition to jest.

'I do! And you may go upstairs and tell him so.'

'All right; I will.'

Jane ran upstairs and knocked at the door of the parlour. A gruff voice bade her enter, but the room was nearly in darkness.

'Will you have a light, Mr. Byass?'

'No—thank you.'

'Mr. Byass, Mrs. Byass says I'm to say she hates you.'

'All right. Tell her I've known it a long time. She needn't trouble about me; I'm going out to enjoy myself.'

Jane ran back to the kitchen.

'Mr. Byass says he's known it a long time,' she reported, with much gravity. 'And he's going out to enjoy himself.'

Bessie remained mute.

'What message shall I take back, Mrs. Byass?'

'Tell him if he dares to leave the house, I'll go to mother's the first thing to-morrow, and let them know how he's treating me.'

'Tell her,' was Mr. Byass's reply, 'that I don't see what it matters to her whether I'm at home or away. And tell her she's a cruel wife to me.'

Something like the sound of a snivel came out of the darkness as he concluded. Jane, in reporting his speech, added that she thought he was shedding tears. Thereupon Bessie gave a sob, quite in earnest.

'So am I,' she said chokingly. 'Go and tell him, Jane.'

'Mr. Byass, Mrs. Byass is crying,' whispered Jane at the parlour-door. 'Don't you think you'd better, go downstairs?'

Hearing a movement, she ran to be out of the way. Samuel left the dark room, and with slow step descended to the kitchen. Then Jane knew that it was all right, and tripped up to her room humming a song of contentment.

Had she, then, wholly outgrown the bitter experiences of her childhood? Had the cruelty which tortured her during the years when the soul is being fashioned left upon her no brand of slavish vice, nor the baseness of those early associations affected her with any irremovable taint? As far as human observation could probe her, Jane Snowdon had no spot of uncleanness in her being; she had been rescued while it was yet time, and the subsequent period of fostering had enabled features of her character, which no one could have discerned in the helpless child, to expand with singular richness. Two effects of the time of her bondage were, however, clearly to be distinguished. Though nature had endowed her with a good intelligence, she could only with extreme labour acquire that elementary book-knowledge which vulgar children get easily enough; it seemed as if the bodily overstrain at a critical period of life had affected her memory, and her power of mental application generally. In spite of ceaseless endeavour, she could not yet spell words of the least difficulty; she could not do the easiest sums with accuracy; geographical names were her despair. The second point in which she had suffered harm was of more serious nature. She was subject to fits of hysteria, preceded and followed by the most painful collapse of that buoyant courage which was her supreme charm and the source of her influence. Without warning, an inexplicable terror would fall upon her; like the weakest child, she craved protection from a dread inspired solely by her imagination, and solace for an anguish of wretchedness to which she could give no form in words. Happily this illness afflicted her only at long intervals, and her steadily improving health gave warrant for hoping that in time it would altogether pass away.

Whenever an opportunity had offered for struggling successfully with some form of evil—were it poor Pennyloaf's dangerous despair, or the very human difficulties between Bessie and her husband—Jane lived at her highest reach of spiritual joy. For all that there was a disappointment on her mind, she felt this joy to-night, and went about her pursuits in happy self-absorption. So it befell that she did not hear a knock at the house-door. Mrs. Byass answered it, and not knowing that Mr. Snowdon was from home, bade his usual visitor go upstairs. The visitor did so, and announced his presence at the door of the room.

'Oh, Mr. Kirkwood,' said Jane, 'I'm so sorry, but grandfather had to go out with a gentleman.'

And she waited, looking at him, a gentle warmth on her face.

CHAPTER XVI

DIALOGUE AND COMMENT

'Will it be late before he comes back?' asked Sidney, his smile of greeting shadowed with disappointment.

'Not later than half-past ten, he said.'

Sidney turned his face to the stairs. The homeward prospect was dreary after that glimpse of the familiar mom through the doorway. The breach of habit discomposed him, and something more positive strengthened his reluctance to be gone. It was not his custom to hang in hesitancy and court chance by indirectness of speech; recognising and admitting his motives, he said simply:

'I should like to stay a little, if you will let me—if I shan't be in your way?'

'Oh no! Please come in. I'm only sewing.'

There were two round-backed wooden chairs in the room; one stood on each side of the fireplace, and between them, beside the table, Jane always had her place on a small chair of the ordinary comfortless kind. She seated herself as usual, and Sidney took his familiar position, with the vacant chair opposite. Snowdon and he were accustomed to smoke their pipes whilst conversing, but this evening Sidney dispensed with tobacco.

It was very quiet here. On the floor below dwelt at present two sisters who kept themselves alive (it is quite inaccurate to use any other phrase in such instances) by doing all manner of skilful needlework; they were middle-aged women, gentle-natured, and so thoroughly subdued to the hopelessness of their lot that scarcely ever could even their footfall be heard as they went up and down stairs; their voices were always sunk to a soft murmur. Just now no infant wailing came from the Byasses' regions. Kirkwood enjoyed a sense of restfulness, intenser, perhaps, for the momentary disappointment he had encountered. He had no desire to talk; enough for a few minutes to sit and watch Jane's hand as it moved backwards and forwards with the needle.

'I went to see Pennyloaf as I came back from work,' Jane said at length, just looking up.

'Did you? Do things seem to be any better?'

'Not much, I'm afraid. Mr. Kirkwood, don't you think you might do something? If you tried again with her husband?'

'The fact is,' replied Sidney, 'I'm so afraid of doing more harm than good.'

'You think—But then perhaps that's just what I'm doing?'

Jane let her hand fall on the sewing and regarded him anxiously.

'No, no! I'm quite sure you can't do harm. Pennyloaf can get nothing but good from having you as a friend. She likes you; she misses you when you happen not to have seen her for a few days. I'm sorry to say it's quite a different thing with Bob and me. We're friendly enough—as friendly as ever—but I haven't a scrap of influence with him like you have with his wife. It was all very well to get hold of him once, and try to make him understand, in a half-joking way, that he wasn't behaving as well as he might. He didn't take it amiss—just that once. But you can't think how difficult it is for one man to begin preaching to another. The natural thought is: Mind your own business. If I was the parson of the parish—'

He paused, and in the same instant their eyes met. The suggestion was irresistible; Jane began to laugh merrily.

What sweet laughter it was? How unlike the shrill discord whereby the ordinary workgirl expresses her foolish mirth! For years Sidney Kirkwood had been unused to utter any sound of merriment; even his smiling was done sadly. But of late he had grown conscious of the element of joy in Jane's character, had accustomed himself to look for its manifestations—to observe the brightening of her eyes which foretold a smile, the moving of her lips which suggested inward laughter—and he knew that herein, as in many another matter, a profound sympathy was transforming him. Sorrow such as he had suffered will leave its mark upon the countenance long after time has done its kindly healing, and in Sidney's case there was more than the mere personal affliction tending to confirm his life in sadness. With the ripening of his intellect, he saw only more and more reason to condemn and execrate those social disorders of which his own wretched experience was but an illustration. From the first, his friendship with Snowdon had exercised upon him a subduing influence; the old man was stern enough in his criticism of society, but he did not belong to the same school as John Hewett, and the sober authority of his character made appeal to much in Sidney that had found no satisfaction amid the uproar of Clerkenwell Green. For all that, Kirkwood could not become other than himself; his vehemence was moderated, but he never affected to be at one with Snowdon in that grave enthusiasm of far-off hope which at times made the old man's speech that of an exhorting prophet. Their natural parts were reversed; the young eyes declared that they could see nothing but an horizon of blackest cloud, whilst those enfeebled by years bore ceaseless witness to the raying forth of dawn.

And so it was with a sensation of surprise that Sidney first became aware of light-heartedness in the young girl who was a silent hearer of so many lugubrious discussions. Ridiculous as it may sound—as Sidney felt it to be—he almost resented this evidence of happiness; to him, only just recovering from a shock which would leave its mark upon his life to the end, his youth wronged by bitter necessities, forced into brooding over problems of ill when nature would have bidden him enjoy, it seemed for the moment a sign of shallowness that Jane could look and speak cheerfully. This extreme of morbid feeling proved its own cure; even in reflecting upon it, Sidney was constrained to laugh contemptuously at himself. And therewith opened for him a new world of thought. He began to study the girl. Of course he had already occupied himself much with the peculiarities of her position, but of Jane herself he knew very little; she was still, in his imagination, the fearful and miserable child over whose shoulders he had thrown his coat one bitter night; his impulse towards her was one of compassion merely, justified now by what he heard of her mental slowness, her bodily sufferings. It would take very long to analyse the process whereby this mode of feeling was changed, until it became the sense of ever-deepening sympathy which so possessed him this evening. Little by little Jane's happiness justified itself to him, and in so doing began subtly to modify his own temper. With wonder he recognised that the poor little serf of former days had been meant by nature for one of the most joyous among children. What must that heart have suffered, so scorned and trampled upon! But now that the days of misery were over, behold nature having its way after all. If the thousands are never rescued from oppression, if they perish abortive in their wretchedness, is that a reason for refusing to rejoice with the one whom fate has blest? Sidney knew too much of Jane by this time to judge her shallow-hearted. This instinct of gladness had a very different significance from the animal vitality which prompted the constant laughter of Bessie Byass; it was but one manifestation of a moral force which made itself nobly felt in many another way. In himself Sidney was experiencing its pure effects, and it was owing to his conviction of Jane's power for good that he had made her acquainted with Bob Hewett's wife. Snowdon warmly approved of this; the suggestion led him to speak expressly of Jane, a thing he very seldom did, and to utter a strong wish that she should begin to concern herself with the sorrows she might in some measure relieve.

Sidney joined in the laughter he had excited by picturing himself the parson of the parish. But the topic under discussion was a serious one, and Jane speedily recovered her gravity.

'Yes, I see how hard it is,' she said. 'But it's a cruel thing for him to neglect poor Pennyloaf as he does. She never gave him any cause.'

'Not knowingly, I quite believe,' replied Kirkwood. 'But what a miserable home it is!'

'Yes.' Jane shook her head. 'She doesn't seem to know how to keep things in order. She doesn't seem even to understand me when I try to show her how it might be different.'

'There's the root of the trouble, Jane. What chance had Pennyloaf of ever learning how to keep a decent home, and bring up her children properly? How was she brought up? The wonder is that there's so much downright good in her; I feel the same wonder about people every day. Suppose Pennyloaf behaved as badly as her mother does, who on earth would have the right to blame her? But we can't expect miracles; so long as she lives decently, it's the most that can be looked for. And there you are; that isn't enough to keep a fellow like Bob Hewett in order. I doubt whether any wife would manage it, but as for poor Pennyloaf—'

'I shall speak to him myself,' said Jane quietly.

'Do! There's much more hope in that than in anything I could say. Bob isn't a bad fellow; the worst thing I know of him is his conceit. He's good-looking, and he's clever in all sorts of ways, and unfortunately he can't think of anything but his own merits. Of course he'd no business to marry at all whilst he was nothing but a boy.'

Jane plied her needle, musing.

'Do you know whether he ever goes to see his father?' Sidney inquired presently.

'No, I don't,' Jane answered, looking at him, but immediately dropping her eyes.

'If he doesn't I should think worse of him. Nobody ever had a kinder father, and there's many a reason why he should be careful to pay the debt he owes.'

Jane waited a moment, then again raised her eyes to him. It seemed as though she would ask a question, and Sidney's grave attentiveness indicated a surmise of what she was about to say. But her thought remained unuttered, and there was a prolongation of silence.

Of course they were both thinking of Clara. That name had never been spoken by either of them in the other's presence, but as often as conversation turned upon the Hewetts, it was impossible for them not to supplement their spoken words by a silent colloquy of which Clara was the subject. From her grandfather Jane knew that, to this day, nothing had been heard of Hewett's daughter; what people said at the time of the girl's disappearance she had learned fully enough from Clem Peckover, who even yet found it pleasant to revive the scandal, and by contemptuous comments revenge herself for Clara's haughty usage in old days. Time had not impaired Jane's vivid recollection of that Bank-holiday morning when she herself was the first to make it known that Clara had gone away. Many a time since then she had visited the street whither Snowdon led her—had turned aside from her wonted paths in the thought that it was not impossible she might meet Clara, though whether with more hope or fear of such a meeting she could not have said. When two years had gone by, her grandfather one day led the talk to that subject; he was then beginning to change in certain respects the tone he had hitherto used with her, and to address her as one who had outgrown childhood. He explained to her how it came about that Sidney could no longer be even on terms of acquaintance with John Hewett. The conversation originated in Jane's bringing the news that Hewett and his family had at length left Mrs. Peckover's house. For two years things had gone miserably with them, their only piece of good fortune being the death of the youngest child. John was confirmed in a habit of drinking. Not that he had become a brutal sot; sometimes for as much as a month he would keep sober, and even when he gave way to temptation he never behaved with violence to his wife and children. Still, the character of his life had once more suffered a degradation, and he possessed no friends who could be of the least use to him. Snowdon, for some reason of his own, maintained a slight intercourse with the Peckovers, and through them he endeavoured to establish an intimacy with Hewett; but the project utterly failed. Probably on Kirkwood's account, John met the old man's advances with something more than coldness. Sternly he had forbidden his wife and the little ones to exchange a word of any kind with Sidney, or with any friend of his. He appeared to nourish incessantly the bitter resentment to which he gave expression when Sidney and he last met.