The Nether World

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 a 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 if impelled by mental anguish; she stretched out her hand 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.'

'I said nothing,' he replied, 'only because words seemed meaningless.'

'Not only that. You feel for me, I know, because you are not heartless; but at the same time you obey your reason, which tells you that all I suffer comes of my own self-will.'

'I should like you to think better of me than that. I'm not one of those people, I hope, who use every accident to point a moral, and begin by inventing the moral to suit their own convictions. I know all the details of your misfortune.'

'Oh, wasn't it cruel that she should take such revenge upon me!' Her voice rose in unrestrained emotion. 'Just because she envied me that poor bit of advantage over her! How could I be expected to refuse the chance that was offered? It would have been no use; she couldn't have kept the part. And I was so near success. I had never had a chance of showing what I could do. It wasn't much of a part, really, but it was the lead, at all events, and it would have made people pay attention to me. You don't know how strongly I was always drawn to the stage; there I found the work for which I was meant. And I strove so hard to make my way. I had no friends, no money. I earned only just enough to supply my needs. I know what people think about actresses. Mr. Kirkwood, do you imagine I have been living at my ease, congratulating myself that I had escaped from all hardships?'

He could not raise his eyes. As she still awaited his answer, he said in rather a hard voice:

'As I have told you, I read all the details that were published.

'Then you know that I was working hard and honestly—working far, far harder than when I lived in Clerkenwell Close. But I don't know why I am talking to you about it. It's all over. I went my own way, and I all but won what I fought for. You may very well say, what's the use of mourning over one's fate?'

Sidney had risen.

'You were strong in your resolve to succeed,' he said gravely, 'and you will find strength to meet even this trial.'

'A weaker woman would suffer far less. One with a little more strength of character would kill herself.'

'No. In that you mistake. You have not yourself only to think of. It would be an easy thing to put an end to your life. You have a duty to your father.'

She bent her head.

'I think of him. He is goodness itself to me. There are fathers who would have shut the door in my face. I know better now than I could when I was only a child how hard his life has been; he and I are like each other so many ways; he has always been fighting against cruel circumstances. It's right that you, who have been his true and helpful friend, should remind me of my duty to him.'

A pause; then Sidney asked:

'Do you wish me to speak to him very soon about your finding occupation?'

'If you will. If you could think of anything.'

He moved, but still delayed his offer to take leave.

'You said just now,' Clara continued, falteringly, 'that you did not try to express sympathy, because words seemed of no use. How am I to find words of thanks to you for coming here and listening to what I had to say?'

'But surely so simple an act of friendship—'

'Have I so many friends? And what right have I to look to you for an act of kindness? Did I merit it by my words when I last—'

There came a marvellous change—a change such as it needed either exquisite feeling or the genius of simulation to express by means so simple. Unable to show him by a smile, by a light in her eyes, what mood had come upon her, what subtle shifting in the direction of her thought had checked her words—by her mere movement as she stepped lightly towards him, by the carriage of her head, by her hands half held out and half drawn back again, she prepared him for what she was about to say. No piece of acting was ever more delicately finished. He knew that she smiled, though nothing of her face was visible; he knew that her look was one of diffident, half-blushing pleasure. And then came the sweetness of her accents, timorous, joyful, scarcely to be recognised as the voice which an instant ago had trembled sadly in self-reproach.

'But that seems to you so long ago, doesn't it? You can forgive me now. Father has told me what happiness you have found, and I—I am so glad!'

Sidney drew back a step, involuntarily; the movement came of the shock with which he heard her make such confident reference to the supposed relations between himself and Jane Snowdon. He reddened—stood mute. For a few seconds his mind was in the most painful whirl and conflict; a hundred impressions, arguments, apprehensions, crowded upon him, each with its puncturing torment. And Clara stood there waiting for his reply, in the attitude of consummate grace.

'Of course I know what you speak of,' he said at length, with the bluntness of confusion. 'But your father was mistaken. I don't know who can have led him to believe that—It's a mistake, altogether.'

Sidney would not have believed that anyone could so completely rob him of self-possession, least of all Clara Hewett. His face grew still more heated. He was angry with he knew not whom, he knew not why—perhaps with himself in the first instance.

'A mistake?' Clara murmured, under her breath. 'Oh, you mean people have been too hasty in speaking about it. Do pardon me. I ought never to have taken such a liberty—but I felt—'

She hesitated.

'It was no liberty at all. I dare say the mistake is natural enough to those who know nothing of Miss Snowdon's circumstances. I myself, however, have no right to talk about her. But what you have been told is absolute error.'

Clara walked a few paces aside.

'Again I ask you to forgive me.' Her tones had not the same clearness as hitherto. 'In any case, I had no right to approach such a subject in speaking with you.'

'Let us put it aside,' said Sidney, mastering himself. 'We were just agreeing that I should see your father, and make known your wish to him.'

'Thank you. I shall tell him, when I go upstairs, that you were the friend whom I had asked to come here. I felt it to be so uncertain whether you would come.'

'I hope you couldn't seriously doubt it.'

'You teach me to tell the truth. No. I knew too well your kindness. I knew that even to me—'

Sidney could converse no longer. He felt the need of being alone, to put his thoughts in order, to resume his experiences during this strange hour. An extreme weariness was possessing him, as though he had been straining his intellect in attention to some difficult subject. And all at once the dank, cold atmosphere of the room struck into his blood; he had a fit of trembling.

'Let us say good-bye for the present.'

Clara gave her hand silently. He touched it for the first time, and could not but notice its delicacy; it was very warm, too, and moist. Without speaking she went with him to the outer door. His footsteps sounded along the stone staircase; Clara listened until the last echo was silent.

She too had begun to feel the chilly air. Hastily putting on her hat, she took up the lamp, glanced round the room to see that nothing was left in disorder, and hastened up to the fifth storey.

In the middle room, through which she had to pass, her father and Mr. Eagles were talking together. The latter gave her a 'good-evening,' respectful, almost as to a social superior. Within, Amy and Annie were just going to bed. She sat with them in her usual silence for a quarter of an hour, then, having ascertained that Eagles was gone into his own chamber, went out to speak to her father.

'My friend came,' she said. 'Do you suspect who it was?'

'Why, no, I can't guess, Clara.'

'Haven't you thought of Mr. Kirkwood?'

'You don't mean that?'

'Father, you are quite mistaken about Jane Snowdon—quite.'

John started up from his seat.

'Has he told you so, himself?'

'Yes. But listen; you are not to say a word on that subject to him. You will be very careful, father?'

John gazed at her wonderingly. She kissed his forehead, and withdrew to the other room.

CHAPTER XXXII

A HAVEN

John Hewett no longer had membership in club or society. The loss of his insurance-money made him for the future regard all such institutions with angry suspicion. 'Workin' men ain't satisfied with bein' robbed by the upper classes; they must go and rob one another.' He had said good-bye to Clerkenwell Green; the lounging crowd no longer found amusement in listening to his frenzied voice and in watching the contortions of his rugged features. He discussed the old subjects with Eagles, but the latter's computative mind was out of sympathy with zeal of the tumid description; though quite capable of working himself into madness on the details of the Budget, John was easily soothed by his friend's calmer habits of debate. Kirkwood's influence, moreover, was again exerting itself upon him—an influence less than ever likely to encourage violence of thought or speech. In Sidney's company the worn rebel became almost placid; his rude, fretted face fell into a singular humility and mildness. Having ended by accepting what he would formerly have called charity, and that from a man whom he had wronged with obstinate perverseness, John neither committed the error of obtruding his gratitude, nor yet suffered it to be imagined that obligation sat upon him too lightly. He put no faith in Sidney's assertion that some unknown benefactor was to be thanked for the new furniture; one and the same pocket had supplied that and the money for Mrs. Hewett's burial. Gratitude was all very well, but he could not have rested without taking some measures towards a literal repayment of his debt. The weekly coppers which had previously gone for club subscriptions were now put away in a money-box; they would be long enough in making an appreciable sum, but yet, if he himself could never discharge the obligation, his children must take it up after him, and this he frequently impressed upon Amy, Annie, and Tom.

Nothing, however, could have detached John's mind so completely from its habits of tumult, nor have fixed it so firmly upon the interests of home, as his recovery of his daughter. From the day of Clara's establishment under his roof he thought of her, and of her only. Whilst working at the filter-factory he remained in imagination by her side, ceaselessly repeating her words of the night before, eagerly looking for the hour that would allow him to return to her. Joy and trouble mingled in an indescribable way to constitute his ordinary mood; one moment he would laugh at a thought, and before a companion could glance at him his gladness would be overshadowed as if with the heaviest anxiety. Men who saw him day after day said at this time that he seemed to be growing childish; he muttered to himself a good deal, and looked blankly at you when you addressed him. In the course of a fortnight his state became more settled, but it was not the cheerful impulse that predominated. Out of the multitude of thoughts concerning Clara, one had fixed itself as the main controller of his reflection. Characteristically, John hit upon what seemed an irremediable misfortune, and brooded over it with all his might. If only Sidney Kirkwood were in the same mind as four years ago!

And now was he to believe that what he had been told about Sidney and Jane Snowdon was misleading? Was the impossible no longer so? He almost leapt from his chair when he heard that Sidney was the visitor with whom his daughter had been having her private conversation. How came they to make this appointment? There was something in Clara's voice that set his nerves a-tremble. That night he could not sleep, and next morning he went to work with a senile quiver in his body. For the first time for more than two months he turned into a public-house on his way, just to give himself a little 'tone.' The natural result of such a tonic was to heighten the fever of his imagination; goodness knows how far he had got in a drama of happiness before he threw off his coat and settled to his day's labour.

Clara, in the meanwhile, suffered a corresponding agitation, more penetrative in proportion to the finer substance of her nature. She did not know until the scene was over how much vital force it had cost her; when she took off the veil a fire danced before her eyes, and her limbs ached and trembled as she lay down in the darkness. All night long she was acting her part over and over; when she woke up, it was always at the point where Sidney replied to her, 'But you are mistaken!'

Acting her part; yes, but a few hours had turned the make-believe into something earnest enough. She could not now have met Kirkwood with the self-possession of last evening. The fever that then sustained her was much the same as she used to know before she had thoroughly accustomed herself to appearing in front of an audience; it exalted all her faculties, gifted her with a remarkable self-consciousness. It was all very well as long as there was need of it, but why did it afflict her in this torturing form now that she desired to rest, to think of what she had gained, of what hope she might reasonably nourish? The purely selfish project which, in her desperation, had seemed the only resource remaining to her against a life of intolerable desolateness, was taking hold upon her in a way she could not understand. Had she not already made a discovery that surpassed all expectation? Sidney Kirkwood was not bound to another woman; why could she not accept that as so much clear gain, and deliberate as to her next step? She had been fully prepared for the opposite state of things, prepared to strive against any odds, to defy all probabilities, all restraints; why not thank her fortune and plot collectedly now that the chances were so much improved?

But from the beginning of her interview with him, Clara knew that something more entered into her designs on Sidney than a cold self-interest. She had never loved him; she never loved anyone; yet the inclinations of her early girlhood had been drawn by the force of the love he offered her, and to this day she thought of him with a respect and liking such as she had for no other man. When she heard from her father that Sidney had forgotten her, had found some one by whom his love was prized, her instant emotion was so like a pang of jealousy that she marvelled at it. Suppose fate had prospered her, and she had heard in the midst of triumphs that Sidney Kirkwood, the working man in Clerkenwell, was going to marry a girl he loved, would any feeling of this kind have come to her? Her indifference would have been complete. It was calamity that made her so sensitive. Self-pity longs for the compassion of others. That Sidney, who was once her slave, should stand aloof in freedom now that she wanted sympathy so sorely, this was a wound to her heart. That other woman had robbed her of something she could not spare.

Jane Snowdon, too! She found it scarcely conceivable that the wretched little starveling of Mrs. Peckover's kitchen should have grown into anything that a man like Sidney could love. To be sure, there was a mystery in her lot. Clara remembered perfectly how Scawthorne pointed out of the cab at the old man Snowdon, and said that he was very rich. A miser, or what? More she had never tried to discover. Now Sidney himself had hinted at something in Jane's circumstances which, he professed, put it out of the question that he could contemplate marrying her. Had he told her the truth? Could she in fact consider him free? Might there not be some reason for his wishing to keep a secret?

With burning temples, with feverish lips, she moved about her little room like an animal in a cage, finding the length of the day intolerable. She was constrained to inaction, when it seemed to her that every moment in which she did not do something to keep Sidney in mind of her was worse than lost. Could she not see that girl, Jane Snowdon? But was not Sidney's denial as emphatic as it could be? She recalled his words, and tried numberless interpretations. Would anything that he had said bear being interpreted as a sign that something of the old tenderness still lived in him? And the strange thing was, that she interrogated herself on these points not at all like a coldly scheming woman, who aims at something that is to be won, if at all, by the subtlest practising on another's emotions, whilst she remains unaffected. Rather like a woman who loves passionately, whose ardour and jealous dread wax moment by moment.

For what was she scheming? For food, clothing, assured comfort during her life? Twenty-four hours ago Clara would most likely have believed that she had indeed fallen to this; but the meeting with Sidney enlightened her. Least of all women could she live by bread alone; there was the hunger of her brain, the hunger of her heart. I spoke once, you remember, of her 'defect of tenderness;' the fault remained, but her heart was no longer so sterile of the tender emotions as when revolt and ambition absorbed all her energies. She had begun to feel gently towards her father; it was an intimation of the need which would presently bring all the forces of her nature into play. She dreaded a life of drudgery; she dreaded humiliation among her inferiors; but that which she feared most of all was the barrenness of a lot into which would enter none of the passionate joys of existence. Speak to Clara of renunciation, of saintly glories, of the stony way of perfectness, and you addressed her in an unknown tongue; nothing in her responded to these ideas. Hopelessly defeated in the one way of aspiration which promised a large life, her being, rebellious against the martyrdom it had suffered, went forth eagerly towards the only happiness which was any longer attainable. Her beauty was a dead thing; never by that means could she command homage. But there is love, ay, and passionate love, which can be independent of mere charm of face. In one man only could she hope to inspire it; successful in that, she would taste victory, and even in this fallen estate could make for herself a dominion.