The Nether World

by George Gissing

  ‘Do you often go to the theatre?’ he added carelessly. ‘I have a great many acquaintances connected with the stage in one way or another. If you would like, I should be very glad to send you tickets now and then. I always have more given me than I can well use.’

  Clara thanked him rather coldly, and said that she was very seldom free in the evening. Thereupon Mr. Scawthorne again smiled, raised his hat, and departed.

  Possibly he had some consciousness of the effect of his words, but it needed a subtler insight, a finer imagination than his, to interpret the pale, beautiful, harassed face which studiously avoided looking towards him as he paused before stepping out on to the pavement. The rest of the evening, the hours of night that followed, passed for Clara in bet tumult of heart and brain. The news of Grace Rudd had flashed upon her as revelation of a clear possibility where hitherto she had seen only mocking phantoms of futile desire. Grace was an actress; no matter by what course, to this she had attained. This man, Scawthorne, spoke of the theatrical life as one to whom all its details were familiar; acquaintance with him of a sudden bridged over the chasm which had seemed impassable. Would he come again to see her? Had her involuntary reserve put an end to any interest he might have felt in her? Of him personally she thought not at all; she could not have recalled his features; he was a mere abstraction, the representative of a wild hope which his conversation had inspired.

  From that day the character of her suffering was altered; it became less womanly, it defied weakness and grew to a fever of fierce, unscrupulous rebellion. Whenever she thought of Sidney Kirkwood, the injury he was inflicting upon her pride rankled into bitter resentment, unsoftened by the despairing thought of self-subdual which had at times visited her sick weariness. She bore her degradations with the sullen indifference of one who is supported by the hope of a future revenge. The disease inherent in her being, that deadly outcome of social tyranny which perverts the generous elements of youth into mere seeds of destruction, developed day by day, blighting her heart, corrupting her moral sense, even setting marks of evil upon the beauty of her countenance. A passionate desire of self-assertion familiarised her with projects, with ideas, which formerly she had glanced at only to dismiss as ignoble. In proportion as her bodily health failed, the worst possibilities of her character came into prominence. Like a creature that is beset by unrelenting forces, she summoned and surveyed all the craft faculties lurking in the dark places of her nature; theoretic y she had now accepted every debasing compact by which a woman can spite herself on the world’s injustice. Self-assertion; to be no longer an unregarded atom in the mass of those who are born only to labour for others; to find play for the strength and the passion which, by no choice of her own, distinguished her from the tame slave. Sometimes in the silence of night she suffered from a dreadful need of crying aloud, of uttering her anguish in a scream like that of insanity. She stifled it only by crushing her face into the pillow until the hysterical fit had passed, and she lay like one dead.

  A fortnight after his first visit Mr. Scawthorne again presented himself, polite, smiling, perhaps rather more familiar. He stayed talking for nearly an hour, chiefly of the theatre. Casually he mentioned that Grace Rudd had got her engagement—only a little part in a farce. Suppose Clara came to see her play some evening? Might he take her? He could at any time have places in the dress-circle.

  Clara accepted the invitation. She did so without consulting Mrs. Tubbs, and when it became necessary to ask for the evening’s freedom, difficulties were made. ‘Very well,’ said Clara, in a tone she had never yet used to her employer, ‘then I shall leave you.’ She spoke without a moment’s reflection; something independent of her will seemed to direct her in speech and act. Mrs. Tubbs yielded.

  Clara had not yet been able to obtain the dress she wished for. Her savings, however, were sufficient for the purchase of a few accessories, which made her, she considered, not unpresentable. Scawthorne was to have a cab waiting for her at a little distance from the luncheon-bar. It was now June, and at the hour of their meeting still broad daylight, but Clara cared nothing for the chance that acquaintances might see her; nay, she had a reckless desire that Sidney Kirkwood might pass just at this moment. She noticed no one whom she knew, however; but just as the cab was turning into Pentonville Road, Scawthorne drew her attention to a person on the pavement.

  ‘You see that old fellow,’ he said. ‘Would you believe that he is very wealthy?’

  Clara had just time to perceive an old man with white hair, dressed as a mechanic.

  ‘But I know him,’ she replied. ‘His name’s Snowdon.’

  ‘So it is. How do you come to know him?’ Scawthorne inquired with interest.

  She explained.

  ‘Better not say anything about it,’ remarked her companion. ‘He’s an eccentric chap. I happen to know his affairs in the way of business. I oughtn’t to have told secrets, but I can trust you.’

  A gentle emphasis on the last word, and a smile of more than usual intimacy. But his manner was, and remained through the evening, respectful almost to exaggeration. Clara seemed scarcely conscious of his presence, save in the act of listening to what he said. She never met his look, never smiled. From entering the theatre to leaving it, she had a high flush on her face. Impossible to recognise her friend in the actress whom Scawthorne indicated; features and voice were wholly strange to her. In the intervals, Scawthorne spoke of the difficulties that beset an actress’s career at its beginning.

  ‘I suppose you never thought of trying it?’ he asked. ‘Yet I fancy you might do well, if only you could have a few months’ training, just to start you. Of course it all depends on knowing how to go about it. A little money would be necessary—not much.’

  Clara made no reply. On the way home she was mute. Scawthorne took leave of her in Upper Street, and promised to look in again before long.

  Under the heat of these summer days, in the reeking atmosphere of the bar, Clara panted fever-stricken. The weeks went on; what strength supported her from the Monday morning to the Saturday midnight she could not tell. Acting and refraining, speaking and holding silence, these things were no longer the consequences of her own volition. She wished to break free from her slavery, but had not the force to do so; something held her voice as often as she was about to tell Mrs. Tubbs that this week would be the last. Her body wasted so that all the garments she wore were loose upon her. The only mental process of which she was capable was reviewing the misery of days just past and anticipating that of the days to come. Her only feelings were infinite self-pity and a dull smouldering hatred of all others in the world. A doctor would have bidden her take to bed, as one in danger of grave illness. She bore through it without change in her habits, and in time the strange lethargy passed.

  Scawthorne came to the bar frequently. He remarked often on her look of suffering, and urged a holiday. At length, near the end of July, he invited her to go up the river with him on the coming Bank-holiday. Clara consented, though aware that her presence would be more than ever necessary at the bar on the day of much drinking. Later in the evening she addressed her demand to Mrs. Tubbs. It was refused.

  Without a word of anger, Clara went upstairs, prepared herself for walking, and set forth among the by-ways of Islington. In half an hour she had found a cheap bedroom, for which she paid a week’s rent in advance. She purchased a few articles of food and carried them to her lodging, then lay down in the darkness.

  CHAPTER X

  THE LAST COMBAT

  During these summer months Sidney Kirkwood’s visits to the house in Clerkenwell Close were comparatively rare. It was not his own wish to relax in any degree the close friendship so long subsisting between the Hewetts and himself, but from the day of Clara’s engagement with Mrs. Tubbs John Hewett began to alter in his treatment of him. At first there was nothing more than found its natural explanation in regret of what had happened, a tendency to muteness, to troubled brooding; but before long John made it unmistakable
that the young man’s presence was irksome to him. If, on coming home, he found Sidney with Mrs. Hewett and the children, a cold nod was the only greeting he offered; then followed signs of ill-humour, such as Sidney could not in the end fail to interpret as unfavourable to himself. He never heard Clara’s name on her father’s lips, and himself never uttered it when John was in hearing.

  ‘She told him what passed between us that night,’ Sidney argued inwardly. But it was not so. Hewett had merely abandoned himself to an unreasonable resentment. Notwithstanding his concessions, he blamed Sidney for the girl’s leaving home, and, as his mood grew more irritable, the more hopeless it seemed that Clara would return, he nursed the suspicion of treacherous behaviour on Sidney’s part. He would not take into account any such thing as pride which could forbid the young man to urge a rejected suit. Sidney had grown tired of Clara, that was the truth, and gladly caught at any means of excusing himself. He had made new friends. Mrs. Peckover reported that he was a constant visitor at the old man Snowdon’s lodgings; she expressed her belief that Snowdon had come back from Australia with a little store of money, and if Kirkwood had knowledge of that, would it not explain his interest in Jane Snowdon?

  ‘For shame to listen to such things!’ cried Mrs. Hewett angrily, when her husband once repeated the landlady’s words, ‘I’d be ashamed of myself, John! If you don’t know him no better than that, you ought to by this time.’

  And John did, in fact, take to himself no little shame, but his unsatisfied affection turned all the old feelings to bitterness. In spite of himself, he blundered along the path of perversity. Sidney, too, had his promptings of obstinate humour. When he distinctly recognised Hewett’s feeling it galled him; he was being treated with gross injustice, and temper suggested reprisals which could answer no purpose but to torment him with self-condemnation. However, he must needs consult his own dignity; he could not keep defending himself against ignoble charges. For the present, there was no choice but to accept John’s hints, and hold apart as much as was possible without absolute breach of friendly relations. Nor could he bring himself to approach Clara. It was often in his mind to write to her; had he obeyed the voice of his desire he would have penned such letters as only the self-abasement of a passionate lover can dictate. But herein, too, the strain of sternness that marked his character made its influence felt. He said to himself that the only hope of Clara’s respecting him lay in his preservation of the attitude he had adopted, and as the months went on he found a bitter satisfaction in adhering so firmly to his purpose. The self-flattery with which no man can dispense whispered assurance that Clara only thought the more of him the longer he held aloof. When the end of July came, he definitely prescribed to his patience a trial of yet one more month. Then he would write Clara a long letter, telling her what it had cost him to keep silence, and declaring the constancy he devoted to her.

  This resolve he registered whilst at work one morning. The triumphant sunshine, refusing to be excluded even from London workshops, gleamed upon his tools and on the scraps of jewellery before him; he looked up to the blue sky, and thought with heavy heart of many a lane in Surrey and in Essex where he might be wandering but for this ceaseless necessity of earning the week’s wage. A fly buzzed loudly against the grimy window, and by one of those associations which time and change cannot affect, he mused himself back into boyhood. The glimpse before him of St. John’s Arch aided the revival of old impressions; his hand ceased from its mechanical activity, and he was absorbed in a waking dream, when a voice called to him and said that he was wanted. He went down to the entrance, and there found Mrs. Hewett. Her coming at all was enough to signal some disaster, and the trouble on her face caused Sidney to regard her with silent interrogation.

  ‘I couldn’t help comin’ to you,’ she began, gazing at him fixedly. ‘I know you can’t do anything, but I had to speak to somebody, an’ I know nobody better than you. It’s about Clara.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s left Mrs. Tubbs. They had words about Bank-holiday last night, an’ Clara went off at once. Mrs. Tubbs thought she’d come ‘ome, but this mornin’ her box was sent for, an’ it was to be took to a house in Islington. An’ then Mrs. Tubbs came an’ told me. An’ there’s worse than that, Sidney. She’s been goin’ about to the theatre an’ such places with a man as she got to know at the bar, an’ Mrs. Tubbs says she believes it’s him has tempted her away.’

  She spoke the last sentences in a low voice, painfully watching their effect.

  ‘And why hasn’t Mrs. Tubbs spoken about this before?’ Sidney asked, also in a subdued voice, but without other show of agitation.

  ‘That’s just what, I said to her myself. The girl was in her charge, an’ it was her duty to let us know if things went wrong. But how am I to tell her father? I dursn’t do it, Sidney; for my life, I dursn’t! I’d go an’ see her where she’s lodging—see, I’ve got the address wrote down here—but I should do more harm than good; she’d never pay any heed to me at the best of times, an’ it isn’t likely she would now.’

  ‘Look here if she’s made no attempt to hide away, you may be quite sure there’s no truth in what Mrs. Tubbs says. They’ve quarrelled, and of course the woman makes Clara as black as she can. Tell her father everything as soon as he comes home; you’ve no choice.’

  Mrs. Hewett averted her face in profound dejection. Sidney learnt at length what her desire had been in coming to him; she hoped he would see Clara and persuade her to return home.

  ‘I dursn’t tell her’ father,’ she kept repeating. ‘But perhaps it isn’t true what Mrs. Tubbs says. Do go an’ speak to her before it’s too late. Say we won’t ask her to come ‘ome, if only she’ll let us know what she’s goin’ to do.’

  In the end he promised to perform this service, and to communicate the result that evening. It was Saturday; at half-past one he left the workroom, hastened home to prepare himself for the visit, and, without thinking of dinner, set out to find the address Mrs. Hewett had given him. His steps were directed to a dull street on the north of Pentonville Road; the house at which he mad e inquiry was occupied by a drum-manufacturer. Miss Hewett, he learnt, was not at home; she had gone forth two hours ago, and nothing was known of her movements. Sidney turned away and began to walk up and down the shadowed side of the street; there was no breath of air stirring, and from the open windows radiated stuffy odours. A quarter of an hour sufficed to exasperate him with anxiety and physical malaise. He suffered from his inability to do anything at once, from conflict with himself as to whether or not it behoved him to speak with John Hewett; of Clara he thought with anger rather than fear, for her behaviour seemed to prove that nothing had happened save the inevitable breach with Mrs. Tubbs. Just as he had said to himself that it was no use waiting about all the afternoon, he saw Clara approaching. At sight of him she manifested neither surprise nor annoyance, but came forward with eyes carelessly averted. Not having seen her for so long, Sidney was startled by the change in her features; her cheeks had sunk, her eyes were unnaturally dark, there was something worse than the familiar self-will about her lips.

  ‘I’ve been waiting to see you,’ he said. ‘Will you walk along here for a minute or two?’

  ‘What do you want to say? I’m tired.’

  ‘Mrs. Tubbs has told your mother what has happened, and she came to me. Your father doesn’t know yet.’

  ‘It’s nothing to me whether he knows or not. I’ve left the place, that’s all, and I’m going to live here till I’ve got another.’

  ‘Why not go home?’

  ‘Because I don’t choose to. I don’t see that it concerns you, Mr. Kirkwood.’

  Their eyes met, and Sidney felt how little fitted he was to reason with the girl, even would she consent to hear him. His mood was the wrong one; the torrid sunshine seemed to kindle an evil fire in him, and with difficulty he kept back words of angry unreason; he even—strangest of inconsistencies—experienced a kind of brutal pleasure in her obvi
ous misery. Already she was reaping the fruit of obstinate folly. Clara read what his eyes expressed; she trembled with responsive hostility.

  ‘No, it doesn’t concern me,’ Sidney replied, half turning away. ‘But it’s perhaps as well you should know that Mrs. Tubbs is doing her best to take away your good name. However little we are to each other, it’s my duty to tell you that, and put you on your guard. I hope your father mayn’t hear these stories before you have spoken to him yourself.’

  Clara listened with a contemptuous smile.

  ‘What has she been saying?’

  ‘I shan’t repeat it.’

  As he gazed at her, the haggardness of her countenance smote like a sword-edge through all the black humours about his heart, piercing the very core of love and pity. He spoke in a voice of passionate appeal.

  ‘Clara, come home before it is too late! Come with me—now—come at once? Thank heaven you have got out of that place! Come home, and stay there quietly till we can find you something better.’

  ‘I’ll die rather than go home!’ was her answer, flung at him as if in hatred. ‘Tell my father that, and tell him anything else you like. I want no one to take any thought for me; and I wouldn’t do as you wish, not to save my soul!’