The Nether World

by George Gissing

  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.