The Nether World

by George Gissing

  ‘I only wish my wife and me could join you,’ he remarked. ‘But it wouldn’t do to take a holiday so soon after settling to business. Better luck for me next year, father, let’s hope.’

  That he had settled to business was a fact of which Joseph made so much just now that one would have been tempted to suppose it almost a new experience for him. His engagement, he declared, was with a firm of advertising agents in the City; nothing to boast of, unfortunately, and remunerative only in the way of commission; but he saw his way to better things.

  ‘Jane, my girl,’ he continued, averting his eyes as if in emotion, ‘I don’t know how you and me are going to show our gratitude for all this kindness, I’m sure. I hope you haven’t got so used to it that you think there’s no need to thank your grandfather?’

  The girl and the old man exchanged a look. Joseph sighed, and began to speak of another subject in a tone of cheery martyrdom.

  Jane herself had not been quite so joyous as was her wont since the occurrence that caused her to take a new view of her position in the world. She understood that her grandfather regarded the change very gravely, and in her own heart awoke all manner of tremulous apprehensions when she tried to look onward a little to the uncertainties of the future. Forecasts had not hitherto troubled her; the present was so rich in satisfactions that she could follow the bent of her nature and live with no anxiety concerning the unknown. It was a great relief to her to be assured that the long-standing plans for the holiday would suffer no change. The last week was a time of impatience, resolutely suppressed. On the Saturday afternoon Sidney was to meet them at Liverpool Street. Would anything happen these last few days—this last day—this last hour? No; all three stood together on the platform, and their holiday had already begun.

  Over the pest-stricken regions of East London, sweltering in sunshine which served only to reveal the intimacies of abomination; across miles of a city of the damned, such as thought never conceived before this age of ours; above streets swarming with a nameless populace, cruelly exposed by the unwonted light of heaven; stopping at stations which it crushes the heart to think should be the destination of any mortal; the train made its way at length beyond the outmost limits of dread, and entered upon a land of level meadows, of hedges and trees, of crops and cattle. Michael Snowdon was anxious that Jane should not regard with the carelessness of familiarity those desolate tracts from which they were escaping. In Bethnal Green he directed her attention with a whispered word to the view from each window, and Jane had learnt well to understand him. But, the lesson over, it was none of his purpose to spoil her natural mood of holiday. Sidney sat opposite her, and as often as their eyes met a smile of contentment answered on either’s face.

  They alighted at Chelmsford, and were met by the farmer in whose house they were going to lodge, a stolid, good-natured fellow named Pammenter, with red, leathery cheeks, and a corkscrew curl of black hair coming forward on each temple. His trap was waiting, and in a few minutes they started on the drive to Danbury. The distance is about five miles, and, until Danbury Hill is reached, the countryside has no point of interest to distinguish it from any other representative bit of rural Essex. It is merely one of those quiet corners of flat, homely England, where man and beast seem on good terms with each other, where all green things grow in abundance, where from of old tilth and pasture-land are humbly observant of seasons and alternations, where the brown roads are familiar only with the tread of the labourer, with the light wheel of the farmer’s gig, or the rumbling of the solid warn. By the roadside you pass occasionally a mantled pool, where perchance ducks or geese are enjoying themselves; and at times there is a pleasant glimpse of farm-yard, with stacks and barns and stables. All things as simple as could be, but beautiful on this summer afternoon, and priceless when one has come forth from the streets of Clerkenwell.

  Farmer Pammenter was talkative, and his honest chest-voice sounded pleasantly; but the matter of his discourse might have been more cheerful. Here, as elsewhere, the evil of the times was pressing upon men and disheartening them from labour. Farms lying barren, ill-will between proprietor and tenant, between tenant and hind, departure of the tillers of the soil to rot in towns that have no need of them—of such things did honest Pammenter speak, with many a sturdy malediction of landlords and land-laws, whereat Sidney smiled, not unsympathetic.

  Danbury Hill, rising thick-wooded to the village church, which is visible for miles around, with stretches of heath about its lower slopes, with its far prospects over the sunny country, was the pleasant end of a pleasant drive. Mrs. Pammenter and her children (seven of them, unhappily) gave the party a rough, warm-hearted welcome. Ha! how good it was to smell the rooms through which the pure air breathed freely! All the front of the house was draped with purple clematis; in the garden were sun-flowers and hollyhocks and lowly plants innumerable; on the red and lichened tiles pigeons were cooing themselves into a doze; the horse’s hoofs rang with a pleasant clearness on the stones as he was led to his cool stable. Her heart throbbing with excess of delight, Jane pushed back the diamond-paned casement of her bedroom, the same room she had occupied last year and the year before, and buried her face in clematis. Then the tea that Mrs. Pammenter had made ready;—how delicious everything tasted! how white the cloth was! how fragrant the cut flowers in the brown jug!

  But Michael had found the journey a greater tax upon his strength than he anticipated. Whilst Sidney and Jane talked merrily over the tea-table the old man was thinking. ‘Another year they will come without me,’ and he smiled just to hide his thoughts. In the evening he smoked his pipe on a garden-seat, for the most part silent, and at sunset he was glad to go up to his chamber.

  Jane was renewing her friendship with the Pammenters’ eldest girl, an apple-checked, red-haired, ungraceful, but good-natured lass of sixteen. Their voices sounded from all parts of the garden and the farm-yard, Jane’s clear-throated laugh contrasting with the rougher utterance of her companion. After supper, in the falling of the dusk, Sidney strolled away from the gossiping circle within-doors, and found a corner of the garden whence there was a view of wooded hillside against the late glow of the heavens. Presently he heard footsteps, and through the leafage of a tree that shadowed him he saw Jane looking this way and that, as if she sought some one. Her dress was a light calico, and she held in her hand a rough garden hat, the property of Miss Pammenter. Sidney regarded her for some moments, then called her by name. She could not see him at first, and looked about anxiously. He moved a branch of the tree and again called her; whereupon she ran forward.

  ‘I thought perhaps you’d gone up the hill,’ she said, resting her arms on the wall by which he was standing.

  Then they kept silence, enjoying the sweetness of the hour. Differently, it is true; for Kirkwood’s natural sensitiveness had been developed and refined by studies of which Jane had no conception. Imperfect as his instruction remained, the sources of spiritual enjoyment were open to him, and with all his feeling there blended that reflective bitterness which is the sad privilege of such as he. Jane’s delight was as simple as the language in which she was wont to express herself. She felt infinitely more than Pennyloaf, for instance, would have done under the circumstances; but her joy consisted, in the main, of a satisfaction of pure instincts and a deep sense of gratitude to those who made her life what it was. She could as little have understood Sidney’s mind at this moment as she could have given an analytic account of her own sensations. For all that, the two were in profound sympathy; how different soever the ways in which they were affected, the result, as they stood side by side, was identical in the hearts of both.

  Sidney began to speak of Michael Snowdon, keeping his voice low, as if in fear of breaking those subtle harmonies wherewith the night descended.

  ‘We must be careful not to over-tire him, He looked very pale when he went upstairs. I’ve thought lately that he must suffer more than he tells us.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he often does,’ Jane assen
ted, as if relieved to speak of it. ‘Yet he always says it’s nothing to trouble about, nothing but what is natural at his age. He’s altered a great deal since father came,’ she added, regarding him diffidently.

  ‘I hope it isn’t because he thinks your father may be wanting to take you away?’

  ‘Oh, it can’t be that! Oh, he knows I wouldn’t leave him! Mr. Kirkwood, you don’t think my father will give us any trouble?’

  She revealed an anxiety which delicacy of feeling had hitherto prevented her expressing. Sidney at once spoke reassuringly, though he had in fact no little suspicion of Joseph Snowdon’s tactics.

  ‘It’s my grandfather that I ought to think most of,’ pursued Jane earnestly. ‘I can’t feel to my father as I do to him. What should I have been now if—’

  Something caused her to leave the speech unfinished, and for a few moments there was silence. From the ground exhaled a sweet fresh odour, soothing to the senses, and at times a breath of air brought subtler perfume from the alleys of the garden. In the branches above them rustled a bird’s wing. At a distance on the country road sounded the trotting of a horse.

  ‘I feel ashamed and angry with myself,’ said Sidney, in a tone of emotion, ‘when I think now of t hose times. I might have done something, Jane. I had no right to know what you were suffering and just go by as if it didn’t matter!’

  ‘Oh, but you didn’t!’ came eagerly from the girl’s lips. ‘You’ve forgotten, but I can’t. You were very kind to me—you helped me more than you can think—you never saw me without speaking kindly. Don’t you remember that night when I came to fetch you from the workshop, and you took off your coat and put it over me, because it was cold and raining?’

  ‘Jane, what a long, long time ago that seems!’

  ‘As long as I live I shall never forget it—never! You were the only friend I had then.’

  ‘No; there was some one else who took thought for you,’ said Sidney, regarding her gravely.

  Jane met his look for an instant—they could just read each other’s features in the pale light—then dropped her eyes.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve forgotten that either,’ he added, in the same unusual voice.

  ‘No,’ said Jane, below her breath.

  ‘Say who it is I mean.’

  ‘You mean Miss Hewett,’ was the reply, after a troubled moment.

  ‘I wanted you to say her name. You remember one evening not long ago, when your grandfather was away? I had the same wish then. Why shouldn’t we speak of her? She was a friend to you when you needed one badly, and it’s right that you should remember her with gratitude. I think of her just like we do of people that are dead.’

  Jane stood with one hand on the low wall, half-turned to him, but her face bent downwards. Regarding her for what seemed a long time, Sidney felt as though the fragrance of the earth and the flowers were mingling with his blood and confusing him with emotions. At the same his tongue was paralysed. Frequently of late he had known a timidity in Jane’s presence, which prevented him from meeting her eyes, and now this tremor came upon him with painful intensity. He knew to what his last words had tended; it was with consciousness of a distinct purpose that he had led the conversation to Clara; but now he was powerless to speak the words his heart prompted. Of a sudden he experienced a kind of shame, the result of comparison between himself and the simple girl who stood before him; she was so young, and the memory of passions from which he had suffered years ago affected him with a sense of unworthiness, almost of impurity. Jane had come to be his ideal of maidenhood, but till this moment he had not understood the full significance of the feeling with which he regarded her. He could not transform with a word their relations to each other. The temptation of the hour had hurried him towards an end which he must approach with more thought, more preparation of himself.

  It was scarcely for ten heart-beats. Then Jane raised her eyes and said in a voice that trembled:

  ‘I’ve often wished I could see her again, and thank her for her kindness that night.’

  ‘That will help me to think with less pain of things that are long since over and done with,’ Sidney replied, forcing himself to speak firmly. ‘We can’t alter the past, Jane, but we can try to remember only the best part of it. You, I hope, very seldom look back at all.’

  ‘Grandfather wishes me never to forget it. He often says that.’

  ‘Does he? I think I understand.’

  Jane drew down a branch and laid the broad cool leaves against her cheek; releasing it, she moved in the direction of the house. Her companion followed with slow step, his head bent. Before they came to the door Jane drew his attention to a bat that was sweeping duskily above their heads; she began to speak with her wonted cheerfulness.

  ‘How I should like Pennyloaf to be here! I wonder what she’d think of it?’

  At the door they bade each other good night. Sidney took yet a few turns in the garden before entering. But that it would have seemed to the Pammenters a crazy proceeding, he would have gladly struck away over the fields and walked for hours.

  CHAPTER XX

  A VISION OF NOBLE THINGS

  He slept but for an hour or two, and even then with such disturbance of fitful dreams that he could not be said to rest. At the earliest sound of movements in the house he rose and went out into the morning air. There had fallen a heavy shower just after sunrise, and the glory of the east was still partly veiled with uncertain clouds. Heedless of weather-signs, Sidney strode away at a great pace, urged by his ungovernable thoughts. His state was that miserable one in which a man repeats for the thousandth time something he has said, and torments himself with devising possible and impossible interpretations thereof. Through the night he had done nothing but imagine what significance Jane might have attached to his words about Clara Hewett. Why had he spoken of Clara at all? One moment he understood his reasons, and approved them; the next he was at a loss to account for such needless revival of a miserable story. How had Jane interpreted him? And was it right or wrong to have paused when on the point of confessing that he loved her?

  Rain caught him at a distance from home, and he returned to breakfast in rather a cheerless plight. He found that Michael was not feeling quite himself, and would not rise till midday. Jane had a look of anxiety, and he fancied she behaved to him with a constraint hitherto unknown. The fancy was dispelled, however, when, later in the morning, she persuaded him to bring out his sketch-book, and suggested points of view for a drawing of the farm that had been promised to Mr. Pammenter Himself unable to recover the tone of calm intimacy which till yesterday had been natural between them, Sidney found himself studying the girl, seeking to surprise some proof that she too was no longer the same, and only affected this unconsciousness of change. There was, perhaps, a little less readiness in her eyes to meet his, but she talked as naturally as ever, and the spontaneousness of her good-humour was assuredly not feigned.

  On Monday the farmer had business in Maldon. Occasionally when he drove over to that town he took one or other of his children with him to visit a relative, and to-day he proposed that Jane should be of the party. They started after an early dinner. Michael and Sidney stood together in the road, watching the vehicle as it rolled away; then they walked in silence to a familiar spot where they could sit in shadow. Sidney was glad of Jane’s departure for the afternoon. He found it impossible to escape the restlessness into which he had fallen, and was resolved to seek relief by opening his mind to the old man. There could be little doubt that Michael already understood his thoughts, and no better opportunity for such a conversation was likely to present itself. When they had been seated for a minute or two, neither speaking, Sidney turned to his companion with a grave look. At the same instant Michael also had raised his eyes and seemed on the point of saying something of importance. They regarded each other. The old man’s face was set in an expression of profound feeling, and his lips moved tremulously before words rose to them.

  ‘What were you goi
ng to say, Sidney?’ he asked, reading the other’s features.

  ‘Something which I hope won’t be displeasing to you. I was going to speak of Jane. Since she has been living with you she has grown from a child to a woman. When I was talking with her in the garden on Saturday night I felt this change more distinctly than I had ever done before. I understood that it had made a change in myself. I love her, Mr. Snowdon, and it’s my dearest hope that she may come to feel the same for me.’

  Michael was more agitated than the speaker; he raised a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes as if the light pained them. But the smile with which he speedily answered Sidney’s look of trouble was full of reassurance.

  ‘You couldn’t have said anything that would give me more pleasure,’ he replied, just above his breath. ‘Does she know it? Did you speak to her?’

  ‘We were talking of years ago, and I mentioned Clara Hewett. I said that I had forgotten all about her except that she’d befriended Jane. But nothing more than that. I couldn’t say what I was feeling just then. Partly I thought that it was right to speak to you first; and then—it seemed to me almost as if I should be treating her unfairly. I’m so much older—she knows that it isn’t the first time I—and she’s always thought of me just as a friend.’