The Nether World

by George Gissing

  Of course a man might have said, ‘What matter how things arrange themselves when Michael is past knowledge of them? I will marry the woman I honestly desire, and together we will carry out this humanitarian project so long as it be possible. When it ceases to be so, well—.’ But Sidney could not take that view. It shamed him beyond endurance to think that he must ever avoid Jane’s look, because he had proved himself dishonest, and, what were worse, had tempted her to become so.

  The conflict between desire and scruple made every day a weariness. Instead of looking forward eagerly to the evening in the week which he spent with Michael and Jane, he dreaded its approach. Scarcely had he met Jane’s look since this trouble began; he knew that her voice when she spoke to him expressed consciousness of something new in their relations, and even whilst continuing to act his part he suffered ceaselessly. Had Michael ever repeated to his granddaughter the confession which Sidney would now have given anything to recall? It was more than possible. Of Jane’s feeling Sidney could not entertain a serious doubt, and he knew that for a long time he had done his best to encourage it. It was unpardonable to draw aloof from her just because these circumstances had declared themselves, circumstances which brought perplexity into her life and doubtless made her long for another kind of support than Michael could afford her. The old man himself appeared to be waiting anxiously; he had fallen back into his habit of long silences, and often regarded Sidney in a way which the latter only too well understood.

  He tried to help himself through the time of indecision by saying that there was no hurry. Jane was very young, and with the new order of things her life had in truth only just begun. She must have a space to look about her; all the better if she could form various acquaintances. On that account he urged so strongly that she should be brought into relation with Miss Lant, and, if possible, with certain of Miss Lant’s friends. All very well, had not the reasoning been utterly insincere. It might have applied to another person; in Jane’s case it was mere sophistry. Her nature was home-keeping; to force her into alliance with conscious philanthropists was to set her in the falsest position conceivable; striving to mould herself to the desires of those she loved, she would suffer patiently and in secret mourn for the time when she had been obscure and happy. These things Sidney knew with a certainty only less than that wherewith he judged his own sensations; between Jane and himself the sympathy was perfect. And in despite of scruple he would before long have obeyed the natural impulse of his heart, had it not been that still graver complications declared themselves, and by exasperating his over-sensitive pride made him reckless of the pain he gave to others so long as his own self-torture was made sufficiently acute.

  With Joseph Snowdon he was doing his best to be on genial terms, but the task was a hard one. The more he saw of Joseph, the less he liked him. Of late the filter manufacturer had begun to strike notes in his conversation which jarred on Sidney’s sensibilities, and made him disagreeably suspicious that something more was meant than Joseph cared to put into plain speech. Since his establishment in business Joseph had become remarkably attentive to his father; he appeared to enter with much zeal into all that concerned Jane; he conversed privately with the old man for a couple of hours at a time, and these dialogues, for some reason or other, he made a point of reporting to Sidney. According to these reports—and Sidney did not wholly discredit them—Michael was coming to have a far better opinion of his son than formerly, was even disposed to speak with him gravely of his dearest interests.

  ‘We talked no end about you, Sidney, last night,’ said Joseph on one occasion, with the smile, whereby he meant to express the last degree of friendly intelligence.

  And Sidney, though anxiously desiring to know the gist of the conversation, in this instance was not gratified. He could not bring himself to put questions, and went away in a mood of vague annoyance which Joseph had the especial power of exciting.

  With the Byasses, Joseph was forming an intimacy; of this too Sidney became aware, and it irritated him. The exact source of this irritation he did not at first recognise, but it was disclosed at length unmistakably enough, and that on the occasion of the visit recently described. Bessie’s pleasantry, which roused him in so unwonted a manner, could bear, of course, but one meaning; as soon as he heard it, Sidney saw as in a flash that one remaining aspect of his position which had not as yet attracted his concern. The Byasses had learnt, or had been put in the way of surmising, that Michael Snowdon was wealthy; instantly they passed to the reflection that in marrying Jane their old acquaintance would be doing an excellent stroke of business. They were coarse-minded, and Bessie could even venture to jest with him on this detestable view of his projects. But was it not very likely that they derived their information from Joseph Snowdon? And if so, was it not all but certain that Joseph had suggested to them this way of regarding Sidney himself?

  So when Jane’s face appeared at the door he held himself in stubborn disregard of her. A thing impossible to him, he would have said a few minutes ago. He revenged himself upon Jane. Good; in this way he was likely to make noble advances.

  The next evening he was due at the Snowdons’, and for the very first time he voluntarily kept away. He posted a note to say that the business of his removal had made him irregular; he would come next week, when things were settled once more.

  Thus it came to pass that he sat wretchedly in his unfamiliar room and groaned about ‘that accursed money.’ His only relief was in bursts of anger. Why had he not the courage to go to Michael and say plainly what he thought? ‘You have formed a wild scheme, the project of a fanatic. Its realisation would be a miracle, and in your heart you must know that Jane’s character contains no miraculous possibilities. You are playing with people’s lives, as fanatics always do. For Heaven’s sake, bestow your money on the practical folks who make a solid business of relieving distress! Jane, I know, will bless you for making her as poor as ever. Things are going on about you which you do not suspect. Your son is plotting, plotting; I can see it. This money will be the cause of endless suffering to those you really love, and will never be of as much benefit to the unknown as if practical people dealt with it. Jane is a simple girl, of infinite goodness; what possesses you that you want to make her an impossible sort of social saint?’ Too hard to speak thus frankly. Michael had no longer the mental pliancy of even six months ago; his idea was everything to him; as he became weaker, it would gain the dire force of an hallucination. And in the meantime he, Sidney, must submit to be slandered by that fellow who had his own ends to gain.

  To marry Jane, and, at the old man’s death, resign every farthing of the money to her trustees, for charitable uses?—But the old pang of conscience; the life-long wound to Jane’s tender heart.

  A day of headache and incapacity, during which it was all he could do to attend to his mechanical work, and again the miserable loneliness of his attic. It rained, it rained. He had half a mind to seek refuge at some theatre, but the energy to walk so far was lacking. And whilst he stood stupidly abstracted there came a knock at his door.

  ‘I thought I’d just see if you’d got straight,’ said Joseph Snowdon, entering with his genial smile.

  Sidney made no reply, but turned as if to stir the fire. Hands in pockets, Joseph sauntered to a seat.

  ‘Think you’ll be comfortable here?’ he went on. ‘Well, well; of course it’s only temporary.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ returned Sidney. ‘I may stay here as long as I was at the last place—eight years.’

  Joseph laughed, with exceeding good-nature.

  ‘Oh yes; I shouldn’t wonder,’ he said, entering into the joke. ‘Still’—becoming serious—’I wish you’d found a pleasanter place. With the winter coming on, you see—’

  Sidney broke in with splenetic perversity.

  ‘I don’t know that I shall pass the winter here. My arrangements are all temporary—all of them.’

  After glancing at him the other crossed his legs and see
med to dispose himself for a stay of some duration.

  ‘You didn’t turn up the other night—in Hanover Street.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was there. We talked about you. My father has a notion you haven’t been quite well lately. I dare say you’re worrying a little, eh?’

  Sidney remained standing by the fireplace, turned so that his face was in shadow.

  ‘Worry? Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied, idly.

  ‘Well, I’m worried a good deal, Sidney, and that’s the fact.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘All sorts of things. I’ve meant to have a long talk with you; but then I don’t quite know how to begin. Well, see, it’s chiefly about Jane.’

  Sidney neither moved nor spoke.

  ‘After all, Sidney,’ resumed the other, softening his voice, ‘I am her father, you see. A precious bad one I’ve been, that there’s no denying, and dash it if I don’t sometimes feel ashamed of myself. I do when she speaks to me in that pleasant way she has—you know what I mean. For all that, I am her father, and I think it’s only right I should do my best to make her happy. You agree with that, I know.’

  ‘Certainly I do.’

  ‘You won’t take it ill if I ask whether—in fact, whether you’ve ever asked her—you know what I mean.’

  ‘I have not,’ Sidney replied, in a clear, unmoved tone, changing his position at the same time so as to look his interlocutor in the face.

  Joseph seemed relieved.

  ‘Still,’ he continued, ‘you’ve given her to understand—eh? I suppose there’s no secret about that?’

  ‘I’ve often spoken to her very intimately, but I have used no words such as you are thinking of. It’s quite true that my way of behaving has meant more than ordinary friendship.’

  ‘Yes, yes; you’re not offended at me bringing this subject up, old man? You see, I’m her father, after all, and I think we ought to understand each other.’

  ‘You are quite right.’

  ‘Well, now, see.’ He fidgeted a little. ‘Has my father ever told you that his friend the lawyer, Percival, altogether went against that way of bringing up Jane?’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’

  ‘You do?’ Joseph paused before proceeding. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t much care about Percival. I had a talk with him, you know, when my business was being settled. No, I don’t quite take to him, so to say. Now, you won’t be offended? The fact of the matter is, he asked some rather queer questions about you—or, at all events, if they weren’t exactly questions, they—they came to the same thing.’

  Sidney was beginning to glare under his brows. Commonsense told him how very unlikely it was that a respectable solicitor should compromise himself in talk with a stranger, and that such a man as J. J. Snowdon; yet, whether the story were true or not, it meant that Joseph was plotting in some vile way, and thus confirmed his suspicions. He inquired, briefly and indifferently, what Mr. Percival’s insinuations had been.

  ‘Well, I told you I don’t much care for the fellow. He didn’t say as much, mind, but he seemed to be hinting-like that, as Jane’s father, I should do well to—to keep an eye on you—ha, ha! It came to that, I thought—though, of course, I may have been mistaken. It shows how little he knows about you and father. I fancy he’d got it into his head that it was you set father on those plans about Jane—though why I’d like to know.’

  He paused. Sidney kept his eyes down, and said nothing.

  ‘Well, there’s quite enough of that; too much. Still I thought I’d tell you, you see. It’s well to know when we’ve got enemies behind our backs. But see, Sidney; to speak seriously, between ourselves.’ He leaned forward in the confidential attitude. ‘You say you’ve gone just a bit further than friendship with our Janey. Well, I don’t know a better man, and that’s the truth—but don’t you think we might put this off for a year or two? Look now, here’s this lady, Miss Lant, taking up the girl, and it’s an advantage to her; you won’t deny that. I sympathise with my good old dad; I do, honestly; but I can’t help thinking that Janey, in her position, ought to see a little of the world. There’s no secrets between us; you know what she’ll have as well as I do. I should be a brute if I grudged it her, after all she’s suffered from my neglect. But don’t you think we might leave her free for a year or two?’

  ‘Yes, I agree with you.’

  ‘You do? I thought you and I could understand each other, if we only got really talking. Look here, Sidney; I don’t mind just whispering to you. For anything I know, Percival is saying disagreeable things to the old man; but don’t you worry about that. It don’t matter a scrap, you see, so long as you and I keep friendly, eh? I’m talking very open to you, but it’s all for Janey’s sake. If you went and told father I’d been saying anything against Percival—well, it would make things nasty for me. I’ve put myself in your hands, but I know the kind of man you are. It’s only right you should hear of what’s said. Don’t worry; we’ll just wait a little, that’s all. I mean it all for the little girl’s sake. It wouldn’t be nice if you married her and then she was told—eh?’

  Sidney looked at the speaker steadily, then stirred the fire and moved about for a few moments. As he kept absolute silence, Joseph, after throwing out a few vague assurances of goodwill and trust, rose to take his leave. Kirkwood shook hands with him, but spoke not a word. Late the same night Sidney penned a letter to Michael Snowdon. In the morning he read it over, and instead of putting it into an envelope, locked it away in one of his drawers.

  When the evening for his visit to Hanover Street again came round he again absented himself, this time just calling to leave word with the servant that business kept him away. The business was that of walking aimlessly about Clerkenwell, in mud and fog. About ten o’clock he came to Farringdon Road Buildings, and with a glance up towards the Hewetts’ window he was passing by when a hand clutched at him. Turning, he saw the face of John Hewett, painfully disturbed, strained in some wild emotion.

  ‘Sidney! Come this way; I want to speak to you.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Come over here. Sidney—I’ve found my girl—I’ve found Clara!’

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CLARA’S RETURN

  Mrs. Eagles, a middle-aged woman of something more than average girth, always took her time in ascending to that fifth storey where she and her husband shared a tenement with the Hewett family. This afternoon her pause on each landing was longer than usual, for a yellow fog, which mocked the pale glimmer of gas-jets on the staircase, made her gasp asthmatically. She carried, too, a heavy market-bag, having done her Saturday purchasing earlier than of wont on account of the intolerable weather. She reached the door at length, and being too much exhausted to search her pocket for the latchkey, knocked for admission. Amy Hewett opened to her, and she sank on a chair in the first room, where the other two Hewett children were bending over ‘home-lessons’ with a studiousness not altogether natural. Mrs. Eagles had a shrewd eye; having glanced at Annie and Tom with a discreet smile, she turned her look towards the elder girl, who was standing full in the lamplight.

  ‘Come here, Amy,’ she said after a moment’s scrutiny. ‘So you will keep doin’ that foolish thing! Very well, then, I shall have to speak to your father about it; I’m not goin’ to see you make yourself ill and do nothing to prevent you.’

  Amy, now a girl of eleven, affected much indignation.

  ‘Why, I haven’t touched a drop, Mrs. Eagles!’

  ‘Now, now, now, now, now! Why, your lips are shrivelled up like a bit of o’ dried orange-peel! You’re a silly girl, that’s what you are!’

  Of late Amy Hewett had become the victim of a singular propensity; whenever she could obtain vinegar, she drank it as a toper does spirits. Inadequate nourishment, and especially an unsatisfied palate, frequently have this result in female children among the poor; it is an anticipation of what will befall them as soon as they find their way to the publichouse.