The Nether World
There was an after-piece, but Clara was not engaged in it. When, at the fall of the curtain on the melodrama, she went to the shabby dressing-room which she shared with two companions, a message delivered by the call boy bade her repair as soon as possible to the manager's office. What might this mean? She was startled on the instant, but speedily recovered her self-control; most likely she was to receive a rating—let it come! Without unusual hurry, she washed, changed her dress, and obeyed the summons.
Mr. Peel was still a young man, of tall and robust stature, sanguine, with much sham refinement in his manner; he prided himself on the civility with which he behaved to all who had business relations with him, but every now and then the veneer gave an awkward crack, and, as in his debate with Miss Walcott, the man himself was discovered to be of coarse grain. His aspect was singular when, on Clara's entrance into the private room, he laid down his cigarette and scrutinised her. There was a fiery hue on his visage, and the scowl of his black eyebrows had a peculiar ugliness.
'Miss Vale,' he began, after hesitation, 'do you consider that you played your part this evening with the conscientiousness that may fairly be expected of you?'
'Perhaps not,' replied the girl, averting her eyes, and resting her hand on the table.
'And may I ask why not?'
'I didn't feel in the humour. The house saw no difference.'
'Indeed? The house saw no difference? Do you mean to imply that you always play badly?'
'I mean that the part isn't worth any attention—even if they were able to judge.'
There was a perfection of insolence in her tone that in itself spoke strongly for the abilities she could display if occasion offered.
'This is rather an offhand way of treating the subject, madam,' cried Mr. Peel. 'If you disparage our audiences, I beg you to observe that it is much the same thing as telling me that my own successes are worthless!'
'I intended nothing of the kind.'
'Perhaps not.' He thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked down at his boots for an instant. 'So you are discontented with your part?'
'It's only natural that I should be.'
'I presume you think yourself equal to Juliet, or perhaps Lady Macbeth?'
'I could play either a good deal better than most women do.'
The manager laughed, by no means ill-humouredly.
'I'm sorry I can't bring you out in Shakespeare just at present, Miss Vale; but—should you think it a condescension to play Laura Denton?'
This was Miss Walcott's part, now Grace Danver's. Clara looked at him with mistrust; her breath did not come quite naturally.
'How long would it take you, do you think,' pursued the other, 'to get the words?'
'An hour or two; I all but know them.'
The manager took a few paces this way and that.
'We go on to Bolton to-morrow morning. Could you undertake to be perfect for the afternoon rehearsal?'
'Yes.'
'Then I'll try you. Here's a copy you can take. I make no terms, you understand; it's an experiment. We'll have another talk to-morrow. Good-night.'
She left the room. Near the door stood Grace Danver and another actress, both of whom were bidden to wait upon the manager before leaving. Clara passed under the fire of their eyes, but scarcely observed them.
Rain drenched her between the theatre and her lodgings, for she did not think of putting up an umbrella; she thought indeed of nothing; there was fire and tumult in her brain. On the round table in her sitting-room supper was made ready, but she did not heed it. Excitement compelled her to walk incessantly round and round the scanty space of floor. Already she had begun to rehearse the chief scenes of Laura Denton; she spoke the words with all appropriate loudness and emphasis; her gestures were those of the stage, as though an audience sat before her; she seemed to have grown taller. There came a double knock at the house-door, but it did not attract her attention; a knock at her own room, and only when some one entered was she recalled to the present. It was Grace again; her lodging was elsewhere, and this late visit could have but one motive.
They stood face to face. The elder woman was so incensed that her lips moved fruitlessly, like those of a paralytic.
'I suppose you're going to make a scene,' Clara addressed her. 'Please remember how late it is, and don't let all the house hear you.'
'You mean to tell me you accepted that offer of Peel's—without saying a word—without as much as telling him that he ought to speak to me first?'
'Certainly I did. I've waited long enough; I'm not going to beat about the bush when my chance comes.'
'And you called yourself my friend?'
'I'm nobody's friend but my own in an affair of this kind. If you'd been in my place you'd have done just the same.'
'I wouldn't! I couldn't have been such a mean creature! Every man and woman in the company'll cry shame on you.'
'Don't deafen me with your nonsense! If you played the part badly, I suppose some one else must take it. You were only on trial, like I shall be.'
Grace was livid with fury.
'Played badly! As if we didn't all know how you've managed it! Much it has to do with good or bad acting! We know how creatures of your kind get what they want.'
Before the last word was uttered she was seized with a violent fit of coughing; her cheeks flamed, and spots of blood reddened on the handkerchief she put to her mouth. Half-stifled, she lay back in the angle of the wall by the door. Clara regarded her with a contemptuous pity, and when the cough had nearly ceased, said coldly:
'I'm not going to try and match you in insulting language; I dare say you'd beat me at that. If you take my advice, you'll go home and take care of yourself; you look ill enough to be in bed. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks of me; what you said just now was a lie, but it doesn't matter. I've got the part, and I'll take good care that I keep it. You talk about us being friends; I should have thought you knew by this time that there's no such thing as friendship or generosity or feeling for women who have to make their way in the world. You've had your hard times as well as I, and what's the use of pretending what you don't believe? You wouldn't give up a chance for me; I'm sure I should never expect you to. We have to fight, to fight for everything, and the weak get beaten. That's what life has taught me.'
'You're right,' was the other's reply, given with a strangely sudden calmness. 'And we'll see who wins.'
Clara gave no thought to the words, nor to the look of deadly enmity that accompanied them. Alone again, she speedily became absorbed in a vision of the triumph which she never doubted was near at hand. A long, long time it seemed since she had sold herself to degradation: with this one hope. You see that she had formulated her philosophy of life since then; a child of the nether world whom fate had endowed with intellect, she gave articulate utterance to what is seething in the brains of thousands who fight and perish in the obscure depths. The bitter bargain was issuing to her profit at last; she would yet attain that end which had shone through all her misery—to be known as a successful actress by those she had abandoned, whose faces were growing dim to her memory, but of whom, in truth, she still thought more than of all the multitudinous unknown public. A great success during the remainder of this tour, and she might hope for an engagement in London. Her portraits would at length be in the windows; some would recognise her.
Yet she was not so pitiless as she boasted. The next morning, when she met Grace, there came a pain at her heart in seeing the ghastly, bloodless countenance which refused to turn towards her. Would Grace be able to act at all at the next town? Yes, one more scene.
They reached Bolton. In the afternoon the rehearsal took place, but the first representation was not until to-morrow. Clara saw her name attached to the leading female character on bills rapidly printed and distributed through the town. She went about in a dream, rather a delirium. Mr. Peel used his most affable manner to her; his compliments after the rehearsal were an augury of great things. And the eventful evening approached.
To give herself plenty of time to dress (the costumes needed for the part were fortunately simple, and Mr. Peel had advanced her money to make needful purchases) she left her lodgings at half-past six. It was a fine evening, but very dark in the two or three by-streets along which she had to pass to reach the theatre. She waited a minute on the doorstep to let a troop of female mill-hands go by; their shoes clanked on the pavement, and they were singing in chorus, a common habit of their kind in leaving work. Then she started and walked quickly. .
Close by the stage-door, which was in a dark, narrow passage, stood a woman with veiled face, a shawl muffling the upper part of her body. Since six o'clock she had been waiting about the spot, occasionally walking to a short distance, but always keeping her face turned towards the door. One or two persons came up and entered; she observed them, but held aloof. Another drew near. The woman advanced, and, as she did so, freed one of her arms from the shawl.
'That you, Grace?' said Clara, almost kindly, for in her victorious joy she was ready to be at peace with all the world.
The answer was something dashed violently in her face—something fluid and fiery—something that ate into her flesh, that frenzied her with pain, that drove her shrieking she knew not whither.
Late in the same night, a pointsman, walking along the railway a little distance out of the town, came upon the body of a woman, train-crushed, horrible to view. She wore the dress of a lady; a shawl was still partly wrapped about her, and her hands were gloved. Nothing discoverable upon her would have helped strangers in the task of identification, and as for her face—But a missing woman was already sought by the police, and when certain persons were taken to view this body, they had no difficulty in pronouncing it that of Grace Danver.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FAMILY HISTORY PROGRESSES
What could possess John Hewett that, after resting from the day's work, he often left his comfortable room late in the evening and rambled about the streets of that part of London which had surely least interest for him, the streets which are thronged with idlers, with carriages going homeward from the theatres, with those who can only come forth to ply their business when darkness has fallen? Did he seek food for his antagonism in observing the characteristics of the world in which he was a stranger, the world which has its garners full and takes its ease amid superfluity? It could scarcely be that, for since his wife's death an indifference seemed to be settling upon him; he no longer cared to visit the Green or his club on Sunday, and seldom spoke on the subjects which formerly goaded him to madness. He appeared to be drawn forth against his will, in spite of weariness, and his look as he walked on was that of a man who is in search of some one. Yet whom could he expect to meet in these highways of the West End?
Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly, the Strand, the ways about St. James's Park; John Hewett was not the only father who has come forth after nightfall from an obscure home to look darkly at the faces passing on these broad pavements. At times he would shrink into a shadowed corner, and peer thence at those who went by under the gaslight. When he moved forward, it was with the uneasy gait of one who shuns observation; you would have thought, perchance, that he watched an opportunity of begging and was shamefaced: it happened now and then that he was regarded suspiciously. A rough-looking man, with grizzled beard, with eyes generally bloodshot, his shoulders stooping—naturally the miserable are always suspected where law is conscious of its injustice.
Two years ago he was beset for a time with the same restlessness, and took night-walks in the same directions; the habit wore away, however. Now it possessed him even more strongly. Between ten and eleven o'clock, when the children were in bed, he fell into abstraction, and presently, with an unexpected movement, looked up as if some one had spoken to him—just the look of one who hears a familiar voice; then he sighed, and took his hat and went forth. It happened sometimes when he was sitting with his friends Mr. and Mrs. Eagles; in that case he would make some kind of excuse. The couple suspected that his business would take him to the public-house, but John never came back with a sign about him of having drunk; of that failing he had broken himself. He went cautiously down the stone stairs, averting his face if anyone met him; then by cross-ways he reached Gray's Inn Road, and so westwards.
He had a well-ordered home, and his children were about him, but these things did not compensate him for the greatest loss his life had suffered. The children, in truth, had no very strong hold upon his affections. Sometimes, when Amy sat and talked to him, he showed a growing nervousness, an impatience, and at length turned away from her as if to occupy himself in some manner. The voice was not that which had ever power to soothe him when it spoke playfully. Memory brought back the tones which had been so dear to him, and at times something more than memory; he seemed really to hear them, as if from a distance. And then it was that he went out to wander in the streets.
Of Bob in the meantime he saw scarcely anything. That young man presented himself one Sunday shortly after his father had become settled in the new home, but practically he was a stranger. John and he had no interests in common; there even existed a slight antipathy on the father's part of late years. Strangely enough this feeling expressed itself one day in the form of a rebuke to Bob for neglecting Pennyloaf—Pennyloaf, whom John had always declined to recognise.
'I hear no good of your goin's on,' remarked Hewett, on a casual encounter in the street. 'A married man ought to give up the kind of company as you keep.'
'I do no harm,' replied Bob bluntly. 'Has my wife been complaining to you?'
'I've nothing to do with her; it's what I'm told.'
'By Kirkwood, I suppose? You'd better not have made up with him again, if he's only making mischief.'
'No, I didn't mean Kirkwood.'
And John went his way. Odd thing, was it not, that this embittered leveller should himself practise the very intolerance which he reviled in people of the upper world. For his refusal to recognise Pennyloaf he had absolutely no grounds, save—I use the words advisedly—an aristocratic prejudice. Bob had married deplorably beneath him; it was unpardonable, let the character of the girl be what it might. Of course you recognise the item in John Hewett's personality which serves to explain this singular attitude. But, viewed generally, it was one of those bits of human inconsistency over which the observer smiles, and which should be recommended to good people in search of arguments for the equality of men.
After that little dialogue, Bob went home in a disagreeable temper. To begin with, his mood had been ruffled, for the landlady at his lodgings—the fourth to which he had removed this year—was 'nasty' about a week or two of unpaid rent, and a man on whom he had counted this evening for the payment of a debt was keeping out of his way. He found Pennyloaf sitting on the stairs with her two children, as usual; poor Pennyloaf had not originality enough to discover new expressions of misery, and that one bright idea of donning her best dress was a single instance of ingenuity. In obedience to Jane Snowdon, she kept herself and the babies and the room tolerably clean, but everything was done in the most dispirited way.
'What are you kicking about here for?' asked Bob impatiently. 'That's how that kid gets its cold—of course it is!—Ger out!'
The last remark was addressed to the elder child, who caught at his legs as he strode past. Bob was not actively unkind to the little wretches for whose being he was responsible; he simply occupied the natural position of unsophisticated man to children of that age, one of indifference, or impatience. The infants were a nuisance; no one desired their coming, and the older they grew the more expensive they were.
It was a cold evening of October; Pennyloaf had allowed the fire to get very low (she knew not exactly where the next supply of coals was to come from), and her husband growled as he made a vain endeavour to warm his hands.
'Why haven't you got tea ready?' he asked,
'I couldn't be sure as you was comin', Bob; how could I? But I'll soon get the kettle boilin'.'
'Couldn't be sure as I was coming? Why, I've been back every night this week—except two or three.'
It was Thursday, but Bob meant nothing jocose.
'Look here!' he continued, fixing a surly eye upon her. 'What do you mean by complaining about me to people? Just mind your own business. When was that girl Jane Snowdon here last?'
'Yesterday, Bob.'
'I thought as much, Did she give you anything?' He made this inquiry in rather a shamefaced way.
'No, she didn't.'
'Well, I tell you what it is. I'm not going to have her coming about the place, so understand that. When she comes next, you'll just tell her she needn't come again.'
Pennyloaf looked at him with dismay. For the delivery of this command Bob had seated himself on the corner of the table and crossed his arms. But for the touch of black-guardism in his appearance, Bob would have been a very good-looking fellow; his face was healthy, by no means commonplace in its mould, and had the peculiar vividness which indicates ability—so impressive, because so rarely seen, in men of his level. Unfortunately his hair was cropped all but to the scalp, in the fashionable manner; it was greased, too, and curled up on one side of his forehead with a peculiarly offensive perkishness. Poor Pennyloaf was in a great degree responsible for the ills of her married life; not only did she believe Bob to be the handsomest man who walked the earth but in her weakness she could not refrain from telling him as much. At the present moment he was intensely self-conscious; with Pennyloaf's eye upon him, he posed for effect. The idea of forbidding future intercourse with Jane had come to him quite suddenly; it was by no means his intention to make his order permanent, for Jane had now and then brought little presents which were useful, but just now he felt a satisfaction in asserting authority. Jane should understand that he regarded her censure of him with high displeasure.
'You don't mean that, Bob?' murmured Pennyloaf.
'Of course I do. And let me catch you disobeying me! I should think you might find better friends than a girl as used to be the Peckovers' dirty little servant.'
Bob turned up his nose and sniffed the air. And Pennyloaf, in spite of the keenest distress, actually felt that there was something in the objection, thus framed! She herself had never been a servant—never; she had never sunk below working with the needle for sixteen hours a day for a payment of ninepence. The work-girl regards a domestic slave as very distinctly her inferior.
'But that's a long while ago,' she ventured to urge, after reflection.
'That makes no difference. Do as I tell you, and don't argue.'
It was not often that visitors sought Bob at his home of an evening, but whilst this dialogue was still going on an acquaintance made his arrival known by a knock at the door. It was a lank and hungry individual, grimy of face and hands, his clothing such as in the country would serve well for a scarecrow. Who could have recognised in him the once spruce and spirited Mr. Jack Bartley, distinguished by his chimney-pot hat at the Crystal Palace on Bob's wedding-day? At the close of that same day, as you remember, he and Bob engaged in terrific combat, the outcome of earlier rivalry for the favour of Clem Peckover. Notwithstanding that memory, the two were now on very friendly terms. You have heard from Clem's lips that Jack Bartley, failing to win herself, ended by espousing Miss Susan Jollop; also what was the result of that alliance. Mr. Bartley was an unhappy man. His wife had a ferocious temper, was reckless with money, and now drank steadily; the consequence was, that Jack had lost all regular employment, and only earned occasional pence in the most various ways. Broken in spirit, he himself first made advances to his companion of former days, and Bob, flattered by the other's humility, encouraged him as a hanger-on.—Really, we shall soon be coming to a conclusion that the differences between the nether and the upper world are purely superficial.
Whenever Jack came to spend an hour with Mr. and Mrs. Hewett, he was sure sooner or later to indulge the misery that preyed upon him and give way to sheer weeping. He did so this evening, almost as soon as he entered.
'I ain't had a mouthful past my lips since last night, I ain't!' he sobbed. 'It's 'ard on a feller as used to have his meals regular. I'll murder Suke yet, see if I don't! I'll have her life! She met me last night and gave me this black eye as you see—she did! It's 'ard on a feller.'
'You mean to say as she 'it you?' cried Pennyloaf.
Bob chuckled, thrust his hands into his pockets, spread himself out. His own superiority was so gloriously manifest.
'Suppose you try it on with me, Penny!' he cried.
'You'd give me something as I should remember,' she answered, smirking, the good little slavey.
'Shouldn't wonder if I did,' assented Bob.
Mr. Bartley's pressing hunger was satisfied with some bread and butter and a cup of tea. Whilst taking a share of the meal, Bob brought a small box on to the table; it had a sliding lid, and inside were certain specimens of artistic work with which he was wont to amuse himself when tired of roaming the streets in jovial company. Do you recollect that, when we first made Bob's acquaintance, he showed Sidney Kirkwood a medal of his own design and casting? His daily work at die-sinking had of course supplied him with this suggestion, and he still found pleasure in work of the same kind. In days before commercialism had divorced art and the handicrafts, a man with Bob's distinct faculty would have found encouragement to exercise it for serious ends; as it was, he remained at the semi-conscious stage with regard to his own aptitudes, and cast leaden medals just as a way of occupying his hands when a couple of hours hung heavy on them. Partly with the thought of amusing the dolorous Jack, yet more to win laudation, he brought forth now a variety of casts and moulds and spread them on the table. His latest piece of work was a medal in high relief bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded with a wreath. Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his father foam at the mouth. True, he might have found subjects artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, and the English people.
Jack Bartley, having dried his eyes and swallowed his bread and butter, considered the medal with much attention.
'I say,' he remarked at length, 'will you give me this, Bob?'
'I don't mind, You can take it if you like.'
'Thanks!'
Jack wrapped it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket, and before long rose to take leave of his friends.
'I only wish I'd got a wife like you,' he observed at the door, as he saw Pennyloaf bending over the two children, recently put to bed.
Pennyloaf's eyes gleamed at the compliment, and she turned them to her husband.
'She's nothing to boast of,' said Bob, judicially and masculinely. 'All women are pretty much alike.'
And Pennyloaf tried to smile at the snub.
Having devoted one evening to domestic quietude, Bob naturally felt himself free to dispose of the next in a manner more to his taste. The pleasures which sufficed to keep him from home had the same sordid monotony which characterises life in general for the lower strata of society. If he had money, there was the music-hall; if he had none, there were the streets. Being in the latter condition to-night, he joined a company of male and female intimates, and with them strolled aimlessly from one familiar rendezvous to another. Would that it were possible to set down a literal report of the conversation which passed during hours thus spent! Much of it, of course, would be merely revolting, but for the most part it would consist of such wearying, such incredible imbecilities as no human patience could endure through five minutes' perusal. Realise it, however, and you grasp the conditions of what is called the social problem. As regards Robert Hewett in particular, it would help you to understand the momentous change in his life which was just coming to pass.
