PATHOLOGICAL
Through the day and through the evening Clara Hewett had her place
behind Mrs. Tubbs’s bar. For daylight wear, the dress which had
formerly been her best was deemed sufficient; it was simple, but not
badly made, and became her figure. Her evening attire was provided by
Mrs. Tubbs, who recouped herself by withholding the promised wages for
a certain number of weeks. When Clara had surveyed this garment in the
bar mirror, she turned away contemptuously; the material was cheap, the
mode vulgar. It must be borne with for the present, like other
indignities which she found to be inseparable from her position. As
soon as her employer’s claim was satisfied, and the weekly five
shillings began to be paid, Clara remembered the promise she had
volunteered to her father. But John was once more at work; for the
present there really seemed no need to give him any of her money, and
she herself, on the other hand, lacked so many things. This dress
plainly would not be suitable for the better kind of engagement she had
in view; it behoved her first of all to have one made in accordance
with her own taste. A mantle, too, a silk umbrella, gloves—It would be
unjust to herself to share her scanty earnings with those at home.
Yes; but you must try to understand this girl of the people, with her
unfortunate endowment of brains and defect of tenderness. That smile of
hers, which touched and fascinated and made thoughtful, had of course a
significance discoverable by study of her life and character. It was no
mere affectation; she was not conscious, in smiling, of the expression
upon her face. Moreover, there was justice in the sense of wrong
discernible upon her features when the very self looked forth from
them. All through his life John Hewett had suffered from the same
impulse of revolt; less sensitively constructed than his daughter,
uncalculating, inarticulate, he fumed and fretted away his energies in
a conflict with forces ludicrously personified. In the matter of his
second marriage he was seen at his best, generously defiant of social
cruelties; but self-knowledge was denied him, and circumstances
condemned his life to futility. Clara inherited his temperament;
transferred to her more complex nature, it gained in subtlety and in
power of self-direction, but lost in its nobler elements. Her mother
was a capable and ambitious woman, one in whom active characteristics
were more prominent than the emotional. With such parents, every
probability told against her patient acceptance of a lot which allowed
her faculties no scope. And the circumstances of her childhood were
such as added a peculiar bitterness to the trials waiting upon her
maturity.
Clara, you remember, had reached her eleventh year when her father’s
brother died and left the legacy of which came so little profit. That
was in 1878. State education had recently made a show of establishing
itself, and in the Hewetts’ world much argument was going on with
reference to the new Board schools, and their advantages or
disadvantages when compared with those in which working-folk’s children
had hitherto been taught. Clara went to a Church school, and the
expense was greater than the new system rendered necessary. Her
father’s principles naturally favoured education on an independent
basis, but a prejudice then (and still) common among workpeople of
decent habits made him hesitate about sending his girl to sit side by
side with the children of the street; and he was confirmed by Clara’s
own view of the matter. She spoke with much contempt of Board schools,
and gave it to be understood that her religious convictions would not
suffer her to be taught by those who made light of orthodoxy. This
attitude was intelligible enough in a child of sharp wit and abundant
self-esteem. Notwithstanding her father’s indifferentism, little Clara
perceived that a regard for religion gave her a certain distinction at
home, and elsewhere placed her apart from ‘common girls.’ She was
subject also to special influences: on the one hand, from her favourite
teacher, Miss Harrop; on the other, from a school-friend, Grace Rudd.
Miss Harrop was a good, warm-hearted woman of about thirty, one of
those unhappy persons who are made for domestic life, but condemned by
fate to school-celibacy. Lonely and impulsive, she drew to herself the
most interesting girl in her classes, and, with complete indiscretion,
made a familiar, a pet, a prodigy of one whose especial need was
discipline. By her confidences and her flatteries she set Clara aflame
with spiritual pride. Ceaselessly she excited her to ambition, remarked
on her gifts, made dazzling forecast of her future. Clara was to be a
teacher first of all, but only that she might be introduced to the
notice of people who would aid her to better things. And the child came
to regard this as the course inevitably before her. Had she not already
received school-prizes, among them a much-gilded little volume ‘for
religious knowledge’? Did she not win universal applause when she
recited a piece of verse on prize-day—Miss Harrop (disastrous
kindness!) even saying that the delivery reminded her of Mrs. ——, the
celebrated actress!
Grace Rudd was busy in the same fatal work. Four years older than
Clara, weakly pretty, sentimental, conceited, she had a fancy for
patronising the clever child, to the end that she might receive homage
in return. Poor Grace! She left school, spent a year or two at home
with parents as foolish as herself, and—disappeared. Prior to that,
Miss Harrop had also passed out of Clara’s ken, driven by restlessness
to try another school, away from London.
These losses appeared to affect Clara unfavourably. She began to
neglect her books, to be insubordinate, to exhibit arrogance, which
brought down upon her plenty of wholesome reproof. Her father was not
without a share in the responsibility for it all. Entering upon his
four hundred pounds, one of the first things John did was to hire a
piano, that his child might be taught to play. Pity that Sidney
Kirkwood could not then cry with effective emphasis, ‘We are the
working classes! we are the lower orders!’ It was exactly what Hewett
would not bring himself to understand. What! His Clara must be robbed
of chances just because her birth was not that of a young lady? Nay, by
all the unintelligible Powers, she should enjoy every help that he
could possibly afford her. Bless her bright face and her clever tongue!
Yes, it was now a settled thing that she should be trained for a
schoolteacher. An atmosphere of refinement must be made for her; she
must be better dressed, more delicately fed.
The bitter injustice of it! In the outcome you are already instructed.
Long before Clara was anything like ready to enter upon a teacher’s
career, her father’s ill-luck once more darkened over the home. Clara
had made no progress since Miss Harrop’s day. The authorities directing
her school might have come forward with aid of some kind, had it
appeared to them that the girl would repay such trouble; but they had
their forebodings about her. Whenever she chose, she could learn in
five minutes what another girl could scarcely commit to memory in
twenty; but it was obviously for the sake of display. The teachers
disliked her; among the pupils she had no friends. So at length there
came the farewell to school and the beginning of practical life, which
took the shape of learning to stamp crests and addresses on note-paper.
There was hope that before long Clara might earn thirteen shillings a
week.
The bitter injustice of it! Clara was seventeen now, and understood the
folly of which she had been guilty a few years ago, but at the same
time she felt in her inmost heart the tyranny of a world which takes
revenge for errors that are inevitable, which misleads a helpless child
and then condemns it for being found astray. She could judge herself,
yes, better than Sidney Kirkwood could judge her. She knew her defects,
knew her vices, and a feud with fate caused her to accept them
defiantly. Many a time had she sobbed out to herself, ‘I wish I could
neither read nor write! I wish I had never been told that there is
anything better than to work with one’s hands and earn daily bread!’
But she could not renounce the claims that Nature had planted in her,
that her guardians had fostered. The better she understood how
difficult was every way of advancement, the more fiercely resolute was
she to conquer satisfactions which seemed beyond the sphere of her
destiny.
Of late she had thought much of her childish successes in reciting
poetry. It was not often that she visited a theatre (her father had
always refused to let her go with any one save himself or Sidney), but
on the rare occasions when her wish was gratified, she had watched each
actress with devouring interest, with burning envy, and had said to
herself, ‘Couldn’t I soon learn to do as well as that? Can’t I see
where it might be made more lifelike? Why should it be impossible for
me to go on the stage?’ In passing a shop-window where photographs were
exposed, she looked for those of actresses, and gazed at them with
terrible intensity. ‘I am as good-looking as she is. Why shouldn’t _my_
portrait be seen some day in the windows?’ And then her heart throbbed,
smitten with passionate desire. As she walked on there was a turbid
gloom about her, and in her ears the echoing of a dread temptation. Of
all this she spoke to nobody.
For she had no friends. A couple of years ago something like an
intimacy had sprung up between her and Bessie Jones (since married and
become Bessie Byass), seemingly on the principle of contrast in
association. Bessie, like most London work-girls, was fond of the
theatre, and her talk helped to nourish the ambition which was secretly
developing in Clara. But the two could not long harmonise. Bessie, just
after her marriage, ventured to speak with friendly reproof of Clara’s
behaviour to Sidney Kirkwood. Clara was not disposed to admit freedoms
of that kind; she half gave it to be understood that, though others
might be easily satisfied, she had views of her own on such subjects.
Thereafter Mrs. Byass grew decidedly cool. The other girls with whom
Clara had formal intercourse showed no desire to win her confidence;
they were kept aloof by her reticent civility.
As for Sidney himself, it was not without reason that he had seen
encouragement in the girl’s first reply to his advances. At sixteen,
Clara found it agreeable to have her good graces sought by the one man
in whom she recognised superiority of mind and purpose. Of all the
unbetrothed girls she knew not one but would have felt flattered had
Kirkwood thus distinguished her. Nothing common adhered to his
demeanour, to his character; he had the look of one who will hold his
own in life; his word had the ring of truth. Of his generosity she had
innumerable proofs, and it contrasted nobly with the selfishness of
young men as she knew them; she appreciated it all the more because her
own frequent desire to be unselfish was so fruitless. Of awakening
tenderness towards him she knew nothing, but she gave him smiles and
words which might mean little or much, just for the pleasure of
completing a conquest. Nor did she, in truth, then regard it as
impossible that, sooner or later, she might become his wife. If she
_must_ marry a workman, assuredly it should be Sidney. He thought so
highly of her, he understood things in her to which the ordinary
artisan would have been dead; he had little delicacies of homage which
gave her keen pleasure. And yet—well, time enough!
Time went very quickly, and changed both herself and Sidney in ways she
could not foresee. It was true, all he said to her in anger that night
by the prison wall—true and deserved every word of it. Even in
acknowledging that, she hardened herself against him implacably. Since
he chose to take this tone with her, to throw aside all his graceful
blindness to her faults, he had only himself to blame if she considered
everything at an end between them. She tried to believe herself glad
this had happened; it relieved her from an embarrassment, and made her
absolutely free to pursue the ambitions which now gave her no rest. For
all that, she could not dismiss Sidney from her mind; indeed,
throughout the week that followed their parting, she thought of him
more persistently than for many months. That he would before long seek
pardon for his rudeness she felt certain, she felt also that such
submission would gratify her in a high degree. But the weeks were
passing and no letter came; in vain she glanced from the window of the
bar at the faces which moved by. Even on Sunday, when she went home for
an hour or two, she neither saw nor heard of Kirkwood. She could not
bring herself to ask a question.
Under any circumstances Clara would ill have borne a suspense that
irritated her pride, and at present she lived amid conditions so
repugnant, that her nerves were ceaselessly strung almost beyond
endurance. Before entering upon this engagement she had formed but an
imperfect notion of what would be demanded of her. To begin with, Mrs.
Tubbs belonged to the order of women who are by nature slave-drivers;
though it was her interest to secure Clara for a permanency, she began
by exacting from the girl as much labour as could possibly be included
in their agreement. The hours were insufferably long; by nine o’clock
each evening Clara was so outworn that with difficulty she remained
standing, yet not until midnight was she released. The unchanging
odours of the place sickened her, made her head ache, and robbed her of
all appetite. Many of the duties were menial, and to perform them
fevered her with indignation. Then the mere waiting upon such men as
formed the majority of the customers, vulgarly familiar, when not
insolent, in their speech to her, was hateful beyond anything she had
conceived. Had there been no one to face but her father, she would have
returned home and resumed her old occupation at the end of the first
fortnight, so extreme was her suffering in mind and body; but rather
than give Sidney Kirkwood such a triumph, she would work on, and
breathe no word of what she underwent. Even in her anger against him,
the knowledge of his forgiving disposition, of the sincerity of his
love, was an unavowed support. She knew he could not utterly desert
her; when some day he sought a reconciliation, the renewal of conflict
between his pride and her own would, she felt, supply her with new
courage.
Early one Saturday afternoon she was standing by the windows, partly
from heavy idleness of thought, partly on the chance that Kirkwood
might go by, when a young, well-dressed man, who happened to be passing
at a slow walk, turned his head and looked at her. He went on, but in a
few moments Clara, who had moved back into the shop, saw him enter and
come forwards. He took a seat at the counter and ordered a luncheon.
Clara waited upon him with her customary cold reserve, and he made no
remark until she returned him change out of the coin he offered.
Then he said with an apologetic smile:
‘We are old acquaintances, Miss Hewett, but I’m afraid you’ve forgotten
me.’
Clara regarded him in astonishment. His age seemed to be something
short of thirty; he had a long, grave, intelligent face, smiled
enigmatically, spoke in a rather slow voice. His silk hat, sober
necktie drawn through a gold ring, and dark morning-coat, made it
probable that he was ‘in the City.’
‘We used to know each other very well about five years ago,’ he
pursued, pocketing his change carelessly. ‘Don’t you remember a Mr.
Scawthorne, who used to be a lodger with some friends of yours called
Rudd?’
On the instant memory revived in Clara. In her schooldays she often
spent a Sunday afternoon with Grace Rudd, and this Mr. Scawthorne was
generally at the tea-table. Mr. and Mrs. Rudd made much of him, said
that he held a most important post in a lawyer’s office, doubtless had
private designs concerning him and their daughter. Thus aided, she even
recognised his features.
‘And you knew me again after all this time?’
‘Yours isn’t an easy face to forget,’ replied Mr. Scawthorne, with the
subdued polite smile which naturally accompanied his tone of
unemotional intimacy. ‘To tell you the whole truth, however, I happened
to hear news of you a few days ago. I met Grace Rudd; she told me you
were here. Some old friend had told _her_.’
Grace’s name awoke keen interest in Clara. She was startled to hear it,
and did not venture to make the inquiry her mind at once suggested. Mr.
Scawthorne observed her for an instant, then proceeded to satisfy her
curiosity. Grace Rudd was on the stage; she had been acting in
provincial theatres under the name of Miss Danvers, and was now waiting
for a promised engagement at a minor London theatre.
‘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 hot 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;
theoretically 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 byways 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.