A WELCOME GUEST
The bells of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, ring melodies in intervals of
the pealing for service-time. One morning of spring their music, like
the rain that fell intermittently, was flung westwards by the
boisterous wind, away over Clerkenwell Close, until the notes failed
one by one, or were clashed out of existence by the clamour of a less
civilised steeple. Had the wind been under mortal control it would
doubtless have blown thus violently and in this quarter in order that
the inhabitants of the House of Detention might derive no solace from
the melody. Yet I know not; just now the bells were playing ‘There is a
happy land, far, far away,’ and that hymn makes too great a demand upon
the imagination to soothe amid instant miseries.
In Mrs. Peckover’s kitchen the music was audible in bursts. Clem and
her mother, however, it neither summoned to prepare for church, nor
lulled into a mood of restful reverie. The two were sitting very close
together before the fire, and holding intimate converse; their voices
kept a low murmur, as if; though the door was shut, they felt it
necessary to use every precaution against being overheard. Three years
have come and gone since we saw these persons. On the elder time has
made little impression; but Clem has developed noticeably. The girl is
now in the very prime of her ferocious beauty. She has grown taller and
somewhat stouter; her shoulders spread like those of a caryatid; the
arm with which she props her head is as strong as a carter’s and
magnificently moulded. The head itself looks immense with its pile of
glossy hair. Reddened by the rays of the fire, her features had a
splendid savagery which seemed strangely at discord with the paltry
surroundings amid which she sat; her eyes just now were gleaming with a
crafty and cruel speculation which would have become those of a
barbarian in ambush. I wonder how it came about that her strain, after
passing through the basest conditions of modern life, had thus reverted
to a type of ancestral exuberance.
‘If only he doesn’t hear about the old man or the girl from somebody!’
said Mrs. Peckover. ‘I’ve been afraid of it ever since he come into the
’ouse. There’s so many people might tell him. You’ll have to come round
him sharp, Clem.’
The mother was dressed as her kind are wont to be on Sunday
morning—that is to say, not dressed at all, but hung about with coarse
garments, her hair in unbeautiful disarray. Clem, on the other hand,
seemed to have devoted much attention to her morning toilet; she wore a
dark dress trimmed with velveteen, and a metal ornament of primitive
taste gleamed amid her hair.
‘There ain’t no mistake?’ she asked, after a pause. ‘You’re jolly sure
of that?’
‘Mistake? What a blessed fool you must be! Didn’t they advertise in the
papers for him? Didn’t the lawyers themselves say as it was something
to his advantage? Don’t you say yourself as Jane says her grandfather’s
often spoke about him and wished he could find him? How can it be a
mistake? If it was only Bill’s letter we had to go on, you might talk;
but—there, don’t be a ijiot!’
‘If it turned out as he hadn’t nothing,’ remarked Clem resolutely, ‘I’d
leave him, if I was married fifty times.’
Her mother uttered a contemptuous sound. At the same time she moved her
head as if listening; some one was, in fact, descending the stairs.
‘Here he comes,’ she whispered. ‘Get the eggs ready, an’ I’ll make the
coffee.’
A tap at the door, then entered a tallish man of perhaps forty, though
he might be a year or two younger. His face was clean-shaven,
harsh-featured, unwholesome of complexion; its chief peculiarity was
the protuberance of the bone in front of each temple, which gave him a
curiously animal aspect. His lower lip hung and jutted forward; when he
smiled, as now in advancing to the fire, it slightly overlapped the one
above. His hair was very sparse; he looked, indeed, like one who has
received the tonsure. The movement of his limbs betokened excessive
indolence; he dragged his feet rather than walked. His attire was
equally suggestive; not only had it fallen into the last degree of
shabbiness (having originally been such as is worn by a man above the
mechanic ranks), but it was patched with dirt of many kinds, and held
together by a most inadequate supply of buttons. At present he wore no
collar, and his waistcoat, half-open, exposed a red shirt.
‘Why, you’re all a-blowin’ and a-growin’ this morning, Peckover,’ was
his first observation, as he dropped heavily into a wooden arm-chair.
‘I shall begin to think that colour of yours ain’t natural. Dare you
let me rub it with a handkerchief?’
‘Course I dare,’ replied Clem, tossing her head. ‘Don’t be so forward,
Mr. Snowdon.’
‘Forward? Not I. I’m behind time if anything. I hope I haven’t kept you
from church.’
He chuckled at his double joke. Mother and daughter laughed
appreciatively.
‘Will you take your eggs boiled or fried?’ inquired Mrs. Peckover.
‘Going to give me eggs, are you? Well, I’ve no objection, I assure you.
And I think I’ll have them fried, Mrs. Peckover. But, I say, you
mustn’t be running up too big a bill. The Lord only knows when I shall
get anything to do, and it ain’t very likely to be a thousand a year
when it does come.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ replied the landlady, as if sordid calculation
were a thing impossible to her. ‘I can’t say as you behaved quite
straightforward years ago, Mr. Snowdon, but I ain’t one to make a row
about bygones, an’ as you say you’ll put it all straight as soon as you
can, well, I won’t refuse to trust you once more.’
Mr. Snowdon lay back in the chair, his hands in his waistcoat pockets,
his legs outstretched upon the fender. He was smiling placidly, now at
the preparing breakfast, now at Clem. The latter he plainly regarded
with much admiration, and cared not to conceal it. When, in a few
minutes, it was announced to him that the meal was ready, he dragged
his chair up to the table and reseated himself with a sigh of
satisfaction. A dish of excellent ham, and eggs as nearly fresh as can
be obtained in Clerkenwell, invited him with appetising odour; a large
cup of what is known to the generality of English people as coffee
steamed at his right hand; slices of new bread lay ready cut upon a
plate; a slab of the most expensive substitute for butter caught his
eye with yellow promise; vinegar and mustard appealed to the
refinements of his taste.
‘I’ve got a couple more eggs, if you’d like them doin’,’ said Mrs.
Peckover, when she had watched the beginning of his attack upon the
viands.
‘I think I shall manage pretty well with this supply,’ returned Mr.
Snowdon.
As he ate he kept silence, partly because it was his habit, partly in
consequence of the activity of his mind. He was, in fact, musing upon a
question which he found it very difficult to answer in any satisfactory
way. ‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ he asked himself, and not for
the first time. ‘What makes them treat me in this fashion? A week ago I
came here to look up Mrs. Peckover, just because I’d run down to my
last penny, and I didn’t know where to find a night’s lodging. I’d got
an idea, too, that I should like to find out what had become of my
child, whom I left here nine or ten years ago; possibly she was still
alive, and might welcome the duty of supporting her parent. The chance
was, to be sure, that the girl had long since been in her grave, and
that Mrs. Peckover no longer lived in the old quarters; if I discovered
the woman, on the other hand, she was not very likely to give me an
affectionate reception, seeing that I found it inconvenient to keep
sending her money for Jane’s keep in the old days. The queer thing is,
that everything turned out exactly the opposite of what I had expected.
Mrs. Peckover had rather a sour face at first, but after a little talk
she began to seem quite glad to see me. She put me into a room,
undertook to board me for a while—till I find work, and I wonder when
_that_’ll be?—and blest if this strapping daughter of hers doesn’t seem
to have fallen in love with me from the first go off! As for my girl,
I’m told she was carried off by her grandfather, my old dad, three
years ago, and where they went nobody knows. Very puzzling all this.
How on earth came it that Mrs. Peckover kept the child so long, and
didn’t send her to the workhouse? If I’m to believe _her_, she took a
motherly kindness for the poor brat. But that won’t exactly go down
with J. J. Snowdon; he’s seen a bit too much in his knocking about the
world. Still—what if I’m making a mistake about the old woman? There
_are_ some people do things of that sort; upon my soul, I’ve known
people be kind even to me, without a chance of being paid back! You may
think you know a man or a woman, and then all at once they’ll go and do
something you’d have taken your davy couldn’t possibly happen. I’d have
sworn she was nothing but a skinflint and a lying old witch. And so she
may be; the chances are there’s some game going on that I can’t see
through. Make inquiries? Why, so I have done, as far as I know how.
I’ve only been able to hit on one person who knows anything about the
matter, and he tells me it’s true enough the girl was taken away about
three years ago, but he’s no idea where she went to. Surely the old man
must be dead by now, though he _was_ tough. Well, the fact of the
matter is, I’ve got a good berth, and I’m a precious sight too lazy to
go on the private detective job. Here’s this girl Clem, the finest bit
of flesh I’ve seen for a long time; I’ve more than half a mind to see
if she won’t be fool enough to marry me. I’m not a bad-looking fellow,
that’s the truth, and she may have taken a real liking to me. Seems to
me that I should have come in for a comfortable thing in my old age; if
I haven’t a daughter to provide for my needs, at all events I shall
have a wife who can be persuaded into doing so. When the old woman gets
out of the way I must have a little quiet talk with Clem.’
The opportunity he desired was not long in offering itself. Having made
an excellent breakfast, he dragged his chair up to the fender again,
and reached a pipe from the mantel-piece, where he had left it last
night. Tobacco he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket; it came forth
in the form of yellowish dust, intermingled with all sorts of alien
scraps. When he had lit his pipe, he poised the chair on its hind-legs,
clasped his hands over his bald crown, and continued his musing with an
air of amiable calm. Smoke curled up from the corner of his loose lips,
and occasionally, removing his pipe for an instant, he spat skilfully
between the bars of the grate. Assured of his comfort, Mrs. Peckover
said she must go and look after certain domestic duties. Her daughter
had begun to clean some vegetables that would be cooked for dinner.
‘How old may you be, Clem?’ Mr. Snowdon inquired genially, when they
had been alone together for a few minutes.
‘What’s that to you? Guess.’
‘Why, let me see; you was not much more than a baby when I went away.
You’ll be eighteen or nineteen, I suppose.’
‘Yes, I’m nineteen—last sixth of February. Pity you come too late to
give me a birthday present, ain’t it?’
‘Ah! And who’d have thought you’d have grown up such a beauty! I say,
Clem, how many of the young chaps about here have been wanting to marry
you, eh?’
‘A dozen or two, I dessay,’ Clem replied, shrugging her shoulders
scornfully.
Mr. Snowdon laughed, and then spat into the fire.
‘Tell me about some o’ them, will you? Who is it you’re keeping company
with now?’
‘Who, indeed? Why, there isn’t one I’d look at! Several of ’em’s took
to drinking ’cause I won’t have nothing to do with ’em.’
This excited Mr. Snowdon’s mirth in a high degree; he rolled on his
chair, and almost pitched backwards.
‘I suppose you give one or other a bit of encouragement now and then,
just to make a fool of him, eh?’
‘Course I do. There was Bob Hewett; he used to lodge here, but that was
after your time. I kep’ him off an’ on till he couldn’t bear it no
longer; then he went an’ married a common slut of a thing, just because
he thought it ‘ud make me mad. Ha, ha! I believe he’d give her poison
an’ risk it any day, if only I promised to marry him afterwards. Then
there was a feller called Jeck Bartley. I set him an’ Bob fightin’ one
Bank-holiday—you should a’ seen ’em go at it! Jack went an’ got married
a year ago to a girl called Suke Jollop; her mother forced him. How I
did laugh! Last Christmas Day they smashed up their ’ome an’ threw the
bits out into the street. Jack got one of his eyes knocked out—I
thought I should a’ died o’ laughin’ when I saw him next mornin’.’
The hearer became uproarious in merriment.
‘Tell you what it is, Clem,’ he cried, ‘you’re something like a girl!
Darn me if I don’t like you! I say, I wonder what my daughter’s grown
up? Like her mother, I suppose. You an’ she was sort of sisters, wasn’t
you?’
He observed her closely. Clem laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Queer sort o’ sisters. She was a bit too quiet-like for me. There
never was no fun in her.’
‘Aye, like her mother. And where did you say she went to with the old
man?’
‘Where she went to?’ repeated Clem, regarding him steadily with her big
eyes, ‘I never said nothing about it, ’cause I didn’t know.’
‘Well, I shan’t cry about her, and I don’t suppose she misses me much,
wherever she is. All the same, Clem, I’m a domesticated sort of man;
you can see that, can’t you? I shouldn’t wonder if I marry again one of
these first days. Just tell me where to find a girl of the right sort.
I dare say you know heaps.’
‘Dessay I do. What sort do you want?’
‘Oh, a littlish girl—yellow hair, you know—one of them that look as if
they didn’t weigh half-a-stone.’
‘I’ll throw this parsnip at you, Mr. Snowdon!’
‘What’s up now. You don’t call yourself littlish, do you?’
Clem snapped the small end off the vegetable she was paring, and aimed
it at his head. He ducked just in time. Then there was an outburst of
laughter from both.
‘Say, Clem, you haven’t got a glass of beer in the house?’
‘You’ll have to wait till openin’ time,’ replied the girl sourly, going
away to the far end of the room.
‘Have I offended you, Clem?’
‘Offended, indeed. As if I cared what you say!’
‘Do you care what I think?’
‘Not I!’
‘That means you do. Say, Clem, just come here; I’ve something to tell
you.’
‘You’re a nuisance. Let me get on with my work, can’t you?’
‘No, I can’t. You just come here. You’d better not give me the trouble
of fetching you!’
The girl obeyed him. Her cheeks were very hot, and the danger-signal
was flashing in her eyes. Ten minutes later she went upstairs, and had
a vivacious dialogue of whispers with Mrs. Peckover.