DEATH THE RECONCILER
There is no accounting for tastes. Sidney Kirkwood, spending his Sunday
evening in a garden away there in the chaw-bacon regions of Essex,
where it was so deadly quiet that you could hear the flutter of a
bird’s wing or the rustle of a leaf, not once only congratulated
himself on his good fortune; yet at that hour he might have stood, as
so often, listening to the eloquence, the wit, the wisdom, that give
proud distinction to the name of Clerkenwell Green. Towards sundown,
that modern Agora rang with the voices of orators, swarmed with
listeners, with disputants, with mockers, with indifferent loungers.
The circle closing about an agnostic lecturer intersected with one
gathered for a prayer-meeting; the roar of an enthusiastic
total-abstainer blended with the shriek of a Radical politician.
Innumerable were the little groups which had broken away from the
larger ones to hold semi-private debate on matters which demanded calm
consideration and the finer intellect. From the doctrine of the Trinity
to the question of cabbage _versus_ beef; from Neo-Malthusianism to the
grievance of compulsory vaccination; not a subject which modernism has
thrown out to the multitude but here received its sufficient mauling.
Above the crowd floated wreaths of rank tobacco smoke.
Straying from circle to circle might have been seen Mr. Joseph Snowdon,
the baldness of his crown hidden by a most respectable silk hat, on one
hand a glove, in the other his walking-stick, a yellow waistcoat
enhancing his appearance of dignity, a white necktie spotted with blue
and a geranium in his button-hole correcting the suspicion of age
suggested by his countenance. As a listener to harangues of the most
various tendency, Mr. Snowdon exhibited an impartial spirit; he smiled
occasionally, but was never moved to any expression of stronger
feeling. His placid front revealed the philosopher.
Yet at length something stirred him to a more pronounced interest. He
was on the edge of a dense throng which had just been delighted by the
rhetoric of a well-known Clerkenwell Radical; the topic under
discussion was Rent, and the last speaker had, in truth, put before
them certain noteworthy views of the subject as it affected the poor of
London. What attracted Mr. Snowdon’s attention was the voice of the
speaker who next rose. Pressing a little nearer, he got a glimpse of a
lean, haggard, grey-headed man, shabbily dressed, no bad example of a
sufferer from the hardships he was beginning to denounce. ‘That’s old
Hewett,’ remarked somebody close by. ‘He’s the feller to let ’em ’ave
it!’ Yes, it was John Hewett, much older, much more broken, yet much
fiercer than when we last saw him. Though it was evident that he spoke
often at these meetings, he had no command of his voice and no
coherence of style; after the first few words he seemed to be overcome
by rage that was little short of frenzy. Inarticulate screams and yells
interrupted the torrent of his invective; he raised both hands above
his head and clenched them in a gesture of frantic passion; his visage
was frightfully distorted, and in a few minutes there actually fell
drops of blood from his bitten lip. Rent!—it was a subject on which the
poor fellow could speak to some purpose. What was the root of the
difficulty a London workman found in making both ends meet? Wasn’t it
that accursed law by which the owner of property can make him pay a
half, and often more, of his earnings for permission to put his wife and
children under a roof? And what sort of dwellings were they, these in
which the men who made the wealth of the country were born and lived
and died? What would happen to the landlords of Clerkenwell if they got
their due? Ay, what _shall_ happen, my boys, and that before so very
long? For fifteen or twenty minutes John expended his fury, until, in
fact, he was speechless. It was terrible to look at him when at length
he made his way out of the crowd; his face was livid, his eyes
bloodshot, a red slaver covered his lips and beard; you might have
taken him for a drunken man, so feebly did his limbs support him, so
shattered was he by the fit through which he had passed.
Joseph followed him, and presently walked along at his side.
‘That was about as good a speech as I’ve heard for a long time, Mr.
Hewett,’ he began by observing. ‘I like to hear a man speak as if he
meant it.’
John looked up with a leaden, rheumy eye, but the compliment pleased
him, and in a moment he smiled vacantly.
‘I haven’t said my last word yet,’ he replied, with difficulty making
himself audible through his hoarseness.
‘It takes it out of you, I’m afraid. Suppose we have a drop of
something at the corner here?’
‘I don’t mind, Mr. Snowdon. I thought of looking in at my club for a
quarter of an hour; perhaps you’d come round with me afterwards?’
They drank at the public-house, then Hewett led the way by back streets
to the quarters of the club of which he had been for many years a
member. The locality was not cheerful, and the house itself stood in
much need of repair. As they entered, John requested his companion to
sign his name in the visitors’ book; Mr. Snowdon did so with a
flourish. They ascended to the first floor and passed into a room where
little could be seen but the gas-jets, and those dimly, owing to the
fume of pipes. The rattle of bones, the strumming of a banjo, and a
voice raised at intervals in a kind of whoop announced that a nigger
entertainment was in progress. Recreation of this kind is not uncommon
on Sunday evening at the workmen’s clubs; you will find it announced in
the remarkable list of lectures, &c., printed in certain Sunday
newspapers. The company which was exerting itself in the present
instance had at all events an appreciative audience; laughter and
applause broke forth very frequently.
‘I’d forgot it was this kind o’ thing to-night,’ said Hewett, when he
could discover no vacant seat. ‘Do you care about it? No more don’t I;
let’s go down into the readin’-room.’
Downstairs they established themselves at their ease. John ordered two
half-pints of ale—the club supplied refreshment for the body as well as
for the mind—and presently he was more himself.
‘How’s your wife?’ inquired Joseph. ‘Better, I hope?’
‘I wish I could say so,’ answered the other, shaking his head. ‘She
hasn’t been up since Thursday. She’s bad, poor woman! she’s bad.’
Joseph murmured his sympathy between two draughts of ale.
‘Seen young Kirkwood lately?’ Hewett asked, averting his eyes and
assuming a tone of half-absent indifference.
‘He’s gone away for his holiday; gone into Essex somewhere. When was it
he was speaking of you? Why, one day last week, to be sure.’
‘Speakin’ about me, eh?’ said John, turning his glass round and round
on the table. And as the other remained silent, he added, ‘You can tell
him, if you like, that my wife’s been very bad for a long time. Him an’
me don’t have nothing to say to each other—but you can tell him that,
if you like.’
‘So I will,’ replied Mr. Snowdon, nodding with a confidential air.
He had noticed from the beginning of his acquaintance with Hewett that
the latter showed no disinclination to receive news of Kirkwood. As
Clem’s husband, Joseph was understood to be perfectly aware of the
state of things between the Hewetts and their former friend, and in a
recent conversation with Mrs. Hewett he had assured himself that she,
at all events, would be glad if the estrangement could come to an end.
For reasons of his own, Joseph gave narrow attention to these signs.
The talk was turning to other matters, when a man who had just entered
the room and stood looking about him with an uneasy expression caught
sight of Hewett and approached him. He was middle-aged, coarse of
feature, clad in the creased black which a certain type of artisan
wears on Sunday.
‘I’d like a word with you, John,’ he said, ‘if your friend’ll excuse.’
Hewett rose from the table, and they walked together to an unoccupied
spot.
‘Have you heard any talk about the Burial Club?’ inquired the man, in a
low voice of suspicion, knitting his eyebrows.
‘Heard anything? No. What?’
‘Why, Dick Smales says he can’t get the money for his boy, as died last
week.’
‘Can’t get it? Why not?’
‘That’s just what I want to know. Some o’ the chaps is talkin’ about it
upstairs. M’Cosh ain’t been seen for four or five days. Somebody had
news as he was ill in bed, and now there’s no findin’ him. I’ve got a
notion there’s something wrong, my boy.’
Hewett’s eyes grew large and the muscles of his mouth contracted.
‘Where’s Jenkins?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I suppose he can explain it?’
‘No, by God, he can’t! He won’t say nothing, but he’s been runnin’
about all yesterday and to-day, lookin’ precious queer.’
Without paying any further attention to Snowdon, John left the room
with his companion, and they went upstairs. Most of the men present
were members of the Burial Club in question, an institution of some
fifteen years’ standing and in connection with the club which met here
for social and political purposes; they were in the habit, like John
Hewett, of depositing their coppers weekly, thus insuring themselves or
their relatives for a sum payable at death. The rumour that something
was wrong, that the secretary M’Cosh could not be found, began to
create a disturbance; presently the nigger entertainment came to an
end, and the Burial Club was the sole topic of conversation.
On the morrow it was an ascertained fact that one of the catastrophes
which occasionally befall the provident among wage-earners had come to
pass. Investigation showed that for a long time there had been
carelessness and mismanagement of funds, and that fraud had completed
the disaster. M’Cosh was wanted by the police.
To John Hewett the blow was a terrible one. In spite of his poverty, he
had never fallen behind with those weekly payments. The thing he
dreaded supremely was, that his wife or one of the children should die
and he be unable to provide a decent burial. At the death of the last
child born to him the club had of course paid, and the confidence he
felt in it for the future was a sensible support under the many
miseries of his life, a support of which no idea can be formed by one
who has never foreseen the possibility of those dear to him being
carried to a pauper’s grave. It was a touching fact that he still kept
up the payment for Clara; who could say but his daughter might yet come
back to him to die? To know that he had lost that one stronghold
against fate was a stroke that left him scarcely strength to go about
his daily work.
And he could not breathe a word of it to his wife. Oh that bitter curse
of poverty, which puts corrupting poison into the wounds inflicted by
nature, which outrages the spirit’s tenderness, which profanes with
unutterable defilement the secret places of the mourning heart! He
could not, durst not, speak a word of this misery to her whose
gratitude and love had resisted every trial, who had shared
uncomplainingly all the evil of his lot, and had borne with supreme
patience those added sufferings of which he had no conception. For she
lay on her deathbed. The doctor told him so on the very day when he
learnt that it would be out of his power to discharge the fitting
pieties at her grave. So far from looking to her for sympathy, it
behoved him to keep from her as much as a suspicion of what had
happened.
Their home at this time was a kitchen in King’s Cross Road. The eldest
child, Amy, was now between ten and eleven; Annie was nine; Tom seven.
These, of course, went to school every day, and were being taught to
appreciate the woefulness of their inheritance. Amy was, on the whole,
a good girl; she could make purchases as well as her mother, and when
in the mood, look carefully after her little brother and sister; but
already she had begun to display restiveness under the hard discipline
to which the domestic poverty subjected her. Once she had played truant
from school, and told falsehoods to the teachers to explain her
absence. It was discovered that she had been tempted by other girls to
go and see the Lord Mayor’s show. Annie and Tom threatened to be
troublesome when they got a little older; the boy could not be taught
to speak the truth, and his sister was constantly committing petty
thefts of jam, sugar, even coppers; and during the past year their
mother was seldom able to exert herself in correcting these faults.
Only by dint of struggle which cost her agonies could she discharge the
simplest duties of home. She made a brave fight against disease and
penury and incessant dread of the coming day, but month after month her
strength failed. Now at length she tried vainly to leave her bed. The
last reserve of energy was exhausted, and the end near.
After her death, what then? Through the nights of this week after her
doom had been spoken she lay questioning the future. She knew that but
for her unremitting efforts Hewett would have yielded to the despair of
a drunkard; the crucial moment was when he found himself forsaken by
his daughter, and no one but this poor woman could know what force of
loving will, what entreaties, what tears, had drawn him back a little
way from the edge of the gulf. Throughout his life until that day of
Clara’s disappearance he had seemed in no danger from the deadliest
enemy of the poor; one taste of the oblivion that could be bought at
any street-corner, and it was as though drinking had been a recognised
habit with him. A year, two years, and he still drank himself into
forgetfulness as often as his mental suffering waxed unendurable. On
the morrow of every such crime—interpret the word rightly—he hated
himself for his cruelty to that pale sufferer whose reproaches were
only the utterances of love. The third year saw an improvement, whether
owing to conscious self-control or to the fact that time was blunting
his affliction. Instead of the public-house, he frequented all places
where the woes of the nether world found fierce expression. He became a
constant speaker at the meetings on Clerkenwell Green and at the
Radical clubs. The effect upon him of this excitement was evil enough,
yet not so evil as the malady of drink. Mrs. Hewett was thankful for
the alternative. But when she was no longer at his side—what then?
His employment was irregular, but for the most part at cabinet-making.
The workshop where he was generally to be found was owned by two
brothers, who invariably spent the first half of each week in steady
drinking. Their money gone, they set to work and made articles of
furniture, which on Saturday they took round to the shops of small
dealers and sold for what they could get. When once they took up their
tools, these men worked with incredible persistency, and they expected
the same exertion from those they employed. ‘I wouldn’t give a —— for
the chap as can’t do his six-and-thirty hours at the bench!’ remarked
one of them on the occasion of a workman falling into a fainting-fit,
caused by utter exhaustion. Hewett was anything but strong, and he
earned little.
Late on Saturday afternoon, Sidney Kirkwood and his friends were back
in London. As he drew near to Tysoe Street, carrying the bag which was
all the luggage he had needed, Sidney by chance encountered Joseph
Snowdon, who, after inquiring about his relatives, said that he had
just come from visiting the Hewetts. Mrs. Hewett was very ill indeed;
and it was scarcely to be expected she would live more than a few days.
‘You mean that?’ exclaimed Kirkwood, upon whom, after his week of
holiday and of mental experiences which seemed to have changed the face
of the world for him, this sudden announcement came with a painful
shock, reviving all the miserable past. ‘She is dying?’
‘There’s no doubt of it.’
And Joseph added his belief that John Hewett would certainly not take
it ill if the other went there before it was too late.
Sidney had no appetite now for the meal he would have purchased on
reaching home. A profound pity for the poor woman who had given him so
many proofs of her affection made his heart heavy almost to tears. The
perplexities of the present vanished in a revival of old tenderness, of
bygone sympathies and sorrows. He could not doubt but that it was his
duty to go to his former friends at a time such as this. Perhaps, if he
had overcome his pride, he might have sooner brought the estrangement
to an end.
He did not know, and had forgotten to ask of Snowdon, the number of the
house in King’s Cross Road where the Hewetts lived. He could find it,
however, by visiting Pennyloaf. Conquering his hesitation, he was on
the point of going forth, when his landlady came up and told him that a
young girl wished to see him. It was Amy Hewett, and her face told him
on what errand she had come.
‘Mr. Kirkwood,’ she began, looking up with embarrassment, for he was
all but a stranger to her now, ‘mother wants to know if you’d come and
see her. She’s very bad; they’re afraid she’s—’
The word was choked. Amy had been crying, and the tears again rose to
her eyes.
‘I was just coming,’ Sidney answered, as he took her hand and pressed
it kindly.
They crossed Wilmington Square and descended by the streets that slope
to Coldbath Fields Prison. The cellar in which John Hewett and his
family were housed was underneath a milk-shop; Amy led the way down
stone steps from the pavement of the street into an area, where more
than two people would have had difficulty in standing together. Sidney
saw that the window which looked upon this space was draped with a
sheet. By an open door they entered a passage, then came to the door of
the room. Amy pushed it open, and showed that a lamp gave light within.
To poor homes Sidney Kirkwood was no stranger, but a poorer than this
now disclosed to him he had never seen. The first view of it made him
draw in his breath, as though a pang went through him. Hewett was not
here. The two younger children were sitting upon a mattress, eating
bread. Amy stepped up to the bedside and bent to examine her mother’s
face.
‘I think she’s asleep,’ she whispered, turning round to Sidney.
Sleep, or death? It might well be the latter, for anything Sidney could
determine to the contrary. The face he could not recognise, or only
when he had gazed at it for several minutes. Oh, pitiless world, that
pursues its business and its pleasure, that takes its fill of life from
the rising to the going down of the sun, and within sound of its
clamour is this hiding-place of anguish and desolation!
‘Mother, here’s Mr. Kirkwood.’
Repeated several times, the words at length awoke consciousness. The
dying woman could not move her head from the pillow; her eyes wandered,
but in the end rested upon Sidney. He saw an expression of surprise, of
anxiety, then a smile of deep contentment.
‘I knew you’d come. I did so want to see you. Don’t go just yet, will
you?’
The lump in his throat hindered Sidney from replying. Hot tears, an
agony in the shedding, began to stream down his cheeks.
‘Where’s John?’ she continued, trying to look about the room. ‘Amy,
where’s your father? He’ll come soon, Sidney. I want you and him to be
friends again. He knows he’d never ought to a’ said what he did. Don’t
take on so, Sidney! There’ll be Amy to look after the others. She’ll be
a good girl. She’s promised me. It’s John I’m afraid for. If only he
can keep from drink. Will you try and help him, Sidney?’
There was a terrible earnestness of appeal in the look she fixed upon
him. Sidney replied that he would hold nothing more sacred than the
charge she gave him.
‘It’ll be easier for them to live,’ continued the feeble voice. ‘I’ve
been ill so long, and there’s been so much expense. Amy’ll be earning
something before long.’
‘Don’t trouble,’ Sidney answered. ‘They shall never want as long as I
live—never!’
‘Sidney, come a bit nearer. Do you know anything about _her_?’
He shook his head.
‘If ever—if ever she comes back, don’t turn away from her—will you?’
‘I would welcome her as I would a sister of my own.’
‘There’s such hard things in a woman’s life. What would a’ become of
me, if John hadn’t took pity on me! The world’s a hard place; I should
be glad to leave it, if it wasn’t for them as has to go on in their
trouble. I knew you’d come when I sent Amy. Oh, I feel that easier in
my mind!’
‘Why didn’t you send long before? No, it’s my fault. Why didn’t I come?
Why didn’t I come?’
There was a footstep in the passage, a slow, uncertain step; then the
door moved a little. With blurred vision Sidney saw Hewett enter and
come forward. They grasped each other’s hands without speaking, and
John, as though his strength were at an end, dropped upon the chair by
the bedside. For the last four or five nights he had sat there; if he
got half an hour’s painful slumber now and then it was the utmost. His
face was like that of some prisoner, whom the long torture of a foul
dungeon has brought to the point of madness. He uttered only a few
words during the half-hour that Sidney still remained in the room. The
latter, when Mrs. Hewett’s relapse into unconsciousness made it useless
for him to stay, beckoned Amy to follow him out into the area and put
money in her hand, begging her to get whatever was needed without
troubling her father. He would come again in the morning.
Mrs. Hewett died just before daybreak without a pang, as though death
had compassion on her. When Sidney came, about nine o’clock, he found
Amy standing at the door of the milk-shop; the people who kept it had
brought the children up into their room. Hewett still sat by the bed;
seeing Kirkwood, he pointed to the hidden face.
‘How am I to bury her?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Haven’t you heard about
it? They’ve stole the club-money; they’ve robbed me of it; I haven’t as
much as’ll pay for her coffin.’
Sidney fancied at first that the man’s mind was wandering, but Hewett
took out of his pocket a scrap of newspaper in which the matter was
briefly reported.
‘See, it’s there. I’ve known since last Sunday, and I had to keep it
from her. No need to be afraid of speakin’ now. They’ve robbed me, and
I haven’t as much as’ll pay for her coffin. It’s a nice blasted world,
this is, where they won’t let you live, and then make you pay if you
don’t want to be buried like a dog! She’s had nothing but pain and
poverty all her life, and now they’ll pitch her out of the way in a
parish box. Do you remember what hopes I used to have when we were
first married? See the end of ’em—look at this underground hole—look at
this bed as she lays on! Is it my fault? By God, I wonder I haven’t
killed myself before this! I’ve been drove mad, I tell you—mad! It’s
well if I don’t do murder yet; every man as I see go by with a good
coat on his back and a face fat with good feeding, it’s all I can do to
keep from catchin’ his throat an tearin’ the life out of him!’
‘Let’s talk about the burial,’ interposed Sidney. ‘Make your mind at
ease. I’ve got enough to pay for all that, and you must let me lend you
what you want.’
‘Lend me money? You as I haven’t spoke to for years?’
‘The more fault mine. I ought to have come back again long since; you
wouldn’t have refused an old friend that never meant an unkindness to
you.’
‘No, it was me as was to blame,’ said the other, with choking voice.
‘She always told me so, and she always said what was right. But I can’t
take it of you, Sidney; I can’t! Lend it? An’ where am I goin’ to get
it from to pay you back? It won’t be so long before I lie like she does
there. It’s getting too much for me.’
The first tears he had shed rose at this generosity of the man he had
so little claim upon. His passionate grief and the spirit of rebellion,
which grew more frenzied as he grew older, were subdued to a sobbing
gratitude for the kindness which visited him in his need. Nerveless,
voiceless, he fell back again upon the chair and let his head lie by
that of the dead woman.