THE SOUP-KITCHEN
With the first breath of winter there passes a voice half-menacing,
half-mournful, through all the barren ways and phantom-haunted refuges
of the nether world. Too quickly has vanished the brief season when the
sky is clement, when a little food suffices, and the chances of earning
that little are more numerous than at other times; this wind that gives
utterance to its familiar warning is the vaunt-courier of cold and
hunger and solicitude that knows not sleep. Will the winter be a hard
one? It is the question that concerns this world before all others,
that occupies alike the patient workfolk who have yet their home
unbroken, the strugglers foredoomed to loss of such scant needments as
the summer gifted them withal, the hopeless and the self-abandoned and
the lurking creatures of prey. To all of them the first chill breath
from a lowering sky has its voice of admonition; they set their faces;
they sigh, or whisper a prayer, or fling out a curse, each according to
his nature.
And as though the strife here were not already hard enough, behold from
many corners of the land come needy emigrants, prospectless among their
own people, fearing the dark season which has so often meant for them
the end of wages and of food, tempted hither by thought that in the
shadow of palaces work and charity are both more plentiful. Vagabonds,
too, no longer able to lie about the country roads, creep back to their
remembered lairs and join the combat for crusts flung forth by casual
hands. Day after day the stress becomes more grim. One would think that
hosts of the weaker combatants might surely find it seasonable to let
themselves be trodden out of existence, and so make room for those of
more useful sinew; somehow they cling to life; so few in comparison
yield utterly. The thoughtful in the world above look about them with
contentment when carriage-ways are deep with new-fallen snow. ‘Good;
here is work for the unemployed.’ Ah, if the winter did but last a few
months longer, if the wonted bounds of endurance were but, by some
freak of nature, sensibly overpassed, the carriage-ways would find
another kind of sweeping! . . .
This winter was the last that Shooter’s Gardens were destined to know.
The leases had all but run out; the middlemen were garnering their
latest profits; in the spring there would come a wholesale demolition,
and model lodgings would thereafter occupy the site. Meanwhile the
Gardens looked their surliest; the walls stood in a perpetual black
sweat; a mouldy reek came from the open doorways; the beings that
passed in and out seemed soaked with grimy moisture, puffed into
distortions, hung about with rotting garments. One such was Mrs. Candy,
Pennyloaf’s mother. Her clothing consisted of a single gown and a shawl
made out of the fragments of an old counterpane; her clothing—with
exception of the shoes on her feet, those two articles were literally
all that covered her bare body. Rage for drink was with her reaching
the final mania. Useless to bestow anything upon her; straightway it or
its value passed over the counter of the beer-shop in Rosoman Street.
She cared only for beer, the brave, thick, medicated draught, that was
so cheap and frenzied her so speedily.
Her husband was gone for good. One choking night of November he beat
her to such purpose that she was carried off to the police-station as
dead; the man effected his escape, and was not likely to show himself
in the Gardens again. With her still lived her son Stephen, the potman.
His payment was ten shillings a week (with a daily allowance of three
pints), and he saw to it that there was always a loaf of bread in the
room they occupied together. Stephen took things with much philosophy;
his mother would, of course, drink herself to death—what was there
astonishing in that? He himself had heart disease, and surely enough
would drop down dead one of these days; the one doom was no more to be
quarrelled with than the other. Pennyloaf came to see them at very long
intervals; what was the use of making her visits more frequent? She,
too, viewed with a certain equanimity the progress of her mother’s
fate. Vain every kind of interposition; worse than imprudence to give
the poor creature money or money’s worth. It could only be hoped that
the end would come before very long.
An interesting house, this in which Mrs. Candy resided. It contained in
all seven rooms, and each room was the home of a family; under the roof
slept twenty-five persons, men, women, and children; the lowest rent
paid by one of these domestic groups was four-and-sixpence. You would
have enjoyed a peep into the rear chamber on the ground floor. There
dwelt a family named Hope—Mr. and Mrs. Hope, Sarah Hope, aged fifteen,
Dick Hope, aged twelve, Betsy Hope, aged three. The father was a
cripple; he and his wife occupied themselves in the picking of rags—of
course at home—and I can assure you that the atmosphere of their abode
was worthy of its aspect. Mr. Hope drank, but not desperately. His
forte was the use of language so peculiarly violent that even in
Shooter’s Gardens it gained him a proud reputation. On the slightest
excuse he would threaten to brain one of his children, to disembowel
another, to gouge out the eyes of the third. He showed much ingenuity
in varying the forms of menaced punishment. Not a child in the Gardens
but was constantly threatened by its parents with a violent death; this
was so familiar that it had lost its effect; where the nurse or mother
in the upper world cries, ‘I shall scold you!’ in the nether the phrase
is, ‘I’ll knock yer ’ed orff!’ To ‘I shall be very angry with you’ in
the one sphere, corresponds in the other, ‘I’ll murder you!’ These are
conventions—matters of no importance. But Mr. Hope was a man of
individuality; he could make his family tremble; he could bring lodgers
about the door to listen and admire his resources.
In another room abode a mother with four children. This woman drank
moderately, but was very conscientious in despatching her three younger
children to school. True, there was just a little inconvenience in this
punctuality of hers, at all events from the youngsters’ point of view,
for only on the first three days of the week had they the slightest
chance of a mouthful of breakfast before they departed. ‘Never mind,
I’ll have some dinner for you,’ their parent was wont to say. Common
enough in the Board schools, this pursuit of knowledge on an empty
stomach. But then the end is so inestimable!
Yet another home. It was tenanted by two persons only; they appeared to
be man and wife, but in the legal sense were not so, nor did they for a
moment seek to deceive their neighbours. With the female you are
slightly acquainted; christened Sukey Jollop, she first became Mrs.
Jack Bartley, and now, for courtesy’s sake, was styled Mrs. Higgs.
Sukey had strayed on to a downward path; conscious of it, she abandoned
herself to her taste for strong drink, and braved out her degradation.
Jealousy of Clem Peckover was the first cause of discord between her
and Jack Bartley; a robust young woman, she finally sent Jack about his
business by literal force of arms, and entered into an alliance with
Ned Higgs, a notorious swashbuckler, the captain of a gang of young
ruffians who at this date were giving much trouble to the Clerkenwell
police. Their speciality was the skilful use, as an offensive weapon,
of a stout leathern belt heavily buckled; Mr. Higgs boasted that with
one stroke of his belt he could, if it seemed good to him, kill his
man, but the fitting opportunity for this display of prowess had not
yet offered. . . .
Now it happened that, at the time of her making Jane Snowdon’s
acquaintance, Miss Lant was particularly interested in Shooter’s
Gardens and the immediate vicinity. She had associated herself with
certain ladies who undertook the control of a soup-kitchen in the
neighbourhood, and as the winter advanced she engaged Jane in this work
of charity. It was a good means, as Michael Snowdon agreed, of enabling
the girl to form acquaintances among the very poorest, those whom she
hoped to serve effectively—not with aid of money alone, but by her
personal influence. And I think it will be worth while to dwell a
little on the story of this same soup-kitchen; it is significant, and
shall take the place of abstract comment on Miss Lant’s philanthropic
enterprises.
The kitchen had been doing successful work for some years; the society
which established it entrusted its practical conduct to very practical
people, a man and wife who were themselves of the nether world, and
knew the ways thereof. The ‘stock’ which formed the basis of the soup
was wholesome and nutritious; the peas were of excellent quality;
twopence a quart was the price at which this fluid could be purchased
(one penny if a ticket from a member of the committee were presented),
and sometimes as much as five hundred quarts would be sold in a day.
Satisfactory enough this. When the people came with complaints, saying
that they were tired of this particular soup, and would like another
kind for a change, Mr. and Mrs. Batterby, with perfect understanding of
the situation, bade their customers ‘take it or leave it—an’ none o’
your cheek here, or you won’t get nothing at all!’ The result was much
good-humour all round.
But the present year saw a change in the constitution of the committee:
two or three philanthropic ladies of great conscientiousness began to
inquire busily into the working of the soup-kitchen, and they soon
found reason to be altogether dissatisfied with Mr. and Mrs. Batterby.
No, no; these managers were of too coarse a type; they spoke grossly;
what possibility of their exerting a humanising influence on the people
to whom they dispensed soup? Soup and refinement must be disseminated
at one and the same time, over the same counter. Mr. and Mrs. Batterby
were dismissed, and quite a new order of things began. Not only were
the ladies zealous for a high ideal in the matter of soup-distributing,
they also aimed at practical economy in the use of funds. Having
engaged a cook after their own hearts, and acting upon the advice of
competent physiologists, they proceeded to make a ‘stock’ out of
sheep’s and bullocks’ heads; moreover, they ordered their peas from the
City, thus getting them at two shillings a sack less than the price
formerly paid by the Batterbys to a dealer in Clerkenwell. But, alas!
these things could not be done secretly; the story leaked out;
Shooter’s Gardens and vicinity broke into the most excited feeling. I
need not tell you that the nether world will consume—when others supply
it—nothing but the very finest quality of food, that the heads of sheep
and bullocks are peculiarly offensive to its stomach, that a saving
effected on sacks of peas outrages its dearest sensibilities. What was
the result? Shooter’s Gardens, convinced of the fraud practised upon
them, nobly brought back their quarts of soup to the kitchen, and with
proud independence of language demanded to have their money returned.
On being met with a refusal, they—what think you?—emptied the soup on
to the floor, and went away with heads exalted.
Vast was the indignation of Miss Lant and the other ladies. ‘This is
their gratitude!’ Now if you or I had been there, what an opportunity
for easing our minds! ‘Gratitude, mesdames? You have entered upon this
work with expectation of gratitude?—And can you not perceive that these
people of Shooter’s Gardens are poor, besotted, disease-struck
creatures, of whom—in the mass—scarcely a human quality is to be
expected? Have you still to learn what this nether world has been made
by those who belong to the sphere above it?—Gratitude, quotha?—Nay, do
_you_ be grateful that these hapless, half-starved women do not turn
and rend you. At present they satisfy themselves with insolence. Take
it silently, you who at all events hold some count of their dire state;
and endeavour to feed them without arousing their animosity!’
Well, the kitchen threatened to be a failure. It turned out that the
cheaper peas were, in fact, of inferior quality, and the ladies
hastened to go back to the dealer in Clerkenwell. This was something,
but now came a new trouble; the complaint with which Mr. and Mrs.
Batterby had known so well how to deal revived in view of the
concessions made by the new managers. Shooter’s Gardens would have no
more peas; let some other vegetable be used. Again the point was
conceded; a trial was made of barley soup. Shooter’s Gardens came,
looked, smelt, and shook their heads. ‘It don’t look nice,’ was their
comment; they would none of it.
For two or three weeks, just at this crisis in the kitchen’s fate, Jane
Snowdon attended with Miss Lant to help in the dispensing of the
decoction. Jane was made very nervous by the disturbances that went on,
but she was able to review the matter at issue in a far more fruitful
way than Miss Lant and the other ladies. Her opinion was not asked,
however. In the homely grey dress, with her modest, retiring manner,
her gentle, diffident countenance, she was taken by the customers for a
paid servant, and if ever it happened that she could not supply a can
of soup quickly enough sharp words reached her ear. ‘Now then, you
gyurl there! Are you goin’ to keep me all d’y? I’ve got somethink else
to do but stand ’ere.’ And Jane, by her timid hastening, confirmed the
original impression, with the result that she was treated yet more
unceremoniously next time. Of all forms of insolence there is none more
flagrant than that of the degraded poor receiving charity which they
have come to regard as a right.
Jane did speak at length. Miss Lant had called to see her in Hanover
Street; seated quietly in her own parlour, with Michael Snowdon to
approve—with him she had already discussed the matter—Jane ventured
softly to compare the present state of things and that of former
winters, as described to her by various people.
‘Wasn’t it rather a pity,’ she suggested, ‘that the old people were
sent away?’
‘You think so?’ returned Miss Lant, with the air of one to whom a novel
thought is presented. ‘You really think so, Miss Snowdon?’
‘They got on so well with everybody,’ Jane continued. ‘And don’t you
think it’s better, Miss Lant, for everybody to feel satisfied?’
‘But really, Mr. Batterby used to speak so very harshly. He destroyed
their self-respect.’
‘I don’t think they minded it,’ said Jane, with simple good faith. ‘And
I’m always hearing them wish he was back, instead of the new managers.’
‘I think we shall have to consider this,’ remarked the lady,
thoughtfully.
Considered it was, and with the result that the Batterbys before long
found themselves in their old position, uproariously welcomed by
Shooter’s Gardens. In a few weeks the soup was once more concocted of
familiar ingredients, and customers, as often as they grumbled, had the
pleasure of being rebuked in their native tongue.
It was with anything but a cheerful heart that Jane went through this
initiation into the philanthropic life. Her brief period of joy and
confidence was followed by a return of anxiety, which no resolve could
suppress. It was not only that the ideals to which she strove to form
herself made no genuine appeal to her nature; the imperative hunger of
her heart remained unsatisfied. At first, when the assurance received
from Michael began to lose a little of its sustaining force, she could
say to herself, ‘Patience, patience; be faithful, be trustful, and your
reward will soon come.’ Nor would patience have failed her had but the
current of life flowed on in the old way. It was the introduction of
new and disturbing things that proved so great a test of fortitude.
Those two successive absences of Sidney on the appointed evening were
strangely unlike him, but perhaps could be explained by the
unsettlement of his removal; his manner when at length he did come
proved that the change in himself was still proceeding. Moreover, the
change affected Michael, who manifested increase of mental trouble at
the same time that he yielded more and more to physical infirmity.
The letter which Sidney wrote after receiving Joseph Snowdon’s
confidential communications was despatched two days later. He expressed
himself in carefully chosen words, but the purport of the letter was to
make known that he no longer thought of Jane save as a friend; that the
change in her position had compelled him to take another view of his
relations to her than that he had confided to Michael at Danbury. Most
fortunately—he added—no utterance of his feelings had ever escaped him
to Jane herself, and henceforth he should be still more careful to
avoid any suggestion of more than brotherly interest. In very deed
nothing was altered; he was still her steadfast friend, and would
always aid her to his utmost in the work of her life.
That Sidney could send this letter, after keeping it in reserve for a
couple of days, proved how profoundly his instincts were revolted by
the difficulties and the ambiguity of his position. It had been bad
enough when only his own conscience was in play; the dialogue with
Joseph, following upon Bessie Byass’s indiscretion, threw him wholly
off his balance, and he could give no weight to any consideration but
the necessity of recovering self-respect. Even the sophistry of that
repeated statement that he had never approached Jane as a lover did not
trouble him in face of the injury to his pride. Every word of Joseph
Snowdon’s transparently artful hints was a sting to his sensitiveness;
the sum excited him to loathing. It was as though the corner of a
curtain had been raised, giving him a glimpse of all the vile greed,
the base machination, hovering about this fortune that Jane was to
inherit. Of Scawthorne he knew nothing, but his recollection of the
Peckovers was vivid enough to suggest what part Mrs. Joseph Snowdon was
playing in the present intrigues, and he felt convinced that in the
background were other beasts of prey, watching with keen, envious eyes.
The sudden revelation was a shock from which he would not soon recover;
he seemed to himself to be in a degree contaminated; he questioned his
most secret thoughts again and again, recognizing with torment the
fears which had already bidden him draw back; he desired to purify
himself by some unmistakable action.
That which happened he had anticipated. On receipt of the letter
Michael came to see him; he found the old man waiting in front of the
house when he returned to Red Lion Street after his work. The
conversation that followed was a severe test of Sidney’s resolve. Had
Michael disclosed the fact of his private understanding with Jane,
Sidney would probably have yielded; but the old man gave no hint of
what he had done—partly because he found it difficult to make the
admission, partly in consequence of an indecision in his own mind with
regard to the very point at issue. Though agitated by the consciousness
of suffering in store for Jane, his thoughts disturbed by the
derangement of a part of his plan, he did not feel that Sidney’s change
of mind gravely affected the plan itself. Age had cooled his blood;
enthusiasm had made personal interests of comparatively small account
to him; he recognised his granddaughter’s feeling, but could not
appreciate its intensity, its supreme significance. When Kirkwood made
a show of explaining himself, saying that he shrank from that form of
responsibility, that such a marriage suggested to him many and
insuperable embarrassments, Michael began to reflect that perchance
this was the just view. With household and family cares, could Jane
devote herself to the great work after the manner of his ideal? Had he
not been tempted by his friendship for Sidney to introduce into his
scheme what was really an incompatible element? Was it not decidedly,
infinitely better that Jane should be unmarried?
Michael had taken the last step in that process of dehumanisation which
threatens idealists of his type. He had reached at length the pass of
those frenzied votaries of a supernatural creed who exact from their
disciples the sacrifice of every human piety. Returning home, he
murmured to himself again and again, ‘She must not marry. She must
overcome this desire of a happiness such as ordinary women may enjoy.
For my sake, and for the sake of her suffering fellow-creatures, Jane
must win this victory over herself.’
He purposed speaking to her, but put it off from day to day. Sidney
paid his visits as usual, and tried desperately to behave as though he
had no trouble. Could he have divined why it was that Michael had ended
by accepting his vague pretences with apparent calm, indignation,
wrath, would have possessed him; he believed, however, that the old man
out of kindness subdued what he really felt. Sidney’s state was
pitiable. He knew not whether he more shrank from the thought of being
infected with Joseph Snowdon’s baseness or despised himself for his
attitude to Jane. Despicable entirely had been his explanations to
Michael, but how could he make them more sincere? To tell the whole
truth, to reveal Joseph’s tactics would be equivalent to taking a part
in the dirty contest; Michael would probably do him justice, but who
could say how far Joseph’s machinations were becoming effectual? The
slightest tinct of uncertainty in the old man’s thought, and he,
Kirkwood, became a plotter, like the others, meeting mine with
countermine.
‘There will be no possibility of perfect faith between men until there
is no such thing as money! H’m, and when is that likely to come to
pass?’
Thus he epigrammatised to himself one evening, savagely enough, as with
head bent forward he plodded to Red Lion Street. Some one addressed
him; he looked up and saw Jane. Seemingly it was a chance meeting, but
she put a question at once almost as though she had been waiting for
him. ‘Have you seen Pennyloaf lately, Mr. Kirkwood?’
Pennyloaf? The name suggested Bob Hewett, who again suggested John
Hewett, and so Sidney fell upon thoughts of some one who two days ago
had found a refuge in John’s home. To Michael he had said nothing of
what he knew concerning Clara; a fresh occasion of uneasy thought. Bob
Hewett—so John said—had no knowledge of his sister’s situation,
otherwise Pennyloaf might have come to know about it, and in that case,
perchance, Jane herself. Why not? Into what a wretched muddle of
concealments and inconsistencies and insincerities had he fallen!
‘It’s far too long since I saw her,’ he replied, in that softened tone
which he found it impossible to avoid when his eyes met Jane’s.
She was on her way home from the soup-kitchen, where certain
occupations had kept her much later than usual; this, however, was far
out of her way, and Sidney remarked on the fact, perversely, when she
had offered this explanation of her meeting him, Jane did not reply.
They walked on together, towards Islington.
‘Are you going to help at that place all the winter?’ he inquired.
‘Yes; I think so.’
If he had spoken his thought, he would have railed against the
soup-kitchen and all that was connected with it. So far had he got in
his revolt against circumstances; Jane’s ‘mission’ was hateful to him;
he could not bear to think of her handing soup over a counter to ragged
wretches.
‘You’re nothing like as cheerful as you used to be,’ he said, suddenly,
and all but roughly. ‘Why is it?’
What a question! Jane reddened as she tried to look at him with a
smile; no words would come to her tongue.
‘Do you go anywhere else, besides to—to that place?’
Not often. She had accompanied Miss Lant on a visit to some people in
Shooter’s Gardens.
Sidney bent his brows. A nice spot, Shooter’s Gardens.
‘The houses are going to be pulled down, I’m glad to say,’ continued
Jane. ‘Miss Lant thinks it’ll be a good opportunity for helping a few
of the families into better lodgings. We’re going to buy furniture for
them—so many have as good as none at all, you know. It’ll be a good
start for them, won’t it?’
Sidney nodded. He was thinking of another family who already owed their
furniture to Jane’s beneficence, though they did not know it.
‘Mind you don’t throw away kindness on worthless people,’ he said
presently.
‘We can only do our best, and hope they’ll keep comfortable for their
own sakes.’
‘Yes, yes. Well, I’ll say good-night to you here. Go home and rest; you
look tired.’
He no longer called her by her name. Tearing himself away, with a last
look, he raged inwardly that so sweet and gentle a creature should be
condemned to such a waste of her young life.
Jane had obtained what she came for. At times the longing to see him
grew insupportable, and this evening she had yielded to it, going out
of her way in the hope of encountering him as he came from work. He
spoke very strangely. What did it all mean, and when would this winter
of suspense give sign of vanishing before sunlight?