Kingcote reached Waterloo Station as dusk was gathering. He had not
occupied himself on the journey, yet it had seemed short; from when he
waved his hand at Winstoke to Mr. Vissian and Percy, who saw him depart,
to his first glimpse of the grimy south-west end of London--including
twenty minutes’ pacing of a platform when he had to change--a dull
absentmindedness had possessed him, a sense of unreality in his
progress, an indifference to the objects about him. At Waterloo he let
the other occupants of the carriage all descend before he moved; when at
last obliged to stir, it cost him an effort to overcome his inertia. He
had not altered his position since seating himself; there was a printed
notice opposite him, and he had been reading this mechanically for
nearly an hour.
His luggage necessitated the hire of a cab; he found himself crossing
the river, then struggling amid dense traffic in the Strand. More than
half a year of life at Wood End had put a strange distance between
him and the streets of London; he looked at objects with an eye of
unfamiliarity, with unconcern, or with shrinking. In vain he tried to
remind himself that he had come to do battle amid this roaring crowd;
his consciousness refused belief. He had lived so long in a dream; the
waking was so sudden, the reality so brutal, that he must needs fall
back again and close his eyes for a time, letting his ears alone
instruct him. The newsboys yelling the evening papers insisted most
strongly on recognition; they embodied this civilisation into which he
had been dragged back; with involuntary grotesqueness of fancy he saw
in them the representatives of invisible editors, their cries were a
translation, as it were, of editorial utterance, only more offensive
because addressed to the outward sense and not to be escaped. He wished
for deafness....
Where was Knightswell? Where was Isabel Clarendon? His heart sank....
The cab bore him on. He was in Tottenham Court Road, then in Hampstead
Road, then entering that desolate region through which stagnates the
Regent’s Canal, the north end of Camden Town. It was growing dark; the
shops were revealing their many-coloured hideousness with shameless gas
illumination; the air seemed heavy with impurity. The driver had to stop
to make inquiries about his way, and sought a repetition of the address.
Ultimately a gloomy street was entered, and after slow, uncertain
advancing, they stopped. Kingcote had never visited his sister at this
house, but the number on the door was right; he knocked.
He was standing in a short, sloping street of low two-storey
dwelling-houses; they had areas, and steps ascending to the door. In the
gloom he could see that the houses had the appearance of newness, and
were the abodes of what one hears called “decent” working people--one
would prefer some negative term. The top of the street was lost behind
a sudden curve; at the lower end the flaring front of a public-house
showed itself. Children were playing about in considerable numbers,
for there was no regular traffic; before the public-house was an organ
grinding “Ah, che la morte” in valse time. The air was bitterly cold,
and the wind blew for rain.
He had leisure to observe all this, for it was a couple of minutes
before any one answered his knock. Just as he was about to repeat it the
door opened, and a woman with a lighted candle, which she held back to
protect it against the wind, presented herself. She was fat, and had a
prodigious dewlap; on one side of her many-folded chin was a large hairy
wart; she wore a black dress, much strained above the waist, with a
dirty white apron--a most unprepossessing portress.
“Is it Mr. Kingcut?” she asked in a thin, panting voice. “Why, an’ I
was that moment sayin’ as it was time Mr. Kingcut come. I’m sure your
sister’ll be glad to see you, poor thing! How’ll you get your luggidge
in? She’s just lyin’ down a bit; I’ll go an’ tell her. The funeral’s
been a bit too much for her; but I’ve got a nice ’addock down for her,
an’ expectin’ your comin’. See, I’ll leave the candle on the banister,
an’ you shall have a light in the front room in no time.”
A man who loafed by assisted to move the boxes into the house, and
Kingcote dismissed the cab, paying twice the due fare because a word
of argument would just now have cost him agony. He left the candle
guttering at the foot of the stairs, and entered a room of which the
door stood open immediately on his left hand. There was a low fire in
the grate; the candle outside helped him to discern a sofa which stood
before the window, and on this he sank. A hissing sound came from below
stairs, and the house was full of the odour of frying fish.
There was asthmatic panting outside, and, with a lamp in her hand, the
fat woman reappeared; she stood pressing one hand against her side,
in the other holding the light so as to enable her to examine the
new-comer. She talked, struggling with breathlessness.
“Poor thing! She’s that done! It was hawful suddin, in a way, though
we’d been a-expectin’ of it for weeks as you may say. It’s been a trial
for poor Mrs. Jalland, that it have! She couldn’t seem to take comfort,
not even when she saw him laid out. He was a good deal wasted away,
poor man, but he had a pleasant look like on his face; he alius _was_ a
pleasant-lookin’ man. An’ there’s some o’ the funeral beer left over, if
you’d like----”
Kingcote could have raved. He rose and went to the fire; then, as soon
as he dared trust his voice, assured her that he wanted nothing.
“It’s only about a arf-a-pint as is left. We’ve been most careful,
knowin’ as there wasn’t no money to throw away, in a manner speakin,’
though of course, as both me an’ my ’usband said, we knew as Mr.
Kingcut ’ud like everythink done in a ’andsome way, though not bein’ able
to be present pers’nally.”
“Can I see my sister?” he asked, driven to frenzy, and unable altogether
to conceal it.
“She’s just puttin’ herself a bit in order,” was the rather startled
reply. “She’ll be down in a minute, I dessay.”
After another scrutiny, the woman deposited the lamp on the table, and,
seeing that King-cote had turned his back upon her, withdrew, looking an
evil look.
The room was very small; the couch, a round table, a cupboard with
ornamental top, and four chairs, scarcely left space to walk about. On
the table was a green cloth, much stained; the hair of the sofa was in
places worn through, and bits of the stuffing showed themselves. Over
the mantelpiece was a large water-colour portrait of a man in Volunteer
uniform, the late Mr. Jalland; elsewhere on the walls hung pictures such
as are published at Christmas by the illustrated papers, several fine
specimens of the British baby, framed in cheap gilding. But the crowning
adornment of the room was the clock over the fireplace. The case was in
the form of a very corpulent man, the dial-plate being set in the centre
of his stomach.
Kingcote looked about him in despair. His nerves were so unstrung that
he feared lest he should break into tears. Every sensitive chord of his
frame was smitten into agony by the mingled sensations of this arrival;
rage which put him beside himself still predominated, and the smell from
the kitchen, the objects about him, the sound of the woman’s voice which
would not leave his ears, stirred him to a passion of loathing. His very
senses rebelled; he felt sick, faint.
He was rescued by his sister’s entrance. When he had last seen
her, before leaving London, she was a rather world-worn woman of
six-and-twenty, looking perhaps a few years older; now he gazed into
her face and saw the haggard features of suffering middle age. Her
appearance struck him with profound compassion, almost with fear. She
was short in stature, and her small face had never been superficially
attractive; its outlines made a strong resemblance to her brother,
and lacked feminine softness; the tremulous small lips and feeble chin
indicated at once a sweet and passive disposition. As she entered, she
was endeavouring to command herself, to refrain from tears; she stood
there in her plain black dress, holding her hands together at her
breast, like one in pain and dread.
“Mary! My poor girl!”
He spoke with deep tenderness, and went towards her; then she put her
arms round his neck and wept.
He reproached himself. Things might not, should not, have been so bad as
this. In some way he might have helped her, if only by remaining near.
Whilst he had dreamed at Wood End, this poor stricken soul had gone
through the very valley of the shadow of death. He had not paid much
heed to her letters; he had failed in sympathetic imagination; she had
written so simply, so unemphatically. He reproached himself bitterly.
“How good of you, Bernard, to come to me!” she said, regarding him
through her tears. “I do want some one to be near me; I feel so
helpless. Death is so dreadful.”
She said it without stress of feeling, but the words were all the
more powerful. Kingcote felt that they gave him a new understanding of
pathos.
She would not speak more of the dead man, knowing how her brother
had regarded him. At his bidding she sat on the sofa, and by degrees
overcame her weakness; he comforted her.
“What shall I do, Bernard?” she asked, appealing to him with tearful
eyes. “What is to become of the children? What is before us?”
“At first, rest,” was his kind answer. “Don’t let a thought of the
future trouble you; that is my affair. You shall never want whilst I
live, Mary.”
“Oh, it is hard to be a burden to you! I have burdened you for a long
time. You have already done more for me than any brother could be asked
to do. How can I let you?”
“We won’t talk of these things yet; time enough. All I want now is to be
some comfort to you.”
“Oh, you are! It is so good to hold your hand. I feel you won’t desert
me; I am so powerless myself.”
They talked a little longer, then she was reminded that he had come a
journey and needed food.
“Who is that woman?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“Mrs. Bolt? She has, you know, the other half of the house. There are
corresponding rooms on each side, and she lets us this half. She has
been very good indeed to me through it all. I don’t know what I should
have done these last days without her. She has made meals and seen to
the children. I was ashamed to give her so much trouble.”
Kingcote did not reply to this. He merely said: “Then it won’t be
necessary for her to come here?”
“Oh no.” She understood his desire to be alone. “I will get the tea
myself; I can do it quite well. It’s all ready.”
She moved about and laid the table, letting her eyes rest upon her
brother very often, trustfully and rather timidly. She had always
regarded him with something of awe. He belonged to a higher social
sphere than that which she had accepted. She attributed to him vast
knowledge and ability. It was her fear lest she might do or say anything
in his eyes censurable.
“Are the children upstairs?” Kingcote inquired.
“Yes; they have had their tea.”
“You will bring them down afterwards?”
“If you would like it, Bernard.” She had dreaded lest he should find
their presence displeasing.
He reassured her, and then they sat down to the meal. The rain had begun
and was blowing against the windows. Kingcote ate little; his sister
only drank a cup of tea.
“This is not the kind of food you need,” he said. “I must ask you to do
as I wish for a time, and have care for yourself. Have you any servant?”
She shook her head. “But you can’t possibly do house-work at present.”
There was something a little dictatorial in Kingcote’s way of speaking;
a mere habit, but one which Mary knew of old, and which half accounted
for her timorous regard of him.
“Mrs. Bolt has been so kind,” she said, “when I really wasn’t able to do
things.”
“Yes; but we cannot trouble her. What, by-the-bye, are the terms on
which you hold these rooms?”
“From quarter to quarter. We pay twenty-five pounds a year, and have to
give a quarter’s notice.”
“Then it is impossible to remove till the end of June? I’m very sorry
for that.”
“Mrs. Bolt might take things into account, and let us----”
“No, certainly not,” said her brother abruptly. “But I think I shall pay
her the quarter and go as soon as I can find another place.”
(Mrs. Bolt, be it observed, had her ear to the keyhole, and lost not a
word of the conversation.)
“Don’t you think you could find some girl to come and act as servant for
a time?”
“Yes; I could. There’s a girl I used to have sometimes; I think she
could come.”
“Then let her be summoned as soon as possible; and, by-the-bye, has Mrs.
Bolt been at any expense, do you think?”
“I’m afraid she has for a few things.”
“Very well. If you happen to see her, will you ask her to let me have an
account of all such expenses as soon as she can?”
After the meal, Mary went upstairs and fetched the children. They were
boys of eight and seven respectively, thin and ill-fed little beings,
poorly dressed. Both of them cried as their mother brought them forward;
this uncle was in their eyes a most formidable person. Kingcote could
not be affectionate with children, but he spoke to them with as much
kindness as was at his command. Whilst he was talking with the elder,
the other climbed to Mary’s lap and whispered something. Kingcote caught
the words “bread and butter.”
“What’s that, Willy?” he asked. “You would like some bread and butter?”
His mother tried to hush it over, but with no effect.
“Mary,” said her brother, “if I go out, will you open the door to me
yourself? I will give two raps.”
He went, and succeeded in finding a shop not very far off where he could
purchase a large plain cake. Returning, he cut it on a plate and let the
lads eat. Shortly after they were led away to bed. .
He would not let Mary remain with him very long, she was wearied out.
“I’ve put a fire in your room,” she said; “the house is a little damp,
and I thought it was better.”
“In that case I will sit up there. You shall show me the way.”
She took him up to a room that could scarcely be called
furnished--though she had stripped her own of everything she could
possibly spare--where he found his boxes placed.
“Who brought those up?” he asked.
“Mr. Bolt and his son.”
He moved uneasily.
“I do hope you’ll be able to sleep here!” his sister said anxiously. “I
wish I could have made more comfort for you.”
“Oh, it will do perfectly well. Now go and sleep, Mary.”
She embraced him, and her tears came again.
“I can’t thank you, Bernard,” she whispered, sobbing. “I can’t find any
words. You’re very, very good to me.”...
He sat by the fire. A group of noisy lads had assembled in the street,
and were urging two of their number to fight. They did not succeed, and
their foul language passed into the distance. An organ played in front
of the public-house, and there were laughing shrieks of girls. A man
came along hoarsely crying baked potatoes.
He saw his bed-room in the cottage; he remembered the holy silence of
night brooding over the woods and meadows. At this moment Isabel was
sitting alone and thinking of him, sitting amid the graceful luxury of
her refined home. Was _that_ a dream of joy, or _this_ a hideous vision?