The Nether World. George Gissing
Candy!' Bob repeated, as if in scorn of the person so named. 'Get on with you! I'm sick of hearing you talk about her. Why I haven't seen her not these three weeks.'
'It's a – lie!' Clem's epithet was too vigorous for reproduction. 'Sukey Jollop saw you with her down by the meat-market, an' Jeck Bartley saw you too.'
'Jeck did?' He laughed with obstreperous scorn. 'Why, Jeck's gone to Homerton to his mother till Saturday night. Don't be such a bloomin' fool! Just because Suke Jollop's dead nuts on me, an' I won't have nothin' to say to her, she goes tellin' these bloomin' lies. When I see her next, I'll make her go down on her marrow-bones an' beg my pardon. See if I don't just!'
There was an engaging frankness in Bob's way of defending himself which evidently impressed Miss Peckover, though it did not immediately soothe her irritation. She put her arms a-kimbo, and examined him with a steady suspicion which would have disconcerted most young men. Bob, however, only laughed more heartily. The scene was prolonged. Bob had no recourse to tenderness to dismiss the girl's jealousy. His self-conceit was supreme, and had always stood him in such stead with the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were 'dead nuts on him,' that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas. 'Don't be a bloomin' fool!' was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour's wrangling, Clem abandoned her hostile attitude, and eyed him with a savage kind of admiration.
'When are you goin' to buy me that locket, Bob, to put a bit of your 'air in?' she inquired pertinently.
'You just wait, can't you? There's a event coming off next week. I won't say nothing, but you just wait.'
'I'm tired o' waitin'. See here; you ain't goin' to best me out of it?'
'Me best you? Don't be a bloomin' fool, Clem!'
He laughed heartily, and in a few minutes allowed himself to be embraced and sent off to his chamber at the top of the house.
Clem summoned her servant from the passage. At the same moment there entered another lodger, the only one whose arrival Clem still awaited. His mode of ascending the stairs was singular; one would have imagined that he bore some heavy weight, for he proceeded very slowly, with a great clumping noise, surmounting one step at a time in the manner of a child. It was Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, and his way of going up to bed was very simply explained by the fact that a daily sixteen hours of sitting on the box left his legs in a numb and practically useless condition.
The house was now quiet. Clem locked the front-door and returned to the kitchen, eager with anticipation of the jest she was going to carry out. First of all she had to pick a quarrel with Jane; this was very easily managed. She pretended to look about the room for a minute, then asked fiercely:
'What's gone with that sixpence I left on the dresser?'
Jane looked up in terror. She was worn almost to the last point of endurance by her day and night of labour and agitation. Her face was bloodless, her eyelids were swollen with the need of sleep.
'Sixpence!' she faltered, 'I'm sure I haven't seen no sixpence, miss.'
'You haven't? Now, I've caught you at last. There's been nobody 'ere but you. Little thief! We'll see about this in the mornin', an' to-night you shall sleep in the back-kitchen!'
The child gasped for breath. The terror of sudden death could not have exceeded that which rushed upon her heart when she was told that she must pass her night in the room where lay the coffin.
'An' you shan't have no candle, neither,' proceeded Clem, delighted with the effect she was producing. 'Come along! I'm off to bed, an' I'll see you safe locked in first, so as no one can come an' hurt you.'
'Miss! please!—I can't, I durstn't!'
Jane pleaded in inarticulate anguish. But Clem had caught her by the arm, was dragging her on, on, till she was at the very door of that ghastly death-cellar. Though thirteen years old, her slight frame was as incapable of resisting Clem Peckover's muscles as an infant's would have been. The door was open, but at that moment Jane uttered a shriek which rang and echoed through the whole house. Startled, Clem relaxed her grasp. Jane tore herself away, fled up the kitchen stairs, fled upwards still, flung herself at the feet of someone who had come out on to the landing and held a light.
'Oh, help me! Don't let her! Help me!'
'What's up with you, Jane?' asked Clara, for it was she who, not being yet in bed, had come forth at once on hearing the scream.
Jane could only cling to her garment, pant hysterically, repeat the same words of entreaty again and again. Another door opened, and John Hewett appeared half-dressed.
'What's wrong?' he cried. 'The 'ouse o' fire? Who yelled out like that?'
Clem was coming up; she spoke from the landing below.
'It's that Jane, just because I gave her a rap as she deserved. Send her down again.'
'Oh, no!' cried the poor girl. 'Miss Hewett! be a friend to me! She's goin' to shut me up all night with the coffin. Don't let her, miss! I durstn't! Oh, be a friend to me!'
'Little liar!' shouted Clem. 'Oh, that bloomin' little liar! when I never said a word o' such a thing!'
'I'll believe her a good deal sooner than you,' returned Clara sharply. 'Why, anybody can see she's tellin' the truth—can't they, father? She's half-scared out of her life. Come in here, Jane; you shall stay here till morning.'
By this time all the grown-up people in the house were on the staircase; the clang of tongues was terrific. Clem held her ground stoutly, and in virulence was more than a match for all her opponents. Even Bob did not venture to take her part; he grinned down over the banisters, and enjoyed the entertainment immensely. Dick Snape, whose room Bob shared, took the opportunity of paying off certain old scores he had standing against Clem. Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, was very loud and very hoarse in condemnation of such barbarity. Mrs. Hewett, looking as if she had herself risen from a coffin, cried shame on the general heartlessness with which Jane was used.
Clara held to her resolve. She led Jane into the bedroom, then, with a parting shot at Miss Peckover, herself entered and locked the door.
'Drink some water, Jane,' she said, doing her best to reassure the child. 'You're safe for to-night, and we'll see what Mrs. Peckover says about this when she comes back to-morrow.'
Jane looked at her rescuer with eyes in which eternal gratitude mingled with fear for the future. She could cry now, poor thing, and so little by little recover herself. Words to utter her thanks she had none; she could only look something of what she felt. Clara made her undress and lie down with little Tom on the mattress. In a quarter of an hour the candle was extinguished, and but for the wind, which rattled sashes and doors, and made ghostly sounds in the chimneys, there was silence throughout the house.
Something awoke Clara before dawn. She sat up, and became aware that Jane was talking and crying wildly, evidently re-acting in her sleep the scene of a few hours ago. With difficulty Clara broke her slumber.
'Don't you feel well, Jane?' she asked, noticing a strangeness in the child's way of replying to her.
'Not very, miss. My head's bad, an' I'm so thirsty. May I drink out of the jug, miss?'
'Stay where you are. I'll bring it to you.'
Jane drank a great deal. Presently she fell again into slumber, which was again broken in the same way. Clara did not go to sleep, and as soon as it was daylight she summoned her father to come and look at the child. Jane was ill, and, as everyone could see, rapidly grew worse.
CHAPTER V
JANE IS VISITED
At ten o'clock next morning Mrs. Peckover reached home. She was a tall, big-boned woman of fifty, with an arm like a coalheaver's. She had dark hair, which shone and was odorous with unguents; a sallow, uncomely face, and a handsome moustache. Her countenance was more difficult to read than Clem's; a coarse, and most likely brutal, nature was plain enough in its lines, but there was also a suggestion of self-restraint, of sagacity, at all events of cunning—qualities