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 corffee.’
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 ol............