The Nether World | Page 7

that in the back-kitchen
lay the body of a dead woman; it was already encoffined, and waited
for interment on the morrow, when Mrs. Peckover would arrive with a
certain female relative from St. Albans. Now the proximity of this
corpse was a ceaseless occasion of dread and misery to Jane Snowdon;
the poor child had each night to make up a bed for herself in this
front-room, dragging together a little heap of rags when mother and
daughter were gone up to their chamber, and since the old woman's
death it was much if Jane had enjoyed one hour of unbroken sleep. She
endeavoured to hide these feelings, but Clem, with her Bed Indian
scent, divined them accurately enough. She hit upon a good idea.
'Go into the next room,' she commanded suddenly, 'and fetch the
matches off of the mantel-piece. I shall want to go upstairs presently, to
see if you've scrubbed the bed-room well.'
Jane was blanched; but she rose from her knees at once, and reached a

candlestick from above the fireplace.
'What's that for?' shouted Clem, with her mouth full. 'You've no need of
a light to find the mantel-piece. If you're not off--'
Jane hastened from the kitchen. Clem yelled to her to close the door,
and she had no choice but to obey. In the dark passage outside there
was darkness that might be felt. The child all but fainted with the
sickness of horror as she turned the handle of the other door and began
to grope her way. She knew exactly where the coffin was; she knew
that to avoid touching it in the diminutive room was all but impossible.
And touch it she did. Her anguish uttered itself, not in a mere sound of
terror, but in a broken word or two of a prayer she knew by heart,
including a name which sounded like a charm against evil. She had
reached the mantel-piece; oh, she could not, could not find the matches
I Yes, at last her hand closed on them. A blind rush, and she was out
again in the passage. She re-entered the front-kitchen with limbs that
quivered, with the sound of dreadful voices ringing about her, and
blankness before her eyes.
Clem laughed heartily, then finished her beer in a long, enjoyable pull.
Her appetite was satisfied; the last trace of oleaginous matter had
disappeared from her plate, and now she toyed with little pieces of
bread lightly dipped into the mustard-pot. These bonnes bouches put
her into excellent humour; presently she crossed her arms and leaned
back. There was no denying that Clem was handsome; at sixteen she
had all her charms in apparent maturity, and they were of the coarsely
magnificent order. Her forehead was low and of great width; her nose
was well shapen, and had large sensual apertures; her cruel lips may be
seen on certain fine antique busts; the neck that supported her heavy
head was splendidly rounded. In laughing, she became a model for an
artist, an embodiment of fierce life independent of morality. Her health
was probably less sound than it seemed to be; one would have
compared her, not to some piece of exuberant normal vegetation, but
rather to a rank, evilly-fostered growth. The putrid soil of that nether
world yields other forms besides the obviously blighted and sapless.
'Have you done any work for Mrs. Hewett to-day?' she asked of her
victim, after sufficiently savouring the spectacle of terror.
'Yes, miss; I did the front-room fireplace, an' fetched fourteen of coals,
an' washed out a few things.'

'What did she give you?'
'A penny, miss. I gave it to Mrs. Peckover before she went.'
'Oh, you did? Well, look 'ere; you'll just remember in future that all you
get from the lodgers belongs to me, an' not to mother. It's a new
arrangement, understand. An' if you dare to give up a 'apenny to mother,
I'll lick you till you're nothin' but a bag o' bones. Understand?'
Having on the spur of the moment devised this ingenious difficulty for
the child, who was sure to suffer in many ways from such a conflict of
authorities, Clem began to consider how she should spend her evening.
After all, Jane was too poor-spirited a victim to afford long
entertainment. Clem would have liked dealing with some one who
showed fight--some one with whom she could try savage issue in real
tooth-and-claw conflict. She had in mind a really exquisite piece of
cruelty, but it was a joy necessarily postponed to a late hour of the
night. In the meantime, it would perhaps be as well to take a stroll, with
a view of meeting a few friends as they came away from the
work-rooms. She was pondering the invention of some