On the landing he confronted Mrs. Hewett; she started on seeing him, and whispered a question. The exchange of a few words apprised Sidney that Hewett did not even know of Clara’s having quitted Mrs. Tubbs’.
‘Then I must tell him everything,’ he said. To put the task upon the poor woman would have been simple cowardice. Merely in hearing his news she was blanched with dread. She could only point to the door of the front-room—the only one rented by the family since Jane Snowdon’s occupation of the other had taught them to be as economical in this respect as their neighbours were.
Sidney knocked and entered. Two months had passed since his latest visit, and he observed that in the meantime everything had become more squalid. The floor, the window, the furniture, were not kept so clean as formerly—inevitable result of the overcrowding of a room; the air was bad, the children looked untidy. The large bed had not been set in order since last night; in it lay the baby, crying as always, ailing as it had done from the day of its birth. John Hewett was engaged in mending one of the chairs, of which the legs had become loose. He looked with surprise at the visitor, and at once averted his face sullenly.
‘Mr. Hewett,’ Kirkwood began, without form of greeting, ‘on Saturday morning I heard something that I believe I ought to have let you know at once. I felt, though, that it was hardly my business; and somehow we haven’t been quite so open with each other just lately as we used to be.’
His voice sank. Hewett had risen from his crouching attitude, and was looking him full in the face with eyes which grew momentarily darker and more hostile.
‘Well? Why are you stopping? What have you got to say?’
The words came from a dry throat; the effort to pronounce them clearly made the last all but violent.
‘On Friday night,’ Sidney resumed, his own utterance uncertain, ‘Clara left her place. She took a room not far from Upper Street, and I saw her, spoke to her. She’d quarrelled with Mrs. Tubbs. I urged her to come home, but she wouldn’t listen to me. This morning I’ve been to try and see her again, but they tell me she went away yesterday afternoon. I can’t find where she’s living now.’
Hewett took a step forward. His face was so distorted, so fierce, that Sidney involuntarily raised an arm, as if to defend himself.
‘An’ it’s you as comes tellin’ me this!’ John exclaimed, a note of anguish blending with his fury. ‘You have the face to stand there an’ speak like that to me, when you know it’s all your own doing! Who was the cause as the girl went away from ’ome? Who was it, I say? Haven’t been as friendly as we used to be, haven’t we? An’ why? Haven’t I seen it plainer an’ plainer what you was thinkin’ when you told me to let her have her own way? I spoke the truth then—’cause I felt it; an’ I was fool enough, for all that, to try an’ believe I was in the wrong. Now you come an’ stand before me—why, I couldn’t a’ thought there was a man had so little shame in him!’