At the same moment, Mrs. Sowler reiterated her request in more peremptory language. “Do you hear, Jervy—do you hear? Sit a little closer.”
Jervy apparently had his reasons for treating the expression of Mrs. Sowler’s wishes with deference, shabby as she was. Making abundant apologies, he asked his neighbours to favour him by sitting a little nearer to each other, and so contrive to leave a morsel of vacant space at the edge of the bench.
Phoebe, making room under protest, began to whisper again. “What does she mean by calling you Jervy? She looks like a beggar. Tell her your name is Jervis.”
The reply she received did not encourage her to say more. “Hold your tongue; I have reasons for being civil to her—you be civil too.”
He turned to Mrs. Sowler, with the readiest submission to circumstances. Under the surface of his showy looks and his vulgar facility of manner, there lay hidden a substance of callous villainy and impenetrable cunning. He had in him the materials out of which the clever murderers are made, who baffle the police. If he could have done it with impunity, he would have destroyed without remorse the squalid old creature who sat by him, and who knew enough of his past career in England to send him to penal servitude for life. As it was, he spoke to her with a spurious condescension and good humour. “Why, it must be ten years, Mrs. Sowler, since I last saw you! What have you been doing?”
The woman frowned at him as she answered. “Can’t you look at me, and see? Starving!” She eyed his gaudy watch and chain greedily. “Money don’t seem to be scarce with you. Have you made your fortune in America?”
He laid his hand on her arm, and pressed it warningly. “Hush!” he said, under his breath. “We’ll talk about that, after the lecture.” His bright shifty black eyes turned furtively towards Phoebe—and Mrs. Sowler noticed it. The girl’s savings in service had paid for his jewelry and his fine clothes. She silently resented his rudeness in telling her to “hold her tongue”; sitting, sullen, with her impudent little nose in the air. Jervy tried to include her indirectly in his conversation with his shabby old friend. “This young lady,” he said, “knows Mr. Goldenheart. She feels sure he’ll break down; and we’ve come here to see the fun. I don’t hold with Socialism myself—I am for, what my favourite newspaper calls, the Altar and the Throne. In short, my politics are Conservative.”
“Your politics are in your girl’s pocket,” muttered Mrs. Sowler. “How long will her money last?”
Jervy turned a deaf ear to the interruption. “And what has brought you here?” he went on, in his most ingratiating way. “Did you see the advertisement in the papers?”
Mrs. Sowler answered loud enough to be heard above the hum of talking in the sixpenny places. “I was having a drop of gin, and I saw the paper at the public-house. I’m one of the discontented poor. I hate rich people; and I’m ready to pay my sixpence to hear them abused.”