Here was the truth. Bim was an expert in ignorance.
"You will find June in the wilderness of stone and evil. In the daytime it is covered by cloud and fog. In the night-time the red glare of lights reflected shines over it. That is what to follow and where to go. When you come back I will find a gift for you. Away with you. Go!"
Bim went.
CHAPTER III
PARADISE COURT
There are many Paradise Courts in London. The one which comes into this story is identifiable from the fact that a public-house is by its entrance.
Probably this hostelry has given the court its name, for it was the nearest approach to anything of an Eden character which that blotted part of existence held.
The public-house has been known at various times by different names--The Red Lion, The Green Man, The Blue Dragon, The Queen's Head. Possibly it is spoken of by another name now, for its management has always changed pretty frequently, and almost as frequently celebrated the occasion with a new title. It may perhaps be called "The Laughter of June"--who knows?--but digressions are sinful, when they anticipate. These facts are stated to help the reader to find the Paradise Court of the story--if he wants to.
To describe Paradise Court is to tell the picture of one or other of more than a thousand of the mean ways of London. It was narrow and flagged, with cracked slabs of cold stone; was utterly dismal, dingy, dull. Its tenements were brown with years of smoked atmosphere; the windows stained, or stuffed with paper, or empty of glass; the doors, broken gates, giving entrance to inner realms of squalor and nakedness. There is no place on earth more thoroughly hopeless and ugly than was that dismal colony of condemned humanity. The makers of Hell would probably be ashamed to imitate this limbo, where the poorest of the poor crowded and managed to exist.
Hunger and fear were unfading terrors in Paradise Court. Every room was haunted with the tragedy which never dies. No tears were shed there, for the heart which knows despair is dry as a river of sand. In Paradise Court only the babies could have any glimmer of hope, they being utterly ignorant and unable to know. The others were mere mute bodies, too hurt and heavily burdened to feel weary and sore.