She knew where to find him. The den of Mother Mandarin was no new ground to her, though she loathed the idea of going there. Strange that the night she chose for her errand should be just such a night as that on which she had met Mr. Barton. The fog was dense, almost as dense as it had been that night, and a thick drizzle was beginning to squeeze its way through it as she left the respectable portico of Rosary Mansions for the abode of vice and profligacy which sheltered her brother. In half an hour she was at Westminster Bridge. As she crossed over, the clock tower rang out nine.
Leaving the main thoroughfare she plunged into the network of lanes and alleys which thread the mass of miserable dwellings lying within a stone's-throw of the river. How familiar were those ways to her even now! How vividly she recalled the days of penury and misery when footsore and in despair she had trodden the stony pavements there! Every corner loomed up a landmark in her mind!
The unclean figures brushing past her in the darkness in no way scared her now. With a light and rapid step she turned down a lane which sloped to the river, and out on to a ruined wharf green with slime, red with dust. A sharp turn at the bottom of the lane brought her into a small court, now a mere vessel for the fog. Here the houses were all askew. Within them the ragged dwellers snarled and wrangled with each other for all the world like jackals over a carcase. Two or three struggling gas lights managed to pierce the murky air. They served to save her from stumbling. Cautiously she groped her way toward an emaciated-looking building of three stories, its roof so pointed and so narrow as to admit of but one window on each floor. And even these were innocent of glass. They were stuffed with rags.
As she climbed the stairs a hubbub of laughter and of shouting met her ears. Foul as had been the atmosphere without it was more foul within. She had to grasp the filthy iron railing, for she felt an oppression at her chest. As she ascended the sounds died away. At last, panting, she reached the top storey. The door faced her. It was heavy and rudely bound with iron. Three times she knocked lightly. It swung open immediately. Mother Mandarin was in her den—or rather in her eyrie.
The place was still the same. She remembered it well—the square room, with its whitewashed walls, discoloured and scrawled over with vile words and viler caricatures; the great open brick fireplace in which, always smouldered a handful of fire; the filthy mattresses laid out at the far end, on which the customers were wont to sprawl and sleep; and pervading all, the mephitic atmosphere illumined dimly by the swinging petrol-lamp set in a bracket over the fireplace. A Lascar and a Chinaman were lying there like corpses, narcotised by the drug, and dreaming God knows what dreams of paradise. Close to them lay a European, sallow-faced and ragged, and restless for his pipe, which was in course of preparation by the lady of the house. She crouched on the floor near a lamp, twisting and stirring the brown confection with a knitting needle, over a clear flame. As it frizzled and spat, she held a long-stemmed pipe for its reception. Though thus engrossed, she raised her grizzled head as Miriam entered.
The boy who had opened the door, sank back into the corner behind it, and rolled himself into a ball like a doormouse. Mother Mandarin rasped out her welcome.
"Eh, lovey, dovey, deary, and is it you, swelley? Oh, I know'd so well you'd come. Didn't I dream of 'awks kerryin' stones last night, an' if that ain't you with money for your poor ole aunty, she ain't the poor thing as wants it. Come, pretty ducky, chuck us the blunt!"
A small worm of a woman this, with a wrinkled face like a baboon, and eyes piercing as gimlets, and a mass of white hair like spun silk. She wore a dress of old green stuff, threadbare now, patched and discoloured. A dingy red shawl was drawn tightly over her red spare shoulders and across her chest—a woman full of evil, saturated with vice, and exhaling it so powerfully as to repel.
Miriam could not repress a shiver, but she addressed herself at once to the business she had in hand, being only too anxious to have done with it and get away.
"I have come for Jabez," she said. "Where is he?"