On one side of Ironfields, however, Nature had made a feeble attempt to assert herself, but then it was in a queer little village which had been the germ from whence arose this noisy town. In the old days the queer little village had stood amid green fields beside a sparkling river; but now the fields had disappeared, the sparkling river had turned to a dull, muddy stream, and the little village was improved out of all recognition. Like Frankenstein, it had created a monster which dominated it entirely, which took away even its name and reduced it from a quaint, pretty place, redolent of pastoral joys, to a dull little suburb, mostly inhabited by poor people. True, beyond stood the mansions of the Ironfields millionaires, glaring and unpicturesque, in equally glaring gardens laid out with mathematical accuracy; but the upper ten merely drove through the village on their way to these Brummagem palaces, and did not acknowledge its existence in any way. Yet a good many of their progenitors had lived in the dull suburb before Ironfields was Ironfields, but they forgot all about that in the enjoyment of their new-found splendours, and the miserable village was now a kind of poor relation, unrecognised, uncared for, and very much despised.
In the principal street, narrow and winding, with old houses on either side, standing like dismal ghosts of the past, was the chemist's shop, a brand-new place, with plate-glass windows, and the name, "Wosk & Co.," in bright gold letters on a bright blue ground. Behind the plate-glass windows appeared huge bottles containing liquids red, and yellow, and green in colour, which threw demoniacal reflections on the faces of passers-by at night, when the gas flared behind them. All kinds of patent medicines were there displayed to the best advantage; bottles of tooth-brushes, cakes of Pears' soap, phials of queer shape and wondrous virtue, sponges, jars of leeches, queer-looking pipes compounded of glass and india-rubber tubing, packets of fly-exterminators, and various other strange things pertaining to the trade, all calling attention to their various excellencies in neat little printed leaflets scattered promiscuously throughout.
Within, a shining counter of mahogany laden with cures for the various ills which flesh is heir to; and at the far end, a neat little glass screen with a gas-jet on top, above which could be seen the gray-black head of Mr. Wosk and the smooth red head of Mr. Wosk's assistant.
Mr. Wosk (who was also the Co.) was a slender, serious man, always clothed in black, with a sedate, black-bearded countenance, a habit of washing his hands with invisible soap and water, and a rasping little cough, which he introduced into his conversation at inopportune moments. He would have made an excellent undertaker, an ideal mute, for his cast of countenance was undeniably mournful, but Fate had fitted this round peg of an undertaker into the square hole of a chemist in a fit of perverse anger. He bore up, however, against his uncongenial situation with dreary resignation, and dispensed his own medicines with an air of saying, "I hope it will do you good, but I'm afraid it won't." He was the pillar of the Church in a small way, and stole round the chapel on Sundays with the plate in a melancholy fashion, as if he was asking some good Christian to put some food on the plate and despaired of getting it. Ebenezer was his name, and his wife, an acidulated lady of uncertain age, ruled him with a rod of iron, perhaps from the fact that she had no children over whom to domineer.
Mrs. Wosk, however, could not rule the assistant, much as she desired to do so. Not that he made any show of opposition, but always twisted this way and turned that in an eel-like fashion until she did not know quite where to have him. In fact, the assistant ruled Mrs. Wosk (of which rule she had a kind of uneasy consciousness), and as Mrs. Wosk ruled Mr. Wosk, including the Co., M. Jules Guinaud may have been said to have ruled the whole household.
A hard name to pronounce, especially in Ironfields, where French was in the main an unknown tongue, so suburban Ironfields, by common consent, forgot the surname of the assistant, and called him, in friendly fashion, Munseer Joolees, by which appellation he was known for a considerable time. Mrs. Wosk, however, who meddled a good deal with the shop and saw a good deal of the assistant, being learned in Biblical lore (as the wife of a deacon should be), found a certain resemblance suggested by the name and appearance of the assistant between Munseer Joolees and Judas Iscariot, whereupon, with virulent wit, she christened him by the latter name, and Monsieur Joolees became widely known as Monsieur Judas, which name pleased the Ironfields worthies, being easy to pronounce and containing a certain epigrammatic flavour.
The name suited him, too, this slender, undersized man with the stealthy step of a cat; the unsteady greenish eyes that appeared to see nothing, yet took in everything; the smooth, shining red hair plastered tightly down on his egg-shaped skull; and the delicate, pink and white-complexioned, hairless face that bore the impress of a kind of evil beauty—yes, the name suited him admirably, and as he took no exception to it, being in suburban Ironfields opinion an atheist, and therefore ignorant of the Biblical significance of the title, nobody thought of addressing him by any other.
He spoke English moderately well, in a soft, sibilant voice with a foreign accent, and sometimes used French words, which were Greek to all around him. Expressive, too, in a pantomimic way, with his habit of shrugging his sloping shoulders, his method of waving his slim white hands when in conversation, and a certain talent in using his eyes to convey his meaning. Lids drooping downwards, "I listen humbly to your words of wisdom, monsieur." Suddenly raising them so as to display full optic, "Yes, you may look at me; I am a most guileless person." Narrowing to a mere slit, like the pupil of a cat's eye, "Beware, I am dangerous," and so forth, all of which, in conjunction with the aforesaid shrugs and pantomimic action of his hands, made the conversation of Monsieur Judas very intelligible indeed, in spite of his foreign accent and French observations.
It was raining on this particular morning—seasonable weather, of course; but as far as rain went, all the months were the same in Ironfields, and a thick, black fog pervaded the atmosphere. A cold, clammy fog, with a sooty flavour, that crept slowly through the streets and into the houses, like a wounded snake dragging itself along. Here and there pedestrians looming large in the opaque cloud like gigantic apparitions, gas-lamps flaring drearily in the thick air, cabs and carts and carriages all moving cautiously along like endless funerals. And only two o'clock in the afternoon. Surely the darkness which spread over the land of Egypt could be no worse than this; nay, perhaps it was better, Egypt being tropical and lacking the chill, unwholesome moisture which permeated the air, wrapping the dingy houses, the noisy foundries, and the cheerless streets in a dull, sodden pall.
Gas glared in the shop of Wosk & Co., behind the glass doors, which kept out as much of the fog as they were able—gas which gave forth a dim, yellow light to Mr. Wosk behind the screen, looking over prescriptions, and to Monsieur Judas at the counter making up neat packages of medicine bottles. At the little window at the back which looked into the Wosk dwelling-house, an occasional vision of Mrs. Wosk's head appeared like that of a cross cherub, keeping her eye on chemist and assistant.