[Chapter 6]
Monsieur Judas is Confidential
A short distance from the mansion of Dr. Japix, on the road which ran from Ironfields to the dwellings of the magnates of the city, stood a large, square stone house in a dreary piece of ground. The house itself was also remarkably dreary, being painted a dull gray, with all the windows and doors dismally picked out in black. Two stories it was, with five windows in the top story facing the road, four windows and a door with a porch in the lower, and still deeper down the basements guarded at the sides of the house by spiky iron railings of a most resentful appearance. The garden in front had a broad walk running down to a rusty iron gate, on either side a plot of rank green grass, and in the centre of each churchyard-looking plot a tall, solemn cypress. The four lower windows opened like doors directly on to the grass-plots, but were always closed, as Mrs. Binter (proprietress of this charming establishment) thought egress by the funereal front door was quite sufficient.
Over the porch was a broad whiteboard, whereon was inscribed in grim black letters, "Binter's Boarding-house," and although the sight of the unwholesome house was enough to scare timid mortals, Binter's was generally well stocked, and the proprietress did fairly well in her particular line of overcharging and underfeeding.
A tall, gaunt, grim person was Mrs. Binter, arrayed in a severe-looking dress of a dull gray colour (like the house), and picked out in black (also like the house) by wearing an inky ribbon round her throat, a jet-trimmed gauze cap on her iron-gray hair, and rusty black mittens on her lean hands. She also wore round her narrow waist a thin belt of black leather, attached to which by a steel chain was a large bunch of keys, which so jingled when she walked, that in the twilight one could easily believe that Binter's was haunted by a gaunt ghost clanking its rusty chain through the dreary passages.
Mrs. Binter's papa (long since deceased) had been a warder in the county jail, and his one fair daughter having been brought up with an intimate knowledge of prison life, had so accustomed herself to view the world through the bars of a jail, that she had become quite imbued with the routine, the traditions, and the spirit of a first-class penitentiary. It might have been hereditary, it might have been habitual, but Mrs. Binter was certainly very jail-like in all her ways. Having captured Mr. Binter (who had no mind of his own), she made him marry her, and for the rest of his life relegated him to the basement, where he did all the work of a "boots" without the wages of one. His wife looked after the boarders, whom she treated like prisoners, presiding at her own table, where the food was very plain and very wholesome, seeing that they were in bed in their little cells at a proper hour, and altogether conducting the establishment in as near a manner approaching the paternal system as she was able.
Binter's was usually full, as Mrs. B. always advertised it as being in the country, and the worked-to-death clerks of Ironfields were glad to get a breath of fresh air, even when attended by the inconvenience of living in a private jail. But in the evenings all the prison-boarders generally went out on a kind of ticket-of-leave (the understanding being that they were to be in before midnight), and Mrs. Binter had the whole of her private jail to herself.
On this evening, however, all the boarders had gone out with the exception of Monsieur Judas, who was seated in a little cell (called by courtesy the drawing-room), before a feeble little fire which cowered in a large, cold grate. The room was scantily furnished in a very substantial fashion, the chairs very straight in the backs, the sofa just short enough to prevent any one lying down comfortably, the floor covered with a black and white diamond oilcloth, cold and slippery, with a narrow strip of woollen matting in front of the fire. If Mrs. Binter could have chained the fireirons to the wall (after the most approved prison fashion), she no doubt would have been glad to do so; but as she had to preserve a certain appearance of freedom (for which she was profoundly sorry), she let them lie loose, and Monsieur Judas was now sitting with the tongs in his hand adding little bits of coal to the shivering fire.
Mrs. Binter having ascertained through one of the head-warders (the housemaid) that Monsieur Judas was going to stay in all the evening, regarded this as an infringement of the ticket-of-leave system, and went up to the drawing-room cell to speak to him.
Judas heard the rattle of the keys, and knew the head-jailer was coming along, but without desisting from his employment he raised his crafty eyes to the gaunt figure that speedily stood before him.