There is a place where the road skirts a height, and from the road a public park stretches down to the oily-black river winding through flats. Beyond the river gleam the reservoirs of the mills, steaming under the humid air. Beyond them again are hills covered with houses, and away to right and left a forest of tall chimneys. Over all hangs a pall of mist and smoke, a railing edges the road, and here Serge stood and gazed at the queer degraded beauty of it all. There was hardly a blade of grass in the park, none at all on the flats by the river. Trees and plants were stunted. Down in the park, on the benches, sauntering down the paths, hiding behind the bushes, he could see lovers, and that comforted him.
He moved on singing to himself and swinging his stick, and presently he came to a wide place over against a washing-machine factory. The road here was finely broad, but it was flanked on either side by mean little houses and forlorn little shops. It made the slow ascent of a long hill, and although there was plenty of traffic—trams, cabs, drays, lorries—it looked empty and desolate. There was not a tree in sight.
Serge stopped a man with a sandy moustache and a complexion like a suet-pudding and asked his direction to Fern Square.
“I’ll take you there,” said the man. “What number?”
“Five,” answered Serge.
“Mr. Folyat’s.” Serge nodded.
“He’s a good man is Mr. Folyat, and that kind to the poor, and they don’t need to go to his church neither. Him and the Roman priest, Father Soledano, they does a lot of good, and there’s a deal of good needs doing, there is. He gave me a job when I come out o’ prison.”
“Oh! You’ve been in prison?”
“A month ago, I come out.”