All round the room ran a bench: the company sat on the bench, every man with a pipe of tobacco and a mug of drink: the walls were streaming: one felt inclined to run away—out into the fresh air for breath. The space in the middle was mostly kept open for a fight, perhaps: for a dance, perhaps, if a fiddler could be found. Every evening, I believe, there was a fight either between two men, or between two women: or between two boys. What would an Englishman of the baser sort become if he were forbidden to fight?
I describe what I saw after we entered. When Jenny pushed open the door and the breath of that tavern ascended to my nostrils I trembled and hesitated.
'Strong, at first, isn't it?' said Jenny. 'Cousin Will, to stand here and breathe the air that comes up carries me back to my childhood. You are ready to face it? After a little one grows accustomed. They like it, the people inside.' She stood with the handle of the half opened door in her hand. 'Now,' she said. 'You shall visit the Rogues' Delight: the Thieves' Kitchen: the Black Jack: the favourite House of Call for the gallows bird. You shall see what manner of woman is the old lady my mother: and what sort of woman is the young lady my sister.'
'I am ready, Jenny,' I replied, with an effort. One would join a forlorn hope almost as readily.
'Don't mind me. Take no notice whatever I say or do,' she whispered. 'I must humour the wretches. It is more than twelve months since I have been among them. They may resent my absence. However, you keep quiet, and say nothing. Call for drink if you like, and pretend to be an old hand in the place.'
Jenny threw up her head: opened her lips: laughed loudly and impudently: looked round her with an impudent stare: became, in a word, once more, one of the brazen young queans who sell oranges and exchange rude jokes with the gentlemen in the Pit of Drury Lane Theatre. It was a wonderful change. I saw a girl who would perhaps be beautiful if she had preserved any rags or the least appearance of feminine modesty: as for Jenny's sweet and attractive look of innocence, that had vanished. She had, in fact, resumed her former self, and more than her former self. I saw her as she had been. Was there ever before known such a thing that a girl who had never been taught what was meant by feminine modesty should be able to assume, at will, the look of one brought up in a convent—all innocence and ignorance—and, at will, be able to put it off and go back to her former self? No—it is impossible: the innocence of Jenny's face proclaimed the innocence of Jenny's soul.
'Follow me,' she said. 'Keep close, or expect a pewter plate or a pot hurled at your head. They love not strangers.'
She pushed open the door: she descended the steps: I followed. The room was quite full, and the reek of it made me sick and faint for a moment. But to the worst of stinks one quickly grows hardened.
'By——!' cried a voice from out of the smoke. 'It's Madame.'
'Lawks, Mother'—this was a girl's voice-''tis Jenny. Why, Jenny, we all thought you was grown too proud for the Black Jack.'