A bad place by day, an evil place by night, an unsavory place at all
times is Giles's Rents, down by the River.
It is a place of noisome courts and alleys, of narrow, crooked
streets, seething with a dense life from fetid cellar to crowded
garret, amid whose grime and squalor the wail of the new-born infant
is echoed by the groan of decrepit age and ravaging disease; where
Vice is rampant and ghoulish Hunger stalks, pale and grim.
Truly an unholy place is Giles's Rents, down by the River.
Here, upon a certain evening, Barnabas, leaning out from his narrow
casement, turned wistful-eyed, to stare away over broken roof and
chimney, away beyond the maze of squalid courts and alleys that
hemmed him in to where, across the River, the sun was setting in a
blaze of glory, yet a glory that served only to make more apparent
all the filth and decay, all the sordid ugliness of his surroundings.
Below him was a dirty court, where dirty children fought and played
together, filling the reeking air with their shrill clamor, while
slatternly women stood gossiping in ragged groups with grimy hands
on hips, or with arms rolled up in dingy aprons. And Barnabas
noticed that the dirty children and gossiping women turned very
often to stare and point up at a certain window a little further
along the court, and he idly wondered why.
It had been a day of stifling heat, and even now, though evening was
at hand, he breathed an air close and heavy and foul with a thousand
impurities.
Now as he leaned there, with his earnest gaze bent ever across the
River, Barnabas sighed, bethinking him of clean, white, country roads,
of murmuring brooks and rills, of the cool green shades of dewy
woods full of the fragrance of hidden flower and herb and sweet,
moist earth. But most of all he bethought him of a certain wayside
inn, an ancient inn of many gables, above whose hospitable door
swung a sign whereon a weather-beaten hound, dim-legged and faded of
tail, pursued a misty blur that by common report was held to be hare;
a comfortable, homely inn of no especial importance perhaps, yet the
very best inn to be found in all broad England, none the less. And,
as he thought, a sudden, great yearning came upon Barnabas and,
leaning his face between his hands, he said within himself: "'I will arise, and go to my father!'"
But little by little he became aware that the clamor below had
ceased and, glancing down into the court, beheld two men in red
waistcoats, large men, bewhiskered men and square of elbow.
Important men were these, at sight of whom the ragged children stood
awed and silent and round of eye, while the gossiping women drew
back to give them way. Yes, men of consequence they were, beyond a
doubt, and Barnabas noticed that they also stared very often at a
certain window a little further up the court and from it to a third
man who limped along close behind them by means of a very nobbly
stick; a shortish, broadish, mild-looking man whose face was hidden
beneath the shadow of the broad-brimmed hat. Nevertheless at sight
of this man Barnabas uttered an exclamation, drew in his head very
suddenly and thereafter stood, listening and expectant, his gaze on
the door like one who waits to meet the inevitable.