He entered the Vennel. The narrow street seemed more full of life than all the wide main streets of the town together; it teemed with an unseen activity. From the pens and closes and from behind even the thin walls of the houses came an endless variety of sounds voices, laughter, the howl of a dog, the music of a melodeon, singing.
He perceived that they did not retire early here, felt that he was in his element, and outside a lighted window, from which emerged a roistering chorus, he stood rooted, then suddenly, like a provoked dog, he threw back his head and lifted his loud, inebriate voice in unison with the harmony within. The music ceased immediately and, after a pause, the window was thrown up and a stream of slops descended in a curving arch towards him. It missed him, however, by a foot, merely splashing slightly about his legs, and he retired down the street gaily, with the full honours of the encounter.
Halfway down, his nostrils dilated to the succulent odour of frying ham arising from the cooking of some belated supper in a house which he was passing, and reaching him through the night in a spicy, savoury vapour. Immediately he felt hungry and, looking around, discerned over the way a small shop still open, a nondescript eating- house devoted to the sale of such delicacies as pies, puddings, potted head, and tripe and onions. Moved by a sudden impulse, he strode across the street and muttering to himself drunkenly, "Ladies can wait. Matt needs little nourishment. Must keep strength up, m'boy," he entered the place magnificently. Inside, however, his whisky- hunger overcame his style and he shouted, "Throw us a meat pie quick, and swill in plenty of gravy."
"Penny or twopenny?" queried the greasy youth behind the counter.
"Sixpenny! you soor" replied Matthew, amiably. "Do you think I want any of your small trash, your bobachee? Pick me the biggest in the bunch and push it over here, jilde!" He slapped the coin down, took up the newspaper-wrapped package offered in return and, disdaining to consume the pie upon the premises, walked out. Down the street he went, tearing off the paper wrapping and stuffing handfuls of the delicacy into his mouth, eating voraciously, leaving behind him a track which became at once the joy and contention of all the starveling cats of the alley.
When he had finished, he breathed a sigh of content and, recollecting his manners, sucked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously upon his handkerchief. Then he hurried more urgently forward, full of meat and drink, ready now for the subtler and more piquant enchantments of the dessert. He came eventually to the house, found it indeed, without difficulty, for it was not easy to forget one's way in Levenford, and for a moment he stood outside, contemplating the narrow veiled illumination of the windows. As he remained there, momentarily a faint return of his adolescent awe touched him strangely, made him hesitate, but urged by the wild thought of the pleasure that lay therein for him, he seized the knocker and hammered loudly at the door. The clangour thundered up and down the street with a rude insistence, and, when he desisted, echoed to and fro across the narrow canyon of the lane, leaving, after the final reverberation had ceased, a startled silence which seemed to fall upon the outside, to grip even the inside of the house. There was a long pause, during which he stood swaying upon the doorstep and, when he had almost made up his mind to knock again, the door was opened slowly and for a small way only. Still, he was not dismayed by the inhospitable meagreness of this narrow aperture but, wise in his experience, immediately thrust his foot into the opening.
"Good evening, dear lady," he simpered. "Are you at home?"
"What do you want?" said a hard, low-toned, female voice from the interior darkness.
"The sight of your pretty face, my deah," he replied, in his best manner. "Come along now. Don't be so cruel and heartless. Give me a look at your bright eyes or your neat ankles."
"Who are you?" repeated the other harshly. "Who told you to come here?"
"I'm an old inhabitant, sweet creature, lately returned from abroad and not without the wherewithal." He jingled the money in his pocket enticingly and laughed with a short, empty laugh.
There was a pause, then the voice said firmly:
"Go away! You've made a mistake. This is a respectable house. We'll have nothing to do with you whatever," and she made as though to close the door in his face. In the ordinary way he would have been deterred by this rebuff and would undoubtedly have slunk off, but now his foot prevented the door from closing and he replied, with some show of bluster:
"Not so fast, ma'am. Don't be so high and mighty! You're dealing with a tough customer here. Let me in or I'll make such a hullabaloo you'll have the whole street at your door. Yes, I'll bring the town down about your ears."
"Go away at once or I'll get the police on you," said the other in a less firm tone, after a momentary silence that seemed fraught with indecision.
He winked triumphantly at the darkness, feeling that he was winning, realising proudly that he could always bluff the women.
"No, you won't," he replied craftily; "you don't want any police down here. I know that better than you do. I'm the gentleman you want to-night just wait till you see."
SiHe made no answer and, her silence encouraging him, her reticence serving to excite his lust, he muttered:
"I'll come and take a peep at you, Dolly," and, pressing his shoulder into the slight open space of the doorway, he forcibly insinuated himself into the hall. There he blinked for a moment in the light of the lamp which she held in her hand and which was now thrust forward into his face; then his jaw dropped and he stared boorishly, incredulously at her. Across the thrawn, forbidding face of the woman a gross purple narvus lay like a livid weal, stretching like a living fungus which had eaten into and destroyed her cheek and neck. It fascinated him morbidly with the attraction of a repulsive curiosity.
"What do you want?" she repeated in a rasping voice. He was disconcerted; with an effort, he removed his eyes from her face, but as he gazed around the wide, high-vaulted hall, his confidence returned at the thought that there were other rooms in the house, rooms sealed with an alluring mystery. She herself was only the bawd; there must be plenty of fun waiting for him behind one of these doors in the house. He looked at her again and immediately her disfigurement obtruded itself upon him so forcibly that he could not release his attention from it and, despite himself, muttered stupidly:
"Woman, that's an awful mark on your face. How did ye come to get it?"
"Who are you?" she repeated, harshly. "For the last time I ask you, before I have you thrown out."
He was off his guard.
"My name's Brodie Matthew Brodie," he mumbled in an absent, sottish voice. "Where are the young wenches? It's them I want to see! You'll not do!"
As he spoke, she in her turn stared at him and, in the flickering light of the lamp, it seemed as if amazement and agitation in turn swept across her grim features. At length she said slowly:
"I told you that you had mistaken the kind of house that this is! You'll not find much to amuse you here. Nobody lives in this house but me. That's the plain truth. I advise you to leave at once.”
"I don't believe you," he cried sullenly, and, his anger growing, he set up a great hubbub, shouting, "You're a liar, I tell you. Do you think I'm a fool to be put off with a yarn like that? I'll see you further before I go away. Do you think I'll let myself be put off by a thing like you? Me that's travelled to the other end of the world. No! I'll break into every room in this damned house sooner than be beat."