DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL.
I built myself a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;
I said: “O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear Soul--for all is well.”
--_The Palace of Art._
“And where next? I don’t like Colootollah.” The Police and their charge
are standing in the interminable waste of houses under the starlight.
“To the lowest sink of all,” say the Police after the manner of Virgil
when he took the Italian with the indigestion to look at the frozen
sinners. “And where’s that?” “Somewhere about here; but you wouldn’t
know if you were told.” They lead and they lead and they lead, and they
cease not from leading till they come to the last circle of the
Inferno--a long, long, winding, quiet road. “There you are; you can see
for yourself.”
But there is nothing to be seen. On one side are houses--gaunt and dark,
naked and devoid of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls, lighted,
and with shamelessly open doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and
mutter and whisper one to another. There is a hush here, or at least the
busy silence of an officer of counting-house in working hours. One look
down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentlemen of the Calcutta
Police. Let us escape from the lines of open doors, the flaring lamps
within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned with little
plaster dogs, glass balls from Christmas-trees, and--for religion must
not be despised though women be fallen--pictures of the saints and
statuettes of the Virgin. The street is a long one, and other streets,
full of the same pitiful wares, branch off from it.
“Why are they so quiet? Why don’t they make a row and sing and shout,
and so on?” “Why should they, poor devils?” say the Police, and fall to
telling tales of horror, of women decoyed into _palkis_ and shot into
this trap. Then other tales that shatter one’s belief in all things and
folk of good repute. “How can you Police have faith in humanity?”
“That’s because you’re seeing it all in a lump for the first time, and
it’s not nice that way. Makes a man jump rather, doesn’t it? But,
recollect, you’ve _asked_ for the worst places, and you can’t complain.”
“Who’s complaining? Bring on your atrocities. Isn’t that a European
woman at that door?” “Yes. Mrs. D----, widow of a soldier, mother of
seven children.” “Nine, if you please, and good-evening to you,” shrills
Mrs. D----, leaning against the doorpost, her arms folded on her bosom.
She is a rather pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and whatever shame she
may have owned she has long since cast behind her. A shapeless
Burmo-native trot, with high cheek-bones and mouth like a shark, calls
Mrs. D---- “Mem-Sahib.” The word jars unspeakably. Her life is a matter
between herself and her Maker, but in that she--the widow of a soldier
of the Queen--has stooped to this common foulness in the face of the
city, she has offended against the white race. The Police fail to fall
in with this righteous indignation. More--they laugh at it out of the
wealth of their unholy knowledge. “You’re from up-country, and of course
you don’t understand. There are any amount of that lot in the city.”
Then the secret of the insolence of Calcutta is made plain. Small wonder
the natives fail to respect the Sahib, seeing what they see and knowing
what they know. In the good old days, the honorable the directors
deported him or her who misbehaved grossly, and the white man preserved
his _izzat_. He may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian on a
large scale. He did not sink in the presence of the people. The natives
are quite right to take the wall of the Sahib who has been at great
pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and blood.
All this time Mrs. D---- stands on the threshold of her room and looks
upon the men with unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that English soldier,
who married her long ago by the forms of the English Church, be now
flitting bat-wise above the roofs, how singularly pleased and proud it
must be! Mrs. D---- is a lady with a story. She is not averse to telling
it. “What was--ahem--the case in which you were--er--hmn--concerned,
Mrs. D----?” “They said I’d poisoned my husband by putting something
into his drinking-water.” This is interesting. How much modesty _has_
this creature? Let us see. “And--ah--_did_ you?” “‘Twasn’t proved,” says
Mrs. D---- with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like laugh that does infinite
credit to her education and upbringing. Worthy Mrs. D----! It would pay
a novelist--a French one let us say--to pick you out of the stews and
make you talk.
The Police move forward, into a region of Mrs. D----’s. This is
horrible; but they are used to it, and evidently consider indignation
affectation. Everywhere are the empty houses, and the babbling women in
print gowns. The clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but the
Police show no signs of stopping. They plunge hither and thither, like
wreckers into the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample of misery,
filth, and woe.
“Sheikh Babu was murdered just here,” they say, pulling up in one of the
most troublesome houses in the ward. It would never do to appear
ignorant of the murder of Sheikh Babu. “I only wonder that more aren’t
killed.” The houses with their breakneck staircases, their hundred
corners, low roofs, hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem
specially built for crime of every kind. A woman--Eurasian--rises to a
sitting position on a board-charpoy and blinks sleepily at the Police.
Then she throws herself down with a grunt. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I live in Markiss Lane and”--this with intense gravity--“I’m _so_
drunk.” She has a rather striking gipsy-like face, but her language
might be improved.
“Come along,” say the Police, “we’ll head back to Bentinck Street, and
put you on the road to the Great Eastern.” They walk long and steadily,
and the talk falls on gambling hells. “You ought to see our men rush
one of ’em. They like the work--natives of course. When we’ve marked a
hell down, we post men at the entrances and carry it. Sometimes the
Chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. It’s a pity we hadn’t a
hell to show you. Let’s go in here--there may be something forward.”
“Here” appears to be in the heart of a Chinese quarter, for the
pigtails--do they ever go to bed?--are scuttling about the streets.
“Never go into a Chinese place alone,” say the Police, and swing open a
postern gate in a strong, green door. Two Chinamen appear.
“What are we going to see?” “Japanese gir--No, we aren’t, by Jove! Catch
that Chinaman, _quick_.” The pigtail is trying to double back across a
courtyard into an inner chamber; but a large hand on his shoulder spins
him round and puts him in rear of the line of advancing Englishmen, who
are, be it observed, making a fair amount of noise with their boots. A
second door is thrown open, and the visitors advance into a large,
square room blazing with gas. Here thirteen pigtails, deaf and blind to
the outer world, are bending over a table. The captured Chinaman dodges
uneasily in the rear of the procession. Five--ten--fifteen seconds pass,
the Englishmen standing in the full light less than three paces from
the absorbed gang who see nothing. Then burly Superintendent Lamb brings
down his hand on his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot and shouts:
“How do, John?” Follows a frantic rush of scared Celestials, almost
tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get clear. Gudgeon before
the rush of the pike are nothing to John Chinaman detected in the act of
gambling. One pigtail scoops up a pile of copper money, another a
chinaware soup-bowl, and only a little mound of accusing cowries remains
on the white matting that covers the table. In less than half a minute
two facts are forcibly brought home to the visitor. First, that a
pigtail is largely composed of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand as
it slides through; and secondly, that the forearm of a Chinaman is
surprisingly muscular and well-developed. “What’s going to be done?”
“Nothing. They’re only three of us, and all the ringleaders would get
away. Look at the doors. We’ve got ’em safe any time we want to catch
’em, if this little visit doesn’t make ’em shift their quarters. Hi!
John. No pidgin to-night. Show how you makee play. That fat youngster
there is our informer.”
Half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, but the remainder,
assured and trebly assured that the Police really mean “no pidgin,”
return to the table and stand round while the croupier proceeds to
manipulate the cowries, the little curved slip of bamboo and the
soup-bowl. They never gamble, these innocents. They only come to look
on, and smoke opium in the next room. Yet as the game progresses their
eyes light up, and one by one they drop in to deposit their pice on odd
or even--the number of the cowries that are covered and left uncovered
by the little soup-bowl. _Mythan_ is the name of the amusement, and,
whatever may be its demerits, it is _clean_. The Police look on while
their charge plays and loots a parchment-skinned horror--one of Swift’s
Struldbrugs, strayed from Laputa--of the enormous sum of two annas. The
return of this wealth, doubled, sets the loser beating his forehead
against the table from sheer gratitude.
“_Most_ immoral game this. A man might drop five whole rupees, if he
began playing at sundown and kept it up all night. Don’t _you_ ever play
whist occasionally?”
“Now, we didn’t bring you round to make fun of this department. A man
can lose as much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, and if he
loses all his money he steals to get more. A Chinaman is insane about
gambling, and half his crime comes from it. It _must_ be kept down.”
“And the other business. Any sort of supervision there?” “No; so long as
they keep outside the penal code. Ask Dr.---- about that. It’s outside
our department. Here we are in Bentinck Street and you can be driven to
the Great Eastern in a few minutes. Joss houses? Oh, yes. If you want
more horrors, Superintendent Lamb will take you round with him to-morrow
afternoon at five. Report yourself at the Bow Bazar Thanna at five
minutes to. Good-night.”
The Police depart, and in a few minutes the silent, well-ordered
respectability of Old Council House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at
the end of it, is reached. All good Calcutta has gone to bed, the last
tram has passed, and the peace of the night is upon the world. Would it
be wise and rational to climb the spire of that kirk, and shout after
the fashion of the great Lion-slayer of Tarescon: “O true believers!
Decency is a fraud and a sham. There is nothing clean or pure or
wholesome under the stars, and we are all going to perdition together.
Amen!” On second thoughts it would not; for the spire is slippery, the
night is hot, and the Police have been specially careful to warn their
charge that he must not be carried away by the sight of horrors that
cannot be written or hinted at.
“Good-morning,” says the Policeman tramping the pavement in front of the
Great Eastern, and he nods his head pleasantly to show that he is the
representative of Law and Peace, and that the city of Calcutta is safe
from itself for the present.