bleeding and lacerated and quivering, knowing nothing of the reason for
this change in the nature of things, but conscious only that it was not
so before ma went away, she had in her head a horrible tune that jangled,
and would not leave her. It tripped to the racing of her burning pulse,
to the throbbing of her scorched body, and to the beating of the dynamo
in the gas-station beyond the window:
“Someone ought to stick a knife—stick a knife—stick a knife—someone ought
to stick a knife across that bloody Chink!”
What happened during the next four days in that loathly room can hardly
be told. Day and night there were screamings and entreaties. Not one
night’s rest did she know. Sleep for an hour he would give her, and
then she would be awakened by a voice singing a familiar song of
“Stick-a-knife,” and lean hands that worked horrors upon her rosy limbs.
The lemon-coloured curls and the delicate, light beauty of her, so like
her mother, must often have smote him, but he never swerved from his
aim, and in a day or two she became an automaton, anticipating his wish,
moving at a turn of his head, obedient to his unspoken word. As his idea
progressed by these methods he found that the beast that lies in all of
us had burst its chain, and a lust of torture possessed him. He seemed
to lose himself in a welter of cruelty, yet never lost his sense of
direction.
In the intervals of these debauches and the pursuance of his plan, his
love-mad heart would be full to sickness for his lost Daffodil, and the
beauty of her, and her ways and speech—how thus she would go, and thus,
and say so and so. He would awake at night and not find her by him, and
his very bones would yearn for the girl who had chucked him for a yellow
man. And then he would think upon his plan, and, thinking upon that, he
would try to further it; and once the beast of cruelty was loosed again,
it would run in him with a consuming pace, until he began to fear that
the child would be too overdone for his desire.
At last, on the fourth day, he neared the end. She had been laid across
the chair and beaten almost to physical insensibility, and the inevitable
reaction on the mind had left her mentally quiescent, blank. He had timed
it cunningly. For all his abandonment to the passion of torment, some
poison in his blood had led him clearly to his goal; and it was almost
with a shriek of glee that he heard her speak after one of those assaults
which she had come to regard as normal and to accept without surprise.
“Dad—why don’t someone kill the Chink, then?”
He held himself well in hand, and answered casually: “’Cos they’re all
afraid, that’s why.”
“No one couldn’t kill the Chink, could they?”
“Course they could. Easy. Any afternoon. All them lot goes to sleep every
afternoon—Chinky, too, in a dark room. Anyone could kill ’im then. As
easy! I’d like someone to do it, that I would. Taking yer ma away from
you and me, dammim!”
“How’d they do it, then?”
“Why——” He caught her by the frock, and dragged her to him. The physical
pain of the four days had left her half animal, and in her face, swollen
with tears, was a vacant look with less of intelligent consciousness than
a cat’s. She did not notice that the hand that pulled her was not cruel,
but gentle. “Why, easy he’d do it. He’d go to the Chink’s house—the brown
’un at the corner—and he’d slip through the door, ’cos it’s alwis open.
And he’d creep to the back room where the Chinky sleeps, all in the dark.
And he’d _creeeeep_ up to the bed. And he’d have the knife in both hands.
And he’d bring it down—Squelch!—into the Chinky’s neck—so!”
He pantomimed, and noticed with delight that the child’s face was drawn,
as in one who strives to learn a lesson.
“But why don’ someone do it, then, and bring ma back to us?”
“Oh—’cos they’re afraid. And ’cos they mustn’t—that’s why. It’d be
murder. Killing people ain’t right. Murder’s awful wicked.”
“Don’t you wish Chinky was dead, dad? I do.”
“Not ’arf I don’t. I’d be a better man if Chinky was dead. It ain’t right
to say that, but I wish he was. But there ... you don’t want to think
about that kind of thing. It ain’t nice. Don’t you go thinking about it.
And don’t talk about it no more. Else you’ll get some more of what I just
done to yer!”
Next morning, he summoned her, and tore the frock from her, and whipped
her again, and tied her to the bed, suspended, so that her feet twisted
and just touched the ground. And there he left her till noon. Again and
again her aching head would droop, and throw the weight on her arms,
and every time she raised it she would see, on the mantelshelf before
her, a knife that was not there before—a large, lean knife—and a cheap
“sticky-back” photograph—a portrait of the Chink. And as she swayed with
the sustained torture, in her little brain sluggish thoughts began to
crawl, and the golden head was moved to much strange reasoning.
At noon, he returned and released her, and let her dress, and gave her
food. At about three o’clock he departed suddenly, leaving the door
unlocked. He stayed away for part of an hour.
When he came back, the room was empty, and he had great joy. His heart
sang; he flicked his fingers.
He squatted down by the fetid bed, chewing a piece of betel nut, and
waited for her.
At four o’clock he heard the chatter of small feet in the passage, and
then a little storm of frock and dishevelled stockings burst into the
room, slipped and fell, and rose again, and fell yet again on seeing
the Greaser’s sensual grin. Her face was whipped to a flame, and her
breathing was hard. Her hands clutched the breast of her frock.
“Oh!” was the cry she gave, and for a moment she stood transfixed,
expectant of an assault. And when it did not come, she ran on:
“Oh, dad, don’t beat me, don’t whip me. Daddy, I only run out just to—to
do somethink. I done it, dad. I done what they was frightened to do. Dad,
aincher glad? I bin and killed him. I bin and killed the Chinky. I done
him in, dad. All in the dark. He’s dead all right. I put it right in ...
both hands. Don’t whip me no more. I thought it’d bring ma back, p’r’aps.
I thought.... Oooh! Don’t look like that ... dad!...”
His heart leapt. He could have howled with laughter. He wanted to kick
his legs on the bed, and roll about. But he veiled all truth, and stared
at the child with a face that assumed a grey terror.
“You done ... what?” he asked, in slow tones of wonder. “You done ... you
killed someone ... Myrtle ... killed that Chink. Oh—my—Gawd!”
“Yes,” she said, with stark simplicity, stupidly fingering a large knife
which she had drawn from under her frock. “Yep. I done ’im proper. ’Cos
he took ma away from us. Look—here’s the knife. I went right in, all in
the dark. Mind—it’s wet. It went right in. It didn’t half spurt out.”
“Oh, Gawd,” he screamed, acting better than he knew. “Blood. Oh, Gawd!”
He sank limply to the bed, his figure a question mark. Then he leapt
up, dashed to the door, and rushed, in a cloud of words, to the street,
crying hoarsely:
“Oh, Gawd! Police! Police! Someone tell the police. My kid’s done a
murder. Our Myrtle’s bin and killed a Chink. Oh, Gawd. Oh, Gawd. Come in,
someone. Someone go in to her. She’s stuck a knife in a Chink, and she’s
playing with it, and it’s got blood on it. Oh, Gawd, can’t someone tell
the police!”
In the space of a minute, Formosa Terrace, at that hour torpid and
deserted, awoke to furious life. A small, vivid crowd surrounded him, and
he stood at its centre, gesturing wildly, his hair dropping, his face
working, as, fifty times, he told his tale.
Then a whistle was blown, and slowly the police came; and some went to
Pennyfields, to the house of the Chink, and another took the child, and
the sergeant took the Greaser and questioned him. He had it all so pat,
and was so suitably garrulous and agitated, that he noted with glee how
suspicion fell from him.
Yes, the knife was his; it had been given him at the docks by a Malay.
Yes, he did hate the Chink because the Chink had taken his wife, the
child’s mother; and quite probably he had said that the Chink ought to
die. Not the right thing to say, perhaps, but quite likely he’d said
it, because he felt like that then. No, he hadn’t been to work to-day,
but he’d been round at old Benny’s most of the morning, and the people
downstairs saw him come in about an hour ago. Yes, he had punished
the child several times lately. Had had to. His missus had gone with
the Chink, and left him alone with the child to look after as well as
himself, and he couldn’t manage her. He’d had to whip her because she
was dirty. (He brushed away a well-forced tear.) But if ever he’d have
thought anything like this was going to happen, he’d never have left that
knife there. Gawd help him if he would. To think that his kid—his only
kid—should do a murder. It was awful. What’d he done to deserve two blows
like that? His wife gone; and now his little kid to kill someone.... Gawd.
And he broke upon the arms of the supporting constables.
Myrtle and he were taken to the station, the child wondering and a little
pleased with the novelty; he with his life’s work done, his Daffodil’s
ravisher put to sleep. His statement was taken again, and he was told
that he must consider himself detained with the child, to which he
brokenly concurred.
Now there came to the station the officers who had visited the Chink’s
house, and they made a verbal report of what they had seen.
And suddenly, there burst upon the quiet station a great howl—the howl
of a trapped beast, as Greaser Flanagan fell forward over the desk and
hammered the floor with his fists.
“Yerss,” the constable was saying; “yerss—we bin there. Found the body
all right. In bed. Knife wound through the neck—left side. On’y it ain’t
the Chink. It’s a woman. It’s Daffodil Flanagan!”
_The Cue_
Down Wapping way, where the streets rush right and left to water-side
and depot, life ran high. Tide was at flood, and below the Old Stairs
the waters lashed themselves to fury. Against the savage purple of the
night rose a few wisps of rigging and some gruff funnels: lyrics in steel
and iron, their leaping lines as correct and ecstatic as a rhymed verse.
Under the cold glare of the arc lights, gangs of Asiatics hurried with
that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste. The acrid
tang of the East hung on every breath of air.
Hardly the place to which one would turn as to the city of his dreams;
yet there are those who do. Hearts are broken by Blackwall Gardens. The
pity and terror and wonder of first love burn in the blood and limbs of
those who serve behind the counters of East India Dock Road or load up
cargo boats at the landing-stages. Love-mad hands have buried knives in
little white bosoms in Commercial Road, and songs are written by the moon
across many a happy garret-window in Cable Street.
Once, in these streets, when the gas lamps glimmered and the night was
stung with stars, I heard a tale.
* * * * *
The little music hall near the water-side had just slammed its doors on
the last stage hand, and stood silent and dark. Stripped of its lights
and noise, it gave rather the impression of last night’s beer: something
flat and stale and squalid. It seemed conscious of the impression it
created; there was something shamefaced about it, as of one caught doing
unmentionable but necessary things.
At the mouth of the stage-door passage, illumined by a gas jet which
flung a light so furtive as to hint that it could show a great deal more
if it would, stood a man and a girl. The girl was covered from neck to
foot in an old raincoat. The man wore soiled evening-dress, covered by an
ulster. A bowler hat rode cockily on one side of his head. A thin cigar
thrust itself impetuously from a corner of his large mouth. Approached
from behind, he looked English, but his face was flat, and his head was
round. The colour of his skin was a murky yellow. He had almonds for
eyes. His hair was oily. He was a half-caste: the son of a Shadwell
mother and a Chinese father.
He put both hands on the girl’s shoulders. He spoke to her, and his face
lit with slow passion. She shook her head. She laughed.
“Nit, Chinky, nit. You’re a nice old boy, I know, and it was real kind of
you to give me all those nice things. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to
lead you on, y’know. I don’t love you. Not a bit. Never did. I’ve got my
boy. The boy I work with. Been with him for five years now, I have. So
that’s that. And now I must pop off, else the old thing will be wondering
what’s happened to me.”
The half-caste musician glared down at her. He pawed her. He told her, in
his labial enunciation, that she was too pretty for music-hall work. He
told her that she was a wonderful girl, and murmured: “Sweet, lovely li’l
girl. Oh, my beautiful, my beautiful!”
She tittered; and when she moved away he walked by her side, stroking her
sleeve. She began to talk conversationally:
“Never mind, old boy. Cheer up. Rotten house to-night, wasn’t it? I
thought we was going to get the bird, specially when you missed the cue
for our change. Oh, and by the way, be careful of those changes, old
boy. Y’see, Johnnie’s been doing that collapsing trapeze stunt for about
five years now, and he always does it to _The Bridal Chorus_ music.
You want to watch that, y’know; you changed about half-a-tick too soon
to-night, and anything like that jars him. See? Well, here’s my turning.
So long, kid.”
But he did not let her go. His tone of casual compliment swiftly changed.
He caught her wrists and held them. “I want you!” His straight, flat lips
were moist. She drew away; he pulled her to him, bent, swung her from her
feet, and crushed her small body against his, bruising her little mouth
with angry kisses.
But she raised a sharp hand and pushed him in the face.
“Here—steady on, Chinky!” she cried, using the name which she knew would
sting him to the soul. She was disconcerted and inclined to be cross,
while half laughing. “Don’t take liberties, my son. Specially with me.
You’re only a yellow rat, y’know.”
Something flickered for an instant beneath his long, narrow lashes, and
in another instant was gone. He bent again. “O li’l lovely girl.... My
dear!” Some beast seemed to leap within him. His hands mauled her with
intent cruelty, as though he would break and devour her.
“Don’t!” she enjoined. “Chuck it—you look such a silly fool!” She thrust
him away, and rearranged her disordered hair. She was not by any means
afraid of him; wasn’t he only a poor, wretched half-caste? But at the
same time she didn’t want him; didn’t like the odour of his oily black
hair which was right under her nose, or the reek of stale smoke that hung
about his dress-suit. She skipped out of his reach, and cocked a little
finger at him, while she sang, light-heartedly:
“I love you, little yellow bird,
But I love my libertee!”
Like a yellow wraith Cheng Brander faded into the night, his face and
gait calm and inscrutable. Before him danced the face of Jewell Angell,
like a lamp lit by the pure candour of her character: Jewell Angell, the
lady partner in the music hall acrobatic turn of Diabolo and Angela.
He walked home, suffering an overmastering desire to hurt this beautiful,
frail thing that had called him Yellow Rat. To strike her physically
would, he knew, be useless; these fool English did not understand
that women might justifiably be struck; and also, Jewell was, by her
profession, too hard and sturdy, for all her appearance of frailty, to
be hurt by any blow that he could deliver on her body. But there were,
perchance, other ways. His half-Oriental brain uncoiled itself from its
sensuous sloth and glided through a strange forest of ideas, and Cheng
Brander slept that night in the bosom of this forest.
Next evening, as musical director of the dusty, outmoded theatre of
varieties, he climbed to his chair, his blinking face as impassive as
ever, his hand as steady. Some of the boys in the orchestra had often
objected to working under a yellow peril, but he was a skilled musician,
and the management kept him on because he drew to the hall the Oriental
element of the quarter. He ducked from below, slid to his chair, and, on
the tinkle of the stage manager’s bell, took up his baton, tapped, and
led the boys through some rag-tag overture.
Diabolo and Angela were fourth call, and at the moment of the overture
they were in their dressing-rooms, making up. Their turn consisted of
an eccentric gymnastic display, culminating in a sensational drop by
Diabolo from a trapeze fixed in the flies to a floating trapeze on the
stage. The drop involved two somersaults, and the space and the moment
must be nicely calculated so that his hands should arrive in precise
juxtaposition with the swing of the lower trapeze. Every movement in
the turn and the placing of every piece of property was worked out to
the quarter-inch. The heightening or lowering of either trapeze, by the
merest shade, would make a difference in the extent of his reach and
might turn the double fall into disaster. Everything being fixed in
the usual way—and he always personally superintended the fixing of his
props—Diabolo knew exactly when to fall and how far to swing out. He
would wait for _The Bridal Chorus_, catch the tact of the music in his
pulses, and the rest was automatic, or, at any rate, sub-conscious. On
the first note of a certain bar, he would swing off and arrive a second
later, on the lower bar. For five years he had done the trick thus, and
never once had he erred. It was as easy as stepping off the pavement; and
so perfectly drilled were his muscles and nerve centres that he got no
thrill of any kind out of his evening’s work.
The call-boy shot a bullet head through Diabolo’s door, and cried for
band parts. They were flung at him—band parts composed of a medley of
popular airs. He returned ten minutes later.
“The Six Italias are on, sir.”
“Right-o!” said Diabolo, and descended the stone stairs. In the wings he
met Jewell, and they moved round the front cloth, before which a girl was
snarling and dancing and divulging the fact that her wardrobe was of the
scantiest. They moved among their props, pulling at this, altering that,
and swearing at the stage hands, who accepted curses as other men accept
remarks about the weather.
“Hope that yellow pussy’ll get your changes a bit smarter to-night,” said
Jewell. “Did I tell you the little perisher’s been after me? Yep....
Fancy thinking I’d take him on! Fresh little greaser! Mauled me about,
too. I pretty quick dropped it across him, you bet.”
“Good,” said Johnnie. “I’ll pull his yeller face to bits if he comes
round you while I’m about. Tell him from me he’d best stop trifling with
suicide. Better ring through, p’r’aps, and tell him to follow our marks
on the score. Here—Fred—ring the band, will you, and tell him Diabolo
and Angela want him to watch out for their cues, ’cos he mucked ’em last
night. Tell him we change to Number Five directly I’m up the rope.”
They drew back to the wings as the serio-comic girl kicked a clumsy
and valedictory leg over the footlights and fell against the entrance
curtain. They heard their symphony being blared by the brass, and then,
with that self-sufficient, mincing gait traditional to the acrobat, they
tripped on.
It was a poor house—a Tuesday night house—thin and cold. They did not
go well; and while Diabolo was doing the greater share of the stunts,
Jewell stood against the back-cloth, with arms behind her in the part of
the attendant sprite. From there she was looking into the bleak, blank
face of Cheng Brander, and she thought that a baboon might wag a baton
with as much intelligence. His attitude in the chair was always the same:
negligent, scornful. He saw nothing from his Olympian detachment, looked
at none of the turns, smiled at none of their quips, but leant back in
his chair at a comfortable angle, his elbow resting on the arm, his
wrist directing the beat of the baton, his glance fixed either on the
score or wandering to the roof.
Following a brilliant display of jugglery with Indian clubs, Johnnie
bowed and danced himself up-stage, whence, by a pulley-rope, he was
hauled to the flies. Jewell mouthed at the stage manager in the wings.
The stage manager spoke through the telephone, and Cheng Brander, bending
to the receiver, listened:
“Number Five,” said the voice to Cheng Brander.
“Number Nine,” said Cheng Brander to his men.
“One! Two! Three!” cried the voice of Johnnie from the flies. The
audience could just perceive his head, as he swung by the legs from the
upper trapeze.
“Number Nine,” Cheng Brander had said, and the band blared, not _The
Bridal Chorus_, but _Stars and Stripes_. Johnnie was swinging in rhythm
to a melody with which he was so familiar that he was expecting it
before a bar was to be heard. He was anticipating the beat of _The
Bridal Chorus_, and the muscles of his legs had, of their own accord,
slacked their hold on the bar in readiness for the exact moment of
release, when his ears told him of a mistake. Something was wrong
somewhere—something—something.... In a fraction of a second he realised
that the beat of the music was not the beat to which his nerves were
keyed. In a fraction of a second he tried to recover, to check the
incipient fall. But his nerves, thrown out of gear by this unexpected
rhythm at such a moment, failed to respond. The trapeze swung forward.
His hands clutched air. His legs went limp. He came down on his head. One
heard a muffled blow as of something cracking.
A short, sharp gasp came from the house. Cheng bent forward and peered
across the lights. The curtain fell, and the house rose, sick and
disquieted. As it fell, the woman rushed down-stage, and bent with fond
hands and inarticulate cries over the body of her boy.
“The man’s dead,” said Cheng. “The show’s stopped. Play them out with
_The Chinese Patrol_.” He raised his baton, and his face was grave and
inscrutable, save for a tiny flickering at the yellow eyelids, which told
that he was very, very happy.
_Beryl, the Croucher and the Rest of England_
It is an episode in the life and death of Beryl Hermione Maud Chudder
and of Croucher Stumpley, and it is told because it is beautiful, and
because the rest of England arose in its fat, satin’d, Bayswater wrath,
and called it beastly. Horrid things have to be told with it, as with all
tales of Limehouse; but hear the story, if you will, and be gentle, be
pitiful.
The Croucher, known also as the Prize Packet and the Panther, was only
a boy, just nineteen; and when he quitted the ring one Saturday night
at Netherlands, after a heavy and fast fifteen rounds, in which only
the gong had saved his opponent from the knock-out, it was with a free
mind, careless of the future, joyful in the present. He had no fight in
view for another two months; therefore he could cut loose a bit, for,
in wine or want, he was always gay. There had, then, been drinks after
the fight—several; but it was the last that did the trick—an over-ripe
gin. It had made him ill, and he had slouched away from the boys to be
ill quietly. Now he wanted something to pull him together again, for he
thought—as one does think after three or four—that five or six might
do the trick; so behold him, at ten-thirty on this Saturday night,
loafing along East India Dock Road, and turning into Pennyfields. From
Pennyfields he drifted over West India Dock Road, passed a house where
a window seemed deliberately to wink at him, and so swung into that
Causeway where the cold fatalism of the Orient meets the wistful dubiety
of the West. Here he was known and popular with the Chinkies, for he
was a quiet lad, with nothing of bombast, and liked to talk with them.
Besides, he was famous. He had knocked out Nobby Keeks, the Limehouse
Wonder, and had once had Seaman Hunks in serious difficulties for ten
rounds, though matched above his weight; and altogether was regarded as a
likely investment by the gang that backed him.
In the Causeway all was secrecy and half tones. The winter’s day had
died in a wrath of flame and cloud, and now pin-points of light pricked
the curtain of mist. The shuttered gloom of the quarter showed strangely
menacing. Every whispering house seemed an abode of dread things. Every
window seemed filled with frightful eyes. Every corner, half lit by the
bleak light of a naked gas-jet, seemed to harbour unholy things, and
a sense of danger hung on every step. The Causeway was just a fog of
yellow faces and labial murmurings.