two bashful Chinkies and two dock drunks. As he strode in, one of the
drunks was talking in tones five sizes larger than life. The landlord was
maintaining his reputation for _suaviter in modo_ by informing him at
intervals that he was a perfect bloody nuisance to any respectable house,
and the sooner he drank up and cleared and never came near his bar again,
the better; while his pal attended to the _fortiter in re_ by prodding
him repeatedly over the kidneys.
“Well, if yer want a woman, have a woman, and shut up about it.”
“Aw right. I’ll give ten bob for one to-night—there!” And with a proud
hand he jumped a half-sovereign on the table and caught it.
The Croucher had a brandy, and followed the conversation without
listening. He was, as he said, off-colour. Bad-tempered about everything,
like, and didn’t know why. Everything was all _right_. But ... well,
he just felt like that. He wanted something to happen. Something new.
His thoughts swam away like roving fish, and came back suddenly, as
the roaring of the two drunks dropped. It was one of the Chinks who was
talking now, in a whisper:
“Ah said get you one for twelve shillings.”
The drunk thrust up a distorted jaw and stared at him. The stare was
meant to be strong and piercing; it was merely idiotic.
“What’s she like?”
“Dark. Heap plitty.”
“Give you ten bob.”
“No. Twelve shillings. Nice gel.”
“Where’s she come from? How long you had her?”
Now the Croucher pricked up his ears and butted in. He had an idea. Here
was something that might amuse him for a bit, and take off that sickish
feeling. A nice girl.... Good fun. Yes, rather. He had wanted something
fresh, some kind of excitement to stir things up a bit. He felt better
already.
“’Ere, Chinky,” he called. “Leave that blasted drunk and come over here.
Got somethink for yeh.”
The blasted drunk got up, by a grip on the Chink’s coat tail, and
mentioned that he’d show kids whether they could insult a perfly
respectable sailor by.... He then saw that the kid was the Croucher, and
his mate pulled him back, and he slid off the seat and was no more heard
of.
“Look here, Chinky,” murmured Croucher, “I’ll ... what you going to have?
Right-o. Two brandies, quick.... Is this all right, this gel?”
“Sh! Les. Always all light with Wing Foo, eh?”
“Well, listen. I’m on to that. See?”
Wing Foo slid aside, and conferred with his fat yellow friend.
“All light,” he agreed, returning to the Croucher. “You come ’long now,
and see her. You have my room, les.”
The three slid into the Causeway together. The air was busy with the
wailing of a Chinese fiddle. All about them was gloom; twilit shops;
snatches of honeyed talk; fusty smells; bits of traffic; seamen singing.
They crossed the road, slipped Pennyfields, and came to the house set
with its back to the corner whose single window had winked at the
Croucher a few minutes past.
The door yielded at a push, and they entered the main room, lit by a
forlorn candle. The elder Chink extended a flat hand. The Croucher
filled it with thirty pieces of silver, and the bargain was made. One
of them disappeared, and a moment or so later the purchase appeared
at the foot of the stairs which led from the fireplace. On seeing the
Croucher her colour grew, and she gave a quick gasp of surprise which was
unnoticed by the Chinks. But the Croucher caught it.
Beryl Hermione Maud was dark and just fourteen; a neat little figure, not
very tall for her age, but strangely intuitive, over-ripe, one might say.
Morally, she had grown too fast. Though only fourteen years were marked
in the swift lines of her form, in her face were all the wisdom and all
the tears of the ages. She was one of those precocities which abound in
this region. She had a genius for life, for divining its mysteries, where
others wait on long years of experience. Her father had said that she
was a fast little bitch because she stayed out late and lengthened her
skirts, and he threatened to wallop her if she didn’t behave herself. She
then made the mistake of assuming that this new dignity afforded her the
protection of maturity, and proceeded to further liberties. Her father
made haste to shake her belief in this idea, and to remind her that she
was only fourteen, by turning up those lengthened skirts and giving her
the spanking she deserved. This so exasperated her that she ran away from
Tidal Basin, and here she was with the yellow men.
She really was a dainty production. Not beautiful in the Greek sense,
for there is nothing more tedious than the Greek idea of beauty
and proportion. Beryl Hermione Maud’s beauty was more interesting;
indefinite, wayward. The features were irregular, but there was some
quality in the face that called you back. To look into it was to look
into the solemn deeps of a cathedral. Only the lips held any touch of
grossness. Her skin was translucent and fine. Her thick loaded curls
tumbled to her neck. Her glances were steady and reticent, and in her
movements was the shy dignity of the child.
The Croucher was fairly drunk by this time, but he was sober enough to
look at her and discover that she was desirable, and had great joy to
give to men. He swayed across to her, and put his steely arms about her
white neck. She greeted him with a smile, and remained limp and passive
under his embrace, her face lifted, expectant. A shudder ran about her
of delight, fear, and wonder. He was about to seal the bargain with
an unholy kiss when through the hush of the hour came the crack of a
revolver shot.
All started. A moment later came a great shout, and then a babble. There
was chorus of many feet. The noise swelled to a broad roar, the feet came
faster.
Smack! came a stone at the window, and a trickling of broken glass. The
Croucher swung away from Beryl Hermione Maud and looked out. A man, his
whole body insane with fear, was running to the house; behind him was
a nightmare of pursuers. Five seconds, and he was at the door. Without
knowing why, the Croucher pulled it open. The man collapsed in the little
room. The Croucher shut the door.
“Good Gawd, the ol’ man!”
“Let yer old dad in, boy! Gimme a chance!... Oh, Gawd. They nearly ’ad
me. I done a murder. Just ’ad time to run. Old Borden told me you’d gone
with the Chinks. ’Elp me, boy, ’elp me. Don’t let ’em git me. They’ll
’ang me. _’Ang_ me. Oh, Christ—they’re _coming_!” His voice rose to a
scream. “Don’t go back on me. Gimme a chance to hide. Keep ’em back
while I get wind. I can’t run no more. Go out, and ’it ’em, boy. You can.
Stand by yer dad!”
But the Croucher was not wanting these appeals. Already he had dragged
the old man up, and sat him in a chair. Now there was a fury of police
whistles spurting into the night like water on a fire. The anger of the
streets came to them in throbbing blasts. The Croucher slipped to the
window. From under his coat he drew a Smith-Wesson. The old man stretched
a stupid hand.
“D—d—d—don’t! Don’t shoot ’em. Fight ’em!”
“Blast you—and shut up!” snapped the Croucher. “It’s all right. It’ll
just stop ’em. It’s blanks.”
He raised the gun to the broken pane and fired, twice. It did stop ’em.
It wasn’t blank. It was ball.
The leading officer went down and out. The next man took his bullet in
the thigh. Both tumbled ridiculously, and the crowd behind gyrated on
them like a bioscope “comic.” Those who were able sorted themselves out
and ran zealously home. The others remained to struggle and to pray.
“Bloody fool!” cried the old man. “You done it now. Oh, Christ. We both
done a murder now. Gawd ’elp us!”
“Damn good job!”
Stumpley, the elder, collapsed in his chair again, his face white and
damp with sweat. The Chinks waited, as ever, impassive. The Croucher
stood out, alert, commanding.
“Bolt the door,” said the Croucher.
“Clamp the windows,” said the Croucher.
“Light the lamp,” said the Croucher.
The door was bolted, the windows clamped, the lamp lit. The four men
regarded one another. Behind them, in the shaking shadow, stood Beryl
Hermione Maud. Then the Croucher saw her. “Send the girl upstairs,” he
said; and she went.
It was a curious situation. The Chinks didn’t give a damn either way.
They were all in for a picnic now—or something worse than a picnic—if
there is anything worse. Life or death—it was all one to them. The old
man had killed someone; he would be hanged. The boy had killed someone;
he would be hanged. They would be charged with harbouring, and facts
about the little girl, and about other business of theirs would come out.
So, as there would be trouble any way, they were quite prepared to take
what came. Then there was the old man, palsied with fright, hoping,
anticipating, hysterical and inarticulate. Then there was the Croucher,
in love with life, but game enough to play his part and keep his funk
locked tightly inside him. Finally there was the girl, who—but what she
felt is but a matter for conjecture. So far, she had shown about as much
emotion as any girl of her age shows when the music-teacher arrives. The
others took a clear attitude on the situation. She was a dark horse.
Indeed, she might just as well not have been there, and, so far as the
men were concerned, she was not. She was simply forgotten.
They sent her upstairs and left her, while they argued and fought and
barricaded. But she must have thought hard and lived many hard years
during those two days of the Swatow Street siege, when she waited in the
upper room, forlorn and helpless.
Presently one of the Chinks retired and came back with two revolvers and
a small tin box.
“Guns,” he said simply.
“Gimme a shot o’ dope,” slobbered the old man. “Gimme a jolt, Chinky.”
The Croucher stared at the guns. “Oh. Going to ’ave a run for yer money,
old cock? Well, we’re all in, now. Only a matter o’ time. They’re bound
to win in the end. Tip out the bunce, old sport. Ball, all the time.
If they’re going to take me alive, they’ll lose half-a-dozen of their
boys first. They’re all round the back now. I ’eard ’em. We can’t get
out. It’s rope for me and dad. And it’s a stretch for you two. Round to
the back, you Chinky. Keep the window and the door. Good job I’m drunk.
You—up to the back window. Watch for ladders. We’ll show ’em something.”
He did. You will recall the affair. How the police surrounded that little
Fort Chabrol. How the deadly aim of the half-drunk Croucher and the cold
Chinkies got home on the Metropolitan Police Force again and again. How
the Croucher worked the front of the house, which faces the whole length
of the street, and how the Chinkies took the back and the roof. How the
police, in their helplessness against such fatalistic defiance of their
authority, appealed to Government, and how the Government sent down a
detachment of the Guards. You will recall how, in the great contest of
four men and a girl v. the Rest of England, it was the Rest of England
that went down. The overwhelming minority quietly laughed at them.
Of course, you cannot kill an English institution with ridicule, for
ridicule presupposes a sense of proportion in the thing ridiculed; but
there was another way by which the lonely five put the rest of England to
confusion.
It was all very wicked. Murder had been done. It is impossible to justify
the situation in any way. In Bayswater and all other haunts of unbridled
chastity the men and the girl were tortured, burnt alive, stewed in oil,
and submitted to every conceivable pain and penalty for their saucy
effrontery. Yet somehow, there was a touch about the whole thing, this
spectacle of four men defying the whole law and order of the greatest
country in the world, that thrilled every man with any devil in him.
It thrilled the Croucher. The theatricality of it appealed irresistibly
to him. Just then, he lived gloriously. While old Stumpley snivelled
and convulsed, he and his Chinks put up a splendid fight. Through a
little air-hole of the shuttered window Croucher wrought his will on all
invaders, and when the Guards erected their barricade at the end of the
street he roared.
_Zpt! Zpt! Zpt!_ Their rifles spat vicious death, and tinkles of glass
and plaster announced the coming of the bullets. But, by the irony of
things, the defenders remained untouched.
* * * * *
It was on the night of the second day that the Croucher began to be
tired, and to feel that things must be ended. He and the Chinks had
accepted the situation, and had kicked old man Stumpley into a corner.
Then they had taken turns in watching and sleeping. The rest of England
had kept up a desultory _plopetty-plop-plop_ at their block-house,
bringing down bits of plaster and wood-work and other defenceless things.
But it could not go on for ever; and two days of siege, with constant
gripping of a gun, is too much for the nerves, even when you know that
death is at the end of it. He did not fancy walking out and being shot
down, though this is what the old man wished to do; in fact they had
had to hold him down in his chair that very morning to prevent him. He
did not fancy the inglorious death of a self-directed bullet; and he
certainly was not going to a mute surrender and the farce of an Old
Bailey trial. He asked something larger, something with more....
He then discovered that his thoughts were running in the same track as
on the night that began the trouble, and association of ideas at once
brought the girl to his mind. Gawd! Here he was going out, and he hadn’t
had his time, his damfinold time that he had promised himself. After
all, he might as well have his penn’orth. He’d done murder, which was
the worst thing you could do. So he might just as well get some fun out
of lesser offences. What-o! It happened to be his turn to watch; but
he might just as well have company for the watch; and, anyway, there
was nothing to watch for. There, before them, was the whole of English
civilisation, holding back in fear of four men with a large supply of
cartridges. England hoped to starve them into surrender so that it could
hang them comfortably; that much of their tactics he had divined. So—on
with the dance! And then—Ta-ta!
He slipped upstairs to the room where they had locked Beryl Hermione
Maud, lest she might make trouble. He unlocked the door and entered.
It is not definitely known what happened at that interview. He was
there some while, and, when he came down, he came down, not gay and
light-hearted, as he had gone, but morose, changed. Something in his
face, in his manner, had altered. It was as though he had tightened
up. He moved about as a man pondering on something which he is near to
solving. The subject of his pondering was Beryl Hermione Maud. For this
had happened—in those few full moments he had awakened to the meaning of
love.
When he awoke in the late morning, after relief by Wing Foo, he learned
that his old dad was lying in the roadway just outside. He had dashed out
before either could stop him, and had gone down to half-a-dozen shots.
That settled it. They might as well finish their cartridges and then
finish the whole thing. They might as well——
What the hell was that coming downstairs? Smell it? Burning—eh?
Smoke—look at it! Gawd!
The Croucher leapt upstairs.
He leapt upstairs to Beryl Hermione Maud. But the smoke came from her
room. He roared at the door and dashed upon it. It swung open. Flame
alone held it. She was gone. Then he turned, and saw her on the narrow
landing, choking and blinking through a cloud of smoke, as in a dream.
“What the bloody—— Come outer that!” he yelled, and grabbed her sleeve.
“Quick—it’ll be on us in a minute.” He shoved her before him to the
stairs, but she drew back. “Who done it?” he gasped.
“No-no. Stop. I done it. There was some paraffin in the cupboard there.
And some matches. I started the wall where the paper was loose. It’ll be
through in a jiffy.... No, I ain’t going down.”
“What the devil.... What the—— Don’ be a fool. You can get out. I’ll come
wiv yer. Quick—it’s catching the stairs!”
There they stood in the golden haze, while tongues of flame lisped
wickedly about them. The heat was insufferable, the smoke asphyxiating.
Suddenly, through the crackling of wood, came a revolver shot. The
Croucher leaned over the crazy banister. Wing Foo had found honourable
death.
Beryl Hermione Maud softly touched his arm. “Come in here. This room.
It’ll get here last.” Something in her voice, her gesture, struck him
silly. He couldn’t have commanded at that moment. He obeyed.
When in the little room, she shut the door, and snakes of smoke crawled
under it. Then she stepped quietly to him, put her hands about his face,
and kissed him.
* * * * *
There, virtually, the story ends, though much happened between them
before their course was run. There was talk, curious talk, the talk of a
woman of thirty to the man of her life, monstrous to hear from a child
to a boy of nineteen. There were embraces, garrulous silences, kisses,
fears and tremblings. In those moments the Croucher awoke to a sense of
the bigness of things. He became enveloped in something ... a kind of ...
well, the situation and—oh, everything. The murder, the siege, all London
waiting for him, and that sort of thing. It gave him a new emotion; he
felt proud and clean all through. He felt, in his own phrase, like as
though he was going to find something he’d been hunting for for years and
forgotten.
One would like to know more, perhaps, for it might help us to live, and
teach us something of pity. But it is not to be known; and, after all,
these were the little moments of their lives, sacred to themselves.
One can conjecture what passed—the terribly inspired things that were
said, the ridiculously tragic things that were done. One guesses that
the Croucher stood mazed and dumb and blustering with gesture as Beryl
stretched impassioned hands to him and screamed that she loved him, had
loved him for years, as he went conqueringly about Limehouse, and that
she had fired the house that they might die together.
And one knows what happened in the last three minutes, for the wide
window fell, and those below saw clearly. The front of the house was a
mouth of flame. The troops and police closed in. A fire engine jangled
insanely at the end of Pekin Street. People shouted. People screamed. And
they heard Beryl Hermione Maud speak.
“Open the door. It’ll be over quicker. Kiss me, Croucher.”
They saw the Croucher open the door and spring again to her side, as
an octopus of fire writhed upon them. A police officer yelled obscure
advice. A fireman dashed forward and grew suddenly frantic, for though
everything was at hand, nothing could be done. The nearest hydrant was
many yards away, and the engine had to make a circuit. Even the pressmen
were momentarily awed.
Beryl flung furious arms about her boy, and again was heard to speak.
“You afraid?”
“Wiv you? Christ Almighty, no. But ... oh ... you ... young ... wonderful
... ought to live. ’Tain’t fair. It’s bloody. You ain’t had your time
... and you ain’t done nothing wrong. I deserve what I got, but....
Steady—it’s coming now.”
They saw him pull her back on his arm. They saw him put a large hand over
her mouth and drag her where the smoke rolled.
* * * * *
“Easy—hoses!”
“Stir up, damyeh. Lively, there.”
“Finished with engine.”
“Stand clear, dammit, stand clear. Salvage up.”
“Take report, Simpson. Smart now. Two bodies....”
“Oh, dammit, do stand clear!”
_The Sign of the Lamp_
Here, O hearts that beat with mine, is the saddest of all tales. It is
the tale of the breaking of a man’s faith in woman. A thousand arrows
over their places of slumber....
It was on the Bund of Shanghai that the father of Sway Lim had said these
words to him: “Son, mistrust all white women; they are but pale devils;
they shall ensnare you.”
But Lim had not listened; and it was Poppy Sturdish, of Limehouse and
Poplar, who proved to him that his father spoke truth. Poppy was fair in
the eyes of a Chinaman; she was an anæmic slip of a girl, with coarse
skin and mean mouth, a frightened manner and a defiant glance. She had
scarce any friends, for she was known to be a copper’s nark; thus came
the fear in her step and the challenge in her eyes. Often she had blown
the gaff on the secret games of Chinatown, for she spoke Cantonese and a
little Swahili and some Hindustani, and could rustle it with the best of
them; and it was her skill and shrewdness in directing the law to useful
enterprises, such as the raiding of wicked houses, that caused her to be
known in all local stations and courts as the Chinese Poppy.
She lived in the tactfully narrow Poplar High Street, that curls its
nasty length from Limehouse to Blackwall, and directly opposite her
cottage was the loathly lodging of Sway Lim—one room, black and smelly
with dirt—next the home of the sailors of Japan. From his open window he
could see into the room of the desirable Poppy, and by day and evening
he would sit there, watching her movements, and listening with delight
to her chief charm—that voice of hers that wailed in your heart long
since it had ceased to wail in your ears. She was a bad girl, mean and
treacherous; everybody knew that; but she was young and very pale;
so that Sway Lim, wet-lipped, would gloat upon her from his window.
Sometimes he would pluck at his plaintive fiddle, and make a song for
her. Over the sad, yellow evening his voice would float in an old Malayan
chanty:
“Love is kind to the least of men....
Eee-awa! Eee-awa!”
But a little while, and she had consented to walk with Lim, and to visit
the Queen’s Theatre, and to take drinks—double gins—at the Blue Lantern.
From him she accepted brooches and rings wherewith to deck the beauty
of her twenty-five years; and when she questioned him whence he had the
money for these things, he told her that he played fan-tan at the house
of Ho Ling. This he did either not knowing or not caring that Poppy was a
copper’s nark, and was under the sharp thumb of an inspector. He talked
to Poppy as he had talked to none outside his native land. He told her of
his home, of his childhood, of his prolific and wonderful parent, who had
twelve mighty sons. He talked of a land of lilies and soft blue nights
which he had left that he might adventure in strange countries, and see
the beauties of the white girls of other lands, and learn great things,
as befitted the first son of a proud house. He told her how well he
played fan-tan, where he played it, and at what times, how many tricks he
had acquired, and the heap plenty money he had made. And he sang to her:
_Yao chien wo ngai tzu nu._
All these things he told her in successive sweet evenings of June,
when Limehouse was a city of rose and silver, and the odour of exotic
spices lured every sense to the secret amiable delights of the pillow.
All these things he told her; yet was he surprised when one night
there came a knocking at the lower door of the house of Ho Ling, and a
knocking at the back door of the house of Ho Ling, and a knocking at the
upper door of the house of Ho Ling, and the ominously casual entrance
of burly gentlemen in racing overcoats, bowler hats, and large boots.
He was surprised when he was hauled away to a station, and detained for
the night in the cells, and taken thence to Thames Police Court. Was
he surprised when he saw the Chinese Poppy in court, chatting affably
with the most important-looking gentleman in racing overcoat and bowler
hat? He was not. His heart broke within him, and all emotion died. Tears
came to his throat, but not to his eyes, so that when the interpreter
questioned him, he could make no answer; his dignity dropped from him; he
could but glare and mumble. “I loved her,” his heart cried silently; “I
loved her, and she betrayed me. Treachery. Treachery.” And his companions
in the dock, who, too, had warned him against the white girl, wagged
wise, condemnatory heads that would have declared: “We told you so.”
His heart was broken by a white barbarian devil of a girl; and he
addressed himself forthwith, quietly and tenderly, to vengeance. He
paid his fine, and those of his companions, for he alone had sufficient
money to save them from prison; and then he went home to his chamber,
walking to a monotonous march of: “Treachery. Treachery.” As he turned
into Poplar High Street he came upon Poppy, walking with a beefy youth,
who glowered and looked very strong. As Poppy passed, she lifted a slim,
white hand, smacked the face of Sway Lim and, with delicate, cruel
fingers, pulled the nose of Sway Lim.