had crowned it. His holy of holies, his personal dignity, his nose, had
been degraded. All the wrath of his fathers foamed in his blood. All
the tears of the ages rushed over his heart. Innumerable little agonies
scorched his flesh. Silently, swiftly, he crouched into himself as a
tortoise into its shell, and, followed by the brute laughter of the beefy
youth, he slipped by dark corners away.
Once in his chamber, he bowed himself before the joss, and burned many
prayer papers that the powers might be propitiated and pleased to
forward his schemes.
* * * * *
Now it was not long before the gentle, wet lips of Sway Lim had won from
other lips, less gentle, but well moistened with beer and gin, certain
things good to be known concerning Poppy Sturdish, or Chinese Poppy. He
learnt that her heart and the beautiful body of her, loaded with infinite
pale graces that never a yellow man might discover, had been freely
rendered to another; not to the Inspector, but to a greater personage of
Poplar: none other than the beefy youth, Hunk Bottles.
Hunk Bottles was not a good man. The life he led was not clean. He robbed
and bashed. It was rumoured that he had done worse deeds, too, by night;
but, as the leader of the Hunk Bottles Gang, and the sower of strife
among the labourers, white, black, brown and yellow, of the docks, he was
a fellow of some consequence, and there were times when the police looked
steadily in the opposite direction when he approached.
But there was at last a day when public sentiment demanded that all
local and personal considerations be set aside, and that Hunk Bottles
be apprehended. For it had come to pass that murder had been done in
Chinatown, in a nasty house near Pennyfields, where men played cards and
other games, and sometimes quarrelled among themselves; and the police
sought the murderer and found him not. Only they found in the hand of
the murdered man half the sleeve of a coat: a coat of good material, a
material which a local tailor recognised because he used very little of
it, and had but two customers for it. One was his own father; the other
was Hunk Bottles.
But Hunk Bottles had flown, and none knew whither. Yet were there two
who could have made very shrewd guesses. One of these sat, with a broken
heart, evening by evening, at his window, watching the opposite window,
where sometimes a soft shape would dance across the blind, and dance
with trampling feet upon his poor heart. Sometimes the door would open,
and she would go forth, and he would watch her, and when she was gone,
he would continue to watch the way she was gone, and would sit until she
returned. Sometimes her window would open, too, and she would shoot a
spiteful head through it, and cry to him, in her own rich tongue, that
all yellow swine were offal to her. This man knew where Hunk Bottles
might be found, for he had seen Hunk Bottles creep to the opposite door,
at the dark hour of two in the morning, and he had seen a lowered light,
had heard the crackle of a whisper, and the sweet hiss of stormy kisses
showered upon the white body of Poppy, and her murmurous defiance: “I
won’t give you up. Never. Never. Never. Take me dyin’ oath I won’t. Not
if they kill me, Hunk. ’Ope I’m in ’ell first.”
Very swiftly the story spread through Limehouse from gentle Chinese
lips, and it came, in less than an hour, to the police station. Fifteen
minutes later the important gentleman in racing overcoat and bowler hat
called upon Poppy, and challenged her. And when he had challenged her,
he charged her with a mission. At first she was truculent; then sullen;
then complacent. She took her dyin’ oath that she didn’t know where Hunk
was. She only knew that he had been to her twice, very late at night. She
did not know where he came from, or where he went. She was in deadly fear
of him. Of course she ought to have give him up, but how could she? He’d
split her throat. He carried a gun and knives. He’d do her in at once if
he suspected. What _could_ she do?
They talked ... and talked. The Inspector’s large hand moved
emphatically, patting the table as he made certain points.
“Don’t try to tell me,” he urged, in the off-hand way of the police
officer. “I know all about it. You do what you got to do, and you needn’t
be frightened of nobody. And you better do it, I give you my word, me
gel; I got you fixed good and tight. So watch out. And don’t forget
nothing. Now then ... what’s your orders?”
In a dull, cold voice Poppy repeated a formula. “Put the lamp in the
window, with the red shade on. When I got his gun and his two knives off
him, I take the shade away. Then you comes in.”
“That’s it. Why, it’s as easy.... Just a little lovey-lovey. Kinder lead
him on. Then sit him down on that there sofa, and love him some more.
Then he’ll take off his belt, and other things. When he’s got his coat
off, with the gun in it, get him over this side away from it. Never
mind about the knives; he won’t get a chanst to use them. Then you put
your hand up, to straighten your hair, like, and knock the shade off,
accidental.
“Now mind yeh.... No hanky-panky. Else I’ll have to do it on yeh, as I
ought to have done years ago. So mind yeh. I ain’t standing any khybosh.
Not in these nor any other trousers. You do what you’re told, and
things’ll be all the better for you for a long time to come. We shall be
outside from now till he comes. So don’t try to slip out and bung him the
word. It won’t be no good. And above all, don’t try to get gay with me.
See? Ever read your Bible? Read it now, ’fore he comes. There’s a yarn
about a chap called Samson, and his gel Delilah. Tells you just how to do
it!”
He had just snapped his last phrase when there came to both of them, very
sharp and clear, the wailing of a Malayan chanty:
“Love is kind to the least of men....
Eee-awa! Eee-awa!”
Instinctively both looked up, and then they saw that the window was wide
to the street, and at the opposite open window was a yellow face and
head which blinked at them impassively under the hard morning light, and
continued its melancholy entertainment.
A few long hours followed, and then came Hunk Bottles, perilously,
slipperily. He was whisked into the house as by a gust of wind, while
in several grim corners several gentlemen in racing overcoats and bowler
hats, and one in uniform, grinned quietly. For now it was Poppy’s charge
to deliver the boy to his tormentors, and she should very terribly cop
out if she failed in that charge.
That, however, was exactly what she meant to do. He had come, her own,
very own Hunk; and she must get him away. Hunk and herself would escape
or die together; and, if they died, several gentlemen in racing overcoats
and bowler hats should die with them. There was a back entrance to her
little house. The Inspector had not thought to post men there; after all,
she was a copper’s nark, and he assumed that he had fairly frightened her
by his instructions that morning. He had overlooked the fact that Poppy
was a London girl, and that she loved Hunk Bottles. He had forgotten that
the state of love is so very near to the state of death.
The moment Hunk was in her room, she spoke swift words to him. She told
him of his peril; she told him of the instructions given to her. She
repeated her oath of allegiance, and detailed her plan for escape.
“They’ll have to kill me first, Hunk. Sop me gob they will. I’m never
going back on yeh. Never!” And she flung hot little arms about him,
letting him play with her as he would while he urged her to pull herself
together. When she had finished assaulting his scrubby face with wet
kisses, she asked him if he had got his gun and his two knives, and he
assured her that he had, as well as a knuckle-duster. And she asked him
if he would make a fight for it if they were caught, and he said he
would, and groaned aloud when she forced him to promise that, if the
fight were lost, he would put her out before the cops could get her.
They embraced again, and he sobbed soft things to her beauty and her
faithfulness.
Then she took the lamp from the table, set the red shade very firmly upon
it, and placed it in the window.
“Half-a-mo’, Hunk,” she whispered. “I’ll just slip away to the back, and
make sure all’s clear.” She turned her face up to him as she retreated,
and its pallor shone as though some sudden lamp of life had been lit
within her, and a lonely Chinky at the opposite window groaned in his
heart that no woman had ever given such a look to him.
But his face remained impassive, and, the moment she was gone from the
room, he thrust across the narrow street a stiff, straight wire such as
is used for fishing on the Great Yellow River, and so finely drawn that
nothing could be seen of it in the road below.
Of a sudden the red shade of the lamp was twitched off.
Swiftly from their corners came several gentlemen in racing overcoats and
bowler hats, one of whom carried a key. The door of the house was opened,
and they disappeared. Ten seconds later they stood before Hunk Bottles,
and Sway Lim at his window, breathing the scents of manioc and pickled
eggs, saw them very clearly. He saw the sudden dismay on the face of the
prisoner, and heard the sharp cry: “Copped, be Christ!” And then: “So she
went to fetch yeh, the bitch!”
He saw him drop both hands in a gesture of surrender, and step forward.
At the same moment, in the doorway appeared the pale, anguished figure of
Poppy. She grasped the situation, and a spasm in her face showed that she
grasped the awful construction that Hunk had placed upon it. She raised a
protesting hand. Her lips moved as if to speak.
But Hunk, his face on fire with fury, grief and despair at this assumed
betrayal by the woman he loved, waved her coldly away. He took his
gun from his pocket, and handed it to the Inspector, who had held him
covered. Poppy darted forward, but was dragged back. She screamed. Then,
mercifully, she fainted; and did not hear, across the cruel night, a
ripple of cold Oriental laughter and a voice that wailed an old Malayan
chanty:
“Love is kind to the least of men....
Eee-awa! Eee-awa!”
_Tai Fu and Pansy Greers_
Now it came to pass that Mohammed Ali stood upon the steps of the
Asiatics’ Home, and swore—not as you and I swear, but richly, with a
feeling for colour and sting, strong in the vivid adjective. He swore in
a bastard dialect compounded of Urdu, Chinese and Cocknese, and a swear
skilfully dished up from these ingredients is—well, have you ever put
cayenne on your mustard? Mohammed Ali was very cross, for his girl, his
white girl, Pansy Greers, had given him the chuck, and for the reason
which has brought many a good fellow the chuck—namely, lack of money.
Pansy was in trouble, and wanted money, of which he had none, for he was
a destitute Oriental. Often they had gone about together, and in his way
he had loved her. The girls of this quarter have a penchant for coloured
boys, based, perhaps, on the attraction of repulsion. However, now that
Mohammed Ali had failed her when put to the test, he was told that he
need not again ask her to walk through Poplar Gardens. So he stood on the
steps, and swore, while Pansy——
Well, Pansy was in trouble, and this was the way of it.
Pansy lived in Pekin Street. About her window the wires wove a network,
and the beat of waters, as they slapped about the wharves, was day
and night in her ears. At evenings there came to her the wail of the
Pennyfields Orient, or the hysterical chortlings of an organ with
music-hall ditties. She worked at Bennett’s Cocoa Rooms in East India
Dock Road; and life for her, as for most of her class, was just a dark
house in a dark street. From the morning’s flush to the subtle evening,
she stood at steaming urns, breathing an air limp with the smell of food,
and serving unhealthy eatables to cabmen, draymen, and, occasionally, a
yellow or black or brown sailor.
She was not pretty. The curse of labour was on her face, and she carried
no delicacies wherewith to veil her maidenhood. From dawn to dusk, from
spring to spring, she had trodden the golden hours in this routine,
and knew, yet scarcely felt, the slow sucking of her ripening powers.
Twenty-one she was; yet life had never sung to her. Toil, and again
toil, was all she knew—toil on a weakened body, improperly fed; for your
work-girl of the East seldom knows how to nourish herself. Pansy lived,
for the most part, on tea and sweets.
She was a good girl. Others of her set found escape and joys in many
crude festivities—music halls, “hops,” and brute embraces and kisses and
intimacy with the boys. But she cared for none of these. Her friends
allowed that she had no go, and hinted, with harsh indecencies, that if
the truth were told your quiet ones were often worst. Her Sundays she
spent tucked in bed with _East Lynne_ or _Forget-me-Not_; but, although
her little head gloated on gilded sin, she had never once tasted it, for
she loved but one human thing—her blowsy mother. Her mother, too, loved
but one thing—not a human thing, but a bottled article—gin.
So, too soon, her mother came to die.
Pansy came home from the shop one night; climbed the stark stairs to
their room; stopped to chi-ike the half-naked children playing on the
landing. Murmuring a rag-time melody, she slouched in, and....
The room was dark, and she felt a sudden nameless chill.
She lit the lamp. Mother was dead.
Those that live, as Pansy did, all their days in physical contact with
the brutality of things become too broken for complaint or remonstrance.
This shock left Pansy just cold and numb, acceptant. It never occurred
to her that hers was a hard lot, that life was not what it ought to be;
vaguely she had stumbled on the truth of going on, whatever happened.
So she went on. One thing alone spun dully on her brain, apart from
the grief of losing her one pal, and that was—how to provide a funeral
such as mother had always desired. For mother, after many years of gin,
was sentimental. She wanted to be buried outside the parish, with her
man. She wanted a brave show. A real handsome funeral, don’t forget.
Feathers, flowers, pall, and a nice sit-down for the guests afterwards.
When, however, you have paid the rent, bought food and dressed yourself,
there isn’t much to save for burial out of eight-and-sixpence a week.
Neighbours, who are always friends in Poplar, brought their little gifts
of love; what they had, they gave; but that was still a long way from a
really swell planting.
It was at this point that Pansy prayed. It is seldom that they pray
about the docks: the bread-and-butter race is a hard one, and the pace
is cruel, and any slackening means disqualification, and praying, as
Pansy had said, real good praying, takes time and thought. But her
praying was made, and sharp and clear there came to her an answer. She
went to Mohammed Ali, and Mohammed Ali, as recorded, failed her. But
... she remembered Tai Fu. She remembered a creeping, scrofulous thing
that had once or twice come to the Cocoa Rooms, and leered damply upon
her. Now, like so many of the settlers in the Chinese quarter, Tai Fu
had money—lots of it. How they make their money in London is a mystery,
but make it they do, probably at the fan-tan table when their flush
compatriots come off the boats; and Tai Fu was reputed to be one of the
richest, though he lived sparsely. Perhaps he was saving so as to realise
a cherished dream of returning to his native river town, and spending
his later days in tranquillity and some magnificence. Certainly he spent
little, and his pen-yen was his one expense.
He was a dreadful doper. Sometimes he would chew betel nut or bhang or
hashish, but mostly it was a big jolt of yen-shi, for he got more value
from that. He was a connoisseur, and used his selected yen-shi and
yen-hok as an Englishman uses a Cabanas.
The first slow inhalations brought him nothing, but, as he continued,
there would come a sweet, purring warmth about the limbs. This effect
was purely physical: the brain was left cold and awake, the thought
uncoloured. But slowly, as the draws grew deeper, the details of the room
would fade, there would be a soft thunder in the ears, his eyes would
close, and about the head gathered a cloud of lilac, at first opaque, but
gradually lightening in consistency till it became but a shy gauze. Then,
with all control of the faculties in suspension, out of the nebula would
swim infinite delicacies of phantasy and rhythm, of the ethereal reality
of a rose-leaf. There would be faces, half revealed and half secret,
under torrents of loaded curls; faces, now dusky, now strangely white;
faces pure and haunting, and faces of creeping sin, floating without
movement, fading and appearing. Faces sad almost to tears; then laughing,
languishing faces; then cold, profound, animal faces—the faces of women,
for the most part, but now and then faces of children and indeterminate
faces.
As the stupor developed, it would bring music to the ears, and a sense of
the glory of the immediate moment, when every tissue of the body would
be keyed to a pitch of ecstasy almost too sweet to be borne. Then, with
a squall of brass in the ears, the colour would change, and this time it
would hold stranger allurements. The whole dream, indeed, built itself
as one builds a sumptuous banquet of the blending of many flavours and
essences, each course a subtle, unmarked progression on its predecessor.
The last stage of the dope-dream would be a chaos of music and a frenzy
of frock and limb and curl against delirious backgrounds. Always the
background was the Causeway, Orientalised. The little café would leap and
bulge to a white temple, the chimney against the sky would sprout into a
pagoda, and there would be the low pulsing of tom-toms. The street would
sway itself out of all proportion, and grotesque staircases would dip to
it from the dim-starred night; and it would be filled with pale girls,
half-garbed in white and silver, and gold and blue.
Tai Fu had never known a white girl. He was a loathly creature, old
and fat and steamy, and none of the girls would have him, for all his
wealth. His attitude to the world was the cold, pitiless attitude of the
overfed and the over-wined. But it was of him that Pansy thought in her
trouble, and when he called at the cocoa shop, she, sick-limbed and eyes
a-blear, but still working, since there was nothing else she could do,
and it killed thought—she told him her tale. He grinned, loose-lipped,
with anticipation of delight. What she asked him, in effect, was: would
he lend her the money for the funeral? And Tai Fu said at once that he
would, if, that is, she....
Well, she was a good girl, but she loved her mother as she loved nothing
else, human or celestial. A dying wish was to her more sacred than a
social form.
She would. She did. Tai Fu got the white girl he had only known in
hop-smoke.
She went to him that night at his house in the Causeway. He opened the
door himself, and flung a low-lidded, wine-whipped glance about her that
seemed to undress her where she stood, noting her fault and charm as one
notes an animal. He did not love her; there was no sentiment in this
business. Brute cunning and greed were in his brow, and lust was in his
lips. He wanted her, and he had got her—quite cheaply, too.
She went to him; and she came away with some gold pieces. But in her face
was a look of horror which she carries to-day.
What he did to her in the blackness of that curtained room of his had
best not be imagined. But she came away with a deep, cold desire and
determination to kill him—and she was not the kind of girl who lightly
stains her finger with a crime of that colour. She came away with bruised
limbs and body, with torn hair, and a face paled to death.
However, her vow was kept. Mother had her funeral, which drew crowds from
everywhere. There were pickles and ham, and coffee and beer and tea, and
plum cake and jam, and flowers and—oh, everything classy.
The morning following the impressive interment she cleared up the litter
in her room, and went to work at the Cocoa Rooms.
“Sorry,” said the proprietor, “but you can’t come here no more. Sorry.
But there’s a lot of talk going about. One of the Chinks got drunk last
night, and has been saying things; and lots of people seen you go to his
house the other night. Sorry; but I kept you here, it’d smash me with the
outdoor trade, straight. Sorry. Here—you better have your week’s money.
You’ll easy get something else, I dessay. Sorry, but it’s more’n I dare.
Understand, doncher?”
Well, she did not get another job. All about Poplar, Limehouse and St
George’s the wretched story had galloped, for Tai Fu had told what he had
done to her, and it was a tale worth telling. She was a bad girl—she was
abominable—that was clear. If she’d only gone wrong ordinary, it wouldn’t
have been so bad, but this....
Cruel starings whipped her eyes wherever she went. Many came, curiously,
with sympathy, eager to know, and from every side she heard, hot-eared,
the low refrain: “Ah, there’s your quiet ones! Now, didn’t I only
say—eh?—don’t that just show?”
She did not get another job. Here and there she appealed, but in vain;
she was sent about her dirty business.
“I’d help you if I could, Pansy, but there—I can’t. So it’s no good. I
got children to keep, and if I gave you a job here you know what it’d be.
I’d lose business. Sorry; but you’re done. You’re down and out, me gel.”
She was. And when she realised that, tenser and colder became the desire
to kill Tai Fu. She did not die. She did not wish to die. She did not
dissolve in self-pity. It was a quieter business; the canker of the soul.
She met a girl who had sometimes been to the Cocoa Rooms, and who was,
indeed, watching for her, having heard the story. This friend gave her
frocks and things and lessons in the art of man-leading, and Pansy began
to grow and to live well, and to have money. Before her mother’s grave
was lit with the cheap red clovers, the daughter was known to fifty boys
and many strange beds. But never once did her great desire fade or fail.
She would kill Tai Fu; if not now, then at some good time that should
appear.
* * * * *
It was the day of the Feast of the New Year, the mid-January celebrations
in which Limehouse lives deliriously for some thirty hours. Pennyfields,
the Causeway and West India Dock Road were whipped to stormy life with
decorations. The windows shook with flowers. The roofs laughed with
flags. Lanterns were looped from house to house, and ran from roof to
post in a frenzy of Oriental colour and movement.
In the morning there was the solemn procession with joss-sticks to the
cemetery, where prayers were held over the graves of the Chinese, and
lamentations were carried out in native fashion—with sweet cakes, and
whisky, and wine, and other delectables, also with song and gesture and
dance.
In the evening—ah!—dancing in the halls with the girls. The
glamorous January evening of Chinatown—yellow men, with much money
to spend—beribboned, white girls, gay, flaunting and fond of curious
kisses—rainbow lanterns, now lit, and swaying lithely on their
strings—noise, bustle and laughter of the cafés—mad waste of food and
drink—all these things touch the affair with an alluring quality of
dream. Surely the girls may be forgiven if they love on such a night and
with such people. Surely the sad lights of the Scandinavian Seamen’s Home
can have little attraction at an hour like this!
Of course, Pansy was there. She was known now. She was expected. Not by
Tai Fu. With him she had had no dealings since the one night of horror
she had spent under his roof. But to-night, in the gay confusion of the
Causeway, she came suddenly and accidentally against his fat, greasy
figure. She had apparently been jerked off her feet, and fell against his
brown coat. He caught her. She looked up and, although on many occasions
when he had invited her with a look in the street she had always killed
him with a lip, she laughed.
“Ullo, Chinky dear! Fancy falling into your funny arms!”
He ambled, and smiled grotesquely. A small crowd, with fevered feet, mad
for the hour, jostled and danced against them; and suddenly Pansy caught
an outstretched yellow hand in one of hers, and, with the other circled
about Tai Fu’s waist, commenced to pull the bunch of them round in a
whirligig.