Pansy, in a hysterical exhaustion, dropped out, and collapsed in high
laughter against a shop. Tai Fu, his pulses hot for her again, dropped
out, too, and moved to her side. The others slacked off in a scuffle, and
one, noting Tai Fu, who was the richest of them still, cried in Cantonese
that he should invite them in and play host. In a shrill metallic voice,
Pansy seconded it, grabbed Tai Fu’s arm and bullied him into acceptance;
and soon they were crowding to his upper room. The word went round that
it was open doors at Tai Fu’s, and soon half the Causeway was struggling
into one small room, snatching food and drink.
On the way up the stairs Pansy leaned heavily against Tai Fu, sidling,
nestling, and whispering words which he could not catch, but which
sounded very sweet. He had his guests seated and bade them order from
the restaurant waiter who had followed whatever they should require.
Meantime, he squatted on a cane mat and drew Pansy to the cushions beside
him; and there they sat, locked in one another’s arms, her curls on his
yellow neck, her skirts about his feet in a froth of petticoat lace.
The fun lasted for hours. It seemed impossible to tire the company. Were
they not feasting at the expense of Tai Fu, the miserly? But an Oriental
revelry of the cheaper kind is a deadly affair, and Pansy found it so.
The narcotised temperaments of the East, so blunted to joy or sorrow,
catch a responsive note only from the loud and the barbaric. The solemn
smokes swirled about the low room, and as it grew warmer and thicker, so
did the faces grow moister and more pallid, so did the sense of smell
grow sharper, and so did the bitter nightmare, brooding over the whole
place, take hold on Pansy.
Tai Fu was drinking whisky, but Pansy only sipped tea. Her face, too, was
pale and damp, but in that crowd, though now seared and world-weary, she
was a wild rose. Suddenly she leaned heavily on her lover’s arm, her chin
uptilted to him. He was staring stupidly across the lanterned apartment.
But the gay insouciance of Pansy recalled him, as she lolled backward,
for he gave a sudden start and a clipped exclamation.
She was frolicsome to-night. “What’s the matter, old dear?” she asked.
“Found a pin? A-ah—naughty. Can’t cuddle English girls without finding a
pin, somewhere, Fuey dear. No rose without a thorn!”
She languished against him, and this time he withdrew his arm, and
fingered her neck with his long hand, smiling idiotically. She pulled
a bottle across the floor and filled his glass. He drank to her and,
as a fiddler, with a one-stringed instrument, started a crooning
accompaniment, he struggled up and would have her dance. He tried to help
her, but fell, a little heavily, and Pansy fell over him, and there they
rolled, to the joy of the company. Then Pansy scrambled up and danced.
It was a _danse macabre_. In that evil-smelling room, with those secret
faces peering at her through the reeking smoke, she felt sick with the
wine and the tumult; but her lips laughed, and she danced merrily, and
Tai Fu sprawled and declared that she was a lovely girl.
The music stopped. Pansy stopped dancing and swooned in a seductive
exhaustion into his big arms.
“Oh—damn—the—pins!” he said, picking each English word with care, while
he dragged Pansy closer and sprawled over the cushions. He drank more
whisky, and again good humour prevailed, and had Pansy heard the comments
that were made about her she would, in spite of her profession, have
shrivelled.
Now Tai Fu’s hands became more familiar, and Pansy sportively rebuked
him with an assumption of shocked virtue. He messed his fingers in her
hair and drew her closer, pricking his arm with every embrace, while she
reminded him that if you play with a bee you sometimes find the sting.
But he was by now too drunk to feel mere pin-pricks, and he rolled his
great carcass about with languid laughter.
Later, he drank more whisky, and then began to look sick. He even excused
himself, as feeling faint, and got up. Pansy clung to him.
“Don’t go, old boy. Here—listen—don’t send me away hungry. Aren’t we
going to have a little ... love, eh, dearie?”
But he thrust her off. His jaw hung. He looked incipiently bilious. And
suddenly he waved the company aside, and they, seeing that the show was
at an end, straggled out, noisily and slowly. Pansy moved to him at the
last, but it was certain that he was too sick for amusement, and he
toddled with a friend to another room.
Pansy, left alone, went down the stairs and out into the clear, cold air
and the midnight glitter of Poplar.
Tai Fu died that night of aconite poisoning. However, he had chewed
strange leaves and preparations of leaves for so long that no one was
much surprised. Certainly Pansy was not. When she heard of it, she
murmured, “Oh!” airily, as though to say: “Damn good riddance.”
For when she had undressed in her bedroom, on the night of the feast, she
had removed from the belt of her waist a fine needle, which had lain for
forty-eight hours in a distillation of aconite.
_The Bird_
It is a tale that they tell softly in Pennyfields, when the curtains are
drawn and the shapes of the night shut out....
Those who held that Captain Chudder, s.s. _Peacock_, owners, Peter
Dubbin & Co., had a devil in him, were justified. But they were nearer
the truth who held that his devil was not within him, but at his side,
perching at his elbow, dropping sardonic utterance in his ear; moving
with him day and night and prompting him—so it was held—to frightful
excesses. His devil wore the shape of a white parrot, a bird of lusty
wings and the cruellest of beaks. There were those who whispered that
the old man had not always been the man that his crew knew him to be:
that he had been a normal, kindly fellow until he acquired his strange
companion from a native dealer in the malevolent Solomons. Certainly his
maniac moods dated from its purchase; and there was truth in the dark
hints of his men that there was something wrong with that damned bird
... a kind of ... something you sort of felt when it looked at you or
answered you back. For one thing, it had a diabolical knack of mimicry,
and many a chap would cry: “Yes, George!” or “Right, sir!” in answer to a
commanding voice which chuckled with glee as he came smartly to order.
They invariably referred to it as “that bloody bird,” though actually
it had done nothing to merit such opprobrium. When they thought it over
calmly, they could think of no harm that it had done to them: nothing to
arouse such loathing as every man on the boat felt towards it. It was not
spiteful; it was not bad-tempered. Mostly it was in cheery mood and would
chuckle deep in the throat, like the Captain, and echo or answer, quite
pleasantly, such remarks, usually rude, as were addressed to it.
And yet.... Somehow....
There it was. It was always there—everywhere; and in its speech they
seemed to find a sinister tone which left them guessing at the meaning of
its words. On one occasion, the cook, in the seclusion of the fo’c’sle,
had remarked that he would like to wring its neck if he could get hold
of it; but old grizzled Snorter had replied that that bird couldn’t be
killed. There was a something about that bird that ... well, he betted
no one wouldn’t touch that bird without trouble. And a moment of panic
stabbed the crowd as a voice leapt from the sombre shadows of the corner:
“That’s the style, me old brown son. Don’t try to come it with me—what?”
and ceased on a spasmodic flutter of wicked white wings.
That night, as the cook was ascending the companion, he was caught by
a huge sea, which swept across the boat from nowhere and dashed him,
head-on, below. For a week he was sick with a broken head, and throughout
that week the bird would thrust its beak to the berth where he lay, and
chortle to him:
“Yep, me old brown son. Wring his bleeding neck—what? Waltz me around
again, Willie, round and round and round!”
That is the seamen’s story and, as the air of Limehouse is thick with
seamen’s stories, it is not always good to believe them. But it is a
widely known fact that on his last voyage the Captain did have a devil
with him, the foulest of all devils that possess mortal men: not the
devil of slaughter, but the devil of cruelty. They were from Swatow to
London, and it was noted that he was drinking heavily ashore, and he
continued the game throughout the voyage. He came aboard from Swatow,
drunk, bringing with him a Chinese boy, also drunk. The greaser, being a
big man, kicked him below; otherwise, the boat in his charge would have
gone there; and so he sat or sprawled in his cabin, with a rum bottle
before him and, on the corner of his chair, the white parrot, which
conversed with him and sometimes fluttered on deck to shout orders in the
frightful voice of his master and chuckle to see them momentarily obeyed.
“Yes,” repeated old man Snorter, sententiously, “I’d run a hundred miles
’fore I’d try to monkey with the old man or his bloody bird. There’s
something about that bird.... I said so before. I ’eard a story once
about a bird. Out in T’aip’ing I ’eard it. It’ll make yeh sick if I tell
it....”
Now while the Captain remained drunk in his cabin, he kept with him
for company the miserable, half-starved Chinky boy whom he had brought
aboard. And it would make others sick if the full dark tale were told
here of what the master of the _Peacock_ did to that boy. You may read
of monstrosities in police reports of cruelty cases; you may read old
records of the Middle Ages; but the bestialities of Captain Chudder could
not be told in words.
His orgy of drink and delicious torture lasted till they were berthed in
the Thames; and the details remain sharp and clear in the memories of
those who witnessed it. At all the ceremonial horrors which were wrought
in that wretched cabin, the parrot was present. It jabbered to the old
man; the old man jabbered back, and gave it an occasional sip of rum from
his glass; and the parrot would mimic the Chink’s entreaties, and wag a
grave claw at him as he writhed under the ritual of punishment; and when
that day’s ceremony was finished it would flutter from bow to stern of
the boat, its cadaverous figure stinging the shadows with shapes of fear
for all aboard; perching here, perching there, simpering and whining in
tune with the Chink’s placid moaning.
Placid; yes, outwardly. But the old man’s wickedness had lighted a
flame beneath that yellow skin which nothing could quench: nothing but
the floods of vengeance. Had the old man been a little more cute and a
little less drunk, he might have remembered that a Chinaman does not
forget. He would have read danger in the face that was so submissive
under his devilries. Perhaps he did see it, but, because of the rum that
was in him, felt himself secure from the hate of any outcast Chink; knew
that his victim would never once get the chance to repay him, Captain
Chudder, master of the _Peacock_, and one of the very smartest. The Chink
was alone and weaponless, and dare not come aft without orders. He was
master of the boat; he had a crew to help him, and knives and guns, and
he had his faithful white bird to warn him. Too, as soon as they docked
at Limehouse, he would sling him off or arrange quick transfer to an
outward boat, since he had no further use for him.
But it happened that he made no attempt to transfer. He had forgotten
that idea. He just sat below, finished his last two bottles, paid off
his men, and then, after a sleep, went ashore to report. Having done
that, he forgot all trivial affairs, such as business, and set himself
seriously to search for amusement. He climbed St George’s, planning a
real good old booze-up, and the prospect that spread itself before his
mind was so compelling that he did not notice a lurking yellow phantom
that hung on his shadow. He visited the Baltic on the chance of finding
an old pal or so, and, meeting none, he called at a shipping office
at Fenchurch Street, where he picked up an acquaintance, and they two
returned eastward to Poplar, and the phantom feet _sup-supped_ after
them. Through the maze and clamour of the London streets and traffic the
shadow slid; it dodged and danced about the Captain’s little cottage in
Gill Street; and when he, and others, came out and strolled to a bar,
and, later, to a music hall, it flitted, mothlike, around them.
Surely, since there is no step in the world that has just the obvious
stealth of the Chinaman’s, he must have heard those whispering feet?
Surely his path was darkened by that shadow? But no. After the music
hall he drifted to a water-side wine-shop, and then, with a bunch of the
others, went wandering.
It was late. Eleven notes straggled across the waters from many grey
towers. Sirens were screeching their derisive song; and names of various
Scotch whiskies spelt themselves in letters of yellow flame along the
night. Far in the darkness a voice was giving the chanty:
“What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”
The Captain braced himself up and promised himself a real glittering
night of good-fellowship, and from gin-warmed bar to gin-warmed bar he
roved, meeting the lurid girls of the places and taking one of them
upstairs. At the last bar his friends, too, went upstairs with their
ladies, and, it being then one o’clock in the morning, he brought a
pleasant evening to a close at a certain house in Poplar High Street,
where he took an hour’s amusement by flinging half-crowns over the
fan-tan table.
But always the yellow moth was near, and when, at half-past two, he came,
with uncertain step, into the sad street, now darkened and loud only with
the drunken, who found unfamiliar turnings in familiar streets, and old
landmarks many yards away from their rightful places, the moth buzzed
closer and closer.
The Captain talked as he went. He talked of the night he had had, and the
girls his hands had touched. His hard face was cracked to a meaningless
smile, and he spat words at obstructive lamp-posts and kerb-stones, and
swears dropped like toads from his lips. But at last he found his haven
in Gill Street, and his hefty brother, with whom he lived when ashore,
shoved him upstairs to his bedroom. He fell across the bed, and the sleep
of the swinish held him fast.
* * * * *
The grey towers were tolling three o’clock, and the thick darkness of the
water-side covered the night like a blanket. The lamps were pale and few.
The waters slucked miserably at the staples of the wharves. One heard the
measured beat of a constable’s boot; sometimes the rattle of chains and
blocks; mournful hooters; shudders of noise as engines butted lines of
trucks at the shunting station.
Captain Chudder slept, breathing stertorously, mouth open, limbs heavy
and nerveless. His room was deeply dark, and so little light shone on
the back reaches of the Gill Street cottages that the soft raising of
the window made no visible aperture. Into this blank space something
rose from below, and soon it took the shape of a flat, yellow face which
hung motionless, peering into the room. Then a yellow hand came through;
the aperture was widened; and swiftly and silently a lithe, yellow body
hauled itself up and slipped over the sill.
It glided, with outstretched hand, from the window, and, the moment it
touched the bed, its feeling fingers went here and there, and it stood
still, gazing upon the sleep of drunkenness. Calmly and methodically a
yellow hand moved to its waist and withdrew a kreese. The same hand
raised the kreese and held it poised. It was long, keen and beautifully
curved, but not a ray of light was in the room to fall upon it, and the
yellow hand had to feel its bright blade to find whether the curve ran
from or towards it.
Then, with terrific force and speed, it came down: one—two—three. The
last breath rushed from the open lips. Captain Chudder was out.
The strong yellow hand withdrew the kreese for the last time, wiped it
on the coverlet of the bed, and replaced it in its home. The figure
turned, like a wraith, for the window; turned for the window and found,
in a moment of panic, that it knew not which way to turn. It hesitated a
moment. It thought it heard a sound at the bed. It touched the coverlet
and the boots of the Captain; all was still. Stretching a hand to the
wall, Sung Dee began to creep and to feel his way along. Dark as the room
was, he had found his way in, without matches or illuminant. Why could he
not find his way out? Why was he afraid of something?
Blank wall was all he found at first. Then his hand touched what seemed
to be a picture frame. It swung and clicked and the noise seemed to echo
through the still house. He moved farther, and a sharp rattle told him
that he had struck the loose handle of the door. But that was of little
help. He could not use the door; he knew not what perils lay behind it.
It was the window he wanted—the window.
Again he heard that sound from the bed. He stepped boldly forward and
judged that he was standing in the middle of the room. Momentarily a
sharp shock surged over him. He prayed for matches, and something in his
throat was almost crying: “The window! The window!” He seemed like an
island in a sea of darkness; one man surrounded by legions of immortal,
intangible enemies. His cold Chinese heart went hot with fear.
The middle of the room, he judged, and took another step forward, a step
which landed his chin sharply against the jutting edge of the mantelshelf
over the fireplace. He jumped like a cat and his limbs shook; for now
he had lost the door and the bed, as well as the window, and had made
terrible noises which might bring disaster. All sense of direction was
gone. He knew not whether to go forward or backward, to right or left.
He heard the tinkle of the shunting trains, and he heard a rich voice
crying something in his own tongue. But he was lapped around by darkness
and terror, and a cruel fancy came to him that he was imprisoned here for
ever and for ever, and that he would never escape from this enveloping,
suffocating room. He began to think that——
And then a hot iron of agony rushed down his back as, sharp and clear at
his elbow, came the Captain’s voice:
“Get forrard, you damn lousy Chink—get forrard. Lively there! Get out of
my room!”
He sprang madly aside from the voice that had been the terror of his life
for so many weeks, and collided with the door; realised that he had made
further fearful noises; dashed away from it and crashed into the bed;
fell across it and across the warm, wet body that lay there. Every nerve
in every limb of him was seared with horror at the contact, and he leapt
off, kicking, biting, writhing. He leapt off, and fell against a table,
which tottered, and at last fell with a stupendous crash into the fender.
“Lively, you damn Chink!” said the Captain. “Lively, I tell yeh. Dance,
d’yeh hear? I’ll have yeh for this. I’ll learn you something. I’ll give
you something with a sharp knife and a bit of hot iron, my cocky. I’ll
make yer yellow skin crackle, yeh damn lousy chopstick. I’ll have yeh
in a minute. And when I get yeh, orf with yeh clothes. I’ll cut yeh to
pieces, I will.”
Sung Dee shrieked. He ran round and round, beating the wall with his
hands, laughing, crying, jumping, while all manner of shapes arose in his
path, lit by the grey light of fear. He realised that it was all up now.
He cared not how much noise he made. He hadn’t killed the old man; only
wounded him. And now all he desired was to find the door and any human
creatures who might save him from the Captain. He met the bed again,
suddenly, and the tormentor who lay there. He met the upturned table and
fell upon it, and he met the fireplace and the blank wall; but never,
never the window or the door. They had vanished. There was no way out.
He was caught in that dark room, and the Captain would do as he liked
with him.... He heard footsteps in the passage and sounds of menace and
alarm below. But to him they were friendly sounds, and he screamed loudly
toward them.
He cried to the Captain, in his pidgin, for mercy.
“Oh, Captain—no burn me to-day, Captain. Sung Dee be heap good sailor,
heap good servant, all same slave. Sung Dee heap plenty solly hurt
Captain. Sung Dee be good boy. No do feller bad lings no feller more. O
Captain. Let Sung Dee go lis time. Let Sung Dee go. O Captain!”
But “Oh, my Gawd!” answered the Captain. “Bless your yellow heart. Wait
till I get you trussed up. Wait till I get you below. I’ll learn yeh.”
And now those below came upstairs, and they listened in the passage, and
for the space of a minute they were hesitant. For they heard all manner
of terrible noises, and by the noises there might have been half-a-dozen
fellows in the Captain’s room. But very soon the screaming and the
pattering feet were still, and they heard nothing but low moans; and at
last the bravest of them, the Captain’s brother, swung the door open and
flashed a large lantern.
And those who were with him fell back in dumb horror, while the brother
cried harshly: “Oh!... my ... God!” For the lantern shone on a Chinaman
seated on the edge of the bed. Across his knees lay the dead body of
the Captain, and the Chink was fondling his damp, dead face, talking
baby talk to him, dancing him on his knee, and now and then making
idiot moans. But what sent the crowd back in horror was that a great
death-white Thing was flapping about the yellow face of the Chink,
cackling: “I’ll learn yeh! I’ll learn yeh!” and dragging strips of flesh
away with every movement of the beak.
_Gina of the Chinatown_
_A Reminiscence_
Memory is a delicate instrument. Like an old musical box, it will lie
silent for long years; then a mere nothing, a jerk, a tremor, will start
the spring, and from beneath its decent covering of dust it will talk
to us of forgotten passion and desire. Some memories are thus moved at
sight of a ribbon, a faded violet, a hotel bill; others at the sound of
a voice or a bar of music, or at the bite of a flavour on the palate or
an arrangement of skies against a well-known background. To me return
all the unhappy, far-off things when I smell the sharp odour of a little
dirty theatre near Blackwall. Then I think upon all those essences of
life most fragrant and fresh, and upon ... Gina Bertello.
Gina Bertello was as facile and appealing as the syllables of her name.
At thirteen she was the happiest and best-loved child in Acacia Grove,
Poplar; for she had those three rare qualities which, together, will
carry any pilgrim safely through this world to the higher blisses of the
next: she was gentle—and brave—and gay.
You might then have seen her about the streets at all hours of day and
night, a frail slip of a kiddie, delicate as a water-colour, swift
and restless as a bird. From her little head hung twenty bright yellow
curls, short to the neck, and these curls shook and caught the sun fifty
times to the minute as she shot her sharp glances, which rested on
nothing and yet reflected everything. Liquid fire seemed to run under
the light skin, and the lines of her figure, every one of which had
something true to say to you, were of an almost epigrammatic neatness.
Small as she was, she was perfectly built, and dressed with that careful
contempt for taste which you may observe in the attire of all children
of theatrical parents. A black satin frock kissed the slim, stockinged
leg at the delicately correct moment; a scarlet band held the waist; a
scarlet hat crowned all; and the shock of short curls, chiming with the
black and scarlet, made an unforgettable picture which always appealed
to the stage sense of her old dad, Batty Bertello. Moreover, there was
the practical advantage that if ever you wanted your Gina in a hurry,
when she was out playing, you could always pick her from any bunch of
children half-a-mile away. Also, she could never be lost, for she stood
alone. Indeed, no child has ever been seen, either in Poplar or in
Kensington, of such arresting appearance as this rumple-headed darling
who, for twelve months, flitted, in small type, across the bills of the
minor music halls. She was as distinctive as a nigger in a snowstorm; and
when she was taken to theatres or concerts beyond the confines of Poplar
where she was known, people turned to stare at her, and turned again to
stare. There was about her some elfish quality that made her seem only
half real. Even her old dad could not quite believe in her. He fully
expected some morning to wake up and find that she had slipped away to
the bluebell or daffodil from which she had escaped.