while the groom sought for the chap he knew down here. She felt that
it must be a queer and inspiring situation to know a man down here. Yet
Dixon seemed to think nothing of it. It seemed too frightfully awful that
people should live here. Never mind; Socialism was growing day by day
among the right people, and——
Then Dixon returned with the chap he knew down there, and Lady Dorothy
thought of Grosvenor Square, and shrank as she viewed their cicerone. For
he was Ho Ling, fat and steamy; and he sidled to her out of the mist,
threatening and shrinking, with that queer mixture of self-conceit and
self-contempt which is the Chinese character. It may be that Dixon was
up to something in bringing his mistress here; one never knows. But here
she was, and here was the yellow Ho Ling; and, with a feminine fear of
cowardice, she nerved herself to go through with it. She had heard that
the Chinese quarter offered splendid material for studies in squalor,
as well as an atmosphere of the awful and romantic. Her first glances
did not encourage her in this idea; for these streets and people are
only awful and romantic to those who have awful and romantic minds. Lady
Dorothy hadn’t. She had only awful manners.
With Ho Ling in front, Lady Dorothy following, and Dixon in the rear,
they crossed the road.
* * * * *
Henry Wiggin lifted the jug from the coverless deal table, inverted
it on his face, held it for a moment, then set it down with a crack,
voluptuously rolling his lips. That was all right, that was. Heaven help
the chaps what hadn’t got no beer that night; that’s all he’d got to say.
He was leading from this to a few brief but sincere observations to his
brother Bert on the prices of malt liquors, when, on the grimy window,
which, in the fashion of the district, stood flush with the pavement,
came two or three secret taps. Each started; each in different ways.
Henry half rose from his chair, and became at once alert, commanding,
standing out. Bert’s glance shot to half-a-dozen points at once, and he
seemed to dissolve into himself. For a few seconds the room was chokingly
silent. Then, with a swift, gliding movement, Henry reached the window,
and, as Bert flung back from the light’s radius, he stealthily opened it.
It creaked yearningly, and immediately a yellow face filled its vacancy.
“Ullo. It is I—Ho Ling. Lady here—all same lah-de-dah—going—how you
say—slumming. Parted half-a-bar. Wants to see inside places. Will my
serene friend go halves if she come into here, and part more half-bars?
How you say?”
“Wotto. I’m on. Wait ’alf-a-jiff.” He closed the window, and made for the
door. “’S all right, Bert. On’y a toff gointer shell out. Wants to squint
round our place. We go halves with Chinky whatever she parts.”
“Sure it’s a toff?” in a voice meant to be a whisper but suggesting the
friction of sand-paper. “Sure it ain’t a plant?”
“Course it ain’t. Old ’O Ling’s all right.” He fiddled with the handle
of the door, opened it, and stood back, only mildly interested in the
lah-de-dah who was invading the privacy of his home. If he had any
feeling at all, it was a slight impatience of this aloof creature of the
world above; the sort of mild irritation that the convicts feel when they
stand on railway stations, the objects of the curious stares of hundreds
of people who are at liberty and think nothing of being so.
There was a moment’s hesitation; then, into the fishy, beery, shaggy
atmosphere of the room stole a whiff of the ampler ether and diviner
air of Mayfair. Into the arc of yellow candle-light, into the astonished
gaze of Henry, and into the professionally quickened stare of Bert,
stepped the warm, human actuality of _A Duke’s Daughter_, from last
year’s academy. Behind her, in the doorway, calm and inscrutable as a
Pentonville warder, stood Ho Ling, careful to be a witness of the amount
parted. Behind him, in the deep, dark gloom of the archway, was the groom.
Lady Dorothy gazed around. She saw a carpetless room, furnished only with
a bed on the floor, a couple of chairs, and a table littered with fried
fish and chips and a couple of stone jugs. In the elusive twilight, it
was impossible to obtain a single full view, and the bobbing candle made
this still more difficult. By the table stood Henry, in all his greasy
glory, a tasteful set-off to the walls which dripped with moisture from
the railway above.
Oh! And again—oh! And did people really live down here? Was it allowed?
Didn’t the authorities——? Was this all there was—one room? Did they eat
and sleep and do _everything_ here? And was this all the furniture?
Really? But how_ever_ did they manage? Did they really mean to say....
But they couldn’t, surely.... How ... well.... Was that the bed—that
thing over there? And had they no.... Dear-dear. How terrible. How——
Oh! What was that? A _rat_? A RAT? Ugh! How _horrid_! She skipped lightly
aside, and as she did so the bracelets on her wrists jingled, and the
small chatelaine bag at her waist jingled, and her wrist-watch and the
brooch at her alabaster throat were whipped to a thousand sparkling
fragments by the thin light. And as they sang, Bert’s ears tingled, even
as a war-horse’s at the noise of battle.
He considered the situation. From the outer world came little sound. The
bewildering maze of arches shut them completely from the rattle of the
main streets, and Poppy Gardens was deserted. A train rumbled heavily
over the arches—a long train carrying a host of woes that grumbled
and whined. It passed, and left a stillness more utter. It was simply
tempting Providence to let the occasion pass. It was simply asking for it.
He looked; he saw; he appreciated. His fingers moved. On her entry he had
been standing back in the corner, beyond the dancing reach of the light,
and, with sub-conscious discretion, he had maintained his position. Now
he saw the magnificent meaning of it. And as Lady Dorothy, prettily
shrinking, moved from point to point of the cramped room, he thrust
forward his scrubby lips until they reached Henry’s shoulder.
“It’s a sorf job!”
Henry at the table turned his head, and his eyes raked the ceiling. “I’m
ashamed of yeh, Bert,” he whispered.
“Make old Ling take that kid off,” came from Bert. “Tell ’im we’ll share.”
“Bert—oh, yeh low blaggard!”
But Bert, from his gloomy corner, caught Ho Ling’s eye, and mouthed
him. And Ho Ling knew. He turned back into the dark street. He spoke to
the groom, and his mumbling voice came sleepily to the others, like the
lazy hum of busy bees. Four footsteps grated on the rough asphalt and
gradually dimmed away. Silence.
Bert moved a foot forward, and tapped his brother’s ankle. There was no
response. He repeated the action. But Henry had dropped into his chair
before the odorous litter of three-pieces-and-chips in paper, and was
staring, staring, quietly but with passionate adoration, at the lady who
shed her lambent light on Number 2 Poppy Gardens. For though Henry’s
calling, if it is to be followed with success—and five years ago Henry
was the narkiest nark in East London—demands a hardened cynicism, a
resolute stoniness, yet his heart was still young, in places, and a faint
spark of humanity still glowed, not only for Bert, but for the world in
general. But Henry knew nothing of the ways of love. None of the rosebuds
of Limehouse had won his regard or even his fleeting fancy. In his middle
age he was heartwhole. And now, into the serenity of that middle age had
burst a whirlwind. He gazed—and gazed. Here stood this—this—“ayngel”
was the only word that came to his halting mind—here she stood, a rose
among dank river weeds, in his bedroom, next to him, ’Enery, the blahsted
copper’s nark. It was too wonderful. It was too—oh, too....
He was trapped. He was in love. Soft voices sang to him, and he became
oblivious to all save the dark head of Dorothy, standing out in the misty
light, a vague circle of radiance enchanting his dulled eyes.
So that Bert tapped his brother’s foot vainly.
Then Dorothy moved a pace toward Henry. Bert, still unseen, drew snakily
back. She stood against the table, looking down on the seated figure. Her
dress rustled against his fingers, and he thrilled with pulsing heat,
because of the body loaded with graces and undiscovered wonders that it
clothed. The glamour of her close neighbourhood and the peaceful perfume
of violet that stole from her fired him with a senseless glory, and he
longed to assert his right to her admiration. She was talking, but he
heard no words. He only knew that she was standing against him; and as
he stared, unseeing, about the room with its whiffy table, its towzled
bed, its scratched walls (set alight by the shivering candle, as though
the whole world were joining him in his tremor), he felt well content.
He would like to sit like this for ever and for ever. This English rose,
this sleek angel, this....
_Ah!_ Henry felt at that moment that it was Providence and nothing
less. Providence. Only so could it be explained. It was, without the
least doubt, some divinity protecting this wandering angel that moved
Henry, at that critical moment, to turn his head. For what he saw,
as he turned, was a corner of thick velvety darkness; and from that
corner emerged a pair of swart, whiskered hands. Slowly they swam,
slowly, toward the fair neck of Lady Dorothy as she talked to Henry in
ostrich-like security. Henry stared.
Then the hands met, and their meeting was signalled by a quick scream
that died as soon as uttered into a gasping flutter. It must be repeated
that Henry loved his brother, and though, from childhood onward, they had
differed widely on points of ethics, never once had either raised his
hand against the other. But to-night romance had steeped Henry’s soul;
he was moon-mad; the fairies had kissed him. Thus he explained it next
morning, but none would hear him.
For, the moment Bert’s hands enclosed Dorothy’s neck, Henry, full of
that tough, bony strength peculiar to those who live lives of enforced
abstinence, sprang up, and his left went _THK!_ squarely between Bert’s
eyes. The grasp was loosened, and Henry grabbed Dorothy’s wrist and
swung back his arm, jerking her clean across the room. She screamed. He
followed it with a second blow on Bert’s nose. Bert staggered, dazed.
“Wha’-wha’? Hands orf yeh brother, ’Enery. What yeh doin’? ’Ittin’ yer
own brother?” There was ineffable surprise and reproach in his tone.
But Henry left him in no doubt, for he now saw red, and a third smack
landed on Bert’s jaw. Then Bert, too, arose in his wrath. Henry, however,
in his professional career had had vast experience in tough scrums of
this kind, in narrow space, while Bert knew but little of any warfare
except that of the streets. As Henry drew back, tightly strung for Bert’s
rush, his leg shot out behind him, caught the corner of the table and
sent it and the candle sprawling to the floor with a doleful bump and a
rush of chips.
Then the fun began. For of all sports that can ever be devised, there
can be none more inspiriting than a fight in the dark. To Henry, in
the peculiar circumstances, it was the time of his life. He thrilled
and burned with the desire to perform great deeds. He would have liked
very much to die in this fight. Quixote never so thrilled for Dulcinea
as Henry Wiggin for Lady Dorothy. He became all-powerful; nothing was
impossible. He could have fought a thousand Berts and have joyed in the
encounter. An intense primed vigour swept over his spare jockey frame,
and he knew, even so late, the meaning of life and love. Lady Dorothy
screamed.
“Oh, yeh snipe!” cried Bert, with furious curses; and his rubber slippers
_sup-supped_ on the floor as he fumbled for his recreant brother. Henry
retreated to the wall, and his pawing hand found Lady Dorothy. She
screamed and shrank.
“Shut up, yeh fool!” he cried, in excess of enthusiasm. “Give yehself
away, yeh chump. Steady—I’ll get yeh out.” He dragged her along the wall
while Bert fumed and panted like a caged animal.
“Gotcher!” A sudden rush forward and he spread himself over the upturned
table. More language, and Lady Dorothy, had her senses been fully alert,
might have culled material for half-a-dozen slum novels from her first
excursion into Limehouse.
“’Alf a mo’, ’alf a mo’,” whispered Henry, consolingly, as he felt her
shake against him. “I’ll get the door in a minute. So bloody dark,
though. Steady—’e’s close now. Bert—don’ be a fool. Yeh’ll get the
rozzers on yeh.”
But Bert was beating the air with a Poplar sandbag, and it was clear from
his remarks that he was very cross. It seemed doubtful that he would
hear reason. Lady Dorothy screamed.
“’Alf a mo’, lidy. I’ll——” He broke off with a rude word, for the
sandbag had made its mark on his shoulder. Now he wanted Bert’s blood as
a personal satisfaction, and he left his lady by the wall and charged
gloriously into the darkness. “I’ll break yeh face if I get yeh, Bert.
I’ll split yeh lousy throat.”
His hand groped and clawed; it touched something soft. The something
darted back, and almost immediately came a volley of throttled screams
that set Henry writhing with a lust for blood. There followed a little
clitter, as of dropping peas, and a wrench and a snap.
“Gottem!”
“Bert—yeh bleeding twicer, if I get ’old of yeh I’ll——” and the rest of
his speech cannot be set down. He snaked along the wall and his stretched
hand struck the door knob. The situation was critical. The thick darkness
veiled everything from him. Somewhere, in that pool of mystery, was Lady
Dorothy in the vandal clutches of brother Bert. Too, she was silent.
Henry opened the door, and looked out on a darkness and a silence
thicker than those of the room. A train rumbled over the long-suffering
arches. When it had faded into the beyond, he stepped out and put one
hand to his mouth. Along the hollow, draughty archway a queer call rang
in a little hurricane.
“Weeny—Weeny—_Wee-ee-ee-ee-ny_!”
Bert gave a gusty scream. He knew what it meant. “Gawd, ’Enery, I’ll do
yeh in for this. I’ll ’ave——”
“Where’bouts are yeh, lidy; where’bouts are yeh?”
“I’m here. He’s got—he’s—oh!” Tiny shrieks flitted from her like sparks
from an engine.
And then the atmosphere became electric, as Henry, noting the position of
the door, made a second dash into space. He heard the dragging of feet as
Bert hustled his quarry away from the point at which she had spoken. He
followed it, and this time he caught Bert and held him. For a moment or
so they strained terribly; then Henry, with a lucky jerk, released the
grip on Dorothy.
They closed. Henry got a favourite arm-lock on his brother, but blood
was pounding and frothing, and violence was here more useful than
skill. They stood rigid, and gasped and swore as terribly as our Army in
Flanders, and they tugged and strained with no outward sign of movement.
One could hear the small bones crick. Lady Dorothy stood in a corner and
shrieked staccato. It seemed that neither would move for the next hour,
when Bert, seeing a chance, shifted a foot for a closer grip, and with
that movement the fight went to Henry. He gave a sudden jerk and twist,
flattened his brother against his hard chest, hugged him in a bear-like
embrace for a few seconds and swung him almost gently to the ground.
“Come, lidy-quick. ’E’ll be up in a minute. Run! Fer the love of
glory—run!”
He caught her and slid for the door; bumped against the corner of it;
swore; found the exit and pulled Lady Dorothy, gasping thankfully, into
the chill air and along the sounding arches, which already echoed the
throbbing of feet—big feet. But he had no thought for what lay behind.
With Dorothy’s lily hand clasped in his he raced through the night and
the lone Poplar arches towards East India Dock Road.
* * * * *
“No, but, look ’ere,” said Bert; “hang it all, cancher see——”
“Quite ’nough from you,” said the constable. “Hear all that at the
station, we can.”
Bert extended a hand tragically to argue, but, realising the futility of
resisting the obvious, he sat on the edge of the floor-bed and relapsed
into moody silence. He reflected on the utter hopelessness of human
endeavour while such a thing as luck existed. And it was only the other
day that he had pasted on his walls a motto, urging him to _Do It Now_.
“You was ’asty, Bert,” he communed. “’At’s alwis bin your fault—’aste.”
Then Henry, shoulders warped, hands pocketed, shuffled into the room. He
looked disgustedly at the floor, littered with fish and chips and watered
with two small pools of black beer. He looked around the room, as though
around life generally, and his lip dropped and his teeth set. He seemed
to see nobody.
“What-o, Hen, me boy!” said the constable amiably. “You look cheerful,
you do. Look’s though you lost a tanner and found a last year’s Derby
sweep ticket.” Then, relapsing to business: “This is all right, though,
this is.” He indicated the table, where lay a little heap of bracelets,
a brooch, two or three sovereigns, some silver and a bag. “First time I
ever knew you pop the daisy on yer brother, though. Fac. What was it?”
“Eh? What was ...? Oh, he went for a—a lidy what was going round ’ere.
She’s just got int’er carriage near ‘The Star of the East.’ You’ll find
’er chap under the arches somewhere with old Ho Ling, the Chink. In ‘The
Green Man’ I fink I saw ’em. Bert went for ’er and swabbed the twinklers.
’At’s all I know.” He sat down sourly by the table.
Bert sprang up frantically, but the constable put a spry grip on his arm.
He squirmed. “What.... No, but.... What yeh doing ... ’ere ... I....
Narkin’ on yer own brother! But yeh can’t! Yeh can’t _do_ it! Playin’ the
low-down nark on Bert. You.... I....”
It could be seen that this second shock was too terrible. The fight
and the calling of the cops was a mortal offence, but at least
understandable. But this....
“’Ere, but it’s Bert, ’Enery. Bert. You ain’t goin’ back on ol’ Bert.
Now! ’Enery, play up!” He implored with hands and face.
Henry slewed savagely round. In his eyes was the light that never was on
sea or land. “Oh, shut orf!”
For the lips of Henry Wiggin, copper’s nark, had kissed those of Lady
Dorothy Grandolin, all under the Poplar arches, and in the waistcoat
pocket of Henry Wiggin, the copper’s nark, were the watch and chain of
Lady Dorothy Grandolin.
_The Gorilla and the Girl_
In an underground chamber near the furtive Causeway, Saturnalia was being
celebrated. The room which lay below the sign of the Blue Lantern was
lit by shy gas-jets and furnished with wooden tables and chairs. Strange
scents held the air. Bottled beer and whisky crowded a small table at
the far end, and near this table stood the owner of the house, Mr Hunk
Bottles. At other small tables were cards and various devices for killing
time and money. All those who were well seen in Limehouse and Poplar were
here, and the informed observer could recognise many memorable faces.
Chuck Lightfoot and Battling Burrows were engaged in a comparatively
peaceable game of fan-tan with Sway Lim and Quong Tart; at any rate the
noise they were making could not have been heard beyond Custom House. Tai
Ling and his Marigold were there, very merry, and Pansy Greers, with an
escort from the Pool, attracted much attention in a dress which finished
where it ought to have begun. Ding-Dong was there: Perce Sleep; Paris
Pete; Polly the Pug; Jenny Jackson’s Provence Boys, so called because
they frequented that café; the Chatwood Kid, from whom no safe could
withhold its secrets; and, in fact, all the golden boys and naughty
girls of the district were snatching their moment of solace. Old Foo
Ah lolloped on a chair, slumbering in the heavy content of a kangaroo.
That masculine lady, Tidal Basin Sal, sprawled on a shabby private-bar
lounge with a little girl, whom she would alternately kiss and slap
proprietorially. A nigger from the Polynesians made himself a nuisance to
the air and the company; and on a table at the extreme end stood little
Gina of the Chinatown, slightly drunk, and with clothing disarranged,
singing that most thrilling and provocative of rag-times:
“You’re here and I’m here,
So what do we care?”
“Yerss,” the Monico Kid was saying, in a sedulously acquired American
accent, “had a tumble to-day. I was hustling the match with Flash Fred,
and we took a big nig off the water for the works. I stood for the finish
on him, and it listens like good music to me, cos he don’t tip me. Fred
spotted him and officed me to pull the rough stuff. Rough’s my middle
name. I wrote the book about it. But the nig was fresh and shouted for
the blue boys. See my eye? Well, we handed out some punk stuff, and then
I levanted, and now I’m lying cavey a bit, see? Gaw, there ain’t nothing
to this rough-neck stuff. I figger on quittin’ ’fore long. Dick the Duke
was pinched t’other day. I went t’ear it. A stretch? Lorlummy, they fair
shied the book at ’im and told ’im to add up the sentences. Yerss ...
it’s all a wangle.”
But the couple on whom Hunk kept the most careful eye were his young
daughter, Lois, and little Batty Bertello, the son of the sharpest
copper’s nark in the quarter. These two sat apart, on a lounge, clasped
in one another’s arms, their feet drawn up from the floor, lip locked
to lip in the ecstasy of self-discovery; for the man the ecstasy of
possession, for the girl the ecstasy of surrender.
Lois had picked up Batty in Tunnel Gardens one Sunday night, and although
from the age of ten she had been accustomed to kisses and embraces from
boy admirers, she realised, when Batty first kissed her, that here was
something different. There was nothing soppy about him ... rather,
something kind of curious ... big and strong, like. He seemed to give
everything; yet gave you the rummy feeling of having held something in
reserve, something that you were not good enough for. You didn’t know
what it was or how great it was, and it made you kind of mad to find
out. And when he kissed you.... She wondered if she were a bad, nasty
girl for wanting to have his hands about her. All her person was at once
soothed and titillated by the throb of his pulses when they clasped; she
was a responsive instrument on which he played the eternal melody. She
felt that she could hold no secrets from him; so at risk of losing him
she told him the whole truth about herself; told it in that voice of
hers, fragile and firm as fluted china and ringing with the tender tones
of far-away bells. How that she was the daughter of the terrible Hunk
Bottles, and lived in that bad house, the Blue Lantern, and how that her
father was the lifelong enemy of his father, Jumbo Bertello. And Batty
had laughed, and they had continued to love.
Presently Lois swung herself from the lounge and began to “cook” for
her boy. On a small table she spread the lay-out; lit the lamp; dug
out the treacly hop from the toey and held it against the flame. It
bubbled furiously, and the air was charged with a loathsome sweetness.
Then, holding the bamboo pipe in one hand, she scraped the bowl with
a yen-shi-gow, and kneaded the brown clot with the yen-hok. Slowly it
changed colour as the poison gases escaped. Then she broke a piece in her
finger, and dropped it into the bowl, and handed the stem to Batty. He
puffed languorously, and thick blue smoke rolled from him.
But Hunk Bottles regarded the scene with slow anger. Lois was ignoring
his commands. When he had heard that she was going with the son of a
copper’s nark he had drawn her aside and had spoken forceful words. He
had said:
“Look ’ere, me gel, you be careful. Less you go round with that young
Bertello the better. Y’know what ’is old man is, doncher? Well, be
careful what yeh talk about. Cos if any of my business gets out.... Well”
(he hit the air with a fat hand) “if I do catch yeh talkin’ at all, I’ll
break every bone in yeh blinkin’ body. I’ll take the copper-stick to yeh
and won’t let up till every bit of yeh’s broken. Else I’ll give yeh to
one o’ the Chinks to do what ’e likes with. So now yeh know. See?”
Lois knew that this was not an idle threat. She had seen things done at
the Blue Lantern. There were rooms into which she was not permitted
to pry. Once in the cellar she had seen little glass tubes of peculiar
shape, coloured papers, and a big machine. She had seen men who came to
the private bar, and never called for a drink, but had one given them,
and who sat and mumbled across the counter for hours at a stretch.