From Limehouse Nights, by Thomas Burke.
Copyright, 1917, by Robert M. McBride and Company.
It is a tale of love and lovers that they tell in the low-lit Causeway
that slinks from West India Dock Road to the dark waste of waters
beyond. In Pennyfields, too, you may hear it; and I do not doubt that it
is told in far-away Tai-Ping, in Singapore, in Tokio, in Shanghai, and
those other gay-lamped haunts of wonder whither the wandering people of
Limehouse go and whence they return so casually. It is a tale for tears,
and should you hear it in the lilied tongue of the yellow men, it would
awaken in you all your pity. In our bald speech it must, unhappily, lose
its essential fragrance, that quality that will lift an affair of
squalor into the loftier spheres of passion and imagination, beauty and
sorrow. It will sound unconvincing, a little ... you know ... the kind
of thing that is best forgotten. Perhaps....
But listen.
It is Battling Burrows, the lightning welter-weight of Shadwell, the box
o’ tricks, the Tetrarch of the ring, who enters first. Battling Burrows,
the pride of Ratcliff, Poplar and Limehouse, and the despair of his
manager and backers. For he loved wine, woman and song; and the boxing
world held that he couldn’t last long on that. There was any amount of
money in him for his parasites if only the damned women could be cut
out; but again and again would he disappear from his training quarters
on the eve of a big fight, to consort with Molly and Dolly, and to drink
other things than barley-water and lemon-juice. Wherefore Chuck
Lightfoot, his manager, forced him to fight on any and every occasion
while he was good and a money-maker; for at any moment the collapse
might come, and Chuck would be called upon by his creditors to strip off
that “shirt” which at every contest he laid upon his man.
Battling was of a type that is too common in the eastern districts of
London; a type that upsets all accepted classifications. He wouldn’t be
classed. He was a curious mixture of athleticism and degeneracy. He
could run like a deer, leap like a greyhound, fight like a machine, and
drink like a suction-hose. He was a bully; he had the courage of the
high hero. He was an open-air sport; he had the vices of a French
decadent.
It was one of his love adventures that properly begins this tale; for
the girl had come to Battling one night with a recital of terrible
happenings; of an angered parent, of a slammed door.... In her arms was
a bundle of white rags. Now Battling, like so many sensualists, was also
a sentimentalist. He took that bundle of white rags; he paid the girl
money to get into the country; and the bundle of white rags had existed
in and about his domicile in Pekin Street, Limehouse, for some eleven
years. Her position was nondescript; to the casual observer it would
seem that she was Battling’s relief punch-ball—an unpleasant post for
any human creature to occupy, especially if you are a little girl of
twelve, and the place be the one-room household of the lightning
welter-weight. When Battling was cross with his manager ... well, it is
indefensible to strike your manager or to throw chairs at him, if he is
a good manager; but to use a dogwhip on a small child is permissible and
quite as satisfying; at least he found it so. On these occasions, then,
when very cross with his sparring partners, or overflushed with victory
and juice of the grape, he would flog Lucy. But he was reputed by the
boys to be a good fellow. He only whipped the child when he was drunk;
and he was only drunk for eight months of the year.
For just over twelve years this bruised little body had crept about
Poplar and Limehouse. Always the white face was scarred with red, or
black-furrowed with tears; always in her steps and in her look was
expectation of dread things. Night after night her sleep was broken by
the cheerful Battling’s brute voice and violent hands; and terrible were
the lessons which life taught her in those few years. Yet, for all the
starved face and the transfixed air, there was a lurking beauty about
her, a something that called you in the soft curve of her cheek that
cried for kisses and was fed with blows, and in the splendid
mournfulness that grew in eyes and lips. The brown hair chimed against
the pale face, like the rounding of a verse. The blue cotton frock and
the broken shoes could not break the loveliness of her slender figure or
the shy grace of her movements as she flitted about the squalid alleys
of the docks; though in all that region of wasted life and toil and
decay, there was not one that noticed her, until....
Now there lived in Chinatown, in one lousy room over Mr. Tai Fu’s store
in Pennyfields, a wandering yellow man, named Cheng Huan. Cheng Huan was
a poet. He did not realise it. He had never been able to understand why
he was unpopular; and he died without knowing. But a poet he was, tinged
with the materialism of his race, and in his poor listening heart
strange echoes would awake of which he himself was barely conscious. He
regarded things differently from other sailors; he felt things more
passionately, and things which they felt not at all; so he lived alone
instead of at one of the lodging-houses. Every evening he would sit at
his window and watch the street. Then, a little later, he would take a
jolt of opium at the place at the corner of Formosa Street.
He had come to London by devious ways. He had loafed on the Bund at
Shanghai. The fateful intervention of a crimp had landed him on a boat.
He got to Cardiff, and sojourned in its Chinatown; thence to Liverpool,
to Glasgow; thence, by a ticket from the Asiatics’ Aid Society, to
Limehouse, where he remained for two reasons—because it cost him nothing
to live there, and because he was too lazy to find a boat to take him
back to Shanghai.
So he would lounge and smoke cheap cigarettes, and sit at his window,
from which point he had many times observed the lyrical Lucy. He noticed
her casually. Another day, he observed her, not casually. Later, he
looked long at her; later still, he began to watch for her and for that
strangely provocative something about the toss of the head and the hang
of the little blue skirt as it coyly kissed her knee.
Then that beauty which all Limehouse had missed smote Cheng. Straight to
his heart it went, and cried itself into his very blood. Thereafter the
spirit of poetry broke her blossoms all about his odorous chamber.
Nothing was the same. Pennyfields became a happy-lanterned street, and
the monotonous fiddle in the house opposite was the music of his
fathers. Bits of old song floated through his mind: little sweet verses
of Le Tai-pih, murmuring of plum blossom, ricefield and stream. Day by
day he would moon at his window, or shuffle about the streets, lighting
to a flame when Lucy would pass and gravely return his quiet regard; and
night after night, too, he would dream of a pale, lily-lovely child.
And now the Fates moved swiftly various pieces on their sinister board,
and all that followed happened with a speed and precision that showed
direction from higher ways.
It was Wednesday night in Limehouse, and for once clear of mist. Out of
the coloured darkness of the Causeway stole the muffled wail of reed
instruments, and, though every window was closely shuttered, between the
joints shot jets of light and stealthy voices, and you could hear the
whisper of slippered feet, and the stuttering steps of the satyr and the
sadist. It was to the café in the middle of the Causeway, lit by the
pallid blue light that is the symbol of China throughout the world, that
Cheng Huan came, to take a dish of noodle and some tea. Thence he moved
to another house whose stairs ran straight to the street, and above
whose doorway a lamp glowed like an evil eye. At this establishment he
mostly took his pipe of “chandu” and a brief chat with the keeper of the
house, for, although not popular, and very silent, he liked sometimes to
be in the presence of his compatriots. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he
slid through the door and up the stairs.
The chamber he entered was a bit of the Orient squatting at the portals
of the West. It was a well-kept place where one might play a game of
fan-tan, or take a shot or so of _li-un_, or purchase other varieties of
Oriental delight. It was sunk in a purple dusk, though here and there a
lantern stung the gloom. Low couches lay around the walls, and strange
men decorated them: Chinese, Japs, Malays, Lascars, with one or two
white girls; and sleek, noiseless attendants swam from couch to couch.
Away in the far corner sprawled a lank figure in brown shirting, its
nerveless fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe. On one of the
lounges a scorbutic nigger sat with a Jewess from Shadwell. Squatting on
a table in the centre, beneath one of the lanterns, was a musician with
a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody
of six repeated notes.
The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many growings,
opium, betel nut, and moist flesh allied themselves in one grand assault
against the nostrils.
As Cheng brooded on his insect-ridden cushion, of a sudden the lantern
above the musician was caught by the ribbon of his reed. It danced and
flung a hazy radiance on a divan in the shadow. He saw—started—half
rose. His heart galloped, and the blood pounded in his quiet veins. Then
he dropped again,—crouched, and stared.
O lily-flowers and plum blossoms! O silver streams and dim-starred
skies! O wine and roses, song and laughter! For there, kneeling on a
mass of rugs, mazed and big-eyed, but understanding, was Lucy ... his
Lucy ... his little maid. Through the dusk she must have felt his intent
gaze upon her; for he crouched there, fascinated, staring into the now
obscured corner where she knelt.
But the sickness which momentarily gripped him on finding in this place
his snowy-breasted pearl passed and gave place to great joy. She was
here; he would talk with her. Little English he had, but simple words,
those with few gutturals, he had managed to pick up; so he rose, the
masterful lover, and, with feline movements, crossed the nightmare
chamber to claim his own.
If you wonder how Lucy came to be in this bagnio, the explanation is
simple. Battling was in training. He had flogged her that day before
starting work; he had then had a few brandies—not many; some eighteen or
nineteen—and had locked the door of his room and taken the key. Lucy
was, therefore, homeless, and a girl somewhat older than Lucy, so old
and so wise, as girls are in that region, saw in her a possible source
of revenue. So there they were, and to them appeared Cheng.
From what horrors he saved her that night cannot be told, for her ways
were too audaciously childish to hold her long from harm in such a
place. What he brought to her was love and death.
For he sat by her. He looked at her—reverently yet passionately. He
touched her—wistfully yet eagerly. He locked a finger in her wondrous
hair. She did not start away; she did not tremble. She knew well what
she had to be afraid of in that place; but she was not afraid of Cheng.
She pierced the mephitic gloom and scanned his face. No, she was not
afraid. His yellow hands, his yellow face, his smooth black hair ...
well, he was the first thing that had ever spoken soft words to her; the
first thing that had ever laid a hand upon her that was not brutal; the
first thing that had deferred in manner towards her as though she, too,
had a right to live. She knew his words were sweet, though she did not
understand them. Nor can they be set down. Half that he spoke was in
village Chinese; the rest in a mangling of English which no distorted
spelling could possibly reproduce.
But he drew her back against the cushions and asked her name, and she
told him; and he inquired her age, and she told him; and he had then two
beautiful words that came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again
and again:
“Lucia ... l’il Lucia.... Twelve.... Twelve.” Musical phrases they were,
dropping from his lips, and to the child who heard her name pronounced
so lovingly, they were the lost heights of melody. She clung to him, and
he to her. She held his strong arm in both of hers as they crouched on
the divan, and nestled her cheek against his coat.
Well ... he took her home to his wretched room.
“Li’l Lucia, come-a-home ... Lucia.”
His heart was on fire. As they slipped out of the noisomeness into the
night air and crossed the West India Dock Road into Pennyfields, they
passed unnoticed. It was late, for one thing, and for another ... well,
nobody cared particularly. His blood rang with soft music and the
solemnity of drums, for surely he had found now what for many years he
had sought—his world’s one flower. Wanderer he was, from Tuan-tsen to
Shanghai, Shanghai to Glasgow, Cardiff ... Liverpool ... London. He had
dreamed often of the women of his native land; perchance one of them
should be his flower. Women, indeed, there had been. Swatow ... he had
recollections of certain rose-winged hours in coast cities. At many
places to which chance had led him a little bird had perched itself upon
his heart, but so lightly and for so brief a while as hardly to be felt.
But now—now he had found her in this alabaster Cockney child. So that he
was glad and had great joy of himself and the blue and silver night, and
the harsh flares of the Poplar Hippodrome.
You will observe that he had claimed her, but had not asked himself
whether she were of an age for love. The white perfection of the child
had captivated every sense. It may be that he forgot that he was in
London and not in Tuan-tsen. It may be that he did not care. Of that
nothing can be told. All that is known is that his love was a pure and
holy thing. Of that we may be sure, for his worst enemies have said it.
Slowly, softly they mounted the stairs to his room, and with almost an
obeisance he entered and drew her in. A bank of cloud raced to the east
and a full moon thrust a sharp sword of light upon them. Silence lay
over all Pennyfields. With a bird-like movement, she looked up at
him—her face alight, her tiny hands upon his coat—clinging, wondering,
trusting. He took her hand and kissed it; repeated the kiss upon her
cheek and lip and little bosom, twining his fingers in her hair.
Docilely, and echoing the smile of his lemon lips in a way that thrilled
him almost to laughter, she returned his kisses impetuously, gladly.
He clasped the nestling to him. Bruised, tearful, with the love of life
almost thrashed out of her, she had fluttered to him out of the evil
night.
“O li’l Lucia!” And he put soft hands upon her, and smoothed her and
crooned over her many gracious things in his flowered speech. So they
stood in the moonlight, while she told him the story of her father, of
her beatings, and starvings and unhappiness.
“O li’l Lucia.... White Blossom.... Twelve.... Twelve years old!”
As he spoke, the clock above the Milwall Docks shot twelve crashing
notes across the night. When the last echo died, he moved to a cupboard,
and from it he drew strange things ... formless masses of blue and gold,
magical things of silk, and a vessel that was surely Aladdin’s lamp, and
a box of spices. He took these robes, and, with tender, reverent
fingers, removed from his White Blossom the besmirched rags that covered
her and robed her again, and led her then to the heap of stuff that was
his bed, and bestowed her safely.
For himself, he squatted on the floor before her, holding one grubby
little hand. There he crouched all night, under the lyric moon,
sleepless, watchful; and sweet content was his. He had fallen into an
uncomfortable posture, and his muscles ached intolerably. But she slept,
and he dared not move nor release her hand lest he should awaken her.
Weary and trustful, she slept, knowing that the yellow man was kind and
that she might sleep with no fear of a steel hand smashing the delicate
structure of her dreams.
In the morning, when she awoke, still wearing her blue and yellow silk,
she gave a cry of amazement. Cheng had been about. Many times had he
glided up and down the two flights of stairs, and now at last his room
was prepared for his princess. It was swept and garnished, and was an
apartment worthy a maid who is loved by a poet-prince. There was a bead
curtain. There were muslins of pink and white. There were four bowls of
flowers, clean, clear flowers to gladden the White Blossom and set off
her sharp beauty. And there was a bowl of water, and a sweet lotion for
the bruise on her cheek.
When she had risen, her prince ministered to her with rice and egg and
tea. Cleansed and robed and calm, she sat before him, perched on the end
of many cushions as on a throne, with all the grace of the child
princess in the story. She was a poem. The beauty hidden by neglect and
fatigue shone out now more clearly and vividly, and from the head
sunning over with curls to the small white feet, now bathed and
sandalled, she seemed the living interpretation of a Chinese lyric. And
she was his; her sweet self and her prattle, and her bird-like ways were
all his own.
Oh, beautifully they loved. For two days he held her. Soft caresses from
his yellow hands and long, devout kisses were all their demonstration.
Each night he would tend her, as might mother to child; and each night
he watched and sometimes slumbered at the foot of her couch.
But now there were those that ran to Battling at his training quarters
across the river, with the news that his child had gone with a Chink—a
yellow man. And Battling was angry. He discovered parental rights. He
discovered indignation. A yellow man after his kid! He’d learn him.
Battling did not like men who were not born in the same great country as
himself. Particularly he disliked yellow men. His birth and education in
Shadwell had taught him that of all creeping things that creep upon the
earth the most insidious is the Oriental in the West. And a yellow man
and a child. It was ... as you might say ... so ... kind of ... well,
wasn’t it? He bellowed that it was “unnacherel.” The yeller man would go
through it. Yeller! It was his supreme condemnation, his final epithet
for all conduct of which he disapproved.
There was no doubt that he was extremely annoyed. He went to the Blue
Lantern, in what was once Ratcliff Highway, and thumped the bar, and
made all his world agree with him. And when they agreed with him he got
angrier still. So that when, a few hours later, he climbed through the
ropes at the Netherlands to meet Bud Tuffit for ten rounds, it was Bud’s
fight all the time, and to that bright boy’s astonishment he was the
victor on points at the end of the ten. Battling slouched out of the
ring, still more determined to let the Chink have it where the chicken
had the axe. He left the house with two pals and a black man, and a
number of really inspired curses from his manager.
On the evening of the third day, then, Cheng slipped sleepily down the
stairs to procure more flowers and more rice. The genial Ho Ling, who
keeps the Canton store, held him in talk some little while, and he was
gone from his room perhaps half-an-hour. Then he glided back, and
climbed with happy feet the forty stairs to his temple of wonder.
With a push of a finger he opened the door, and the blood froze on his
cheek, the flowers fell from him. The temple was empty and desolate;
White Blossom was gone. The muslin hangings were torn down and trampled
underfoot. The flowers had been flung from their bowls about the floor,
and the bowls lay in fifty fragments. The joss was smashed. The cupboard
had been opened. Rice was scattered here and there. The little straight
bed had been jumped upon by brute feet. Everything that could be smashed
or violated had been so treated, and—horror of all—the blue and yellow
silk robe had been rent in pieces, tied in grotesque knots, and slung
derisively about the table legs.
I pray devoutly that you may never suffer what Cheng Huan suffered in
that moment. The pangs of death, with no dying; the sickness of the soul
which longs to escape and cannot; the imprisoned animal within the
breast which struggles madly for a voice and finds none; all the agonies
of all the ages—the agonies of every abandoned lover and lost woman,
past and to come—all these things were his in that moment.
Then he found voice and gave a great cry, and men from below came up to
him; and they told him how the man who boxed had been there with a black
man; how he had torn the robes from his child, and dragged her down the
stairs by her hair; and how he had shouted aloud for Cheng and had vowed
to return and deal separately with him.
Now a terrible dignity came to Cheng, and the soul of his great fathers
swept over him. He closed the door against them, and fell prostrate over
what had been the resting-place of White Blossom. Those without heard
strange sounds as of an animal in its last pains; and it was even so.
Cheng was dying. The sacrament of his high and holy passion had been
profaned; the last sanctuary of the Oriental—his soul dignity—had been
assaulted. The love robes had been torn to ribbons; the veil of his
temple cut down. Life was no longer possible; and life without his
little lady, his White Blossom, was no longer desirable.
Prostrate he lay for the space of some five minutes. Then, in his face
all the pride of accepted destiny, he arose. He drew together the little
bed. With reverent hands he took the pieces of blue and yellow silk,
kissing them and fondling them and placing them about the pillow.
Silently he gathered up the flowers, and the broken earthenware, and
burnt some prayer papers and prepared himself for death.
Now it is the custom among those of the sect of Cheng that the dying
shall present love-gifts to their enemies; and when he had set all in
order, he gathered his brown canvas coat about him, stole from the
house, and set out to find Battling Burrows, bearing under the coat his
love-gift to Battling. White Blossom he had no hope of finding. He had
heard of Burrows many times; and he judged that, now that she was taken
from him, never again would he hold those hands or touch that laughing
hair. Nor, if he did, could it change things from what they were.
Nothing that was not a dog could live in the face of this sacrilege.
As he came before the house in Pekin Street, where Battling lived, he
murmured gracious prayers. Fortunately, it was a night of thick river
mist, and through the enveloping velvet none could observe or challenge
him. The main door was open, as are all doors in this district. He
writhed across the step, and through to the back room, where again the
door yielded to a touch.
Darkness. Darkness and silence, and a sense of frightful things. He
peered through it. Then he fumbled under his jacket—found a match—struck
it. An inch of a candle stood on the mantelshelf. He lit it. He looked
around. No sign of Burrows, but ... Almost before he looked he knew what
awaited him. But the sense of finality had kindly stunned him; he could
suffer nothing more.
On the table lay a dog-whip. In the corner a belt had been flung. Half
across the greasy couch lay White Blossom. A few rags of clothing were
about her pale and slim body; her hair hung limp as her limbs; her eyes
were closed. As Cheng drew nearer and saw the savage red rails that ran
across and across the beloved body, he could not scream—he could not
think. He dropped beside the couch. He laid gentle hands upon her, and
called soft names. She was warm to the touch. The pulse was still.
Softly, oh, so softly, he bent over the little frame that had enclosed
his friend-spirit, and his light kisses fell all about her. Then, with
the undirected movements of a sleep-walker, he bestowed the rags
decently about her, clasped her in strong arms, and crept silently into
the night.
From Pekin Street to Pennyfields it is but a turn or two, and again he
passed unobserved as he bore his tired bird back to her nest. He laid
her upon the bed, and covered the lily limbs with the blue and yellow
silks and strewed upon her a few of the trampled flowers. Then, with
more kisses and prayers, he crouched beside her.
So, in the ghastly Limehouse morning, they were found—the dead child,
and the Chink, kneeling beside her, with a sharp knife gripped in a
vice-like hand, its blade far between his ribs.
Meantime, having vented his wrath on his prodigal daughter, Battling,
still cross, had returned to the Blue Lantern, and there he stayed with
a brandy tumbler in his fist, forgetful of an appointment at
Premierland, whereby he should have been in the ring at ten o’clock
sharp. For the space of an hour Chuck Lightfoot was going blasphemously
to and fro in Poplar, seeking Battling and not finding him, and
murmuring in tearful tones: “Battling—you dammanblasted Battling—where
are yeh?”
His opponent was in his corner sure enough, but there was no fight. For
Battling lurched from the Blue Lantern to Pekin Street. He lurched into
his happy home, and he cursed Lucy, and called for her. And finding no
matches, he lurched to where he knew the couch should be, and flopped
heavily down.
Now it is a peculiarity of the reptile tribe that its members are
impatient of being flopped on without warning. So, when Battling
flopped, eighteen inches of writhing gristle upreared itself on the
couch, and got home on him as Bud Tuffit had done the night before—one
to the ear, one to the throat, and another to the forearm.
Battling went down and out.
And he, too, was found in the morning, with Cheng Huan’s love-gift
coiled about his neck.