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 dog-whip 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 over-flushed 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, rice-field 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 glooms. 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 which
came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again and again:
“Lucia ... li’l 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
Millwall 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 edge 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 candle
stood on the mantelshelf. He lit it. He looked round. 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, 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.