by Thomas Burke
“Makes me sick,” he used to say to his first fiddle, “when I think that anything so—you know—kind of … lovely … as that should ever have to die. To think that all that … er … you know … glorious little body … should ever … er … stop living. Don’t seem right. Seems like a blasted outrage to me. Ought to live for ever—anything as lovely as that. Gives me the fair fantods. And yet—of course—she will die, same as all the blasted clods and rotters like you and me. Before long, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Got a kind of feeling that she will, somehow. Every time I look at her I think of it. Makes me damn sick with things. Wonder what it’s all for—all this damn game of living?”
What Gina did to Poplar generally, she did also, in a more exact degree, to her immediate circle. She took Acacia Grove in hand and woke it up. She taught it how to release the flesh from its bondage and revel in the bliss of mere living. There were suppers—or rather Suppers—with the boys from one or other of the halls as guests, and cheap wine instead of beer, and sometimes a sinister little bottle of liqueur; and kisses and caresses were no longer venial sins, but little delicacies that went round the tables at these festivals as naturally as the cruet. And because Gina smiled and extolled it, they approved; and how they hastened to condemn and abolish all that upon which she frowned! She first started on Mumdear, and brought her away from the seventies and eighties into these times.
“Now, Mumdear, pull yourself together, and listen to your little Gina. In some places the younger generation knocks at the door, but in this house it’s going to knock the bally door down and walk right in. You’re out-moded. You’ve got to sit up and take notice of things more, especially of me. Don’t be a back number. Come forward to the front of the bookstall. Burn that bonnet. Sell those clothes. In a word, pull yourself together. If you don’t, I shall kill you, and pin you to a cork, wings extended.”
And when Mumdear protested that really Gina was too young to talk like that, Gina took no notice.
“Fourteen is as fourteen does, Mumdear; and what I don’t know about things a girl ought to know has been torn out of the book. I’ve been through things with a small tooth-comb, and I know what’s there. I know the words and the music. I’ve read the book and seen the pictures. I’ve got perfect control of the ball. Brace up, old darling, and watch your Gina. It’s a wise mother who knows more than her own daughter.”
Thereafter there were no more newspapers for tablecloths; no more scramble suppers; no more slovenliness; no more cheap and nasty food; no more stodgy teas. The art of the Bertello home at that time was represented by oleographs after originals of Marcus Stone and the Hon. John Collier. Gina burnt them, and hung up cheap but serviceable reproductions of Whistler, Manet and Renoir. She taught Mumdear to be truly Bohemian and to entertain the boys from the profession. Mumdear blossomed anew. One final protest she ventured.
“But, Gina, duckie, we can’t afford to be ikey.”
“Ikey?” snapped Gina. “Who’s going to be ikey, my lamb? It isn’t a question of affording or of being ikey. It’s a question of being comfortable. It won’t cost any more to have flowers on the table and to eat something besides beef and mutton—probably less. And as for being ikey—well, when you catch me going up in the air I’ll be much obliged if you’ll stick pins in me so’s I can explode.”
As she ruled Mumdear, so did she rule others. At fourteen she had the mature carriage of womanhood—a very valuable asset in her profession. She could hold her own everywhere in the matter of back-chat, and there were none who attempted liberties a second time. It is doubtful if she had ever, at any age, had a period of innocence, using the word in the sense of ignorance. She had that curious genius for life by which the chosen divine its mysteries immediately where others perforce wait on long years of experience. As she herself expressed it, she knew her way about all the streets and wasn’t going to be driven down the wrong one by any son of a gun. She might not be clever, but she thanked God she was clean.
Thus for twelve months she scattered laughter and love and kindness around Poplar, Shadwell, Limehouse and Blackwall, carolling along her amiable way, joy as her counsellor, courage as her guide. Her curl-clad face at this time carried the marks of the fatigue peculiar to those temperamental subjects who spend themselves to the last ounce in whatever they set their hearts to—be it amusement, or love, or work. They live at top pitch because nothing else is possible to them. Gina’s face, drawn though it was, and permanently flushed, danced always with elfin lights, and never were her limbs in repose. Even in sleep she was strangely alive, with the hectic, self-consuming energy of the precocious.
Then, as suddenly as she appeared, she disappeared, and over everything there fell a blank dismay. The light died from the streets. Laughter was chilled. The joy of living withered as at a curse. Something tender and gay and passionate had been with us; something strange and exquisitely sweet was gone from us; and we grew sharply old and went about our work without any song or jest or caress. Only we thanked God and the grey skies that it had been given to us to recognise it while it was there.
There was some speculation, and at last, because she was so much a part of Poplar and we of her, the truth was made known sorrowfully and reverently.
A hurried night journey in a cab to a lying-in hospital; and this lovely child, fifteen years old, crept back to the bluebell or the daffodil which had lent her to us. All that remains to us is her memory and that brave philosophy of hers which was sobbed out to a few friends from the little white bed in the maternity home.
“Life’s very beautiful. It’s worth having, however it ends. There’s so much in it. Wine and things to eat. Things to wear. Shops to look at. Coming home to supper. Meeting people. Giving parties. Books to read. Music to hear.
“I think we ought to be so happy. And so kind. Because people suffer such a lot, don’t they?
“I’ve not been bad, Mumdear. I’m only in love with everything and everybody. They’re all so … oh, sweet—and all that. I’m not bad. I’ve only loved life, and when things tempted me I said Yes. It’s so easy to say No to temptation. Any coward can do that. Kiss me a little, Mum. I’m so tired.
“I hope I haven’t been mean or greedy or cruel. I love the boys and girls I work with, and I love the music I dance to, and … Poplar.
“I don’t know whether I’ve kept the Ten Commandments. Don’t much care. But if ever I’ve hurt anyone, if ever I’ve been unkind, I hope they’ll forgive me. Because … I … love them so. …
“Mumdear … ask them for some more of that cocaine … cos … it … it hurts … so.”
There is a grave in East Ham cemetery which the suns and showers seem to love, so softly they fall about it. The young musical director who had presaged her ending and expressed himself as feeling sick that so fragrant a flower should ever come to die, leaves bunches of violets there once a week. For it was he who brought her to the dust.
Knight-Errant
You may know Henry Wiggin on sight: Henry, the sloppily robed, the slippery faced, with hands deep in pockets, shuffling along the Limehouse streets, hugging the walls in modest self-effacement, one eye sweeping the scene before him, the other creeping sinuously to the rear; Henry, the copper’s nark, the simple, the unsuspecting, knowing not the ways of deceit or the speech of the unrighteous. But Henry has of late become outmoded. After fifteen years of narking he finds that he is getting stale; he is a back number. A new generation has arisen, and with it a new school of nark diplomacy with principles very complex. Business has fallen off, the slops no longer trust him; and the exhilarating pastime of narking has become, for Henry, a weariness of the flesh. Time back, his hands, as a nark, were clean; but in these troublous days he must perforce touch jobs which, in his senescent youth, would have revolted his quick sense of nark honour.
His downfall began with that utter abandonment of principle in the Poppy Gardens excitement. And, if you possess a sufficiently ad
venturous spirit to penetrate into those strange streets where the prudent never so much as peep, and to hazard inquiries concerning Henry the Blahsted Nark, the full explanation, which follows below, will be given you—though in an amplified form, richer in the vivid adjective.
It is now known that it was no professional point that led him to slide back on the one person in the world who was more to him than gold or silver or many beers. It was something more tremendous, more incomprehensible, more … you know. The two people concerned are unfortunately inaccessible to the general public and even to the ubiquitous pressman. Both of them, in their different ways, shrink from notoriety with a timidity as sharp as that which distinguishes the lady novelist. But pressmen are not the only people who can get stories. Here is Henry’s.
Henry had a brother, a dearly loved companion, whom, from infancy, he had cherished with a love that is not usual among brothers under the Poplar arches. For this brother he had, when a nipper, pinched from coffee-stalls, so that he should not go supperless to bed. He had “raked” and “glimmed,” and on two occasions he was caught doing honest work for his young brother. The one soft spot in his heart was for brother Bert. But this brother … Alas, how often does one find similar cases in families! Two brothers may be brought up amid the same daily surroundings, under the same careful parentage, enjoying each the same advantages. Yet, while one pursues the bright and peaceful path of virtue, the other will deviate to the great green ocean of iniquity. It is idle to shirk the truth. Let the sordid fact be admitted. While Henry Wiggin was a copper’s nark, brother Bert was a burglar. He stole things, and sold them to Mr Fence Cohen round the corner, and was not ashamed. Henry knew that this was wrong, and the dishonesty of his brother was a load to him. Often he had sought to lead those erring feet into the Straight Way, but his fond efforts were repulsed.
“’Enery—if yeh don’t stop shootin’ yeh mouth at me, I’ll push yeh blasted face in!”
On the great night when Romance peeped coyly into the life of Henry Wiggin, he and Bert were noisily guzzling fried fish and taters and draught stout in their one-room cottage, back of the Poplar arches—Number 2 Poppy Gardens. Poppy Gardens, slumbrous and alluring as its name may be, is neither slumbrous nor alluring. Rather, it is full of quick perils for the unwary. It has not only its record of blood, but also its record of strange doings which can only be matched by the records of certain byways about Portman Square. The only difference is that in the one place you have dirt, decay, and yellow and black faces. In the other, you have luxury and gorgeous appurtenance.
Wherefore it was stupid, stupid, with that ostrich-like stupidity that distinguishes the descendants of noble families who have intermarried with their kind; I say it was stupid for Lady Dorothy Grandolin to choose this, of all places, for her first excursion into slum-land, in order to gather material for her great work: Why I am a Socialist: a Confession of Faith; Together with some Proposals for Ameliorating the Condition of the Very Poor; with Copious Appendices by the Fabian Society. Far better might she have fared in the Dials; in Lambeth; even in Hoxton. But no; it must be Limehouse—and at night. Really, one feels that she deserved all she got.
With no other escort than a groom—who knew a chap down here—she stood in West India Dock Road, near the Asiatics’ Home; and, to be strictly impartial, she was a rather effective bit of colour, so far as raiment went. You have certainly seen her photographs in the sixpenny weeklies, or reproductions, in The Year’s Pictures, of those elegant studies by Sargent and Shannon. It cannot be said that she is beautiful, though the post card public raves about her; for her beauty is classical and Greek, which means that she is about as interesting as a hard-boiled egg. However, if we acknowledge her divinity we must regret that she should ever have embraced the blue-serge god, and regret still more that her waxen fingers should have itched with the fever of propagandist authorship. However, she was determined to do a book on the Very Poor; nothing would stop her. Her little soul blazed in a riot of fine fire for the cause. Yesterday, it was Auction; the day before it was Settlements; to-day, the Very Poor. And in papa’s drawing-room there was no doubt that the Very Poor was a toy to be played with very prettily; for it is the one success of these people that they can do things with an air.
So she stood in the damp darkness of Little Asia, skirts daintily aloof, 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. “’Sall 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 sandpaper. “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. Behin
d 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 however 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.