The Lamps of Limehouse

A New Series of Limehouse Sketches, VI. The Scoffer

THOMAS BURKE

Author of "Limehouse Nights," etc.

IN the upper part of his refined and wellpatronised laundry in Pennyfields, Mr. Jones Lee Fat kept two opium rooms. One was a bare room, strewn with rough rugs, for the use of himself and his fellows. In its neighbour he had rigged up a variety-stage opium-den which provoked immoderate and undignified mirth in every Chink who peeped into it.

This was for the use of those visitors from the upper end of the town; sophisticated folk who, glutted with the changeless pastimes of their circle, turned to the waterside for some taste of the hot Orient that should adjust their cloyed palates.

For them Jones Lee Fat had arranged the opium-den that their imaginations demanded. To his assistants, who, in preparing it under his directions, frequently lost their dignity in expressions of uncontrollable derision, he justified himself.

"For," said he, with a bland smirk, "should we not at all times observe the exhortations of the I-li, wherein it is written that the polished host will first acquaint himself with the tastes and inclinations of a coming guest before drawing up the order of the entertainment to which he would invite him? Wherefore,

O Lee Han and Ping Kow, since this insignificant establishment has become known to foreigners in other parts of this city, whose exalted patronage may be extended to us, it is fitting that we should prepare here such a chamber of the Great Tobacco as their makers of printed leaves and theatrical entertainments have described to them."

Even so it was done.

And each night Jones Lee Fat would gaze upon this chamber with folded hands and face streaked with faint reflections of the facetious grimaces of his assistants. Indeed, it gave cause for smiles. Six couches, upholstered in black cloth, and touched with tinsel, lay flat on the floor. By each stood a lacquer lay-out and a bamboo pipe. On a brazier in a corner a pile of scented wood was smouldering and tossing about the room its evil sweet vapour. Three long lanterns of subdued tone hung from the ceiling. Against one wall stood a long narrow mirror. The others were dressed with banners and bead curtains. One who was proficient on the Chinese guitar, hired to attend each evening and furnish a spicy snack between pipes, sat in an adjoining room and plucked his instrument with perfunctory fingers. In another corner squatted a massive gilt Buddha. Undoubtedly Mr. Jones Lee Fat gave value for money, and many were his patrons from the other side of London, and he flourished exceedingly.

UNTIL one night; when, into this atmosphere of dusk, dim banners, and scented wood stalked a chill symbol of common-sense. It was a large, round, well-fed man. His clothes, well-cut, he wore with an air of distinction. His face, well shaped as to the features, was empty of peculiar character; the face of a man who has never known great emotion or great struggle. He might have been a banker, a lawyer, a merchant, a shopkeeper, a man about town. Certainly he was a man of whom one might say that "there was no nonsense about him."

He turned to Jones Lee Fat, who had preceded him to the room.

"As I was saying, I thought I'd like to have a shot at this stuff. Heard so much about it from different people, that I'd like to know what it is they shout about. . . . Oh, yes, dreams and all that kind of stuff. Lovely girls and gardens. I know. All bunkum. You're not going to tell me that you can get that kind of effect out of poppy-seed—what? Still, I want to convince 'em by trying it myself. I know I shan't get anything out of it, though. Damn waste of time. All I shall get'll be a fat head to-morrow. However, get the medicine ready, and show me how I take it. And, no monkey-tricks, mind, if it sends me to sleep. Lots of people who know you, know I've come here to-night; and there'll be trouble if you get up to any larks—what? Not that I've got much on me that's worth stealing—see?"

Mr. Jones Lee Fat made protestations of the honour done to his despicable hovel by the presence of the dignified guest, and of the unceasing vigilance which himself would exercise to ensure that no disturbing occasion should be suffered to interrupt honourable guest's intercourse with the divine tobacco. To which the honourable guest replied: "All right, Chinkie. Get on with it."

Jones Lee Fat went away to fetch the toey, and the guest examined his surroundings with a cold eye, and muttered:

"Lot of damn-fool paraphernalia. Helping out the dope idea, I suppose. Mysterious East kind-of-thing. Chu Chin Chow. Glamour. Mysticism. Lure of the Orient, and all that. H'm! Well, I wouldn't take a dozen of this for a comfortable chair and a whisky and soda, and a cigar. However. ..."

Without noise Jones Lee Fat returned, and, with his own hands, prepared six pellets of li-un. He cooked one and arranged it in the pipe. Then he demonstrated to his guest the correct posture in which to recline, and how best to inhale the smoke; saw him comfortably reposed, and left him.

The heavy Englishman smoked. From the narrow street beneath the chamber's window, the tuneless song of Limehouse came to his ears: high, plaintive notes from the Asiatics and gruff chords from the lounging dockers. Respectable tramcars hummed. Careless carts and jolly drays lent themselves to a feast of noise. Boats in the river hooted and brayed. Girls cried and boys whistled.

The heavy Englishman smoked. When the first pellet was spent, he rattled the lamp with the stem of his pipe. Jones Lee Fat appeared.

"Put another pill in the pipe," said the guest, raising himself on one elbow. "I got nothing exciting out of that one. Never thought I should. It's all talk— this stuff about dope. Still, it gives you a nice soothing kind of feeling. That's about all there is to it. Something like an extra special cigar. I don't mind trying another. Tleasant sort of feeling—lying here in the twilight and drawing it in."

Jones Lee Fat offered no defence to this flippant depreciation of the Great Tobacco. He cooked another pellet, placed it in the pipe, and retired.

THE guest stretched himself at full length, and took it to his lips. He bit heavily upon its jade stem, and sucked its fumes deep into his lungs. The feeling of comfort, which he had likened to that afforded by a good cigar, imperceptibly increased. He had taken many inhalations before he noticed the change. Then he became aware of a sturdy warmth flowing through his limbs and swathing his heart, and robbing him of all care.

He had smoked the first pipe consciously, deliberately. He was now drawing automatically at the second pipe; and soon he was aware that he was sharply sundered from his normal self. Vast distances seemed to separate him from the man of business worries who had sneered at the attractions of opium. This distance widened, and he was sufficiently sober to be just conscious of the widening. He strove to reduce the distance, to recapture himself. He tortured his brain into remembrance of himself and his affairs. But soon the effort grew painful, and he surrendered to the laving warmth and sweetness of the smoke.

(Continued on page 114)

(Continued from page 45)

The pipe fell from him, and for some unmeasured time he lay in ecstasy, between sleeping and waking. Then, with an involuntary jerk, he opened his eyes, and looked about him. He lay in a great hall hung with banners. A hidden band of stringed instruments fed every sense with strange music. Velvet robed his limbs, and the fumes of burning sandal-wood crept across his face, and with them came the hot, bitter breath of the desert. He looked about him with interest, but without wonder. But wonder and a sharp thrill came suddenly to him as his eyes, roving from point to point, reached the wall near which he lay. He was not alone.

FLAT against the wall, silent, motionless, stood the slender figure of a young Chinese girl. Blue-black was her hair, dressed against her olive cheeks, and her robe of yellow silk fell about her like a drooping lotus-flower. Her arms hung before her. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves. Straight at him she was looking, and, as his eyes met hers, little thrills ran like cold rivers about him. He tried to speak, for it seemed to him that those deep eyes were addressing him. But no words came, and, in breathless silence he gave back her deep regard, and received the blessing of her presence.

Still and silent she remained while he gazed, but her eyes called to him as clearly as words sounding upon his ear, and he struggled to answer her.

He rose to his knees. He looked far into her eyes, clothing his look with understanding. Many minutes he knelt thus, filling himself with her golden, strange beauty, and awaiting in rapture some sign from her. At last it came. She moved. The painted statue slowly unclasped her hands and raised her little arms. With that movement, there broke from her lips a low, long cry. Long she held it, while he held breath with her. Then, as it died away, her voice leapt into a wild young song, whose notes filled the chamber like battling birds. It was a thing of no tune and no words; yet it seemed charged with the knowledge of all good and all evil. It rose and fell. It went to a scream and dropped to a croon. It was now a dirge, now a paean, now a chant of invocation; and every note in it he longed to answer, for he knew it was a song of the mating of man and woman.

When the last high note had ceased, she dropped her arms, and raised them again, and held them to him; and the soft robe fell from her to her feet, and spread there like a tumbled blossom. At that gesture, his limbs loosened. With a cry of savage ecstasy he rose, and staggered some paces toward her. He heard the hammering of his pulses, and his arms ached and tingled at the thought of clasping her and holding her as his own. She was his woman; he had known that, at first sight of her; and now he was to take her. For a brief moment, as he swayed with outstretched arms, a dull idea came to him that he was a London business man; that he had a wife who was awaiting him in a place called Streatham; that he was expected at a committee meeting on the morrow. Then the cloud returned upon him, and it was gone. He was once more a lover going to his woman. He gave himself a few moments of delicious agony by halting in his approach. Then, with a shrill cry, he leapt upon her.

And lo, she was gone. Though he struggled with arms and feet toward her. she was gone.

By her going the frugal supper of Mr. Jones Lee Fat was interrupted. For, as he sat below, wielding chopsticks over a mess of rice and pork, he was startled by a shrill cry and a crash. His two assistants, who were with him, also heard it, and the three rose in stolid wonder. They gathered lights, and ran in a cluster up the stairs, and threw open the door of the smokingchamber. They bore their lights into its shadow, and there they saw the figure of the man who did not believe in the Great Tobacco.

He lay sprawled against the wall where stood the long mirror, and his torn face and bleeding hands were thrust far through the broken glass and woodwork.