The Lamps of Limehouse

A New Series of Limehouse Sketches. 1. The Garden of Dreams

THOMAS BURKE

author of "Limehouse Nights," "Broken Blossoms," etc.

INTO the low-toned Causeway that lurks by the Limehouse Docks crept a man and a woman The woman was pale, ill-favoured, with thin, dank hair, Her clothes hung about her. She walked with the man, not as friend with friend, not with affection or disgust, but as one who had been walking with him many years. The man, wearing a rough seaman's cap and scarf, looked not at her nor spoke. His face, somehow a little delicate, suggested the poet rather than the seaman.

They passed down the Causeway, where tiny windows made lozenges of light, and—interrupting shuttered shops—formed on the pavement a mosaic of glitter and gloom. Through an open doorway at the far end they slipped into a strait passage whose other exit was shrouded by a straw curtain. The passage held a heavy odour, itself sombre, yet bearing invitations to cool delights. Silence enveloped it; a silence of tranquil sound gathered from the drums and frigid fiddles of the seamen's homes of Pennyfields, and the gongs and crying instruments of reed that give glamour to the grey dockside evenings.

Through the curtain they passed into a dark chamber thick with kitchen fumes. From its dim depths came a voice of greeting. The man gave one syllable in answer, and mounted a flight of steps which led from a corner to the upper part. The woman followed. On the floor of the room into which they came lay a few hard mattresses. Two were occupied by figures whose outlines could be barely seen by the pallid blue beads of the lamps that burned beside them. At the side of each vacant mattress stood an opium lay-out, the sole appointment of this chilly shrine of the Great Tobacco.

THE man motioned the woman to a couch and stretched himself on another. Unbidden, a figure entered, lighted the man's lamp, took a small serving of li-un from a white jar, held it against the. flame till it was cooked, then deftly deposited it in the man's pipe. So did he serve the woman, and then withdrew himself:

They smoked; the woman idly, the man with low noises of luxury. When their pipes were spent the man clapped his hands. The figure entered and again filled his pipe. The woman then spoke.

"Not again, dearie. Not another, dearie. You 'adn't ought to—not on top of all that drink."

The man delivered an animal exclamation.

" 'Sall right," he added. "I promised I'd knock it orf after this. I may's well 'ave me fill." He applied the stem to his lips, and his breath rushed out in a sigh. The first pipe had given him nothing. With the early puffs of the second he knew that the pipe would bring him what he sought, and he praised his own cunning in drinking heavily of gin and brandy before approaching the Tobacco. When it was exhausted, he laid the pipe aside and fixed his eyes upon the blue flame of the lamp.

SLOWLY the flame grew in height and expanded in radiance until it became a monstrous curved fan enveloping his face. Then, when it seemed like to stifle him, its center split into rainbow hues, and life moved within it; and the hues resolved themselves into one, and he was looking into a flowered garden where a blue moon threw its light upon supernal loveliness that broke his throat in a soft moan. In the forefront of the garden lay a wide lawn, midmost of which stood a gilded temple of many turrets and windows, and from turret and window looked out strange girls moving lazy arms. At a sudden stroke of a gong, whose vibrations spread before him in a thousand ripples of light, window and turret were empty; and in a moment the girls poured as a cascade of soft shapes with a, spray of tresses to the lawn before the temple. And there they flowed and gathered themselves, and then smiled and danced before him to tunes which running water played against his ear; and these tunes floated before him in the air as strings of lemon lanterns.

Strangely his mind divided itself. He knew that he was looking into a garden, and he knew that he was lying on his back on a hard mattress in a Limehouse hovel. By this very division of the mind, which made him aware that he dreamt, he knew again that he had done well; and while the most of him fed upon the garden's glory, some part of him secretly rejoiced at the triumph of his experiment.

Then his mind was one, and he was himself in,the garden. About him gathered in a cloud the lissome dancers, and at a closer view he saw that their eyes were mournful with too much beauty, and that they were fairer things of woman shape than he had ever dreamed of or desired. In a riot of robe and the half-seen flush of limbs, they swam to him out of the dream, so close, so clear as to be alive to every sense save that of touch. With hand and lip they invited him to refections of wonder, some with their full charm disclosed, some with a single muslin through which the curve and colour of their shapes came and melted like a diminishing melody on violins. Sharper and sharper grew the detail of the scene against the blue dusk. The contour of a cheek, the light lacing of veins about the neck, the beating of a pulse in the arm, the minute lineation of the lips, the intimate interfoldings about the shoulder, the soft texture of the skin of these trance figures leapt clear before him, until the beauty of the whole was lost in the magnificence of detail. Colour became a creature. A scarlet belt, slack about a clad waist, assumed a character of itself; and a foam of lace about a bosom breathed apart from what it decked.

WHILE his senses beat about him in a tumult of voices, he saw his thoughts running before him like a little brook of coloured waters, and he strove to separate this thought from that, and wondered that so many white thoughts were among them. Then, the garden cleared and one figure remained alone, looking with strange gravity upon him—the face of a child with the deep informed eyes of a woman; and it seemed to him that he knew. her. For some moments he gazed upon her, eating up the pathos of her beauty. Then he moved upon her, and as he moved she fled from him. Through the dim thickets of the garden she ran, and hotly; he followed after, and, as he followed, the light of the garden changed softly from blue, to amber and again to gold and again to a pale light that was not of sun or moon. Through lanes of flowers and brakes of bush she led him, and though he ran as none ever ran he could not attain her.

Often he had dreamed of beauty. Often he had seen remote, gracious women in the countries to which his voyages had taken him, whose beauty seemed ethereal, so far removed were they from any way of life to which his best endeavours might carry him; women in fine raiment and stately carriages, whose lives were silken and scented with refinements whose nature he could never know. And sometimes his soul had vainly beaten itself against the battlement of stars that guarded the paradise wherein they dwelt. Buf here was keener beauty than any lady of the world could show him. Here before him was rapture deeper than any that his rough heart had cried for while he took the counterfeit delight that his Limehouse mistress afforded him.

Down mossy paths rough heart had cried for while he took the counterfeit delight that his Limehouse mistress afforded him.

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Down mossy paths and through dim dells she ran. About her hung a filmy raiment of a green that is known to the rainbow. Her curls streamed about her face, depending to her arms; and with every movement of her limbs she shook ecstacy into the air towards him. Across the grass her white feet shot, like flashes of a lantern; and now he would be upon her and well-nigh touch her, and now with a turn she would be far from him. And though he yearned to come to her, lovely was the chase to him, and he felt that he would never tire. As he ran, he suddenly found himself singing a song that was strange to him though the words fell aptly from his lips; and the words he sang were these:

Stay, child, and come with me to the house in the hills,

For you are a piece of holy music,

And it is only there that I shall truly learn you.

The fumes of May-time rise like a cloud about me

When your gown is gathered by the breeze;

And the almond-blossoms that lie everywhere along my path,

Are the thousand smiles that you dropped as you passed by.

Perhaps I shall never catch you, you fugitive melody,

But 1 shall be happy in following the path you go,

And gathering echoes of you along the way.

And lo, in a clearing of green grass spangled with flowers that twinkled with changing hues, the light grew into the laughing light of a Spring morning, and she stood amid the flowers awaiting him. Trembling, he drew near. From her drooping robe peeped her eager limbs and shining skin, as she stood taut and slender, poised like a startled faun. A new joy awoke within him that was pain to endure; and as he stretched arms to her a shudder ran about him and his heart tingled. Then he reached her, and, with timid fingers, gathered her to him, and she became alive to his touch. He laced his arms about her, and he felt her body as a harp thrilling to his caress; and even while his hands delighted in her his heart prayed pardon.

For one swift moment he held her thus; then, with a crash of drums and a storm of brass bugles, the light fled away and a dark melancholy fell upon the garden. Stupidly he gazed about him, while holding close his radiant captive.

"Speak! Speak!" he cried. "Oh, speak to me, my love, my lady!"

And faintly he heard her speak.

"You never cuddled me like that before, dearie. Never, dearie. It's time we was going now. It's gitting late."

He raised his head, and into his eyes looked the eyes of the Limehouse woman. About her neck his arms were tightly laced, and the specks of blue light that touched the gloom of the Causeway chamber danced before him. Away in the distance a street band blared with drum and bugle. For some seconds he held her from him, glaring at the dank hair, the towzled clothes, and the raddled skin; glaring with unbelieving eyes in which blazed still the hunger for the lost girl. Then, with a monstrous cry that racked his throat, a cry of dismay, despair, and fury, he leapt from the couch and fell upon her.

Some minutes later the police took him quietly away and quietly charged him with murder. He did not move or speak. They took him to a cell, and provided him with a generous meal, and were astonished when he dashed it to the ground, because they felt sure, from the look in his eyes, that a great hunger was gnawing him.