There is a big luncheon party on among my friends and I am told that a party has been arranged to go through the Limehouse district with Thomas Burke, who wrote "Limehouse Nights." I resent it exceedingly and refuse to go with a crowd to meet Burke. I revolt against the constant crowding. I hate crowds.
London and its experiences are telling on me and I am nervous and unstrung. I must see Burke and go with him alone. He is the one man who sees London through the same kind of glasses as myself.
I am told that Burke will be disappointing because he is so silent, but I do not believe that I will be disappointed in him.
Robinson tells the crowd of my feelings and how much I have planned on this night alone with Burke, and the party is called off. We 'phone Burke and I make an engagement to meet him at his home that evening at ten o'clock. We are to spend the night together in Limehouse. What a prospect!
That night I was at Thomas Burke's ahead of time. The prospect of a night spent in the Limehouse district with the author of "Limehouse Nights" was as alluring as Christmas morning to a child.
Burke is so different from what I expected. "Limehouse Nights" had led me to look for some one physically, as well as mentally, big, though I had always pictured him as mild-mannered and tremendously human and sympathetic.
I notice even as we are introduced that Burke looks tired and it is hard to think that this little man with the thin, peaked face and sensitive features is the same one who has blazed into literature such elemental lusts, passions and emotions as characterise his short stories.
I am told that he doesn't give out much. I wonder just who he is like. He is very curious. Doesn't seem to be noticing anything that goes on about him. He just sits with his arm to his face, leaning on his hand and gazing into the fire. As he sits there, apparently unperturbed and indifferent, I am warming up to him considerably. I feel a sort of master of the situation. It's a comfortable feeling. Is the reticence real or is this some wonderful trick of his, this making his guest feel superior?
His tired-looking, sensitive eyes at first seem rather severe and serious, but suddenly I am aware of something keen, quick and twinkling in them. His wife has arrived. A very young lady of great charm, who makes you feel instantly her artistic capabilities even in ordinary conversation.
Shortly after his wife comes in Burke and I leave, I feeling very much the tourist in the hands of the super city guide.