A Lochinvar of the East

ANY one looking up at the Hong Far Restaurant would have known that something unusual was going on. The big gauze lanterns were new, and fresh lilies blossomed in vases of pale green porcelain, luminous as jade stones. Everywhere the gilding had been brightened and renewed. Hong Far was always spotless, but this day it fairly shone, for was not Ong Chee, son of Ong Wing, of age, and was not the entire aristocracy of the Quarter bidden to the great feast to be given in honor of his majority? All day the attendants at the fashionable eating-place had been hurrying up and down the polished stairway with burdens on their heads; all day savory incense had been floating from the kitchen, and white-bloused cooks had been succeeding one another in relays over the perspiring range, for the most expensive and elaborate of feasts was not a whit too good to grace this important occasion. Every difficult and expensive dish of the Chinese cuisine was upon the menu, for Ong Wing was rich, and it was rumored that the banquet would not cost less than five dollars a plate. Besides the rice brandy, a great deal of French champagne had been carried in. Ong Wing’s guests were to be, above all things, merry.

In the beautiful restaurant, with its elaborately carved gilt walls, through the interstices of which came the dull glow of ebony, five great tables were set, — at each round and polished board, twenty places. The table tops were of onyx, with carved ebony hanging like black lace from their edges, and the shining stools were dark as rosewood with a mirror-like polish.

At dark the candles were lighted in their great gauze houses. A child of six might have stood in any one of these giant lanterns. The soft glow gave the effect of a dozen full moons shining on the scene of jollity. In the corner near the balcony the orchestra was gathering, and, without any preliminary tuning or scraping, was setting up the long wail of tortured strings and the resonant reply of drum and sturdy brass. The conglomerate sound was terrible to Caucasian ears, but soothing, evidently, to Oriental ones, since numbers of the uninvited lingered below the windows to drink in rapturously this robust ensemble harmony.

By this time hacks had begun to rumble up the narrow street, — white men drove them, — and each carried two or three or four Chinese gentlemen in long blue or purple or plum-colored brocaded garments, which flapped about their silken-bound ankles as they briskly climbed the steps, frankly stared at by the unbidden on the pavement. Ong Wing and his handsome young son are welcoming the arriving guests at the head of the stairs, quite in Caucasian fashion. Presently the round tables are full of guests with aristocratic, or keen, or shrewd, or fat, comfortable faces, but all beautifully clothed and with beautiful, well-kept hands, which manipulate the ivory chopsticks with the extreme of deftness and delicacy.

Above the rasping music rises the clatter of tongues. The bird’s-nest soup comes on, twelve dollars a pound in China, and the epicures wag their heads approvingly, even while their words of praise die away before the excellence of a quail and bean salad, — the perfection of its kind. With the sprouts of young bamboo come renewed volleys of champagne. Perhaps this explains why the voices grow a bit louder, the laughter more hearty, and the toasts to the heir and the speech-making quite Western in their volubility.

Unnoted by the banqueters, the shrill voices of women had mingled themselves with the sharp screams of the orchestra ; professional singing and dancing girls had come in from the most aristocratic resorts of the Quarter, and were adding the music of their high, falsetto voices, and the grace of their slender wrists and ankles, to the merriment of this memorable evening.

Ong Chee alone was not unmindful. He had noted the slave girls when they entered, had observed their smiling eyes and their daintily tinted cheeks. He saw the eyebrows so carefully narrowed by art ; the glossy hair ornamented with gold and pearl and jade ; the exquisite sahms of pink and green and lavender and yellow, delicate sleeve showing within sleeve, in a rainbow of pastel tints. He saw the long tapering fingers with the highly polished, inchlong nails, telling their tale of freedom from manual labor, and he saw, without realizing, that these are the most beautiful hands in the world, with their soft, creamy tints and their weight of translucent jade, set off by yellowest gold. Particularly he noted one pair of hands on which the jade and the chased rings and bracelets were of the finest, for some of these had been his gifts. As the eyes of the other men followed Yun Ho’s graceful, rustling figure, Ong Chee knew a little spasm of jealousy; decidedly, one breathes in Occidental ideas through mere living on Occidental soil.

At last the banquet was over. Ong Chee’s health had been drunk so many times that his head was quite turned by it, and he felt like a college senior on Commencement Day. He did not know whether he should ever get down to earth again or not. The champagne, drunk from big water goblets, was all gone, and Ong Wing had heard at least a hundred times that his banquet had been an immense success. The carriages had taken the guests home through the narrow streets, not, however, until the silly young heart of Ong Chee had been lacerated by many open compliments to Yun Ho and careless inquiries as to where she lived, each one like a blow in the face to him.

Yun Ho was not only the prettiest slave, but new to the Quarter, and Ong Chee was in love with her. His father was rich enough to buy her, and would probably have humored his son so far, though Ong Chee knew that he would never consent to a marriage between them. Ong Chee would be expected to marry a little-foot woman in his own station in life, and though Ong Wing might listen to the suggestion of the beautiful Yun Ho as a second wife, it would be years before Ong Chee would be able to afford such an extravagance. In the meantime what might not happen to Yun Ho? Decidedly this being in love was a tiresome business and likely to complicate things. No one had ever heard before of a Chinese gentleman permitting love for a slave girl to interfere with his career, and Ong Chee was quite angry with himself. What would his father say ? It was perhaps as well not to think about that.

Meanwhile little Yun Ho had gone home with her duenna to Gum Cook Alley. She stood before her mirror, slowly divesting herself of one exquisitely tinted blouse after another, until she looked more like a tea rose than ever, with her beautiful bare yellow arms, and her hands with their burden of good-luck jade and purest gold. Would the jade bring her luck, she wondered. She smiled in the glass, removed the precious things from her hair, and folded herself away on the high, narrow bed like the berth in a ship’s cabin, with long rows of polished boxes full of toilet secrets above her, and silken curtains hanging between her and the room.

The next morning, before the hairdresser had finished with Yun Ho, Ong Chee was in Gum Cook Alley, craving an audience. He had something on his mind, — something that must be submitted at once to Yun Ho. The youth of twenty-one knew well the story of the sixteen-year-old belle of Gum Cook Alley, — how the girl, sent by her parents to buy something in the market place of the tiny village on the river-bank, had been met by the aged Ah Ma, now her duenna and jailer. The old woman, always on the lookout for youth and good looks, had been struck by the child’s beautiful, slanting eyes, her small mouth, — red without any rouge, — the pale, luminous, faintly yellow skin, and the abundant black hair; it seemed a shame that so much marketable loveliness, worth precisely so much a pound, should be wasted on this Chinese river-bank, likely to be swallowed any spring by the horrible, resistless Yellow Terror. Ah Ma worked herself into quite a frenzy in her unselfish desire to save this fragile bit of femininity from the spring freshets. So she smiled at the girl, addressed her in her own dialect, and, observing that she was more poorly dressed than others of her class, asked her if she would not like to go to California, which was full of rich Chinamen, to sell handkerchiefs on the street until some rich man took a fancy to her and married her. It was a fascinating picture that Ah Ma drew, and Yun Ho did not dare to go home for fear that her elderly admirer might change her mind. So the aged Ah Ma and the lovely runaway were housed in the steerage of the next steamer that sailed with her head to the East, and Yun Ho never saw the river villages of China again.

Nor, in truth, did she ever see the handkerchiefs which she was to sell, and but very little of the streets of San Francisco where her rich countrymen abounded, for Ah Ma sold her at once to Ah Fong, the slave dealer, for $1650, which was a good price for a slave who had cost nothing but her passage money.

Yet unlike Ah Fong’s other slaves, Yun Ho was not happy. She hated the house, she loathed her fine clothes, and she envied the hardest-working, smallpox-pitted, ugliest coolie-woman who passed, — envied her her freedom and the burden on her back, and the privilege of doing drudgery. It was the sad look in the young eyes and the discontent of the red mouth which had first attracted Ong Chee as he passed down the Alley, for Ong Chee had been sent to the American day school because his father wished his English to be faultless. Ong Wing would have been horrified had he known that his son had drunk in English ideas with the words that represented them. Happily, he did not know.

The reason for Ong Chee’s visit to Yun Ho so early in the day after the enervating birthday feast was that he had thought it all out overnight, and had news of real importance to communicate. If only he could win her consent to his plans! Ah Ma smiled to see him, for she had not been unconscious of his glances the night before, and she had said to Ah Fong, “ You will have an offer for Yun Ho from the Ong family, — mark my words. See that you get a good price for her, — she is worth at least $2500. ” And Ah Fong had sworn at the old woman for her officiousness. As though one would take advice from a woman!

Ong Chee came close to Yun Ho and took her hand. The Golden Lily, as she was sometimes called, smiled into his eyes, for he was good to see, and they sat down on the carved stools, while Ong Chee talked long and earnestly. During the rest of that day Yun Ho seemed less unhappy than usual, but if she was joyful in anticipation of another visit from Ong Chee her hope was not gratified, for he was not seen again in the Alley that day or the next. On the following day, however, he came again, and Yun Ho brightened wonderfully, and her drooping mouth lost some of its pathetic curve. His stay was brief, since he had an engagement, and early that evening he might have been seen taking a roundabout course to a brick building on the hill which overlooks the Quarter, where his impatient ring was answered by a brisk young woman who ushered him into the sitting-room and sat down with him in serious converse. Presently, Ong Chee passed her a paper, and soon after they shook hands and parted, Ong Chee hurrying along the street and avoiding the street lamps.

Things were as usual in Gum Cook Alley the following day. Yun Ho dressed carefully, ate her meals, sent in from a near-by restaurant, with perfect Oriental stoicism, and showed a sad and impassive face to passers-by. What, a loss to the Chinese stage that woman with such powers of repression should be excluded from the boards!

Toward five o’clock there was a commotion in the Alley. A carriage had stopped two blocks away, and from it had stepped two American ladies and a stout policeman. Up the Alley they came, turning hurriedly in at Ah Fong’s place, for in those days, before white lookouts were employed, front doors stood open. But scarcely had the party turned in than there was a cry from the Chinese lookout within the hall, followed by a banging of doors, a shooting of bolts, a rattling of chains, and a falling into place of barricades. The picket had disappeared from the open wicket, and a yellow silk curtain had fallen where he had been sitting. The policeman was now joined by two others, and their brawny shoulders and a crowbar or two against the first ironbound door forced it at last, only to show another and still heavier one just beyond. The whole corridor was full of doors, and, meanwhile, beyond these barricades there was such a scampering and hurrying and shrieking as was scarcely believable. Every slave girl in the place vied with every other to see who could climb to the roof first, and the Highbinder, Ah Fong, whose property they were, seeing the flying feet and the white-stockinged ankles disappearing up the bamboo ladder, decided that this was an unprovoked raid, and that the Mission folk were out with a dragnet, not seeking any particular girl who had signified a desire to leave, but looking merely for girls in general, if there should happen to be any under age. And so Ah Fong, though he took to the roofs, too, was not very much alarmed, for he had taken care to have his slaves thoroughly terrified on this Mission question, and there was not a girl of them all who did not believe that the food at the Mission was poisoned, that the inmates were subjected to fearful tortures, and that those who survived these things were worked to death at the commonest and most menial occupations, fatal alike to beauty of hand and of face.

While the noise of stout blows and falling doors resounded through the house, Ah Fong marshaled his little company on the roof. All were there, — all but Yun Ho, most beautiful and valuable of his chattels.

“ Where is Yun Ho? ” he cried.

“ She was too late to get to the roof, ” replied Ah Tai. “ She was at the wicket when the white devils came, but I saw her pulling the rice mats over her as I came up the ladder, and she was completely hidden.”

“ Good,” said Ah Fong; “ she is too pretty to swell up and die from poisoned food.”

Then the girls scattered to adjoining roofs and disappeared down their skylights, after a plan as carefully rehearsed as any fire-drill, and Ah Fong drew up the ladder, and, climbing through a neighboring window, commenced to smoke peacefully, as though nothing at all had happened to disturb his serenity. A chance police officer, happening to come out on the roof, would never have dreamed that this peaceful Celestial was the owner of the house being raided below.

In the meantime the officers and the ladies had effected an entrance to the main room of the house, to find evidences of hasty flight all about, here a fancy pin, and there a little embroidered slipper, shed by some fleeing Cinderella, but never a sign of a slave girl.

“ Oh, dear, ” said the younger of the two women, “ I hope she did n’t change her mind, or that they didn’t suspect her and carry her off over the roofs.”

“Well, that ’s the way they’ve gone, all right,” said the officer, eyeing the skylight. “Ah Fong’s a clever devil, and I bet he had ’em well trained.”

“ Yes, but Yun Ho was expecting us to-day, and I didn’t think she would stampede with the rest. We sent her word to hang back and give us some sign so that we might know her.”

“ Well, there’s nothing here, nor in the rooms beyond, sure enough,” said the officer, “ for I’ve been through the house. ”

At that moment there came a faint cough, delicate and tiny, but the young woman heard it, and ran to the rice mats in the corner, calling, “ Yun Ho! Yun Ho! ” and from behind the mats came the prettiest young girl, with a charming red mouth and hands of old ivory laden with translucent jade and yellow gold. She looked up smilingly at the young missionary, and bashfully offered her hand as she breathed, rather than spoke, —

“ Miss Camelon, Yun Ho, Ong Chee. ”

And Miss Cameron cried delightedly, “ This is she! This is she ! ”

If the missionary had had more experience she would not have been so gleeful, since it was her tone more than her words which brought Ah Fong back from his peaceful pipe in his neighbor’s window, brought him back to the skylight and the bamboo ladder with even more celerity than he had exhibited in leaving the place, his yellow face growing dark with passion when he saw the policemen and the ladies in possession of the evidently willing Yun Ho. And as he saw that very desirable young lady departing with her new-found friends, he said, in eloquent Cantonese, things that made Yun Ho blanch in spite herself, for he vowed to be revenged upon Ong Chee. And Ah Fong came of a noted Highbinder clan, and Yun Ho knew that he would keep his word.

Yun Ho was the prettiest girl who had ever been in the Mission, and one of the sweetest. Laziness, the curse of her sex and the mother of immorality, was no quality of hers, and every one, from the matron to the meanest scullery maid, saw that Yun Ho was going to make a perfect wife in that day when the little mirrors and the tiny bells should be sewed around the edge of her sahm, — mirrors in which a bride sees reflected her future happiness, and little bells to keep her always in tune. Yun Ho studied industriously, was content with cambric blouses instead of silk, and when Ong Chee came to see her, she received him modestly enough, and giggled in his presence under the eye of the official chaperon.

But a dubious thing had happened to Ong Chee. He had told his father of his infatuation, and though Ong Wing had threatened and stormed, the son had preserved his Oriental calm, combining with it more than Oriental obstinacy and firmness. Ong Wing had been obstinate too, and had issued an ultimatum. Ong Chee was to give up all thought of Yun Ho, or be disinherited, and this decision was made somewhat easier for Ong Wing because of the fact that his third wife had just presented him with a son, and this unexpected good fortune made it certain that his bones would not go unworshiped. Ong Chee could be spared if he insisted upon setting up his own will; he was no longer an only son.

Ong Chee did insist. Very quietly he laid aside the fine raiment of his father’s providing, — the mandarin cap and the silken hose, — and purchased the commoner garb of a workingman, the while he began to cast about to see what a young Oriental without capital or business experience might do to earn a living. Incidentally, he dropped the fine name of Ong Chee, which presupposed a pedigree, and took the name of Chew Bim, non-committal as Smith or Brown or Jones, and raising no false hopes in the breasts of those who heard.

Ong Chee had been bred for a merchant. It had never been expected that he would soil his fine hands with coarse work, but he had a pretty gift of cookery, and had he been an American would have taken to messing with chafing dishes in a bachelor apartment. As it was, he applied at an uptown hotel for a position as cook, became at once an assistant in the kitchen, and at the end of the year had attained a monthly wage which was quite a fortune in Oriental eyes.

There followed a very quiet wedding in the Mission chapel, which has witnessed many such affairs, and Yun Ho and her husband went to live in a single room in a house occupied by Christian Chinese, and were as happy as only two persons can be who have worked and waited and surmounted obstacles.

One secret Chew Bim kept from his wife. She knew, of course, that he had been disinherited because of her, and she was grateful in her shy, undemonstrative way, but she did not know that there was a price on his head. She knew that Chew Bim did not go abroad after dark. They lived on the edge of the Chinese Quarter, so that he was not obliged to thread the streets and alleys when he returned from work, and, except when he left the house in the morning and returned at night, he was never out of doors. On Sundays, Yun Ho went to church, always with the girls from the Mission. Chew Bim professed nothing except love for her.

One day — it was Chew Bim’s evening off — he was returning early from his work, and he slipped across Sacramento Street and turned into the narrow alley that led past the Mission to his home. He had seen Ah Fong leaning against a lamp-post just outside the Quarter, and he made a detour of two or three blocks, slipped through a narrow alley or two, and was just hurrying by the stone steps of the Mission, which had been Yun Ho’s shelter, when a shot rang out. It was a sharp report, quickly followed by another, and Chew Bim clapped his hands to his breast and fell on the sloping walk in front of the House of Refuge. A man or two ran out from the corner grocery over the way; shirtsleeved men hurried from a near-by lodging-house; and Miss Cameron and one or two of her girls rushed from the Mission.

“What is it? ” Miss Cameron asked.

“ Chink killed, ” said a bartender laconically.

Miss Cameron pressed her way through the crowd to where the man lay, and there was little Ong Chee with a red stream staining his workaday blouse.

“ Oh, my poor Ong Chee! ” cried the missionary, kneeling by his side, “ I am so sorry. Are you much hurt? Poor Yun Ho.”

The dim eyes focused themselves on the gentle face as Miss Cameron tenderly took the hand of the little cook, and he gasped out, —

“Ah Fong, he shot me and then he run. Oh, Miss Cameron, don’t let them spoil my wife.”

“ We will take care of her, ” promised Miss Cameron. “ Poor Ong Chee.”

“There is money enough — you — take — it ” — he said slowly, every word a gasp of pain.

“ Yes, yes,” she returned, pressing her handkerchief to stop the red flow.

Ill news travels fast. Yun Ho had already heard, and forgetting the command of her husband, never under any circumstances to leave the house alone, she was running along the alley, her softsoled shoes making no noise, and when she reached the crowd, she threw herself on the sidewalk beside Miss Cameron, and took her husband’s hand, while the tired eyes opened and looked at her with infinite compassion.

“Miss Cameron take care of you,” was all he said.

The patrol wagon was coming now, and Ong Chee was lifted into it not ungently. Yun Ho and Miss Cameron, both hatless, sat in the wagon with him, and the horses were walked to the Receiving Hospital, where the wounded man was laid on the operating-table.

“He’s got about one chance in a thousand, ” said the rough doctor, after they had finished probing. “But he ’s pure grit all through. I never saw a man stand it better. Poor little dog, — some trouble between the tongs, I suppose.”

Miss Cameron did not explain, — the doctor was scarcely of fine enough fibre to feel the delicacy of the sacrifice.

Yun Ho Avent back to the Mission and safety, for it was quite possible that Ah Fong’s plan was not only to murder Ong Chee, but to carry off his beautiful prize, and each day some one accompanied Yun Ho to the hospital, where she sat and looked at Ong Chee with dumb, loving eyes.

For he did live, — perhaps because he wanted to so much, perhaps because the big Highbinder bullet went a hair too high to accomplish its purpose. Ah Fong had disappeared, of course, as though the earth had swallowed him, but that is an old, old story in Chinatown murders.

It was a month before Ong Chee could be moved to the little room which was home, and several months before he could work again, and after that a bodyguard accompanied him to and from his work, for though Ah Fong had failed, some other of his family would certainly attempt to finish the work.

Little Yun Ho has stopped going to church, and at night she and her husband are prisoners in the upper room, where heavy dark shades hang at the windows, and where no one ever moves between the lamp and the blind.

Some people might think it a high price to pay for living and loving, but Ong Chee’s entrees are as perfect and his salads as irreproachable as though he had nothing at all on his mind, not to mention a bullet in his body. Before Yun Ho he never refers to the matter, though she watches for him anxiously, and is worried if he is five minutes late on the stairs. Theirs is the peace of fatalism.

Only to Miss Cameron does Ong Chee express himself with real freedom, “ They ’ll get me, of course, some day,” he says, without a trace of feeling, but in his voice comes a subtle change as he adds,—

“ But you won’t let them spoil my wife.”

Mabel Craft Deering.