Port O' Gold Part 40

"Oh, my friend, stand fast! You are never alone. The spirit of another is forever with you. Watching--waiting--knowing you shall win the victory which transcends all price."

He read this letter endlessly while people waited in his ante-room. Then he summoned Herbert Waters, now his secretary, and sent them all away.

Among them was a leader of the New York money-powers who never forgave that slight; another was an emissary of the President. Broderick neither knew nor cared. He put the letter in his pocket; walked for hours in the snow, on the banks of the frozen Potomac.

That afternoon he reviewed the situation, was closeted an hour with Douglas of Illinois. The two of them sought Seward of New York, who had just arrived. To their conference came Chase and Wade of Ohio, Trumbull of Illinois, Fessenden of Maine, Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts, Cameron of Pennsylvania.

Soon thereafter Volney Howard in San Francisco received an unsigned telegram, supposedly from Gwin:

Unexpected gathering anti-slavery forces. Looks bad for Lecompton Resolution. President worried about California.

In the southeastern part of San Francisco a few tea and silk merchants had, years before, established the nucleus of an Oriental quarter.

Gradually it had grown until there were provision shops where queer-looking dried vegetables, oysters strung necklace-wise on rings of bamboo, eggs preserved in a kind of brown mold, strange brown nuts and sweetmeats were displayed; there were drugs-shops with wondrous gold and ebony fret work, temples with squat G.o.ds above amazing shrines.

There were stark-odored fish-stalls in alleyways so narrow that the sun touched them rarely, barred upper-windows from which the faces of slant-eyed women peeped in eager wistfulness as if upon an unfamiliar world. Cellar doorways from which slipper-shod, pasty-faced Cantonese crept furtively at dawn; sentineled portals, which gave ingress to gambling houses protected by sheet-iron doors.

On a pleasant Sunday, early in February, Benito, Alice, Adrian and Inez walked in Chinatown with David Broderick. The latter was about to leave for Washington to attend his second session in Congress. Things had fared ill with him politically there and at home.

Just now David Broderick was trying to forget Congress and those battles which the next few weeks were sure to bring. He wanted to carry with him to Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine. An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune and almond were displayed.

"It's their New Year festival," Adrian explained. "Come, we'll visit some of the shops; they'll give us tea and cakes, for that's their custom."

"How interesting!" remarked Inez. She shook hands cordially with a grave, handsomely gowned Chinese merchant, whose emporium they now entered. To her astonishment he greeted her in perfect English. "A graduate of Harvard College," Broderick whispered in her ear.

Wong Lee brought forward a tray on which was an a.s.sortment of strange sweetmeats in little porcelain dishes; he poured from a large tea-pot a tiny bowl of tea for each of his visitors. While they drank and nibbled at the candy he pressed his hands together, moved them up and down and bowed low as a visitor entered; the latter soon departed, apparently abashed by the Americans.

"He would not mingle with the 'foreign devils,'" Broderick smiled. "That was Chang Foo, who runs the Hall of Everlasting Fortune, wasn't it?"

"Yes, the gambling house," Wong Lee answered. "A bad man," his voice sank to a whisper. "Chief of the Hip Lee tong, for the protection of the trade in slave women. He came, no doubt, to threaten me because I am harboring a Christian convert. See," he opened a drawer and took therefrom a rectangle of red paper. "Last night this was found on my door. It reads something like this:

"Withdraw your shelter from the renegade Po Lun, who renounces the G.o.ds of his fathers. Send him forth to meet his fate--lest the blade of an avenger cleave your meddling skull."

"Po was a member of the Hip Yees when he was converted; they stole a Chinese maiden--his beloved and Po Sun hoped to rescue her. That is why he joined that band of rascals."

"And did he succeed?" asked Alice.

"No," Wong Lee sighed. "They spirited her away--out of the city. She is doubtless in some slave house at Vancouver or Seattle. Poor Po! He is heartbroken."

"And what of yourself; are you not in danger?" Broderick questioned.

Wong smiled wanly. "Until the New Year season ends I am safe at any rate."

CHAPTER LIII

ENTER PO LUN

Broderick returned to Washington; he wrote seldom, but the newspapers printed, now and then, extracts from his speeches. The Democrats were once more a dominating power and their organs naturally attacked the California Senator who defied both President and party; they a.s.serted that Broderick was an ignorant boor, whose speeches were written for him by a journalist named Wilkes. But they did not explain how Broderick more than held his own in extemporaneous debate with the nation's seasoned orators. Many of these would have taken advantage of his inexperience, for he was the second youngest Senator in Congress. But he revealed a natural and disconcerting skill at verbal riposte which made him respected, if not feared by his opponents. One day, being harried by administration Senators, he struck back with a savagery which, for the moment, silenced them.

The San Francisco papers--for that matter, all the journals of the nation--printed Broderick's words conspicuously. And, as they held with North or South, with Abolition or with Slavery, they praised or censured him.

"I hope, in mercy to the boasted intelligence of this age, the historian, when writing the history of these times, will ascribe the attempt of the President to enforce the Lecompton resolution upon an unwilling people to the fading intellect, the petulant pa.s.sion and the trembling dotage of an old man on the verge of the grave."

"Buchanan will be furious," said Benito. "They say he's an old beau who wears a toupee and knee-breeches. All Washington that dares to do so will be laughing at him, especially the ladies."

Benito returned from the office one foggy June evening with a copy of The Bulletin that contained a speech by Broderick. It was dusk and Alice had lighted the lamp to read the Washington dispatch as she always did with eager interest, when there came a light, almost stealthy knock at the door. Benito, rather startled, opened it. There stood a Chinese youth of about 18, wrapped in a huge disguising cloak. He bowed low several times, then held forth a letter addressed in brush-fashioned, India-ink letters to "B. Windham Esquire."

Curiously he opened it and read:

"The hand of the 'avenger' has smitten. I have not long to live. Will you, in your honorable kindness, protect my nephew, Po Lun? He will make a good and faithful servant, requiting kindness with zeal. May the Lord of Heaven bless you."

"WONG LEE."

Excitedly and with many gestures Po Lun described the killing of his uncle by a Hip Yee "hatchetman." But even in his dying hour Wong Lee had found means to protect a kinsman. Po Lun wept as he told of Wong Lee's goodness. Suddenly he knelt and touched his forehead three times to the floor at Alice's feet. "Missee, please, you let me stay?" he pleaded.

"Po Lun plenty work. Washee, cookee, clean-em house." His glance strayed toward the cradle. "Takem care you' li'l boy."

Benito glanced at Alice questioningly. "Would you--trust him?" he whispered.

"Yes," she said impulsively. "He has a good face ... and we need a servant." She beckoned to Po Lun. "Come, I will show you the kitchen and a place to sleep."

Broderick came back from Washington and entered actively into the State campaign. He found its politics a hodge-podge of unsettled, bitter policies. The Republicans made overtures to him; they sought a coalition with the Anti-Lecompton Democrats as opposed to Chivalry or Solid South Democracy.

Benito and Alice saw little of Broderick. He was here, there, everywhere, making impa.s.sioned, often violent speeches. Most of them were printed in the daily papers.

"They'll be duelling soon," said Windham anxiously, as he read of Broderick's accusations of "The Lime Point Swindle," "The Mail-carrying Conspiracy," his reference to Gwin and Latham as "two great criminals,"

to the former, "dripping with corruption."

Then came Judge Terry with an unprovoked attack on members of the Anti-Lecompton party. "They are the personal chattels of one man," he said, "a single individual whom they are ashamed of. They belong heart, soul, body and breeches to David C. Broderick. Afraid to acknowledge their master they call themselves Douglas Democrats.... Perhaps they sail under the flag of Douglas, but it is the Black Douglas, whose name is Frederick, not Stephen."

Frederick Douglas was a negro. Therefore, Terry's accusation was the acme of insult and contumely, which a Southerner's imagination could devise. Broderick read it in a morning paper as he breakfasted with friends in the International Hotel and, wounded by the thrust from one he deemed a friend, spoke bitterly:

"I have always said that Terry was the only honest man on the bench of a miserably corrupt court. But I take it all back. He is just as bad as the others."

By some evil chance, D.W. Perley overheard that statement--which proceeded out of Broderick's momentary irritation. Perley was a man of small renown, a lawyer, politician and a whilom friend of Terry.

Instantly he seized the opportunity to force a quarrel, and, in Terry's name, demanded "satisfaction." Broderick was half amused at first, but in the end retorted angrily. They parted in a violent altercation.

"Dave," said Alice, as he dined with them that evening, "your're not going to fight this man?"

"I shall ignore the fellow. I've written him that I fight with no one but my equal. He can make what he likes out of that. I've been in a duel or two. n.o.body will question my courage."

Po Lun proved a model servitor, a careful nurse. Alice often left in his efficient hands her household tasks. Sometimes she and Benito took an outing of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, for there was now a pleasant drive down the Peninsula along the new San Bruno turnpike to San Mateo.

The Windhams were returning from such a drive in the pleasant afternoon sunshine when a tumult of newsboys hawking an extra edition arrested them.