The Port of Adventure Part 27

THE CITY OF ROMANCE

Angela was ridiculously happy next morning. She had no regrets. Nick had stayed to dinner after all, and they had made plans. There was nothing in this, really, she reminded herself, laughing five times an hour; nothing at all. But it was about as wild and exciting as if--as if it were an elopement: to have given up everything she had almost decided upon, and to be going to the Yosemite Valley--with Nick, whom she had intended gently to put in his place--at a distance from hers.

"There will never, never be anything in my life again like this," she said. "I've never lived. I've never done the things I wanted to do. There was always some one or something to keep me back. Now, for a week or a fortnight, I shall live--live! nothing and no one shall keep me back." She knew how absolutely contradictory this was, after taking so much pains to "let the 'forest creature' down gently," and begin all over again. But she did not care. Nothing mattered, except that she could not send him to Mrs.

Gaylor. As gaily as she had embarked upon the "little adventure" at Los Angeles, did she now face the great one.

Nick, too, was violently happy, happier than he had ever been or supposed it possible to be. At Los Angeles he had hardly dared to hope for anything beyond the pleasure of having this woman by his side for a few hours. Since then, his feelings had, as he expressed it to himself, been running up and down, like a thermometer in changeable weather; but they had been "mostly down," and during the last few days had mounted little above freezing-point. Now the sudden bound bewildered him. He did not know why Angela had changed again at the very moment when she had seemed most cold; but she _had_ changed, and almost fiercely he determined now to fight for her. He loved her, and she must know what was in his heart. She could not do what she had just agreed to do unless she liked and trusted him: and he would make the most of all the days to come. He would keep her forever if he could.

Her sudden throwing over of her own plans, for his sake, seemed too good to be true, especially after her strange conduct at Paso Robles; but like a boy who dreams he has all the Christmas presents he ever coveted in vain, and wakes to find them his, he reminded himself that it was true--true--true!

Angela did not tell Nick the excuse she offered Mrs. Harland for giving up her visit. It was enough for him that it was given up. He would have been even more proud and pleased, however, if he had known how frankly she confessed her real intentions.

To do that seemed to Angela the only way. To have fibbed a little, or even to have prevaricated whitely, would have spoiled everything.

"I find, dear Mrs. Harland," she said in her letter, "that I can't tear myself from San Francisco. If I go with you to Shasta and the McCloud River, and come back in a week or a fortnight to do my sightseeing, nothing will be the same. I believe you will understand how I feel. My impressions will be broken. Besides, Mr. Hilliard is here now, and willing to show me what I ought to see. I'm afraid I seemed to repay his kindness by being rude to him at Paso Robles. After San Francisco, he volunteers to be my 'trail guide' through the Yosemite Valley, and if I put off that trip too long I mayn't get so good a guide. Mr. Morehouse has advised me to take him, and says these things are done in this Western World, where gossip is blown away like mist by the winds that sweep through the Golden Gate. Besides, why should any one gossip? There is no cause; and I am n.o.body, and known to few. I'm not worth gossiping about! But I wonder if you'll ever again invite me to Rushing River Camp? I hardly dare expect it. Yet I hope!"

Already Mrs. Gaylor had been invited, and had accepted; but Angela was not thinking of Mrs. Gaylor at the moment, and she was doing her best to keep Nick's thoughts from his "boss's widow." He and "Mrs. May" went about San Francisco together like two children on a holiday.

The place was a surprise to Angela. Her father's stories had pictured for her a strange, wild city, of many wooden houses, a tangle of steep streets running up hill and down dale, a few great mansions, a thousand or more acres of park in the making. But the San Francisco which he had known as a boy had greatly changed, even before the fire. Angela was aware of this, though she had not been able to realize the vastness of the change; and though she knew that the city was reborn since the epic tragedy which laid it low, she had expected to find it in a confused turmoil of growing. The work done in six or seven years by men who loved the City of the Golden Gate--men who gave blood and fortune for her, as men will for an adored woman--was almost incredible. "Rome was not built in a day" she had often heard; but this great town of many hills, so like a Rome of a new world, seemed to have risen from its ashes by magic.

The place began to take on in her eyes a curious, startling individuality.

She began to think of the city not as a town, but as a person. A woman, young, lovely, and beloved, who had gone gaily to bed one night to dream of her lovers, her jewels, and her triumphs. While she lay smiling in her beauty sleep, this woman had been rudely aroused by a cry of fire and shouts that warned her to fly. Dazed, she dressed in wildest haste, putting on all the gorgeous jewels she could find, for fear of losing them forever, and wrapping herself in exquisite laces. But in her hurry, she had been obliged to fling on some very queer garments rather than not be clothed at all; and, losing her head, had contrived to save a few worthless things. All this the woman had done, laughing through her fear of death, because nothing could conquer her brave spirit and because she knew that, scared and dest.i.tute, near to death, she would be rescued at last, loved better than ever for her sufferings, and by and by would be more regal than before.

Now, here was this vital creature, rewarded for her faith by the worship and the prowess of her lovers. What matter if she still wore some of the odd things she had picked up in a hurry? Gowns better than she had ever boasted were being fashioned for her; and the contrast between a tiara showing under a sunbonnet, a scarf of rose-point covering a cotton belt, and diamond-buckled shoes slipped on to torn stockings, made her beauty more piquant, as she sat watching the work of her lovers, on her throne by the sea. No wonder that the men who adored such a woman were brave as she!

generous and reckless as she, and on fire with energy and courage.

"But the beautiful woman worked, too, to help her lovers," Nick answered Angela's little allegory. "When she was wounded, she said, 'Just give me a hand up and I won't die. You shall have a big reward for all you do--only hurry, for I can't bear to be seen like this by any one but you.'"

"And what did her lovers say?" Angela asked.

"'We'll die for you, gladly. You have our hearts. You can have our hearts'

blood.'" And his eyes spoke to her of himself.

The first day was tiring, nevertheless Angela went out to Oakland that night to the Greek theatre, where a cla.s.sic tragedy was to be performed; and next day it was the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. They lunched at the Cliff House, and fed the barking sea-lions on the seal rocks. Then came a few hours' rest: and Chinatown was saved as a _bonne-bouche_ for the evening. They dined in the most stately and expensive of the Chinese restaurants--"no chop suey house," as their waiter said, where they entered through the kitchen to see cakes being baked, and pots of rice in the act of cooking. Upstairs the walls were adorned with golden flowers, panel paintings by artists of China, and strange dragons, and Buddhas that nodded on shelves. There were open-work screens, and tables and chairs of black, carved teakwood. Angela would have been aghast had she dreamed that the queer dinner, which she liked and laughed at, cost Nick more than a hundred dollars, but luckily she was not initiated in the rarity of bird's-nest soup or other Chinese delicacies.

It was half-past eight when they finished dining, the hour when Chinatown begins to be most lively, most ready to amuse itself and, incidentally, strangers. Therein lay the kernel of the nut, the blossom of the clove: that this bit of the old, old East, inlaid in the heart of the new West was not an "exhibition" like "j.a.pan in London," but a large, busy town, living for itself alone. The big posters in Chinese characters, pasted on the walls, were for Chinese eyes; not meant to amuse foreigners. The two or three daily papers printed in Chinese, and filled with advertis.e.m.e.nts, were for the Chinese; the bazaars, crammed with strange Eastern things, were meant to attract women of the Orient, little flitting creatures in embroidered silk jackets and long, tight trousers, who pa.s.sed and gazed, with dark eyes aslant; let European women come, or stay away, as they pleased, there were plenty of Chinese husbands whose purses were full enough to keep the merchants of Chinatown contented. The tiny, dressed-up Oriental dolls--boy and girls--who strolled about with pink balloons or b.u.t.terfly kites, in the short intervals between "Mellican" school and Chinese school, were not baby-actors playing parts on the stage, but real flesh and blood children, who had no idea that they were odd to look at in their gay-coloured gowns and tiny caps.

They did not even know that the streets through which, they toddled were any more strange than the "Mellican" streets outside Chinatown, which they doubtless considered extremely dull, made up of huge gray and white buildings like mountains or prisons; whereas the tortuous ways and blind alleys of their home-town were full of colour; balconied house fronts, high and low, huddled together, painted red or blue, and decorated with flowers, or shaped like Chinese junks or toy castles and temples. It was all new, of course, this town of theirs, since the fire; at least what was above-ground and known to foreigners was new; but it had been built in imitation of past glories. The alleys were as blind, there were as many mysterious, hidden little courts, and packing-case houses and bazaars as ever, so that the children saw no difference; and already a curious look of age, a drugged weariness, had fallen upon the seven-year-old Chinatown.

Angela walked beside Nick through the lighted streets, enchanted with the flowerlike lanterns that bloomed in front of balconied restaurants or places of entertainment, and with the crowding figures that shuffled silently by in felt-soled slippers or high rocker shoes. Tiny, elaborate women, young and old, slim youths with greeny-yellow faces like full summer moons, little old men with hands hidden in flowing sleeves, and dull eyes staring straight ahead, were to her ghosts of the Far East, or creatures of a fantastic dream from which she would soon awake.

When they had "done" the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares and Angela had bought ivory boxes, jade bracelets, and a silver bell collar for Timmy the cat, Nick said that the time had come to join their guide. He had engaged a man supposed to know Chinatown inside and out, and the rendezvous was at 9:30 in Portsmouth Square, the "lungs of Chinatown"--close to the memorial statue of Robert Louis Stevenson.

It was quiet there, and pleasant in the starlight, faintly gilded by the street lamps. The young moon of the sixth month, which had sunk with the sun when Angela was in Monterey, had not yet dropped beyond distant house roofs. Its pearly profile looked down, surrounded by a clear-cut ring, like the face of a pale saint seen through the rose-window of a cathedral.

Soon the guide came, a little dark man with a Jewish face, a German name, an American accent, and the polite manner of an Oriental.

"What would you like the lady to see?" he asked.

"Everything you advise," said Nick. "We've dined in a Chinese restaurant, and seen the things everybody sees. Now we'll do a few barber shops and drug stores, and anything else queer you can think of."

"There's an old fellow," suggested the guide, "who used to be head musician in the big Chinese theatre. He has a place of his own now, about four storeys underground, where he tinkles on every sort of Chinese instrument. Probably the lady would like to visit him. And I know a house where children sing and dance. It's underground too; and the poor little brutes, who go to two kinds of schools till nine o'clock, are at it till midnight. But the lady needn't mind. If she doesn't go, somebody else will, so the kids are kept out of their beds all the same--the more money the merrier. You may get to see a Chinese funeral too, though I ain't sure of one to-night----"

"I guess the lady wouldn't enjoy b.u.t.ting in at a funeral," said Nick.

"No, she wouldn't!" Angela added hastily. "But I should love to see them playing fan-fan--isn't that what they call the gambling game?--and--and smoking opium."

"Afraid the gambling can't be managed," said Mr. Jacob Schermerhorn, sadly shaking his head, as if the good days were gone. "But you'd like a little curio store I'll take you to--owned by an American lady married to a Chinese, and wearing the costume. They sell relics of the fire. And a joss-house is interesting----"

"But the opium smoking----" Angela persisted, suspecting that he meant to slide off the subject.

"That's not easy. Opium smoking's forbidden, and----"

But Angela grew obstinate. "I shan't feel I've seen Chinatown unless I've seen that. The books say it goes on."

"It does, on the quiet--_very_ quiet! But they're scared to death of being found out. Besides----"

"Besides--what?"

"Well, ma'am, your husband said when he engaged me he thought it would be best not to try and get you into any such place. It might hurt your feelings."

"Oh!" exclaimed Angela. Her "feelings," if not hurt, were in commotion.

"He--he _isn't_ my husband."

Then she wondered if it would not have been better to have kept silence, and let the man think what he pleased. He would never see or hear of her again. She laughed to show Nick that she was not embarra.s.sed, and then hurried on. "I _must_ see them smoking!"

"It would make you feel mighty sad, Mrs. May," said Nick. "I went once, and--it kind of haunted me. I thought to myself, I'd never take a woman who had a heart----"

"I haven't a heart," laughed Angela, piqued. "I've only a will.

But--you're my host, so I suppose I shall have to give my will up to yours."

To her surprise, Nick did not yield. "We'd better begin with the singing children," he said to Schermerhorn, "and then we won't feel we're keeping them up late."

The guide led them through Dupont Street, the street of the bazaars, and another smaller, less noisy street, where fat, long-gowned men, and women with gold clasps in their glittering edifices of ebony hair, chaffered for dried abalones, green sugarcane, and Chinese nuts. In bas.e.m.e.nts they could see through half-open doors at the bottom of ladderlike steps, earnest-faced men, with long, well-tended queues of hair, busily tonsuring sleepy clients. Stooping merchants, with wrinkled brown masks like the soft sh.e.l.ls of those nuts which others sold, could be discerned in dim, tiny offices, poring through huge round spectacles as they wrote with paint brushes, in volumes apparently made of brown paper. Here and there, in a badly lit shop with a greenish gla.s.s window, an old chemist with the air of a wizard was measuring out for a blue-coated customer an ounce of dried lizard flesh, some powdered shark's eggs, or slivered horns of mountain deer. These things would cure chills and fever; many other diseases, too, and best of all, win love denied, or frighten away bad spirits.

By and by they turned out of the street into a dim pa.s.sage. This led into another, and so on, until Angela lost count. But at last, when she began to think they must be threading a maze, they plunged into a little square court, where a lantern over one dark doorway showed faintly the blacks of irregularly built houses. Several small windows which looked upon the court were barred, and there was a door with a grated peephole, where Angela fancied that she caught the glint of eyes as the lantern swung in a light breeze. But there was no such _grille_ in the low-browed door which the guide approached. It stood ajar, and he pushed it open without knocking.

"Follow, please," he said, "it's better for me to go first." And Angela followed, with Nick close behind her, down a narrow flight of steps, more a ladder than a stairway, which descended abruptly from the threshold.

One, two, three flights there were, so steep that you had to go slowly or tumble on your nose, and then down at the bottom of the third ran a long pa.s.sage, where a greenish yellow dusk from some unseen lamp prevailed. The walls were of unpainted wood, made of slips as thin as laths, and several doors were roughly cut in it. At the end, one of these doors gaped open, music of a peculiar shrillness floated out. Also a smell as of musk and sandalwood drifted through the crack, with small, fitful trails of smoke or curling mist.

On the other side they were burning incense inside; a Chinese man and a woman, two tiny children like gilded idols, and three or four Europeans.

The latter were evidently tourists, with a guide. They sat on a rough bench, their backs to the door; and the Chinaman was perched on a smaller, higher seat, in front of a rack hung with several odd, brightly painted Chinese musical instruments. He was playing solemnly and delicately on an object like a guitar gone mad--so thought Angela--bringing forth a singing sound, small and crystalline; but, glancing over his shoulder as the newcomer appeared, at once he s.n.a.t.c.hed up another curious object, smiling at Angela, as much as to say the change was a compliment to her. The instrument was of the mandolin type, covered with evil-looking snake-skin, and having only a few strings, which the player's fingers touched lightly.

Each gave out a separate vibration, though all blended together with a strange, alluring sweetness, and, underneath, Angela thought that she could hear, faintly, a wicked impish voice hissing and chuckling, as if something alive and vilely clever were curled up inside the instrument--perhaps the spirit of the snake whose skin had been stolen.

The fat man nodded to the children who stood opposite on a piece of matting, their silk-clad backs against the wooden wall, which was panelled with paintings, very cheap, and not beautiful like those of the restaurant. But the colours were harmonious; and on a low table stood a blue dragon vase, holding in its mouth a single mariposa lily, such as Angela had never seen before. Nick, standing beside her, whispered the name of the white-and-crimson-spotted b.u.t.terfly flower, and she smiled her thanks, as the Chinese woman gave the boy's cap a pat, and tweaked the American ribbon bow which tied the queue of the little girl. Both children began to sing, keeping time with the snake-skinned imp.