The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 2

The former was prospering. The responsibilities of fatherhood had brought an added zest and tang to his keen, bartering Mongol brain.

Where before he had squeezed the dollar, he was now squeezing the cent.

He had many a hard tussle with the rich Yung Long over the price of tea and rice and other staples, and never did either one of them mention the name of Yung Quai, nor that of the woman who had supplanted Yung Quai in the restaurant-keeper's affections.

f.a.n.n.y was honest. She traveled the straight and narrow, as she put it to herself. "Nor ain't it any strain on my feet," she confided to Miss Ryan. For she was happy and contented. Life, after all, had been good to her, had brought her prosperity and satisfaction at the hands of a fat Chinaman, at the end of her fantastic, twisted, unclean youth; and there were moments when, in spite of herself, she felt herself drawn into the surge of that Mongol race which had given her nine-tenths of her blood-a fact which formerly she had been in the habit of denying vigorously.

She laughed her happiness through the spiced, warm mazes of Chinatown, her first-born cuddled to her breast, ready to be friends with everybody.

It was thus that Yung Long would see her walking down Pell Street as he sat in the carved window-seat of his store, smoking his crimson-ta.s.sled pipe, a wandering ray of sun dancing through the window, breaking into prismatic colors, and wreathing his pale, serene face with opal vapors.

He never failed to wave his hand in courtly greeting.

She never failed to return the civility.

Some swell looker, that c.h.i.n.k. But-Gawd!-she was square, all right, all right!

A year later, after Nag Hong Fah, in expectation of the happy event, had acquired an option on a restaurant farther up-town, so that the second son might not be slighted in favor of Brian, who was to inherit the Great Shanghai Chop Suey Palace, f.a.n.n.y sent another little cross-breed into the reek and riot of the Pell Street world. But when Nag Hong Fah came home that night, the nurse told him that the second-born was a girl-something to be entered on the debit, not the credit, side of the family ledger.

It was then that a change came into the marital relations of Mr. and Mrs. Nag Hong Fah.

Not that the former disliked the baby daughter, called f.a.n.n.y, after the mother. Far from it. He loved her with a sort of slow, pa.s.sive love, and he could be seen on an afternoon rocking the wee bundle in his stout arms and whispering to her crooning Cantonese fairy-lilts: all about the G.o.d of small children whose face is a candied plum, so that the babes like to hug and kiss him and, of course, lick his face with their little pink tongues.

But this time there was no christening, no gorgeous magenta-lettered invitations sent to the chosen, no happy prophecies about the future.

This time there were no precious presents of green jade and white jade heaped on the couch of the young mother.

She noticed it. But she did not complain. She said to herself that her husband's new enterprise was swallowing all his cash; and one night she asked him how the new restaurant was progressing.

"What new restaurant?" he asked blandly.

"The one up-town, Toodles-for the baby-"

Nag Hong Fah laughed carelessly.

"Oh-I gave up that option. Didn't lose much."

f.a.n.n.y sat up straight, clutching little f.a.n.n.y to her.

"You-you gave it up?" she asked. "Wottya mean-gave it up?"

Then suddenly inspired by some whisper of suspicion, her voice leaping up extraordinarily strong: "You mean you gave it up-because-because little f.a.n.n.y is-a _goil_?"

He agreed with a smiling nod.

"To be sure! A girl is fit only to bear children and clean the household pots."

He said it without any brutality, without any conscious male superiority; simply as a statement of fact. A melancholy fact, doubtless. But a fact, unchangeable, stony.

"But-but-" f.a.n.n.y's gutter flow of words floundered in the eddy of her amazement, her hurt pride and vanity. "I'm a woman myself-an' I-"

"a.s.suredly you are a woman and you have done your duty. You have borne me a son. Perhaps, if the omens be favorable you will bear me yet another. But this-this girl-" He dismissed little f.a.n.n.y with a wave of his pudgy, dimpled hand as a regrettable accident, and continued, soothingly: "She will be taken care of. Already I have written to friends of our clan in San Francisco to arrange for a suitable disposal when the baby has reached the right age." He said it in his mellow, precise English. He had learned it at a night-school, where he had been the pride and honor of his cla.s.s.

f.a.n.n.y had risen. She left her couch. With a swish-swish of knitted bed-slippers she loomed up on the ring of faint light shed by the swinging petroleum lamp in the center of the room. She approached her husband, the baby held close to her heart with her left hand, her right hand aimed at Nag Hong Fah's solid chest like a pistol. Her deep-set, violet-blue eyes seemed to pierce through him.

But the Chinese blood in her veins-shrewd, patient-scotched the violence of her American pa.s.sion, her American sense of loudly clamoring for right and justice and fairness. She controlled herself. The accusing hand relaxed and fell gently on the man's shoulder. She was fighting for her daughter, fighting for the drop of white blood in her veins, and it would not do to lose her temper.

"Looka here, c.h.i.n.kie-Toodles," she said. "You call yerself a Christian, don't yer? A Christian an' an American. Well, have a heart. An' some sense! This ain't China, Toodles. Lil f.a.n.n.y ain't goin' to be weighed an' sold to some rich brother c.h.i.n.k at so many seeds per pound. Not much! She's gonna be eddycated. She's gonna have her chance, see? She's gonna be independent of the male beast an' the sorta life wot the male beast likes to hand to a skoit. Believe me, Toodles, I know what I'm talkin' about!"

But he shook his stubborn head. "All has been settled," he replied.

"Most satisfactorily settled!"

He turned to go. But she rushed up to him. She clutched his sleeve.

"Yer-yer don't mean it? Yer can't mean it!" she stammered.

"I do, fool!" He made a slight, weary gesture as if brus.h.i.+ng away the incomprehensible. "You are a woman-you do not understand-"

"Don't I, though!"

She spoke through her teeth. Her words clicked and broke like dropping icicles. Swiftly her pa.s.sion turned into stone, and as swiftly back again, leaping out in a great, spattering stream of abuse.

"Yer d.a.m.ned, yellow, stinkin' c.h.i.n.k! Yer-yer-Wottya mean-makin' me bear children-yer own children-an' then-" Little f.a.n.n.y was beginning to howl l.u.s.tily and she covered her face with kisses. "Say, kiddie, it's a h.e.l.luva dad you've drawn! A h.e.l.luva dad! Look at him-standin' there!

Greasy an' yellow an'- Say-he's willin' to sell yer into slavery to some other beast of a c.h.i.n.k! Say-"

"You are a-ah-a c.h.i.n.k yourself, fool!"

"I ain't! I'm white-an' square-an' decent-an'-"

"Ah!"

He lit a cigarette and smiled placidly, and suddenly she knew that it would be impossible to argue, to plead with him. Might as well plead with some sardonic, deaf immensity, without nerves, without heart. And then, womanlike, the greater wrong disappeared in the lesser.

"Ye're right. I'm part c.h.i.n.k myself-an' d.a.m.ned sorry for myself because of it! An' that's why I know why yer gave me no presents when lil f.a.n.n.y was born. Because she's a girl! As if that was my fault, yer fat, sneerin' slob, yer! Yah! That's why yer gave me no presents-I know! I know what it means when a c.h.i.n.k don't give no presents to his wife when she gives boith to a child! Make me lose face-that's wottya call it, ain't it? An' I thought fer a while yer was savin' up the ducats to give lil f.a.n.n.y a start in life!

"Well, yer got another guess comin'! Yer gonna do wot I tell yer, see?

Yer gonna open up that there new restaurant up-town, an' yer gonna give me presents! A bracelet, that's what I want! None o' yer measly c.h.i.n.k jade, either; but the real thing, get me? Gold an' diamonds, see?" and she was still talking as he, unmoved, silent, smiling, left the room and went down the creaking stairs to find solace in the spiced cups of the Palace of Sweet Desire and Heavenly Entertainment.

She rushed up to the window and threw it wide. She leaned far out, her hair framing her face like a glorious, disordered aureole, her loose robe slipping from her gleaming shoulders, her violet eyes blazing fire and hatred.

She shouted at his fat, receding back:

"A bracelet, that's what I want! That's what I'm gonna get, see? Gold an' diamonds! Gold an' diamonds, yer yellow pig, yer!"

It was at that moment that Yung Long pa.s.sed her house. He heard, looked up, and greeted her courteously, as was his wont. But this time he did not go straight on his way. He looked at her for several seconds, taking in the soft lines of her neck and shoulders, the small, pale oval of her face with the crimson of her broad, generous mouth, the white flash of her small, even teeth, and the blue, sombre orbit of her eyes. With the light of the lamp s.h.i.+ning in back, a breeze rus.h.i.+ng in front past the open window, the wide sleeves of her dressing-gown fluttered like immense, rosy b.u.t.terfly-wings.

Instinctively she returned his gaze. Instinctively, straight through her rage and heartache, the old thought came to her mind: