The Readjustment Part 14

"It shall be done, liege lady--three column spread on the front page.

Oh, you've got to have a shoe." For a vendor was bearing down on them, carrying a tray of pink paper shoes like valentines. "That's the symbol of this festival--the G.o.ddess lost her shoe before she died.

How much, Charlie? Two bits two? All light! Empress, permit me to present this souvenir of a grateful people. Miss Waddington, have a shoe on me!"

Eleanor hung the pink trifle to the pin at her throat.

"I shall add it to the royal treasure trove," she said. It came across her then, as one of the unrelated thoughts and fancies which were coursing in such swarms through her mind, that Bertram Chester, though he stuck close to her side, had been unusually silent. She drew him in at once.

"Does it become me?" she asked.

"Everything becomes you."

"You don't say anything about _my_ shoes!" said Kate.

Now the crowd began to eddy and to whirl toward the next corner. There rose the clang of gongs, the shrilling of a Chinese pipe playing a mournful air in that five-toned scale Whose combinations suggest always the mystery of the East. About that corner swept the procession of the Good Lady, priests before, women wors.h.i.+ppers behind. The priests set up a falsetto chant, the banner-bearers lifted their staves, and the parti-colored ma.s.s moved down on them.

"It's like a flower-bed on a landslide!" exclaimed Eleanor.

Mark Heath gravely pulled out his left cuff and took rapid notes with a pencil.

"That goes into the story--anything more up your sleeve like that?"

"Wasn't it good? Eleanor is always thinking up clever things to say,"

Kate came in. Her voice was rather flat.

At the edge of the gutter where they stood, a Chinese shoemaker had set out on a lacquer tray his offering to the G.o.ds. Red candles bordered it, surrounding little bowls of rice and sweetmeats, a slice of roast pig, a Chinese lily. As the banners approached, certain devout coolies found room on the sidewalk to prostrate themselves.

Eleanor, absorbed now in a poetic appreciation of all this glory of color and spirit, felt a movement beside her. She looked down. The shoemaker was flat on his forehead beside his offering.

"Would you per-ceive that c.h.i.n.k grovel," spoke the voice of Bertram Chester.

Before Eleanor could turn on him, he was addressing the shoemaker.

"Feel a heap better, Charlie? Say, who-somalla you? Brush off your knees!" The Chinese, if he understood, paid no more attention than he paid to the lamp post in his path. Gathering up his offering, he pushed his way back through the crowd.

For the first time that evening, Eleanor became somewhat like her normal self as she said:

"Why, this is a religious ceremony, isn't it--all this light and color!"

"Yes," responded the personal conductor of the party, "but you have to pinch yourself to remember it. For instance, you'll be charmed to know that I saw one of those priests, up in front there, arrested last week in a raid on a gambling joint. Morals haven't an awful lot to do with this religion. Maybe that fellow on the pavement was praying that he'd have a chance to murder his dearest enemy, and maybe he was applying for luck in a lottery. Empress of Chinatown, up yon frazzled flight of stairs lurks the New York Daytime Lottery. The agents of said lottery are playing ducks and drakes right now with the pay of the printers on the imperial bulletin which I have the honor to represent. Some day, your grand vizier and most humble servant is going to do a Sunday story on a drawing in a Chinese lottery."

Eleanor showed no inclination to go on with the game.

"Have another shoe--one shoe, Charlie, for the little princess!"

continued Mark Heath. This one, displayed amid the cone-sticks and New Years nuts of a sweetmeat stand, was bright blue. Mark hung it on Eleanor's shoulder; then, as a kind of afterthought, he bought a crimson ta.s.sel for Kate.

The procession was past, was breaking up. The women, in knots of three or four, were scattering to the night's festivities. Mark, as guide, let business go as he led them on his grand tour of Chinatown. They stopped to survey sidewalk altars of rice paper and jade, where priests tapped their little gongs and sang all night the glory of the Good Lady; they visited the prayer store, emporium for red candles, "devil-go-ways," punks, votive ta.s.sels, and all other Chinese devices to win favor of the G.o.ds and surcease from demons; they explored the cavernous underground dwellings beneath the Jackson Street Theatre; they climbed a narrow, reeking pa.s.sage to marvel at the revel of color and riot of strange scent which was the big joss house. Bertram's spirits were rising by this time; he expressed them by certain cub-like gambols which showed both his failure to appreciate the beauty in all this strangeness and his old-time Californian contempt for the Chinese as a people. Once he tweaked a cue in pa.s.sing and laughed in the face of the insulted Chinaman; and once he made pretence of stealing nuts from a sweetmeat stall.

Wherever Mark found a new design in toy shoes, he bought one for Eleanor, until she wore a string of them, like a necklace, across her bodice. Yet had the illumination gone a little out of her; she replied with diminis.h.i.+ng vivacity to Mark's advances as he played the birthday game.

When they mounted the joss house stairs she lagged behind; and Bertram lagged with her.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "I never saw you so bright and chipper as we were awhile ago, and now--say, what's the matter?"

"Nothing. Oh, Mr. Heath--" she raised her voice, "are the actors allowed in the joss house--and if not will you have it fixed for me?"

After they had presented their votive punks to the great high G.o.d, Kate announced that she was footweary.

"Can't we find a place to sit down?" she asked. Mark took her up.

"That's the signal for tea at the Man Far Low restaurant. Ever been there? Tea store below, fantan next floor, restaurant top side all the way through the block. Come on, Empress of Chinatown. The royal board awaits."

The Man Far Low was in the throes of large preparation for the Chinese all-night banquets which would close the festival. The cas.h.i.+er wore his dress tunic, his cap with the red b.u.t.ton. The kitchen door, open on the second landing, gave forth a cloud of steam which bore odors of peanut oil, duck, bamboo sprouts and Chinese garlic; through the cloud they could see cooks working mightily over their bra.s.s pots. Every compartment of the big dining hall upstairs held its prepared table; waiters in new-starched white coats were setting forth a thousand toy devices in porcelain. Though the Chinese feasting had not yet commenced, it was plain, from the att.i.tude of the waiters, that slummers and tourists were not wanted on that night. But still the head waiter, when he came slipping over on his felt shoes, led them to a table in the Eastern dining room, from whose balconies one overlooked Portsmouth Square. His aspect, however, was anything but cheerful.

"Say, you c.h.i.n.k, smile!" said Bertram as he seated himself.

By a slight turn of the head, the very slightest in the world, the Chinese showed that he caught this in all its force. But he went gravely on, setting out porcelain bowls. Eleanor's hand moved a little, as though in restraint.

"Cheer up, Charlie, crops is ripe!" resumed Bertram.

"Don't--please," cried Eleanor. The first word came short, sharp and peremptory; the "please" was appealing.

The color rose under Bertram's brown skin. Kate, an outside party to this pa.s.sage, smiled a quiet smile; but she spoke to Mark Heath.

"What _are_ those paintings on that screen--come and tell me about them!"

Now Bertram and Eleanor stood alone with the table between them.

"I was jollying him!" burst out Bertram. Eleanor glanced at Kate, who stood profile-on listening to the ready Heath.

"Shall we go out on the balcony?" She stepped through the open French window.

As they stood in the shadow, the city at their feet, neither spoke for a moment. Finally,

"It's a call-down, I suppose?" began Bertram, tentatively.

"Not necessarily."

With a slam, he brought his hand down on the balcony rail.

"You don't give--you don't give a d.a.m.n--that's the trouble with you--you don't care what I do!"

Eleanor drew a little away from him before she answered:

"I care if anyone is uncivil."

"What is it but a c.h.i.n.k? They expect it! Why, down in Tulare--" His voice fell away as though he recognized the futility of an attack in this form. She spoke:

"It is you who should not expect it." And then, "I am sorry I said what I did. It was an impulse. We are all imperfect. I've often been unkind myself."

Bertram stood gripping the rail before him as one caught and held by a new emotion. When he spoke, his voice was low and rather hard. At the first tone of it, she shrank from the daimon in him.