weather came on and the mails were behind; we knew there was some new
strain on her spirits. You could see her face grow small and her flesh
waste away.
"One night we sat here, Fleming and I, and she was pacing in her soft,
weary way in the back of the room. There came a knock. It was Gideon's,
yet none of us heard the gate click nor any step outside. She stood
back, for she never showed any impatience--she tried to pretend that she
expected nothing. Fleming opened the door; he stood there an instant
looking out.
"'Didn't you hear a knock?' he asked me. Before I could answer he went
outside, closing the door, and we heard him go down the steps slowly.
"When he came in he merely said, 'A jar of wind.
"'A jar of wind!' Mrs. Fleming mocked him. The knock came again as she
spoke. Once, twice, then the light tap: I have described Gideon's knock.
We did not pretend again it was the wind.
"'You go this time;' Fleming tried to laugh. 'See if there is anything
doing.'
"There was nothing doing whatever, and nothing to be seen. I turned on
the electrics outside, and Fleming, seeing the light, came out to join
me. I asked him if those were his tracks--a man's footsteps could be
seen printed in the fresh, light snow as far as the lowest step and
back. All beyond, where the light streamed down the path to the gate,
was sky-fresh snow softly laid without wind. 'Those are my tracks,' he
said. 'There were no others before--sure,' he repeated, 'and there is no
one down at the gate. You need not go down there. Say nothing to her,'
he continued as we re-opened the door.
"She was expecting us. She was very pale but half smiling, braving it
out. She fixed her eyes on Fleming and then on me. 'Did you not _both_
hear that knock?' As she spoke it came again. I stood nearest the door;
I hurled it open. Absolutely nothing. The lights, burning in a silly
way, made shadows on the steps. Not a mark, not even a leaf-track on the
path we could see below.
"I went over to the telephone and called up the post-office. What
happened at the house in absence I do not know. I found the drawing-room
empty; Fleming joined me coming from his wife's room.
"'She is fearfully upset by that knocking,' he said. 'Can't we think up
some explanation?'
"I feared he would have less courage for inventing explanations after
what I had to tell him.
"I had followed the track of a horse and cart to the stable and found
Gideon's old mare at her hitching-post; the cart was empty, the muddy
lap-robe dragging over the wheel. At the post-office they told me Gideon
had started for the mine an hour and a half ago. 'Hasn't he got out
there with that telegram yet?' they added. From the telegraph office,
where they knew Gideon's hours, they had sent a message across to the
post-office to be carried out by him with the mail. The voice on the
telephone remarked, 'I guess they ought to get that wire pretty soon. It
was marked _Important.'_
"Fleming was cold and shaking as he listened. 'Drive back along the road
through the woods, Joshua'--he seldom called me by that name. 'I think
something has happened to the old man. His knock is on duty tonight, but
where is he?'
"It came again, and following it a low cry from passage behind closed
doors. 'She heard it too,' said Fleming. And he went to his wife.
"I called up the landing-man to help me--Tommy Briscoe; I knew he
wouldn't spread any talk about. The search was not long. A lantern
burning by itself in the woods showed us where he had stopped the cart
and half turned and tramped around in the snow. He'd dropped the bag
out, probably, missed it and looked for it on foot, setting his lantern
down. He'd gone back quite a bit along the road, and, coming back with
it, the light in his eyes, he had made a misstep, and the shaft--the old
Granite Hill shaft, you know--it's close to the road. We found him in
the sump at the bottom. There had been too much rain, but it is a deep
shaft anyway. He kept his hold on the bag, and he kept his senses long
enough to hook it onto a poor little stray pine-root above the water,
where he died. It was a cruel death, but his face was good to look at."
"And the telegram?" I asked.
"It was safe. He'd saved everything, except himself. They were driven
over to Colfax that night, with not a moment to spare----"
"But you haven't told me what it was."
"The message? Yes, it was from her, Constance--sent from an address in
the city. It said--I suppose I may repeat it. It is part of the night's
work.
"'Come to me, mother,' it said. 'I am here. I need you.'"
"And they were in time?"
"To bid her good-by," said Joshua. "There was no hope for her but in
death. Of course, they never explained. She simply fled from--we don't
know what. As long as she could she bore it without complaint, and then
she came home. She had them both with her and she knew them.
"I believe they were willing to give her up. It was the only solution
left. They were very fixed in their ideas about divorce, and what comes
after. They believed in staking all or nothing and abiding the result.
The logic of her choice was death. They saw her free, without a stain,
without an obligation in this life even to her child, for it lay dead
beside her. They did grieve for that. They wanted it to live. It would
have been something--yet, I believe, even that was best.
"They lived on here for a while, if you call it living; but the silence
in these rooms was more than she could endure. And I need not tell you
that the watchman, who was put on after Gideon, had orders to leave that
knocker alone."
"And you think," I asked, "that while Gideon lay dead at the bottom of
the shaft, his knock was 'marching on'?" I regretted instantly the turn
of my last sentence. Joshua stiffened as he replied:
"No; I cannot assert that he was dead, but I am convinced that what was
left of him, of his mortal--or immortal--consciousness, was not
concerned with himself. What may happen to us at that last boundary post
is one of the mysteries no man can solve till he gets there."
"Joshua," I said, "the drift of your conclusion is a tribute to Gideon's
faithfulness--well deserved I have no doubt. But if you'll allow me to
say so, it is not a tribute to the healthy state of your mind. I regret
to say it, but I fear that I agree with you: I think you have lived in
this house too long."
"If I had lived here too long for any other reason," he answered gently,
"enough has been said. It is better we should understand each other.
But, as to my mind--I prefer to keep it unhealthy, if by that you mean
the tendency to project it a little further than reason, founded on such
laws of the universe as we know, can help us. Healthy minds are such as
accept things--endeavor to forget what gives immeasurable pain. I prefer
the pain."
A YELLOW MAN AND A WHITE
BY
ELEANOR GATES
Reprinted from _Scribner's Magazine_ of June, 1905 by permission
FONG WU sat on the porch of his little square-fronted house, chanting
into the twilight. Across his padded blouse of purple silk lay his
_sam-yen_ banjo. And as, from time to time, his hymn to the Three Pure
Ones was prolonged in high, fine quavers, like the uneven, squeaky notes
of a woman's voice, he ran his left hand up the slender neck of the
instrument, rested a long nail of his right on its taut, snake's-skin
head, and lightly touched the strings; then, in quick, thin tones, they
followed the song to Sang-Ching.
The warm shadows of a California summer night were settling down over
the wooded hills and rocky gulches about Fong Wu's, and there was little
but his music to break the silence. Long since, the chickens had
sleepily sought perches in the hen yard, with its high wall of rooty
stumps and shakes, and on the branches of the Digger pine that towered
beside it. Up the dry creek bed, a mile away, twinkled the lights of
Whiskeytown; but no sounds from the homes of the white people came down
to the lonely Chinese. If his clear treble was interrupted, it was by
the cracking of a dry branch as a cottontail sped past on its way to a
stagnant pool, or it was by a dark-emboldened coyote, howling,
dog-like, at the moon which, white as the snow that eternally coifs the
Sierras, was just rising above their distant, cobalt line.
One year before, Fong Wu, heavily laden with his effects, had slipped
out of the stage from Redding and found his way to a forsaken,
ramshackle building below Whiskeytown. His coming had proved of small
interest. When the news finally got about that "a monkey" was living in
"Sam Kennedy's old place," it was thought, for a while, that laundering,
thereafter, would be cheaply done. This hope, however, was soon
dispelled. For, shortly after his arrival, as Fong Wu asked at the
grocery store for mail, he met Radigan's inquiry of "You do my washee,
John?" with a grave shake of the head. Similar questions from others
were met, later, in a similar way. Soon it became generally known that
the "monkey at Sam Kennedy's" did not do washing; so he was troubled no
further.
Yet if Fong Wu did not work for the people of Whiskeytown, he was not,
therefore, idle. Many a sunrise found him wandering through the
chaparral thickets back of his house, digging here and there in the red
soil for roots and herbs. These he took home, washed, tasted, and,
perhaps, dried. His mornings were mainly spent in cooking for his
abundantly supplied table, in tending his fowls and house, and in making
spotless and ironing smooth various undergarments--generous of sleeve
and leg.
But of an afternoon, all petty duties were laid aside, and he sorted
carefully into place upon his shelves numerous little bunches and boxes
of dried herbs and numerous tiny phials of pungent liquid that had come
to him by post; he filled wide sheets of foolscap with vertical lines of
queer characters and consigned them to big, plainly addressed,
well-stamped envelopes; he scanned closely the last newspapers from San
Francisco, and read from volumes in divers tongues, and he poured over
the treasured Taoist book, "The Road to Virtue."
Sunday was his one break in the week's routine. Then, the coolies who
panned or cradled for gold in tailings of near-by abandoned mines,
gathered at Fong Wu's. On such occasions, there was endless, lively
chatter, a steady exchange of barbering--one man scraping another clean,
to be, in turn, made hairless in a broad band about the poll and on
cheek and chin--and much consuming of tasty chicken, dried fish, pork,
rice, and melon seeds. To supplement all this, Fong Wu recounted the
news: the arrival of a consul in San Francisco, the raid on a slave--or
gambling-den, the progress of a tong war under the very noses of the
baffled police, and the growth of Coast feeling against the continued,
quiet immigration of Chinese. But of the social or political affairs of
the Flowery Kingdom--of his own land beyond the sea--Fong Wu was
consistently silent.
Added to his Sunday responsibilities as host and purveyor of news, Fong
Wu had others. An ailing countryman, whether seized with malaria or
suffering from an injury, found ready and efficient attention. The bark
of dogwood, properly cooked, gave a liquid that killed the ague; and oil
from a diminutive bottle, or a red powder whetted upon the skin with a
silver piece, brought out the soreness of a bruise.
Thus, keeping his house, herb-hunting, writing, studying, entertaining,
doctoring, Fong Wu lived on at Whiskeytown.
Each evening, daintily manipulating ivory chopsticks, he ate his supper
of rice out of a dragon-bordered bowl. Then, when he had poured tea from
a pot all gold-encrusted--a cluster of blossoms nodding in a vase at his
shoulder the while--he went out upon the porch of the square-fronted
house.
And there, as now, a scarlet-buttoned cap on his head, his black eyes
soft with dreaming, his richly wrought sandals tapping the floor in
time, his long queue--a smooth, shining serpent--in thick coils about
his tawny neck, Fong Wu thrummed gently upon the three-stringed banjo,
and, in peace, chanted into the twilight.
* * * * *
Flying hoofs scattered the gravel on the strip of road before Fong Wu's.
He looked through the gloom and saw a horse flash past, carrying a
skirted rider toward Whiskeytown. His song died out. He let his banjo
slip down until its round head rested between his feet. Then he turned
his face up the gulch.
Despite the dusk, he knew the traveler: Mrs. Anthony Barrett, who, with
her husband, had recently come to live in a house near Stillwater. Every
evening, when the heat was over, she went by, bound for the day's mail
at the post-office. Every evening, in the cool, Fong Wu saw her go, and
sometimes she gave him a friendly nod.
Her mount was a spirited, mouse-dun mustang, with crop-ears, a roached
mane, and the back markings of a mule. She always rode at a run,
sitting with easy erectness. A wide army hat rested snugly on her fair
hair, and shaded a white forehead and level-looking eyes. But
notwithstanding the sheltering brim, on her girlish face were set the
glowing, scarlet seals of wind and sun.
As he peered townward after her, Fong Wu heard the hurrying hoof-beats
grow gradually fainter and fainter--and cease. Presently the moon topped
the pines on the foot-hills behind him, bathing the gulch in light. The
road down which she would come sprang into view. He watched its farthest
open point. In a few moments the hoof-beats began again. Soon the glint
of a light waist showed through the trees. Next, horse and rider rounded
a curve at hand. Fong Wu leaned far forward.
And then, just as the mustang gained the strip of road before the
square-fronted house, it gave a sudden, unlooked-for, outward leap,
reared with a wild snort, and, whirling, dashed past the
porch--riderless.
With an exclamation, Fong Wu flung his banjo aside and ran to the road.
There under a manzanita bush, huddled and still, lay a figure. He caught
it up, bore it to the porch, and put it gently down.
A brief examination, made with the deftness practise gives, showed him
that no bones were broken. Squatting beside the unconscious woman, he
next played slowly with his long-nailed fingers upon her pulse. Its beat
reassured him. He lighted a lamp and held it above her. The scarlet of
her cheeks was returning.
The sight of her, who was so strong and active, stretched weak and
fainting, compelled Fong Wu into spoken comment. "The petal of a plum
blossom," he said compassionately, in his own tongue.
She stirred a little. He moved back. As, reviving, she opened her eyes,
they fell upon him. But he was half turned away, his face as blank and
lifeless as a mask.
She gave a startled cry and sat up. "Me hurtee?" she asked him, adopting
pidgin-English "Me fallee off?"
Fong Wu rose. "You were thrown," he answered gravely.
She colored in confusion. "Pardon me," she said, "for speaking to you as
if you were a coolie." Then, as she got feebly to her feet--"I believe
my right arm is broken."
"I have some knowledge of healing," he declared; "let me look at it."
Before she could answer, he had ripped the sleeve away. "It is only a
sprain," he said. "Wait." He went inside for an amber liquid and
bandages. When he had laved the injured muscles, he bound them round.
"How did it happen?" she asked, as he worked. He was so courteous and
professional that her alarm was gone.
"Your horse was frightened by a rattler in the road. I heard it whir."
She shuddered. "I ought to be thankful that I didn't come my cropper on
it," she said, laughing nervously.
He went inside again, this time to prepare a cupful of herbs. When he
offered her the draught, she screwed up her face over its nauseating
fumes.
"If that acts as strongly as it tastes," she said, after she had drunk
it, "I'll be well soon."
"It is to keep away inflammation."
"Oh! Can I go now?"
"Yes. But tomorrow return, and I will look at the arm." He took the lamp
away and replaced his red-buttoned cap with a black felt hat. Then he
silently preceded her down the steps to the road. Only when the light of
her home shone plainly ahead of them, did he leave her.
They had not spoken on the way. But as he bowed a good night, she
addressed him. "I thank you," she said. "And may I ask your name?"
"Kwa"--he began, and stopped. Emotion for an instant softened his
impassive countenance. He turned away. "Fong Wu," he added, and was
gone.
The following afternoon the crunch of cart wheels before the
square-fronted house announced her coming. Fong Wu closed "The Book of
Virtue," and stepped out upon the porch.
A white man was seated beside her in the vehicle. As she sprang from it,
light-footed and smiling, and mounted the steps, she indicated him
politely to the Chinese.
"This is my husband," she said. "I have told him how kind you were to me
last night."
Fong Wu nodded.
Barrett hastened to voice his gratitude. "I certainly am very much
obliged to you," he said. "My wife might have been bitten by the
rattler, or she might have lain all night in pain if you hadn't found
her. And I want to say that your treatment was splendid. Why, her arm
hasn't swollen or hurt her. I'll be hanged if I can see--you're such a
good doctor--why you stay in this----"
Fong Wu interrupted him. "I will wet the bandage with medicine," he
said, and entered the house.
They watched him with some curiosity as he treated the sprain and
studied the pulse. When he brought out her second cup of steaming herbs,
Mrs. Barrett looked up at him brightly.
"You know we're up here for Mr. Barrett's health," she said. "A year or
so after we were married, he was hurt in a railway collision. Since
then, though his wounds healed nicely, he has never been quite well. Dr.
Lord, our family physician, prescribed plenty of rough work, and a quiet
place, far from the excitement of a town or city. Now, all this morning,
when I realized how wonderful it was that my arm wasn't aching, I've
been urging my husband--what do you suppose?--to come and be examined by
you!"
Fong Wu, for the first time, looked fully at the white man, marking the
sallow, clayey face, with its dry, lined skin, its lusterless eyes and
drooping lids.
Barrett scowled at his wife. "Nonsense, dear," he said crossly; "you
know very well that Lord would never forgive me."
"But Fong Wu might help you," she declared.
Fong Wu's black eyes were still fixed searchingly upon the white man.
Before their scrutiny, soul-deep, the other's faltered and fell.
"You might help him, mightn't you, Fong Wu?" Mrs. Barrett repeated.
An expression, curious, keen, and full of meaning, was the answer. Then,
"I might if he----" Fong Wu said, and paused.
Past Mrs. Barrett, whose back was toward her husband, the latter had
shot a warning glance. "Come, come, Edith," he cried irritably; "let's
get home."
Mrs. Barrett emptied her cup bravely. "When shall we call again?" she
asked.
"You need not come again," Fong Wu replied. "Each day you have only to
dampen the bandages from these." He handed her a green-flowered box
containing twelve tiny compartments; in each was a phial.
"And I sha'n't have to take any more of this--this awful stuff?" she
demanded gaily, giving back the cup.
"No."
"Ah! And now, I want to thank you again, with all my heart. Here,"--she
reached into the pocket of her walking-skirt,--"here is something for
your trouble." Two double-eagles lay on her open palm.
Fong Wu frowned at them. "I take no money," he said, a trifle gruffly.
And as she got into the cart, he closed the door of his home behind him.
It was a week before Mrs. Barrett again took up her rides for the mail.
When she did, Fong Wu did not fail to be on his porch as she passed. For
each evening, as she cantered up the road, spurring the mustang to its
best paces, she reined to speak to him. And he met her greetings with
unaccustomed good humor.
Then she went by one morning before sunrise, riding like the wind. A
little later she repassed, whipping her horse at every gallop. Fong Wu,
called to his door by the clatter, saw that her face was white and
drawn. At noon, going up to the post-office, he heard a bit of gossip
that seemed to bear upon her unwonted trip. Radigan was rehearsing it
excitedly to his wife, and the Chinese busied himself with his mail and
listened--apparently unconcerned.
"I c'n tell you she ain't afraid of anythin', that Mrs. Barrett," the
post-master was saying; "neither th' cayuse she rides or a critter on
two legs. An' that fancy little drug-clerk from 'Frisco got it straight
from th' shoulder."
"S-s-sh!" admonished his wife, from the back of the office. "Isn't there
some one outside?"
"Naw, just th' chink from Kennedy's. Well, as I remarked, she did jus'
light into that dude. 'It was criminal!' she says, an' her eyes snapped
like a whip; 'it was criminal! an' if I find out for sure that you are
guilty, I'll put you where you'll never do it again.' Th' young gent
smirked at her an' squirmed like a worm. 'You're wrong, Mrs. Barrett,'
he says, lookin' like th' meek puppy he is, 'an' you'll have t' look
some place else for th' person that done it.' But she wouldn't talk no
longer--jus' walked out, as mad as a hornet."
"Well, well," mused Mrs. Radigan. "I wonder what 'twas all about.
'Criminal,' she said, eh? That's funny!" She walked to the front of the
office and peeked through the wicket. But no one was loitering near
except Fong Wu, and his face was the picture of dull indifference.
That night, long after the hour for Mrs. Barrett's regular trip, and
long past the time for his supper-song, Fong Wu heard slow, shuffling
steps approach the house. A moment afterward, the knob of his door was
rattled. He put out his light and slipped a knife into his loose sleeve.
After some fumbling and moving about on the porch, a man called out to
him. He recognized the voice.
"Fong Wu! Fong Wu!" it begged. "Let me in. I want to see you; I want to
ask you for help--for something I need. Let me in; let me in."
Fong Wu, without answering, relit his lamp, and, with the air of one who
is at the same time both relieved and a witness of the expected, flung
the door wide.
Then into the room, writhing as if in fearful agony, his hands palsied,
his face a-drip and, except for dark blotches about the mouth,
green-hued, his eyes wild and sunken, fell, rather than tottered,
Anthony Barrett.
"Fong Wu," he pleaded, from the floor at the other's feet, "you helped
my wife when she was sick, now help me. I'm dying! I'm dying! Give it to
me, for God's sake! give it to me." He caught at the skirt of Fong Wu's
blouse.
The Chinese retreated a little, scowling. "What do you want?" he asked.
A paroxysm of pain seized Barrett. He half rose and stumbled forward.
"You know," he panted, "you know. And if I don't have some, I'll die. I
can't get it anywhere else. She's found me out, and scared the
drug-clerk. Oh, just a little, old man, just a little!" He sank to the
floor again.
"I can give you nothing," said Fong Wu bluntly. "I do not keep--what you
want."
With a curse, Barrett was up again. "Oh, you don't," he screamed,
leering frenziedly. "You yellow devil! You almond-eyed pigtail! But I
know you do! And I must have it. Quick! quick!" He hung, clutching, on
the edge of Fong Wu's wide ironing-table, an ashen wreck.
Fong Wu shook his head.
With a cry, Barrett came at him and seized his lean throat. "You damned
highbinder!" he gasped. "You saddle-nosed monkey! You'll get me what I
want or I'll give you away. Don't I know why you're up here in these
woods, with your pretty clothes and your English talk? A_-ha_! You bet I
do! You're hiding, and you're wanted,"--he dropped his voice to a
whisper,--"the tongs would pay head-money for you. If you don't give it
to me, I'll put every fiend in 'Frisco on your trail."
Fong Wu had caught Barrett's wrists. Now he cast him to one side.
"Tongs!" he said with a shrug, as if they were beneath his notice. And
"Fiends!" he repeated contemptuously, a taunt in his voice.
The white man had fallen prone and was grovelling weakly. "Oh, I won't
tell on you," he wailed imploringly. "I won't, I won't, Fong Wu; I swear
it on my honor."
Fong Wu grunted and reached to a handy shelf. "I will make a bargain
with you," he said craftily; "first, you are to drink what I wish."
"Anything! anything!" Barrett cried.