There was nothing striking in the appearance of Chun Ah Chun. He was
rather undersized, as Chinese go, and the Chinese narrow shoulders and
spareness of flesh were his. The average tourist, casually glimpsing him
on the streets of Honolulu, would have concluded that he was a
good-natured little Chinese, probably the proprietor of a prosperous
laundry or tailorshop. In so far as good nature and prosperity went, the
judgment would be correct, though beneath the mark; for Ah Chun was as
good-natured as he was prosperous, and of the latter no man knew a tithe
the tale. It was well known that he was enormously wealthy, but in his
case "enormous" was merely the symbol for the unknown.
Ah Chun had shrewd little eyes, black and beady and so very little that
they were like gimlet-holes. But they were wide apart, and they
sheltered under a forehead that was patently the forehead of a thinker.
For Ah Chun had his problems, and had had them all his life. Not that he
ever worried over them. He was essentially a philosopher, and whether as
coolie, or multi-millionaire and master of many men, his poise of soul
was the same. He lived always in the high equanimity of spiritual
repose, undeterred by good fortune, unruffled by ill fortune. All things
went well with him, whether they were blows from the overseer in the cane
field or a slump in the price of sugar when he owned those cane fields
himself. Thus, from the steadfast rock of his sure content he mastered
problems such as are given to few men to consider, much less to a Chinese
peasant.
He was precisely that--a Chinese peasant, born to labour in the fields
all his days like a beast, but fated to escape from the fields like the
prince in a fairy tale. Ah Chun did not remember his father, a small
farmer in a district not far from Canton; nor did he remember much of his
mother, who had died when he was six. But he did remember his respected
uncle, Ah Kow, for him had he served as a slave from his sixth year to
his twenty-fourth. It was then that he escaped by contracting himself as
a coolie to labour for three years on the sugar plantations of Hawaii for
fifty cents a day.
Ah Chun was observant. He perceived little details that not one man in a
thousand ever noticed. Three years he worked in the field, at the end of
which time he knew more about cane-growing than the overseers or even the
superintendent, while the superintendent would have been astounded at the
knowledge the weazened little coolie possessed of the reduction processes
in the mill. But Ah Chun did not study only sugar processes. He studied
to find out how men came to be owners of sugar mills and plantations. One
judgment he achieved early, namely, that men did not become rich from the
labour of their own hands. He knew, for he had laboured for a score of
years himself. The men who grew rich did so from the labour of the hands
of others. That man was richest who had the greatest number of his
fellow creatures toiling for him.
So, when his term of contract was up, Ah Chun invested his savings in a
small importing store, going into partnership with one, Ah Yung. The
firm ultimately became the great one of "Ah Chun and Ah Yung," which
handled anything from India silks and ginseng to guano islands and
blackbird brigs. In the meantime, Ah Chun hired out as cook. He was a
good cook, and in three years he was the highest-paid chef in Honolulu.
His career was assured, and he was a fool to abandon it, as Dantin, his
employer, told him; but Ah Chun knew his own mind best, and for knowing
it was called a triple-fool and given a present of fifty dollars over and
above the wages due him.
The firm of Ah Chun and Ah Yung was prospering. There was no need for Ah
Chun longer to be a cook. There were boom times in Hawaii. Sugar was
being extensively planted, and labour was needed. Ah Chun saw the
chance, and went into the labour-importing business. He brought
thousands of Cantonese coolies into Hawaii, and his wealth began to grow.
He made investments. His beady black eyes saw bargains where other men
saw bankruptcy. He bought a fish-pond for a song, which later paid five
hundred per cent and was the opening wedge by which he monopolized the
fish market of Honolulu. He did not talk for publication, nor figure in
politics, nor play at revolutions, but he forecast events more clearly
and farther ahead than did the men who engineered them. In his mind's
eye he saw Honolulu a modern, electric-lighted city at a time when it
straggled, unkempt and sand-tormented, over a barren reef of uplifted
coral rock. So he bought land. He bought land from merchants who needed
ready cash, from impecunious natives, from riotous traders' sons, from
widows and orphans and the lepers deported to Molokai; and, somehow, as
the years went by, the pieces of land he had bought proved to be needed
for warehouses, or coffee buildings, or hotels. He leased, and rented,
sold and bought, and resold again.
But there were other things as well. He put his confidence and his money
into Parkinson, the renegade captain whom nobody would trust. And
Parkinson sailed away on mysterious voyages in the little _Vega_.
Parkinson was taken care of until he died, and years afterward Honolulu
was astonished when the news leaked out that the Drake and Acorn guano
islands had been sold to the British Phosphate Trust for three-quarters
of a million. Then there were the fat, lush days of King Kalakaua, when
Ah Chun paid three hundred thousand dollars for the opium licence. If he
paid a third of a million for the drug monopoly, the investment was
nevertheless a good one, for the dividends bought him the Kalalau
Plantation, which, in turn, paid him thirty per cent for seventeen years
and was ultimately sold by him for a million and a half.
It was under the Kamehamehas, long before, that he had served his own
country as Chinese Consul--a position that was not altogether
unlucrative; and it was under Kamehameha IV that he changed his
citizenship, becoming an Hawaiian subject in order to marry Stella
Allendale, herself a subject of the brown-skinned king, though more of
Anglo-Saxon blood ran in her veins than of Polynesian. In fact, the
random breeds in her were so attenuated that they were valued at eighths
and sixteenths. In the latter proportions was the blood of her great-
grandmother, Paahao--the Princess Paahao, for she came of the royal line.
Stella Allendale's great-grandfather had been a Captain Blunt, an English
adventurer who took service under Kamehameha I and was made a tabu chief
himself. Her grandfather had been a New Bedford whaling captain, while
through her own father had been introduced a remote blend of Italian and
Portuguese which had been grafted upon his own English stock. Legally a
Hawaiian, Ah Chun's spouse was more of any one of three other
nationalities.
And into this conglomerate of the races, Ah Chun introduced the Mongolian
mixture. Thus, his children by Mrs. Ah Chun were one thirty-second
Polynesian, one-sixteenth Italian, one sixteenth Portuguese, one-half
Chinese, and eleven thirty-seconds English and American. It might well
be that Ah Chun would have refrained from matrimony could he have
foreseen the wonderful family that was to spring from this union. It was
wonderful in many ways. First, there was its size. There were fifteen
sons and daughters, mostly daughters. The sons had come first, three of
them, and then had followed, in unswerving sequence, a round dozen of
girls. The blend of the race was excellent. Not alone fruitful did it
prove, for the progeny, without exception, was healthy and without
blemish. But the most amazing thing about the family was its beauty. All
the girls were beautiful--delicately, ethereally beautiful. Mamma Ah
Chun's rotund lines seemed to modify papa Ah Chun's lean angles, so that
the daughters were willowy without being lathy, round-muscled without
being chubby. In every feature of every face were haunting reminiscences
of Asia, all manipulated over and disguised by Old England, New England,
and South of Europe. No observer, without information, would have
guessed, the heavy Chinese strain in their veins; nor could any observer,
after being informed, fail to note immediately the Chinese traces.
As beauties, the Ah Chun girls were something new. Nothing like them had
been seen before. They resembled nothing so much as they resembled one
another, and yet each girl was sharply individual. There was no
mistaking one for another. On the other hand, Maud, who was blue-eyed
and yellow-haired, would remind one instantly of Henrietta, an olive
brunette with large, languishing dark eyes and hair that was blue-black.
The hint of resemblance that ran through them all, reconciling every
differentiation, was Ah Chun's contribution. He had furnished the
groundwork upon which had been traced the blended patterns of the races.
He had furnished the slim-boned Chinese frame, upon which had been
builded the delicacies and subtleties of Saxon, Latin, and Polynesian
flesh.
Mrs. Ah Chun had ideas of her own to which Ah Chun gave credence, though
never permitting them expression when they conflicted with his own
philosophic calm. She had been used all her life to living in European
fashion. Very well. Ah Chun gave her a European mansion. Later, as his
sons and daughters grew able to advise, he built a bungalow, a spacious,
rambling affair, as unpretentious as it was magnificent. Also, as time
went by, there arose a mountain house on Tantalus, to which the family
could flee when the "sick wind" blew from the south. And at Waikiki he
built a beach residence on an extensive site so well chosen that later
on, when the United States government condemned it for fortification
purposes, an immense sum accompanied the condemnation. In all his houses
were billiard and smoking rooms and guest rooms galore, for Ah Chun's
wonderful progeny was given to lavish entertainment. The furnishing was
extravagantly simple. Kings' ransoms were expended without
display--thanks to the educated tastes of the progeny.
Ah Chun had been liberal in the matter of education. "Never mind
expense," he had argued in the old days with Parkinson when that slack
mariner could see no reason for making the _Vega_ seaworthy; "you sail
the schooner, I pay the bills." And so with his sons and daughters. It
had been for them to get the education and never mind the expense.
Harold, the eldest-born, had gone to Harvard and Oxford; Albert and
Charles had gone through Yale in the same classes. And the daughters,
from the eldest down, had undergone their preparation at Mills Seminary
in California and passed on to Vassar, Wellesley, or Bryn Mawr. Several,
having so desired, had had the finishing touches put on in Europe. And
from all the world Ah Chun's sons and daughters returned to him to
suggest and advise in the garnishment of the chaste magnificence of his
residences. Ah Chun himself preferred the voluptuous glitter of Oriental
display; but he was a philosopher, and he clearly saw that his children's
tastes were correct according to Western standards.
Of course, his children were not known as the Ah Chun children. As he
had evolved from a coolie labourer to a multi-millionaire, so had his
name evolved. Mamma Ah Chun had spelled it A'Chun, but her wiser
offspring had elided the apostrophe and spelled it Achun. Ah Chun did
not object. The spelling of his name interfered no whit with his comfort
nor his philosophic calm. Besides, he was not proud. But when his
children arose to the height of a starched shirt, a stiff collar, and a
frock coat, they did interfere with his comfort and calm. Ah Chun would
have none of it. He preferred the loose-flowing robes of China, and
neither could they cajole nor bully him into making the change. They
tried both courses, and in the latter one failed especially disastrously.
They had not been to America for nothing. They had learned the virtues
of the boycott as employed by organized labour, and he, their father,
Chun Ah Chun, they boycotted in his own house, Mamma Achun aiding and
abetting. But Ah Chun himself, while unversed in Western culture, was
thoroughly conversant with Western labour conditions. An extensive
employer of labour himself, he knew how to cope with its tactics.
Promptly he imposed a lockout on his rebellious progeny and erring
spouse. He discharged his scores of servants, locked up his stables,
closed his houses, and went to live in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, in which
enterprise he happened to be the heaviest stockholder. The family
fluttered distractedly on visits about with friends, while Ah Chun calmly
managed his many affairs, smoked his long pipe with the tiny silver bowl,
and pondered the problem of his wonderful progeny.
This problem did not disturb his calm. He knew in his philosopher's soul
that when it was ripe he would solve it. In the meantime he enforced the
lesson that complacent as he might be, he was nevertheless the absolute
dictator of the Achun destinies. The family held out for a week, then
returned, along with Ah Chun and the many servants, to occupy the
bungalow once more. And thereafter no question was raised when Ah Chun
elected to enter his brilliant drawing-room in blue silk robe, wadded
slippers, and black silk skull-cap with red button peak, or when he chose
to draw at his slender-stemmed silver-bowled pipe among the cigarette-and
cigar-smoking officers and civilians on the broad verandas or in the
smoking room.
Ah Chun occupied a unique position in Honolulu. Though he did not appear
in society, he was eligible anywhere. Except among the Chinese merchants
of the city, he never went out; but he received, and he always was the
centre of his household and the head of his table. Himself peasant, born
Chinese, he presided over an atmosphere of culture and refinement second
to none in all the islands. Nor were there any in all the islands too
proud to cross his threshold and enjoy his hospitality. First of all,
the Achun bungalow was of irreproachable tone. Next, Ah Chun was a
power. And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon and an honest business
man. Despite the fact that business morality was higher than on the
mainland, Ah Chun outshone the business men of Honolulu in the scrupulous
rigidity of his honesty. It was a saying that his word was as good as
his bond. His signature was never needed to bind him. He never broke
his word. Twenty years after Hotchkiss, of Hotchkiss, Morterson Company,
died, they found among mislaid papers a memorandum of a loan of thirty
thousand dollars to Ah Chun. It had been incurred when Ah Chun was Privy
Councillor to Kamehameha II. In the bustle and confusion of those
heyday, money-making times, the affair had slipped Ah Chun's mind. There
was no note, no legal claim against him, but he settled in full with the
Hotchkiss' Estate, voluntarily paying a compound interest that dwarfed
the principal. Likewise, when he verbally guaranteed the disastrous
Kakiku Ditch Scheme, at a time when the least sanguine did not dream a
guarantee necessary--"Signed his cheque for two hundred thousand without
a quiver, gentlemen, without a quiver," was the report of the secretary
of the defunct enterprise, who had been sent on the forlorn hope of
finding out Ah Chun's intentions. And on top of the many similar actions
that were true of his word, there was scarcely a man of repute in the
islands that at one time or another had not experienced the helping
financial hand of Ah Chun.
So it was that Honolulu watched his wonderful family grow up into a
perplexing problem and secretly sympathized with him, for it was beyond
any of them to imagine what he was going to do with it. But Ah Chun saw
the problem more clearly than they. No one knew as he knew the extent to
which he was an alien in his family. His own family did not guess it. He
saw that there was no place for him amongst this marvellous seed of his
loins, and he looked forward to his declining years and knew that he
would grow more and more alien. He did not understand his children.
Their conversation was of things that did not interest him and about
which he knew nothing. The culture of the West had passed him by. He
was Asiatic to the last fibre, which meant that he was heathen. Their
Christianity was to him so much nonsense. But all this he would have
ignored as extraneous and irrelevant, could he have but understood the
young people themselves. When Maud, for instance, told him that the
housekeeping bills for the month were thirty thousand--that he
understood, as he understood Albert's request for five thousand with
which to buy the schooner yacht _Muriel_ and become a member of the
Hawaiian Yacht Club. But it was their remoter, complicated desires and
mental processes that obfuscated him. He was not slow in learning that
the mind of each son and daughter was a secret labyrinth which he could
never hope to tread. Always he came upon the wall that divides East from
West. Their souls were inaccessible to him, and by the same token he
knew that his soul was inaccessible to them.
Besides, as the years came upon him, he found himself harking back more
and more to his own kind. The reeking smells of the Chinese quarter were
spicy to him. He sniffed them with satisfaction as he passed along the
street, for in his mind they carried him back to the narrow tortuous
alleys of Canton swarming with life and movement. He regretted that he
had cut off his queue to please Stella Allendale in the prenuptial days,
and he seriously considered the advisability of shaving his crown and
growing a new one. The dishes his highly paid chef concocted for him
failed to tickle his reminiscent palate in the way that the weird messes
did in the stuffy restaurant down in the Chinese quarter. He enjoyed
vastly more a half-hour's smoke and chat with two or three Chinese chums,
than to preside at the lavish and elegant dinners for which his bungalow
was famed, where the pick of the Americans and Europeans sat at the long
table, men and women on equality, the women with jewels that blazed in
the subdued light against white necks and arms, the men in evening dress,
and all chattering and laughing over topics and witticisms that, while
they were not exactly Greek to him, did not interest him nor entertain.
But it was not merely his alienness and his growing desire to return to
his Chinese flesh-pots that constituted the problem. There was also his
wealth. He had looked forward to a placid old age. He had worked hard.
His reward should have been peace and repose. But he knew that with his
immense fortune peace and repose could not possibly be his. Already
there were signs and omens. He had seen similar troubles before. There
was his old employer, Dantin, whose children had wrested from him, by due
process of law, the management of his property, having the Court appoint
guardians to administer it for him. Ah Chun knew, and knew thoroughly
well, that had Dantin been a poor man, it would have been found that he
could quite rationally manage his own affairs. And old Dantin had had
only three children and half a million, while he, Chun Ah Chun, had
fifteen children and no one but himself knew how many millions.
"Our daughters are beautiful women," he said to his wife, one evening.
"There are many young men. The house is always full of young men. My
cigar bills are very heavy. Why are there no marriages?"
Mamma Achun shrugged her shoulders and waited.
"Women are women and men are men--it is strange there are no marriages.
Perhaps the young men do not like our daughters."
"Ah, they like them well enough," Mamma Chun answered; "but you see, they
cannot forget that you are your daughters' father."
"Yet you forgot who my father was," Ah Chun said gravely. "All you asked
was for me to cut off my queue."
"The young men are more particular than I was, I fancy."
"What is the greatest thing in the world?" Ah Chun demanded with abrupt
irrelevance.