He nodded. "There are gods and gods. Some are paper, some are wood,
some are bronze. I use a small one in the office for a paper-weight. In
the Bishop Museum are many gods of coral rock and lava stone."
"But there is only one God," she announced decisively, stiffening her
ample frame argumentatively.
Ah Chun noted the danger signal and sheered off.
"What is greater than God, then?" he asked. "I will tell you. It is
money. In my time I have had dealings with Jews and Christians,
Mohammedans and Buddhists, and with little black men from the Solomons
and New Guinea who carried their god about them, wrapped in oiled paper.
They possessed various gods, these men, but they all worshipped money.
There is that Captain Higginson. He seems to like Henrietta."
"He will never marry her," retorted Mamma Achun. "He will be an admiral
before he dies--"
"A rear-admiral," Ah Chun interpolated.
"Yes, I know. That is the way they retire."
"His family in the United States is a high one. They would not like it
if he married . . . if he did not marry an American girl."
Ah Chun knocked the ashes out of his pipe, thoughtfully refilling the
silver bowl with a tiny pleget of tobacco. He lighted it and smoked it
out before he spoke.
"Henrietta is the oldest girl. The day she marries I will give her three
hundred thousand dollars. That will fetch that Captain Higginson and his
high family along with him. Let the word go out to him. I leave it to
you."
And Ah Chun sat and smoked on, and in the curling smoke-wreaths he saw
take shape the face and figure of Toy Shuey--Toy Shuey, the maid of all
work in his uncle's house in the Cantonese village, whose work was never
done and who received for a whole year's work one dollar. And he saw his
youthful self arise in the curling smoke, his youthful self who had
toiled eighteen years in his uncle's field for little more. And now he,
Ah Chun, the peasant, dowered his daughter with three hundred thousand
years of such toil. And she was but one daughter of a dozen. He was not
elated at the thought. It struck him that it was a funny, whimsical
world, and he chuckled aloud and startled Mamma Achun from a revery which
he knew lay deep in the hidden crypts of her being where he had never
penetrated.
But Ah Chun's word went forth, as a whisper, and Captain Higginson forgot
his rear-admiralship and his high family and took to wife three hundred
thousand dollars and a refined and cultured girl who was one
thirty-second Polynesian, one-sixteenth Italian, one-sixteenth
Portuguese, eleven thirty-seconds English and Yankee, and one-half
Chinese.
Ah Chun's munificence had its effect. His daughters became suddenly
eligible and desirable. Clara was the next, but when the Secretary of
the Territory formally proposed for her, Ah Chun informed him that he
must wait his turn, that Maud was the oldest and that she must be married
first. It was shrewd policy. The whole family was made vitally
interested in marrying off Maud, which it did in three months, to Ned
Humphreys, the United States immigration commissioner. Both he and Maud
complained, for the dowry was only two hundred thousand. Ah Chun
explained that his initial generosity had been to break the ice, and that
after that his daughters could not expect otherwise than to go more
cheaply.
Clara followed Maud, and thereafter, for a space of two years; there was
a continuous round of weddings in the bungalow. In the meantime Ah Chun
had not been idle. Investment after investment was called in. He sold
out his interests in a score of enterprises, and step by step, so as not
to cause a slump in the market, he disposed of his large holdings in real
estate. Toward the last he did precipitate a slump and sold at
sacrifice. What caused this haste were the squalls he saw already rising
above the horizon. By the time Lucille was married, echoes of bickerings
and jealousies were already rumbling in his ears. The air was thick with
schemes and counter-schemes to gain his favour and to prejudice him
against one or another or all but one of his sons-in-law. All of which
was not conducive to the peace and repose he had planned for his old age.
He hastened his efforts. For a long time he had been in correspondence
with the chief banks in Shanghai and Macao. Every steamer for several
years had carried away drafts drawn in favour of one, Chun Ah Chun, for
deposit in those Far Eastern banks. The drafts now became heavier. His
two youngest daughters were not yet married. He did not wait, but
dowered them with a hundred thousand each, which sums lay in the Bank of
Hawaii, drawing interest and awaiting their wedding day. Albert took
over the business of the firm of Ah Chun and Ah Yung, Harold, the eldest,
having elected to take a quarter of a million and go to England to live.
Charles, the youngest, took a hundred thousand, a legal guardian, and a
course in a Keeley institute. To Mamma Achun was given the bungalow, the
mountain House on Tantalus, and a new seaside residence in place of the
one Ah Chun sold to the government. Also, to Mamma Achun was given half
a million in money well invested.
Ah Chun was now ready to crack the nut of the problem. One fine morning
when the family was at breakfast--he had seen to it that all his sons-in-
law and their wives were present--he announced that he was returning to
his ancestral soil. In a neat little homily he explained that he had
made ample provision for his family, and he laid down various maxims that
he was sure, he said, would enable them to dwell together in peace and
harmony. Also, he gave business advice to his sons-in-law, preached the
virtues of temperate living and safe investments, and gave them the
benefit of his encyclopedic knowledge of industrial and business
conditions in Hawaii. Then he called for his carriage, and, in the
company of the weeping Mamma Achun, was driven down to the Pacific Mail
steamer, leaving behind him a panic in the bungalow. Captain Higginson
clamoured wildly for an injunction. The daughters shed copious tears.
One of their husbands, an ex-Federal judge, questioned Ah Chun's sanity,
and hastened to the proper authorities to inquire into it. He returned
with the information that Ah Chun had appeared before the commission the
day before, demanded an examination, and passed with flying colours.
There was nothing to be done, so they went down and said good-bye to the
little old man, who waved farewell from the promenade deck as the big
steamer poked her nose seaward through the coral reef.
But the little old man was not bound for Canton. He knew his own country
too well, and the squeeze of the Mandarins, to venture into it with the
tidy bulk of wealth that remained to him. He went to Macao. Now Ah Chun
had long exercised the power of a king and he was as imperious as a king.
When he landed at Macao and went into the office of the biggest European
hotel to register, the clerk closed the book on him. Chinese were not
permitted. Ah Chun called for the manager and was treated with
contumely. He drove away, but in two hours he was back again. He called
the clerk and manager in, gave them a month's salary, and discharged
them. He had made himself the owner of the hotel; and in the finest
suite he settled down during the many months the gorgeous palace in the
suburbs was building for him. In the meantime, with the inevitable
ability that was his, he increased the earnings of his big hotel from
three per cent to thirty.
The troubles Ah Chun had flown began early. There were sons-in-law that
made bad investments, others that played ducks and drakes with the Achun
dowries. Ah Chun being out of it, they looked at Mamma Ah Chun and her
half million, and, looking, engendered not the best of feeling toward one
another. Lawyers waxed fat in the striving to ascertain the construction
of trust deeds. Suits, cross-suits, and counter-suits cluttered the
Hawaiian courts. Nor did the police courts escape. There were angry
encounters in which harsh words and harsher blows were struck. There
were such things as flower pots being thrown to add emphasis to winged
words. And suits for libel arose that dragged their way through the
courts and kept Honolulu agog with excitement over the revelations of the
witnesses.
In his palace, surrounded by all dear delights of the Orient, Ah Chun
smokes his placid pipe and listens to the turmoil overseas. By each mail
steamer, in faultless English, typewritten on an American machine, a
letter goes from Macao to Honolulu, in which, by admirable texts and
precepts, Ah Chun advises his family to live in unity and harmony. As
for himself, he is out of it all, and well content. He has won to peace
and repose. At times he chuckles and rubs his hands, and his slant
little black eyes twinkle merrily at the thought of the funny world. For
out of all his living and philosophizing, that remains to him--the
conviction that it is a very funny world.