the pressure of your hand—the submissiveness of a race that, being old and wise, prefers the evening meal of rice and fried pork to epic, clanking heroics.
For a moment Ng Ch’u wondered—and shivered slightly at the thought—if Yang Shen-hsiu’s perfectly tailored coat might hold the glimmer of steel. Then he reconsidered. This was New York, and the noon hour, and Forty-second Street, youthful, shrill, but filled with tame, warm conveniences, and safe—sublimely safe.
“I hope I see you well, honorable Manchu?” he asked casually, lighting an expensive, gold-tipped cigarette with fingers that were quite steady.
“Thank you,” replied Yang Shen-hsiu. “I am in excellent health. And yourself?”
“Nothing to complain of.”
“And—” purred the Manchu; and, beneath the gentle, gliding accents, the other could sense the hard, unfaltering resolve of hatred emerging from the dim, wiped-over crepuscule of forty years into new, brazen, arrogant freedom—“the—Moon-beam?”
“Is the Moon-beam no longer.”
“Her spirit has leaped the dragon gate—has rejoined the spirits of her worthy ancestors?”
“No, no.” Ng Ch’u gave a little, lopsided laugh. “But the Moon-beam—alas!—has become Madame Full Moon. She has grown exceedingly fat. As fat as a peasant’s round measure of butter. Ahee! ahoo! Age fattens all—age softens all—and everything—” His voice trembled a little, and he repeated, “All and everything!” Then, rather anxiously, his head to one side, with a patient and inquiring glance in his eyes, “Does it not, Yang Shen-hsiu?”
The latter scratched his cheek delicately with a long, highly polished fingernail.
“Yes,” he said unhurriedly. “Age softens all and everything—except belike—”
“So there are exceptions?” came the meek query.
“Yes, Ng Ch’u. Three.” A light eddied up in the glittering, hooded eyes. “A sword, a stone, and—ah—a Manchu.”
Ng Ch’u dropped his cigarette. He put his fingers together, nervously, tip against tip.
“You have recently arrived in America?” he asked after a short silence.
He spoke with a sort of bored, indifferent politeness, merely as if to make conversation. But the other looked up sharply. The ghost of a smile curled his thin lips.
“My friend,” he replied, “I, too, am familiar with the inexplicable laws of these foreign barbarians which put the yellow man even beneath the black in human worth and civic respect. I, too, know that we of the black-haired race are not permitted to enter this free land—unless we be students or great merchants or dignitaries of China or came here years ago—like you. I realize, furthermore, that babbling, leaky tongues can whisper cunning words to the immigration authorities—can spill the tea for many a worthy coolie who makes his living here on the strength of a forged passport. But—” smoothly, calmly, as Ng Ch’u tried to interrupt, “it so happened that the Old Buddha looked upon me with favor before she resigned her earthly dignities and ascended the dragon. I, the very undeserving one, have been showered with exquisite honors. Very recently I was sent to America in an official capacity. Thus—as to the Chinese exclusion law, also as to babbling, leaky tongues that whisper here and there—do not trouble, Ng Ch’u. Your tongue might catch cold—and would not that cause your honorable teeth to shrivel?”
He paused, stared at the other, then—and a tremor ran over his hawkish features, as a ripple is seen upon a stagnant pool even before the wind of storm strikes it—went on in a voice that was low and passionless, yet pregnant with stony, enormous resolve,
“Coolie! I have never forgotten the Moon-beam. I have never forgotten that once the thought of her played charming cadences on the lute of my youthful soul. I have never forgotten that once her image was the painted pleasure-boat that floated gently on the waters of my dream-ruffled sleep. I—ah—I have never forgotten that once the Moon-beam was a yellow, silken rose, and that a coolie brushed the bloom from her petals with his objectionable lips. No—I have never forgotten.”
“And—” asked Ng Ch’u, a little diffident, but quite matter-of-fact, like a bazaar trader who is not yet sure of the size of his customer’s purse and must therefore bargain circumspectly—“is there no way to—make you forget?”
“Assuredly there is a way,” the Manchu laughed.
“Oh—?”
“What sayeth the Li-Ki—? ‘Do not try to fathom what has not yet arrived! Do not climb the tree if you wish to catch fish!’”
And Yang Shen-hsiu went on his way, while Ng Ch’u looked after him with a rather comical expression of devout concentration on his round face, clasping and unclasping his short, pudgy fingers, pursing his lips, and emitting a sort of melancholy whistle.
He was a coward, and very much afraid. He was only a coolie, though the receiving teller of the Hudson National Bank purred civilly over his deposit-slips.
And the other? A Manchu. An aristocrat. A sharp hatchet of a man who cleaved his way through life. Why, even Yang Shen-hsiu’s back, beneath the prim and decorous folds of the Prince Albert, gave an impression of steely, ruthless efficiency—the efficiency of a hawk’s claw and a snake’s fang.
“Assuredly,” Ng Ch’u said to himself, as he turned east down Forty-second Street, “if I were a fool, I would now write to China and complete my funeral arrangements. I would order longevity boards of seasoned wood and cause the priests to pick out a charming retreat for my earthly remains. Too, if I were a fool, I might quote the Book of Ceremonies and Outer Observances to the tiger about to gore me. Ah—but I am not a fool—I am only a coward—I beg your pardon!” as his head sunk on his chest, he bumped into an indignant dowager who came from a department store, her plump arms crowded with bargains. “I beg your pardon—”
“Goodness! Can’t you see where you’re going—?”
A bundle dropped. Ng Ch’u bent to pick it up. So did the woman. Ng Ch’u straightened up again and, in the process, butted her chin with a round face that was still earnestly apologetic.
Another bundle dropped. People stopped, snickered, nudged each other. The woman suppressed unwomanly words. Ng Ch’u then decided to go away from there.
“Haya! haya!” he continued in his thoughts as he went on his way. “Blessed be the Excellent Lord Gautama who made me a coward! For—is there a keener foresight, a better protection, than fear?”
And, head erect, he walked along, toward his uptown shop that faced Fifth Avenue, beneath an enormous sign bearing his name in braggart, baroque, gilt letters, with a profusion of China’s and Japan’s choicest wares—dim, precious things—bronzes mellowed with the patina of the swinging centuries and embroideries and white and green and amber jade; kakemonos in sepia and gold and pigeon-gray, on which the brush of an artist long since dead had retraced the marvels of some capital of the Ashikaga dynasty; ancient koto harps with plectrums of carved ivory; satsuma bowls enameled with ho-ho birds; but mostly the porcelains of China—porcelains of all periods—Wen-tchang statuettes in aubergine and lambent yellow Kang-he ginger-jars painted with blue and white hawthorn sprays, Keen-lung egg-shell plates with backs of glowing ruby, Yung-ching peach-blow whose ruddy-brown shimmered with flecks of silver and green and pink like the
