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Page 2
This amazing world she had set forth to discover! Yesterday at this
time she had had no thought in her head about Canton. America, the
land of rosy apples and snowstorms, beckoned, and she wanted to fly
thitherward. Yet, here she was, in the ancient Chinese city,
weaving in and out of the narrow streets some scarcely wide enough
for two men to walk abreast, streets that boiled and eddied with
yellow human beings, who worshipped strange gods, ate strange
foods, and diffused strange suffocating smells. These were less
like streets than labyrinths, hewn through an eternal twilight. It
was only when they came into a square that daylight had a positive
quality.
So many things she saw that her interest stumbled rather than
leaped from object to object. Rows of roasted duck, brilliantly
varnished; luscious vegetables, which she had been warned against;
baskets of melon seed and water-chestnuts; men working in teak and
blackwood; fan makers and jade cutters; eggs preserved in what
appeared to her as petrified muck; bird's nests and shark fins. She
glimpsed Chinese penury when she entered a square given over to the
fishmongers. Carp, tench, and roach were so divided that even the
fins, heads and fleshless spines were sold. There were doorways to
peer into, dim cluttered holes with shadowy forms moving about,
potters and rug-weavers.
Through one doorway she saw a grave Chinaman standing on a
stage-like platform. He wore a long coat, beautifully flowered, and
a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous
tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the
corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his
chin. She was informed by Ah Cum that the Chinaman was one of the
_literati_ and that he was expounding the deathless philosophy of
Confucius, which, summed up, signified that the end of all
philosophy is Nothing.
Through yet another doorway she observed an ancient silk brocade
loom. Ah Cum halted the caravan and indicated that they might step
within and watch. On a stool eight feet high sat a small boy in a
faded blue cotton, his face like that of young Buddha. He held in
his hands many threads. From time to time the man below would
shout, and the boy would let the threads go with the snap of a
harpist, only to recover them instantly. There was a strip of old
rose brocade in the making that set an ache in the girl's heart for
the want of it.
The girl wondered what effect the information would have upon Ah
Cum if she told him that until a month ago she had never seen a
city, she had never seen a telephone, a railway train, an
automobile, a lift, a paved street. She was almost tempted to tell
him, if only to see the cracks of surprise and incredulity break
the immobility of his yellow countenance.
But no; she must step warily. Curiosity held her by one hand,
urging her to recklessness, and caution held her by the other. Her
safety lay in pretense--that what she saw was as a tale twice told.
A phase of mental activity that men called courage: to summon at
will this energy which barred the ingress of the long cold fingers
of fear, which cleared the throat of stuffiness and kept the glance
level and ever forward. She possessed it, astonishing fact! She had
summoned this energy so continuously during the past four weeks
that now it was abiding; she knew that it would always be with her,
on guard. And immeasurable was the calm evolved from this
knowledge.
The light touch of Ah Cum's hand upon her arm broke the thread of
retrospective thought; and her gray eyes began to register again
the things she saw.
"Jade," said Ah Cum.
She turned away from the doorway of the silk loom to observe. Pole
coolies came joggling along with bobbing blocks of jade--white
jade, splashed and veined with translucent emerald green.
"On the way to the cutters," said Ah Cum. "But we must be getting
along if we are to lunch in the tower of the water-clock."
As if an order had come to her somewhere out of space, the girl
glanced sideways at the other young fool.
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