Mrs. Spring Fragrance
The winter rains were over: the spring had come to California, flushing
the hills with green and causing an ever-changing pageant of flowers to
pass over them. But there was no spring in Lae Choo’s heart, for the
Little One remained away from her arms. He was being kept in a mission.
White women were caring for him, and though for one full moon he had
pined for his mother and refused to be comforted he was now apparently
happy and contented. Five moons or five months had gone by since the day
he had passed with Lae Choo through the Golden Gate; but the great
Government at Washington still delayed sending the answer which would
return him to his parents.
* * * * *
Hom Hing was disconsolately rolling up and down the balls in his abacus
box when a keen-faced young man stepped into his store.
“What news?” asked the Chinese merchant.
“This!” The young man brought forth a typewritten letter. Hom Hing read
the words:
“Re Chinese child, alleged to be the son of Hom Hing, Chinese merchant,
doing business at 425 Clay street, San Francisco.
“Same will have attention as soon as possible.”
Hom Hing returned the letter, and without a word continued his
manipulation of the counting machine.
“Have you anything to say?” asked the young man.
“Nothing. They have sent the same letter fifteen times before. Have you
not yourself showed it to me?”
“True!” The young man eyed the Chinese merchant furtively. He had a
proposition to make and he was pondering whether or not the time was
opportune.
“How is your wife?” he inquired solicitously—and diplomatically.
Hom Hing shook his head mournfully.
“She seems less every day,” he replied. “Her food she takes only when I
bid her and her tears fall continually. She finds no pleasure in dress
or flowers and cares not to see her friends. Her eyes stare all night. I
think before another moon she will pass into the land of spirits.”
“No!” exclaimed the young man, genuinely startled.
“If the boy not come home I lose my wife sure,” continued Hom Hing with
bitter sadness.
“It’s not right,” cried the young man indignantly. Then he made his
proposition.
The Chinese father’s eyes brightened exceedingly.
“Will I like you to go to Washington and make them give you the paper to
restore my son?” cried he. “How can you ask when you know my heart’s
desire?”
“Then,” said the young fellow, “I will start next week. I am anxious to
see this thing through if only for the sake of your wife’s peace of
mind.”
“I will call her. To hear what you think to do will make her glad,” said
Hom Hing.
He called a message to Lae Choo upstairs through a tube in the wall.
In a few moments she appeared, listless, wan, and hollow-eyed; but when
her husband told her the young lawyer’s suggestion she became as one
electrified; her form straightened, her eyes glistened; the color
flushed to her cheeks.
“Oh,” she cried, turning to James Clancy, “You are a hundred man good!”
The young man felt somewhat embarrassed; his eyes shifted a little under
the intense gaze of the Chinese mother.
“Well, we must get your boy for you,” he responded. “Of course”—turning
to Hom Hing—“it will cost a little money. You can’t get fellows to hurry
the Government for you without gold in your pocket.”
Hom Hing stared blankly for a moment. Then: “How much do you want, Mr.
Clancy?” he asked quietly.
“Well, I will need at least five hundred to start with.”
Hom Hing cleared his throat.
“I think I told to you the time I last paid you for writing letters for
me and seeing the Custom boss here that nearly all I had was gone!”
“Oh, well then we won’t talk about it, old fellow. It won’t harm the boy
to stay where he is, and your wife may get over it all right.”
“What that you say?” quavered Lae Choo.
James Clancy looked out of the window.
“He says,” explained Hom Hing in English, “that to get our boy we have
to have much money.”
“Money! Oh, yes.”
Lae Choo nodded her head.
“I have not got the money to give him.”
For a moment Lae Choo gazed wonderingly from one face to the other;
then, comprehension dawning upon her, with swift anger, pointing to the
lawyer, she cried: “You not one hundred man good; you just common white
man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” returned James Clancy, bowing and smiling ironically.
Hom Hing pushed his wife behind him and addressed the lawyer again: “I
might try,” said he, “to raise something; but five hundred—it is not
possible.”
“What about four?”
“I tell you I have next to nothing left and my friends are not rich.”
“Very well!”
The lawyer moved leisurely toward the door, pausing on its threshold to
light a cigarette.
“Stop, white man; white man, stop!”
Lae Choo, panting and terrified, had started forward and now stood
beside him, clutching his sleeve excitedly.
“You say you can go to get paper to bring my Little One to me if Hom
Hing give you five hundred dollars?”
The lawyer nodded carelessly; his eyes were intent upon the cigarette
which would not take the fire from the match.
“Then you go get paper. If Hom Hing not can give you five hundred
dollars—I give you perhaps what more that much.”
She slipped a heavy gold bracelet from her wrist and held it out to the
man. Mechanically he took it.
“I go get more!”
She scurried away, disappearing behind the door through which she had
come.
“Oh, look here, I can’t accept this,” said James Clancy, walking back to
Hom Hing and laying down the bracelet before him.
“It’s all right,” said Hom Hing, seriously, “pure China gold. My wife’s
parent give it to her when we married.”
“But I can’t take it anyway,” protested the young man.
“It is all same as money. And you want money to go to Washington,”
replied Hom Hing in a matter of fact manner.
“See, my jade earrings—my gold buttons—my hairpins—my comb of pearl and
my rings—one, two, three, four, five rings; very good—very good—all same
much money. I give them all to you. You take and bring me paper for my
Little One.”
Lae Choo piled up her jewels before the lawyer.
Hom Hing laid a restraining hand upon her shoulder. “Not all, my wife,”
he said in Chinese. He selected a ring—his gift to Lae Choo when she
dreamed of the tree with the red flower. The rest of the jewels he
pushed toward the white man.
“Take them and sell them,” said he. “They will pay your fare to
Washington and bring you back with the paper.”
For one moment James Clancy hesitated. He was not a sentimental man; but
something within him arose against accepting such payment for his
services.
“They are good, good,” pleadingly asserted Lae Choo, seeing his
hesitation.
Whereupon he seized the jewels, thrust them into his coat pocket, and
walked rapidly away from the store.
IV
Lae Choo followed after the missionary woman through the mission nursery
school. Her heart was beating so high with happiness that she could
scarcely breathe. The paper had come at last—the precious paper which
gave Hom Hing and his wife the right to the possession of their own
child. It was ten months now since he had been taken from them—ten
months since the sun had ceased to shine for Lae Choo.
The room was filled with children—most of them wee tots, but none so wee
as her own. The mission woman talked as she walked. She told Lae Choo
that little Kim, as he had been named by the school, was the pet of the
place, and that his little tricks and ways amused and delighted every
one. He had been rather difficult to manage at first and had cried much
for his mother; “but children so soon forget, and after a month he
seemed quite at home and played around as bright and happy as a bird.”
“Yes,” responded Lae Choo. “Oh, yes, yes!”
But she did not hear what was said to her. She was walking in a maze of
anticipatory joy.
“Wait here, please,” said the mission woman, placing Lae Choo in a
chair. “The very youngest ones are having their breakfast.”
She withdrew for a moment—it seemed like an hour to the mother—then she
reappeared leading by the hand a little boy dressed in blue cotton
overalls and white-soled shoes. The little boy’s face was round and
dimpled and his eyes were very bright.
“Little One, ah, my Little One!” cried Lae Choo.
She fell on her knees and stretched her hungry arms toward her son.
But the Little One shrunk from her and tried to hide himself in the
folds of the white woman’s skirt.
“Go’way, go’way!” he bade his mother.
THE CHINESE LILY
Mermei lived in an upstairs room of a Chinatown dwelling-house. There
were other little Chinese women living on the same floor, but Mermei
never went amongst them. She was not as they were. She was a cripple. A
fall had twisted her legs so that she moved around with difficulty and
scarred her face so terribly that none save Lin John cared to look upon
it. Lin John, her brother, was a laundryman, working for another of his
countrymen. Lin John and Mermei had come to San Francisco with their
parents when they were small children. Their mother had died the day she
entered the foreign city, and the father the week following, both having
contracted a fever on the steamer. Mermei and Lin John were then taken
in charge by their father’s brother, and although he was a poor man he
did his best for them until called away by death.
Long before her Uncle died Mermei had met with the accident that had
made her not as other girls; but that had only strengthened her
brother’s affection, and old Lin Wan died happy in the knowledge that
Lin John would ever put Mermei before himself.
So Mermei lived in her little upstairs room, cared for by Lin John, and
scarcely an evening passed that he did not call to see her. One evening,
however, Lin John failed to appear, and Mermei began to feel very sad
and lonely. Mermei could embroider all day in contented silence if she
knew that in the evening someone would come to whom she could
communicate all the thoughts that filled a small black head that knew
nothing of life save what it saw from an upstairs window. Mermei’s
window looked down upon the street, and she would sit for hours, pressed
close against it, watching those who passed below and all that took
place. That day she had seen many things which she had put into her
mental portfolio for Lin John’s edification when evening should come.
Two yellow-robed priests had passed below on their way to the joss house
in the next street; a little bird with a white breast had fluttered
against the window pane; a man carrying an image of a Gambling Cash
Tiger had entered the house across the street; and six young girls of
about her own age, dressed gaily as if to attend a wedding, had also
passed over the same threshold.
But when nine o’clock came and no Lin John, the girl began to cry
softly. She did not often shed tears, but for some reason unknown to
Mermei herself, the sight of those joyous girls caused sad reflections.
In the midst of her weeping a timid knock was heard. It was not Lin
John. He always gave a loud rap, then entered without waiting to be
bidden. Mermei hobbled to the door, pulled it open, and there, in the
dim light of the hall without, beheld a young girl—the most beautiful
young girl that Mermei had ever seen—and she stood there extending to
Mermei a blossom from a Chinese lily plant. Mermei understood the
meaning of the offered flower, and accepting it, beckoned for her
visitor to follow her into her room.
What a delightful hour that was to Mermei! She forgot that she was
scarred and crippled, and she and the young girl chattered out their
little hearts to one another. “Lin John is dear, but one can’t talk to a
man, even if he is a brother, as one can to one the same as oneself,”