There were other faces in the picture, but with the exception of the
woman's and the man's he could not reassemble the features of any.
A wild and bitter night. The nor'easter, packed with a cold, penetrating
rain, beat down from the Yellow Sea, its insensate fury clearing the
highways of all save belated labourers and 'ricksha boys. Along the
Chinese Bund the sampans huddled even more closely together, and rocked
and creaked and complained. The inscrutable countenance of the average
Chinaman is the result of five thousand years of misery. It was a night
for hand warmers--little jigsawed brass receptacles filled with smoldering
punk or charcoal, which you carried in your sleeves and hugged if you
happened to be a Chinaman, as Ling Foo was.
He was a merchant. He sold furs, curios, table linen, embroideries. His
shop was out on the Woosung Road. He did not sit on his stool or in his
alcove and wait for customers. He made packs of his merchandise and
canvassed the hotels in the morning, from floor to floor, from room to
room. His curios, however, he left in the shop. That was his lure to bring
his hotel customers round in the afternoon, when there were generally
additional profits and no commissions. This, of course, had been the
modus operandi in the happy days before 1914, when white men began the
slaughter of white men. Nowadays Ling Foo was off to the Astor House the
moment he had news of a ship dropping anchor off the bar twelve miles down
the Whangpoo River. The hour no longer mattered; the point was to beat his
competitors to the market--and often there was no market.
He did not call the white people foreign devils; he called them customers.
That they worshipped a bearded Buddha was no concern of his. Born in the
modern town, having spent twelve years in San Francisco, he was not
heavily barnacled with tradition. He was shrewd, a suave bargainer, and
as honest as the day is long. His English was fluent.
To-night he was angry with the fates. The ship was hours late. Moreover,
it was a British transport, dropping down from Vladivostok. He would be
wasting his time to wait for such passengers as came ashore. They would be
tired and hungry and uncomfortable. So at seven o'clock he lit a piece of
punk, dropped it into his hand warmer, threw his pack over his shoulders,
and left the cheery lobby of the hotel where he had been waiting since
five in the afternoon. He would be cold and wet and hungry when he reached
his shop.