CHAPTER LII

A TRIP TO CHINATOWN

Samuel Brannan brought the first news from Washington. Gwin, who owed his place to Broderick, had after all betrayed him. The bargained-for double patronage was not forthcoming. Broderick was grievously disappointed in Buchanan. There had been a clash between them. No Democratic Senator, the President had said, could quarrel profitably with the Administration. Which meant that Broderick must sustain the Lecompton Resolution or lose face and favor in the nation's forum. Things were at a bitter pass.

"What's the Lecompton Resolution?" Alice asked.

"It's a long story," Brannan answered. "In brief, it means forcing slavery on Kansas, whose people don't want it. And on the Lecompton Resolution hinges more or less the balance of power, which will keep us, here, in the free States, or give us, bound and gagged, to the South."

"And you say Gwin has repudiated his pact?"

"Either that ... or Buchanan has refused to sanction it. The result is the same. David doesn't get his patronage."

"I'm glad! I'm glad!" cried Alice.

Brannan looked at her astonished. "But ... you don't know what it means. His men, awaiting their political rewards! His organization here ... it will be weakened. You don't understand, Mrs. Windham."

"I don't care," she said. "It leaves him--cleaner--stronger!" She turned swiftly and left the room. Brannan shrugged his shoulders. "There's no fathoming women," he thought.

* * * * *

But Broderick, in far Washington, understood when there came to him a letter. It bore neither signature nor salutation:

"When one is stripped of weapons--sometimes it is by the will of God! And He does not fail to give us better ones.

"Truth! Righteousness! Courage to attack all Evil. These are mightier than the weapons of the World.

"Oh, my friend, stand fast! You are never alone. The spirit of another is forever with you. Watching--waiting--knowing you shall win the victory which transcends all price."

He read this letter endlessly while people waited in his ante-room. Then he summoned Herbert Waters, now his secretary, and sent them all away. Among them was a leader of the New York money-powers who never forgave that slight; another was an emissary of the President. Broderick neither knew nor cared. He put the letter in his pocket; walked for hours in the snow, on the banks of the frozen Potomac.

That afternoon he reviewed the situation, was closeted an hour with Douglas of Illinois. The two of them sought Seward of New York, who had just arrived. To their conference came Chase and Wade of Ohio, Trumbull of Illinois, Fessenden of Maine, Wilson of Massachusetts, Cameron of Pennsylvania.

Soon thereafter Volney Howard in San Francisco received an unsigned telegram, supposedly from Gwin:

Unexpected gathering anti-slavery forces. Looks bad for Lecompton Resolution. President worried about California.

In the southeastern part of San Francisco a few tea and silk merchants had, years before, established the nucleus of an Oriental quarter. Gradually it had grown until there were provision shops where queer-looking dried vegetables, oysters strung necklace-wise on rings of bamboo, eggs preserved in a kind of brown mold, strange brown nuts and sweetmeats were displayed; there were drugs-shops with wondrous gold and ebony fret work, temples with squat gods above amazing shrines.

There were stark-odored fish-stalls in alleyways so narrow that the sun touched them rarely, barred upper-windows from which the faces of slant-eyed women peeped in eager wistfulness as if upon an unfamiliar world. Cellar doorways from which slipper-shod, pasty-faced Cantonese crept furtively at dawn; sentineled portals, which gave ingress to gambling houses protected by sheet-iron doors.

On a pleasant Sunday, early in February, Benito, Alice, Adrian and Inez walked in Chinatown with David Broderick. The latter was about to leave for Washington to attend his second session in Congress. Things had fared ill with him politically there and at home.

Just now David Broderick was trying to forget Congress and those battles which the next few weeks were sure to bring. He wanted to carry with him to Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked beside him in the mellow Winter sunshine. An odor of fruit blossoms came to them almost unreally sweet, and farther down the street they saw many little street-stands where flowering branches of prune and almond were displayed.

"It's their New Year festival," Adrian explained. "Come, we'll visit some of the shops; they'll give us tea and cakes, for that's their custom."

"How interesting!" remarked Inez. She shook hands cordially with a grave, handsomely gowned Chinese merchant, whose emporium they now entered. To her astonishment he greeted her in perfect English. "A graduate of Harvard College," Broderick whispered in her ear.

Wong Lee brought forward a tray on which was an assortment of strange sweetmeats in little porcelain dishes; he poured from a large tea-pot a tiny bowl of tea for each of his visitors. While they drank and nibbled at the candy he pressed his hands together, moved them up and down and bowed low as a visitor entered; the latter soon departed, apparently abashed by the Americans.

"He would not mingle with the 'foreign devils,'" Broderick smiled. "That was Chang Foo, who runs the Hall of Everlasting Fortune, wasn't it?"

"Yes, the gambling house," Wong Lee answered. "A bad man," his voice sank to a whisper. "Chief of the Hip Lee tong, for the protection of the trade in slave women. He came, no doubt, to threaten me because I am harboring a Christian convert. See," he opened a drawer and took therefrom a rectangle of red paper. "Last night this was found on my door. It reads something like this:

"Withdraw your shelter from the renegade Po Lun, who renounces the gods of his fathers. Send him forth to meet his fate--lest the blade of an avenger cleave your meddling skull."

"Po was a member of the Hip Yees when he was converted; they stole a Chinese maiden--his beloved and Po Sun hoped to rescue her. That is why he joined that band of rascals."

"And did he succeed?" asked Alice.

"No," Wong Lee sighed. "They spirited her away--out of the city. She is doubtless in some slave house at Vancouver or Seattle. Poor Po! He is heartbroken."

"And what of yourself; are you not in danger?" Broderick questioned.

Wong smiled wanly. "Until the New Year season ends I am safe at any rate."

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