Now, here was this vital creature, rewarded for her faith by the worship and the prowess of her lovers. What matter if she still wore some of the odd things she had picked up in a hurry? Gowns better than she had ever boasted were being fashioned for her; and the contrast between a tiara showing under a sunbonnet, a scarf of rose-point covering a cotton belt, and diamond-buckled shoes slipped on to torn stockings, made her beauty more piquant, as she sat watching the work of her lovers, on her throne by the sea. No wonder that the men who adored such a woman were brave as she! generous and reckless as she, and on fire with energy and courage.
"But the beautiful woman worked, too, to help her lovers," Nick answered Angela's little allegory. "When she was wounded, she said, 'Just give me a hand up and I won't die. You shall have a big reward for all you do—only hurry, for I can't bear to be seen like this by any one but you.'"
"And what did her lovers say?" Angela asked.
"'We'll die for you, gladly. You have our hearts. You can have our hearts' blood.'" And his eyes spoke to her of himself.
The first day was tiring, nevertheless Angela went out to Oakland that night to the Greek theatre, where a classic tragedy was to be performed; and next day it was the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. They lunched at the Cliff House, and fed the barking sea-lions on the seal rocks. Then came a few hours' rest: and Chinatown was saved as a bonne-bouche for the evening. They dined in the most stately and expensive of the Chinese restaurants—"no chop suey house," as their waiter said, where they entered through the kitchen to see cakes being baked, and pots of rice in the act of cooking. Upstairs the walls were adorned with golden flowers, panel paintings by artists of China, and strange dragons, and Buddhas that nodded on shelves. There were open-work screens, and tables and chairs of black, carved teakwood. Angela would have been aghast had she dreamed that the queer dinner, which she liked and laughed at, cost Nick more than a hundred dollars, but luckily she was not initiated in the rarity of bird's-nest soup or other Chinese delicacies.
It was half-past eight when they finished dining, the hour when Chinatown begins to be most lively, most ready to amuse itself and, incidentally, strangers. Therein lay the kernel of the nut, the blossom of the clove: that this bit of the old, old East, inlaid in the heart of the new West was not an "exhibition" like "Japan in London," but a large, busy town, living for itself alone. The big posters in Chinese characters, pasted on the walls, were for Chinese eyes; not meant to amuse foreigners. The two or three daily papers printed in Chinese, and filled with advertisements, were for the Chinese; the bazaars, crammed with strange Eastern things, were meant to attract women of the Orient, little flitting creatures in embroidered silk jackets and long, tight trousers, who passed and gazed, with dark eyes aslant; let European women come, or stay away, as they pleased, there were plenty of Chinese husbands whose purses were full enough to keep the merchants of Chinatown contented. The tiny, dressed-up Oriental dolls—boy and girls—who strolled about with pink balloons or butterfly kites, in the short intervals between "Mellican" school and Chinese school, were not baby-actors playing parts on the stage, but real flesh and blood children, who had no idea that they were odd to look at in their gay-coloured gowns and tiny caps.
They did not even know that the streets through which, they toddled were any more strange than the "Mellican" streets outside Chinatown, which they doubtless considered extremely dull, made up of huge gray and white buildings like mountains or prisons; whereas the tortuous ways and blind alleys of their home-town were full of colour; balconied house fronts, high and low, huddled together, painted red or blue, and decorated with flowers, or shaped like Chinese junks or toy castles and temples. It was all new, of course, this town of theirs, since the fire; at least what was above-ground and known to foreigners was new; but it had been built in imitation of past glories. The alleys were as blind, there were as many mysterious, hidden little courts, and packing-case houses and bazaars as ever, so that the children saw no difference; and already a curious look of age, a drugged weariness, had fallen upon the seven-year-old Chinatown.
Angela walked beside Nick through the lighted streets, enchanted with the flowerlike lanterns that bloomed in front of balconied restaurants or places of entertainment, and with the crowding figures that shuffled silently by in felt-soled slippers or high rocker shoes. Tiny, elaborate women, young and old, slim youths with greeny-yellow faces like full summer moons, little old men with hands hidden in flowing sleeves, and dull eyes staring straight ahead, were to her ghosts of the Far East, or creatures of a fantastic dream from which she would soon awake.
When they had "done" the principal thoroughfares and Angela had bought ivory boxes, jade bracelets, and a silver bell collar for Timmy the cat, Nick said that the time had come to join their guide. He had engaged a man supposed to know Chinatown inside and out, and the rendezvous was at 9:30 in Portsmouth Square, the "lungs of Chinatown"—close to the memorial statue of Robert Louis Stevenson.