Even after the doctor had told him three nights later that the case was hopeless and that Fanny would die—even after, as a man of constructive and practical brain, he had excused himself for a few minutes and had sat down in the back room to write a line to Yung Quai, his divorced wife in San Francisco, bidding her hold herself in readiness and including a hundred dollars for transportation—he continued to treat Fanny Mei Hi with the utmost gentleness and patience.
Tossing on her hot pillows, she could hear him in the long watches of the night breathing faintly, clearing his throat cautiously so as not to disturb her; and on Monday morning—he had lifted her up and was holding her close to help her resist the frightful, hacking cough that was shaking her wasted frame—he told her that he had reconsidered about little Fanny.
“You are going to die,” he said placidly, in a way, apologetically, “and it is fitting that your daughter should make proper obeisance to your departed spirit. A child’s devotion is best stimulated by gratitude. And little Fanny shall be grateful to you. For she will go to a good American school and, to pay for it, I shall sell your possessions after you are dead. The white jade bracelet, the earrings of green jade, the red sables—they will bring over four thousand dollars. Even this little bauble”—he slipped the glittering bracelet from her thin wrist—“this, too, will bring a few dollars. Ten, perhaps twelve; I know a dealer of such trifles in Mott Street who—”
“Say!”
Her voice cut in, raucous, challenging. She had wriggled out of his arms. An opaque glaze had come over her violet-blue eyes. Her whole body trembled. But she pulled herself on her elbows with a terrible, straining effort, refusing the support of his ready hands.
“Say! How much did yer say this here bracelet’s worth?”
He smiled gently. He did not want to hurt her woman’s vanity. So he increased his first appraisal.
“Twenty dollars,” he suggested. “Perhaps twenty-one. Do not worry. It shall be sold to the best advantage—for your little daughter—”
And then, quite suddenly, Fanny burst into laughter—gurgling laughter that shook her body, choked her throat, and leaped out in a stream of blood from her tortured lungs.
“Twenty dollars!” she cried, “Twenty-one! Say, you poor cheese, that bracelet alone’ll pay for lil Fanny’s eddycation. It’s worth three thousand! It’s real, real—gold an’ diamonds! Gold an’ diamonds! Yung Long gave it to me, yer poor fool!” And she fell back and died, a smile upon her face, which made her look like a sleeping child, wistful and perverse.