In Macao.
by Charles A. Gunnison.
California.
This is thy form, dear, native home of mine,-- A gold-net hammock swung from palm to pine, Moved by the breezes of the peaceful sea, And in the net, smiling so drowsily, My mother California, queen divine, Rests, while the poppy garlands her entwine.
In her warm arms, "neath cloudless summer skies, As child I heard her bee-hummed lullabies, Saw her red malvas, blue nemophylae, Pink manzanitas, deep-hued laurel tree, And what were marvels to my childish eyes, Her mariposas, (tethered b.u.t.terflies).
What of the rich and wondrous foreign things Which each new tide to her in tribute brings!
Although from olive, orange, fig, and vine, Her own fond children all their wealth consign, "Tis Flora"s gifts my royal mother sings, As, joined to palm and pine, her hammock swings.
In Macao.
_A Story from the "Gra.s.shopper"s Library."_
I was seated one pleasant day in the garden, which was given to the city of Macao by the Marcos family, near the grotto sacred to the poet Camoens, when a Portuguese priest came from among the wilderness of flowers and sat beside me. He spoke English with a pleasant accent and we read Bowring"s effusion together, as it is engraved on the marble slab nearby. Scarcely had we finished, and the father was telling me of Goa in India, when my uncle Robert came from beneath the great banyan tree and stood before us. The father jumped to his feet, and throwing back his brown robe, rushed forward toward my uncle with a stilletto held ready for an upward stroke. Quickly my uncle drew a revolver and fired--and the father fell dead at my feet.
I
To those who have been in Southern Europe and have seen the towns along the Riviera, the first view of Macao, as the steamboat approaches from Hong Kong, gives the impression of having been suddenly transported to the sunny Mediterranean. Were it not for the colour of the water, and the Chinese junks, Macao would indeed be a perfect representation of any of those lovely spots, as she lies along her crescent bay, from Mount Nillau to Mount Charil, defended by the frowning forts of Sam Francisco and Our Lady of Bom Parto. Beautiful as this picture is, it was doubly so in the brilliant sunset colouring of a certain March day, as the steamer slowly came to her wharf and the pa.s.sengers stepped ash.o.r.e beneath the blue and white flag of Portugal, in this, her farthest eastern possession. The houses with their delicate washings of pink, blue, yellow or green, with white stucco ornaments, now golden in the light, had a warmth of colouring well set off by the dark foliage of camphor and banyan trees showing above the garden walls. The few pa.s.sengers soon dispersed, in chairs or on foot, leaving but one of their number upon the wharf. He was apparently expecting some one to come for him, for he refused all offers of a.s.sistance from the coolies and seated himself just outside the gate. American, of medium height, brown haired and tanned by a tropical sun, Robert Adams was as good a specimen of Anglo Saxon youth as England herself could boast of. He was the last descendant of a New England family, which had preserved its purity for three centuries as unmixed with continental blood as though the three centuries had been pa.s.sed in the quiet vales of Devon, instead of in the New World with its broken barriers.
For three years, after a successful college course, he had been in the only shipping house in Hong Kong which sickly American commerce of the day was able to support in the once flourishing China trade. A small fortune and a good salary, a const.i.tution which even an Eastern summer could not break down, and above all, the heart of the girl he loved, were surely possessions which any king might envy him. Presently a neat bamboo chair borne by three liveried coolies came at a trot down the street, and being placed before this last of the pa.s.sengers, carried him away into the darkness which, with the suddenness of the tropics, had fallen upon the city. The stillness was broken only by the noise of escaping steam from the boat and the regular patter of the barefooted chair carriers. When the chair had disappeared up the narrow, winding street, a Portuguese wrapped in a black cloak came from behind a wall, then by another way walked rapidly over the hill and down the other side to the Praya, arriving in front of one of the largest houses on that most beautiful promenade just as the coolies put down their burden.
The oil lamps along the Praya had been lighted, stretching out to the Estrada Sam Francisco, where the bright windows in the hospital of Sam Januarius seemed to be the lake of lights into which this long stream flowed. No one was abroad, no steps sounded along the pavement except those of the sentry as he walked, and _smoked_, before the neighbouring residence of the Governor. Death at night and sleep in the day time are the characteristics of Macao. No one seems to work, play, sing, dance or even read unless the latter indeed may be done in what Alphonse Daudet calls _la Bibliotheque des cigales_.
As Robert Adams stepped from the chair, the Portuguese came forward with outstretched hand saying: "What is the news Dom Robert in Hong Kong?"
"Oh, Dom Pedro, you came out so suddenly I thought I was attacked. No news, unless it is that the rector of St. John"s is to join me to the loveliest girl in Macao or the world, in just three weeks." "I hope you won"t disappoint him Dom Robert, you came very near doing so to-night,"
said Pedro de Amaral with a laugh. "How, pray?" asked Adams as they entered the now unbarred gate. "You were within three feet of the water, if you had fallen in, that would have disappointed him. Not? Three feet is near. Not?" "Yes, and the boiler might have burst," replied Adams laughing. "Or more improbable yet the Portuguese government might have revived Macao, which would kill me with astonishment my dear Amaral."
Having entered the house he was followed by Dom Pedro, who bent upon him such a look of hatred as only the eyes of Latin races can give. The Portuguese turned to the right to his own apartments and Adams following a servant to the left, was soon in the dimly lighted library of Dom Luiz de Amaral the father of Dom Pedro. There were not many books on the shelves but a superb collection of Oriental swords and knives was arranged in the cases from which the shelves had been taken. Two old engravings, one of the poet Camoens and the other of Catarina de Atayde, his beloved, who died of grief at his banishment, hung on the wall; the rest of the furnishings was of that cosmopolitan character which is sure to collect in the home of a European resident in the far East.
"Can"t you see me Robert?" said a laughing voice of great sweetness from a corner of the study. "One would think that both your eyes had met the same fate that the right one of poor Camoens did in Morocco." "My darling Priscilla how could I see you ten feet away from the light? You know olive oil don"t give the brightest illumination. But its enough though." "Don"t!" "Just one," and then a sound not unknown to many of us put a stop to the conversation. "Shall I leave the room children?" came in merry tones from another corner and immediately an old lady came forward giving both hands to him. "That miserable oil of Dom Amaral"s has put me into a pretty mess," said Adams half annoyed, but laughing as he greeted the lady. "Don"t berate me before my face dear friend about my light, especially when you are so soon to take our brightest light away from us." "Fairly trapped, Dom Amaral," cried Adams laughing heartily at this third interruption. "And here is Dom Pedro dressed for dinner," he continued as the younger Amaral entered the room. "I"ll be with you presently and have my eyes toned down to your Macao standard."
Being so constant a visitor, Robert Adams had his own rooms at Dom Amaral"s, where he found his bags unpacked and the clothes laid out by those deftest of servants, the Chinese. According to custom the dinner of Macao was served at the late hour of nine.
Dom Luiz Diego de Amaral was one of the wealthiest Portuguese in the city, having, unlike most of his fellow citizens, investments abroad which brought him a considerable income after the birth of Hong Kong killed Macao and left it a city of the past, of poverty and pride.
Having in his youth married a Spanish woman who bore him one son, Pedro, he was left a widower before the age of twenty-five.
Some years after, being in Boston where he then had large shipping interests, he took a second wife, Priscilla Harvey, and returned to Macao. Madam de Amaral"s only sister, wife of Captain Fernald had one child which was left an orphan at an early age by the drowning of both parents in Portsmouth harbour.
This orphan, Priscilla Fernald, was taken to her aunt in China and became a member of the household of Dom Amaral. It was a strange transplanting for such a flower from the cold coast of Puritan New England to the tropical, Roman Catholic colony in the heart of heathendom. But the flower of so st.u.r.dy a stock remained true. It was long accepted by all, even by the maiden Priscilla, that young Amaral was to be her husband though nothing had been said on the subject.
Later, the small circle of Macao society, of which poverty and pride were the ruling features, became too dull for the young girl and her foster parents took her often to Hong Kong where she met with those of the outer world.
In that hospitable society of the "city of the fragrant streams," where the dinner table seems to be the only rendezvous, save a garden party now and then, a Tarrantella dance or a Government House ball, the fair Priscilla met young Robert Adams, a native of her far away and almost unknown home. The acquaintance blossomed into friendship and ripened into love. The lover was accepted, and now a courtship of two years was in three weeks to see them married. There were many disappointed youths and envious of Robert Adams, but all took their misfortune as in the way of the world, except young Amaral, who, in silence, had watched the course of events and now hated the happy suitor with all the fierceness of his Southern blood.
That night Robert Adams, unlike the conventional lover, but like a healthy, light-hearted fellow, fell asleep without a sigh, listening to the waves as they broke regularly on the stone embankment before his window. In the room below, Dom Pedro walked until the early morning, no beating of waves could lull him to sleep, for his head ached and his eyes burned in the fever of jealousy. Thus he brooded over his loss till the sun gilded the hermitage fort of Our Lady of Guia.
II.
The following day was Sunday, the liveliest, or rather the only day with any life at all, in Macao, for the visitors from Hong Kong then go about the city sight seeing to be ready for the early return of the steamboat on Monday morning.
A pleasant spot, and one not often molested by visitors on account of the somewhat toilsome climb required to reach it, is the church of Our Lady of Pehna on the summit of Mt. Nillau. Built in 1622 on this high point to be more easily protected from any possible invasion of the Chinese from the main island of Heang Shang, the church serves now only as an addition to the picturesqueness of Macao, and though repaired in 1837 is again in ruin. Priscilla and her affianced chose this for their Sabbath walk, for it is only through nature that the Protestants in Macao can worship nature"s G.o.d, and surely the incense of flowers could bear to Him on high the thanksgiving of those two happy hearts, as truly as the frankincense and myrrh which the good Fathers of the last century burnt upon Mt. Nillau. The narrow but well paved streets with their stuccoed houses, barred windows and little peep-holes at the doors, for questioning the doubtful applicants for admission, even the two months old posters of Chiarini"s circus had a new charm this Sunday morning; for Adams it was a day of quiet after his week of noise and bustle in Hong Kong, while for Priscilla it seemed a gala day full of life after the six silent days of sleepy monotony. "I can see that Pedro is not friendly toward you Robert," she said; "I could hear him walking during all the night and am sure he is planning something to annoy you, I know his ways so well." "Don"t worry, Priscilla, Dom Pedro was probably troubled over some loss at the fan-tan table; they say he won five hundred Mexicans last week and then lost that sum doubled."
"That may be so, Robert, but our approaching marriage is a great cross to him. It is hard to tell what Pedro"s thoughts are; his eyes are like our Macao windows of isingla.s.s and let very little light either way."
The winding road between ruined walls of gray stone, half covered with clinging ficus, spanned by broken arches, with here and there a fallen urn, led them through picturesque turns and by mossy steps to the foot of the huge black cross erected before the empty church. Neither spoke; they did not care for words and the only expression which framed itself audibly was that oft repeated _jubilate_ of health and youth, "How beautiful it is to live!"
Dim in the distance, of almost the same shade as the sky, rose the White Cloud Hills; lesser hills more distinct in waving outline lay before them; then rocky promontories and islands with grotesque forms like the twisted dragons of Chinese embroideries, and the low stretch which marked the position of the wonderful city of Canton. On the yellow water here and there were junks with tanned sails and gay banners; islands with graceful paG.o.das were seen, and the huge white cathedral of the near dependency of Taipa. Then in the foreground at their very feet was Macao, a feast of colour, red roofs, many-hued walls, green trees and brilliant gardens, beautiful as the jewel-set sheath of a Venetian dagger, with its poison and death-dealing wickedness hidden.
Dom Amaral with his wife had gone to the new cathedral to services; their well appointed chairs had scarcely left the court and the gates been bolted behind them when Dom Pedro came from his room. His face had changed greatly since the day before; the loss of sleep and the bitterness of his heart had made him look pale and thin. For the first time in his life he had spoken harshly to his valet, and that meek Celestial wore an expression of grief and surprise, for Pedro Amaral, whatever his faults, did not have the vulgar one of venting his spleen upon his inferiors, so that his lifelong servant was at a loss to account for the sudden change.
Dom Pedro walked to the library and drawing the curtains behind him sat down before the cases filled with brilliant steel. Suddenly he looked away and picked up a book from the table, opening it at random but constantly his eyes reverted to the cases before him. Slowly his features relaxed and with a broken sigh he was about to replace the book when a small photograph card fell from its pages; the face was that of Robert Adams, the book Priscilla"s "Common Prayer." Like a flash the old lines came back in his forehead; he went to the case and opening the gla.s.s doors, carefully took down a small, silver sheath, the work of some artist of Goa, wherein the influence of both India and Europe showed in the execution. The pressure of a b.u.t.ton pushed out a grooved dagger which fitted so low in the sheath as to show only the head of its jeweled hilt. Dom Pedro removed the dagger, wrapped it in his handkerchief and then putting it in his breast pocket replaced the empty sheath in its old position.
III.
The government of Macao derives its greatest revenue from the licensing of gambling houses, and these form one of the princ.i.p.al attractions in the city to the European from Hong Kong as well as the native Portuguese and Chinese. Whatever fault the visitor finds, on moral grounds, with these houses he must admit the fact that they are quiet and orderly, while the picturesqueness of the life within them and that peculiar glamour which varnishes all that pertains to a great gambling hall where fortune shows herself directly face to face with us, has a charm which hides the immorality from even the most straight-laced Puritan.
One of these houses was the favourite and nightly resort of Dom Pedro, where he played high or low according to the state of his finances at the moment. Dom Amaral, though himself a devotee of the fan-tan table, observed with fear this controlling pa.s.sion of his son which he believed would some day destroy the comfortable fortune he had ama.s.sed with so many years of labour.
Adams would have certainly preferred to spend the whole evening in the family circle, but Dom Pedro urged him with so much, and such unusual kindness to accompany him to the gambling house that he consented, and at about eleven o"clock the two young men left the Praya and walked into the town beneath the soft lights of the oil lamps. The streets were deserted as usual, here and there a policeman, hooded like a pilgrim, sauntered leisurely along, or the Chinese watchman with drum and clapper woke the echoes of the lonely ways warning thieves of his approach.
The only illuminated houses were fan-tan houses and these presently became numerous; now and then music was heard but not of a very seductive kind. Into one of the largest and most gaily decorated houses, Dom Pedro and Robert Adams went, climbing to the second floor by stairs bordered with shrubs in huge Chinese pots.
The main playing room contained several tables or counters arranged along the walls, behind which sat the croupiers; at one of these Dom Pedro stopped. On the table was a plate of metal divided into quarters of about a foot square by deep cut lines crossing it, each square being marked in Chinese characters indicating one, two, three and four. The croupiers rattled a pile of bright bra.s.s coins, with square holes in them, called cash; then as Dom Pedro made a sign that he was about to play, the croupier drew away a part of them under a bowl and Dom Pedro placed his wager on number three. The croupier with a bamboo wand then counted out the remaining cash one at a time in sets of four, until finally there were but three left; this being Dom Pedro"s number, he won the stakes.
"In good luck to-night," he said, turning to Adams, "Try if this is a lucky day for you." Robert Adams placed his money on the same square which Dom Pedro had won from, and again the croupier counted the remainder slowly, having drawn away some of the cash under the bowl, four at a time until but two remained and Adams" stake became part of the bank. "Lucky in love, unlucky at play" he said with a laugh, "I shall bet no more to-night." Dom Pedro"s face darkened but in silence he continued winning at every count.
Above the table was a square hole in the ceiling opening into an upper room where those could sit who did not wish to be seen, and were thus able to let their bets down in a little basket and with the same draw up their winnings. This upper room being purposely kept in half light enabled its occupants to see those below without being seen themselves.
Dom Pedro"s luck was astonishing and quite a crowd of onlookers gathered about. Robert Adams growing weary of the play in which he took no interest, left, saying that he would walk slowly as far as the ruined cathedral of St. Paul and on his return step in again. As he stepped back from the table he looked up toward the opening in the ceiling where were two women with faces wrapped in black silk robosas, which showed only the eyes; as the eyes seemed fixed upon him he raised his hat. The action seemed to cause the women considerable consternation, for both hurriedly sprang back from the rail and in doing so one let fall, upon the table below, the basket with a bit of paper and several Mexican dollars which rolled about the room. Everyone looked up laughing at the accident but no one from above claimed the money. Adams left the room glad to be in the fresh air under the clear, starlit sky.
No more lonely or picturesque ruin ever existed than the church of St.
Paul; though human habitations crowd close upon it, they are however the houses of Chinese and make the Christian edifice seem the more solitary.
The church is of that favourite style of architecture so common in new and old Spain, which always brings to the mind of the wanderer in foreign lands the name of good San Xavier.
The half moon had risen high enough to illuminate the whole front as Adams climbed the broad, ma.s.sive steps to the paved s.p.a.ce before it.
Leaning against the heavy bal.u.s.trade he enjoyed the picture. The shadows were deep and through the sightless windows shone a few silver stars.
The magnificent front of solid granite with graceful scroll-work and carved outline, blackened here by smoke and there by age, with vines and trees growing from crevices, stood in wondrous beauty.