Gracie Goodnight by Thomas Burke

Gracie Goodnight had the loveliest hair that ever was seen east of / Aldgate Pump-where lies that land of lovely girls and luxurious locks. / It was this head of hers-melodious as an autumn sunset-that turned the / discordant head of old fat Kang Foo Ah, and made it reel with delicious / fancies, and led him to hire her as a daily girl to clean up his home and / serve in his odoriferous shop.

It was legendary in Limehouse that old Kang Foo Ah knew a thing or three. / When he took that little shop in Pennyfields, business was, according / to those best qualified to speak, rotten. Yet now-in the short space of / eighteen months-he had a very comfortable fortune stowed away in safe / places known to himself. Where his predecessor and his rivals laid out / threepence and made fourpence, Kang Foo Ah would lay out threepence / and make sixpence-halfpenny. As he stood behind his counter, with the / glorious-headed Gracie, nimble-fingered and deft of brain, at his side, / he would smile blandly upon her and upon his customers; his hands, / begemmed like a Hatton Garden Jew's, folded across his stomach. He / positively exuded prosperity, so that its waves seemed to beat upon you / and set you tingling with that veneration which the very wisest of us / feel toward material success.

Everything of the best and latest was in his shop. There were dried / sharks' fins, pickled eggs, twenty years old, bitter melons, lychée / fruits, dried chrysanthemum buds, tea, sweet cakes, "chandu" and its / apparatus, betel nut, some bright keen knives, and an automatic cash / register; while on the walls were Chinese prints, _The Police Budget_, / strips of dried duck and fish, some culinary utensils, and three little / black bottles of fire-extinguisher, with printed instructions for use, / which showed that Kang Foo Ah was doing so well that he had insured his / premises with a respectable fire insurance company.

Oh-and, of course, there was Gracie Goodnight; perhaps the happiest touch / which earned for Kang's store the reputation of having always the best / and the latest. The boys, yellow and white and black, would come to the / store and spend more money than they could afford on cigarettes which / they didn't want and dried fruits which they couldn't eat; and Gracie / would throw out casual invitations to come again and bring a friend and / have a cup of tea in the little curtained room at the back, where she / served or sat in converse of an evening.

So they came again, and the bank balance of Kang Foo Ah. did it not / grow and nourish exceedingly, like the green bay-tree? It did; and as / he grew fatter and more prosperous, so, like all mankind, he grew more / independent, insolent, overbearing. In a current phrase, he began to / throw himself about. In another current phrase, equally expressive, / though less polite, he began to make himself a damned nuisance. At times / he was simply unbearable; yet there was none in Chinatown to stand up to / him and put him back in his place. They endured him meekly, because he / was successful and they were not.

The honour of putting him to bed was reserved for an insignificant / gentleman, not of Chinatown, who resided on the borders of Poplar and / Blackwall. He kept the Blue Lantern, at the corner of Shan-tung Place, / and it was a respectable house; he had often said so. Now as Kang Foo Ah / had never yet known any to stand up to him, he foolishly began to believe / that none ever would do so. He overlooked the fact that he had never yet / matched himself against the landlord of a London public-house.

This story properly begins with Kang tumbling into the private bar of / the aforesaid house, and demanding a gin and rum, mixed. The landlord / declined to serve him. Kang called him pseudonyms.

Then the landlord spoke, wagging an illustrative finger as one who makes / the Thirdly point in his Advent sermon.

"Look here," he said, "I don't mind you coming to my 'ouse and getting / drunk. No. But. what I _do_ object to is yer getting drunk at someone / else's 'ouse, and coming 'ere to be sick. Now clear out, old cock, and / toddle 'ome. A lemon-and-bismuth, and you'll be top-hole in the morning. / Off yeh go."

Kang caught the bar with both hands, and leered in his slimy way.

"Kang Foo Ah fine fellow. " he began; but he was cut short.

"Listen," said Boniface. "Shall I tell you what you are? Yer a perfect / dam nuisance to any decent 'ouse. That's what you are. A perfect dam / nuisance. Yeh never come 'ere but what yer drunk. Never. Yeh may be a / very clever chap, and yeh may have lots of money. But yer a damned / nuisance, and it won't trouble me if I never see yer fat face in my 'ouse / again. And that's telling yeh. Straight. Yeh know now, doncher? Now beat / it, else I'll sick the cops on yeh. Beat it."

In the phrase in which the only onlooker told the story, Kang was / properly told off. He slithered and gibbered for a moment; then he was / propelled by the shoulder, through the swing doors, to the cold pavement / beyond. His voice could be heard in protest.

"Fairly got the monkeys," said the landlord to the only onlooker, as he / returned to the bar. "Fairly got 'em. 'Ear what he called me?"

"Got the monkeys? " echoed the only onlooker, who had never forgotten that / he had once been refused credit by this house. "I should think 'e would / get the monkeys. Anyone'd git the monkeys wiv you talkin' to 'em like / that. Got no tack, you ain't. Bin and lorst a good customer, now, and all / because of yer swank. Didn' you tell 'im you'd be glad to miss 'is vacant / face? Didn' you say 'e was the stink what comes out of Wapping at night? / Didn' you say 'e'd make a bug sorry 'e was masheeshing around in the / same bed with 'im? Course 'e got the monkeys. Who wouldn't? You oughter / learn tack."