The men lifted their hats, and passed on. General Cordez knew Lucille
and had met the Senator’s daughter, but he felt no necessity to join the
group of girls on the grass, and no impulse. And the younger man,
knowing none of them except for a very slight “bowing acquaintance” with
Miss Smith, showed no impulse—if he felt any.
“That was Sên King-lo,” Lucille said, almost excitedly, when the men
were out of earshot. “I wish General Cordez had stopped and introduced
him to you. He’s all the rage. I did just meet him once. But he never
gives me a chance to push it a mite.”
“What is he—what’s his nationality?” Ivy asked.
“Chinese.”
Ivy’s lip curled. “What queer cards Miss Julia knows,” she said.
“Yes, doesn’t she? And the last woman in the world you’d think would,”
Mary Withrow agreed. “Papa wouldn’t like me to know some of the people
Miss Townsend does.”
Their talk debouched then to fashions and clothes. Ivy followed it with
listless inattention. The others tossed and tore it eagerly and hotly.
None of them, not even Lucille, who “had heaps of her things from
Paris—and paid heaps for them, if you want to know”—cared quite as
much for pretty and becoming hats and gowns as the English girl did. But
she had so little money to spend on what she wore that talk of it always
rather stuck in her throat.
The well-born and the well-clothed, the traveled and the noted, strolled
about the festival grounds, admiring the flowers, sat in groups at the
exquisitely laid little tables that dotted and white-starred the shady
nooks, an attendant white-clad darky, important and cordial at each,
keeping the flies off with long white-handled brushes of peacocks’
feathers, and replenishing the dishes and baskets of ice-cream,
charlotte russe and fruit, the cups of tea and coffee, the jugs of
butter-thick cream, and the cold-beaded glasses of cup—delicate cup of
claret or moselle or cider for the “ladies,” mint juleps in strong
perfection and very tall glasses for the men guests. No one could better
Uncle Lysander at mixing juleps—he wore white cotton gloves when he
pulled the mint from the kitchen brook-side—and few could equal Julia
Townsend, of the Townsends of Virginia, at the concocting of cup.
Towards sunset, all the burnished hour’s splendor of colors glowing and
melting over the blue and silver Potomac, a tinkle of banjos came from
behind the tomatoes and asparagus beds. Miss Julia never permitted her
blacks to obtrude jarringly their gift of ripple and rhythm, but always
banjos in the distance played her garden party guests out of her gates.
And as “Dearest May” signaled softly Miss Julia moved slowly gatewards.
“Now darkies come and listen, a story I’ll relate;
It happened in de valley ob de ole Ca’lina State.”
The Italian Minister bent over Miss Julia Townsend’s hand.
“Down in de cornfield whar I used to rake de hay—”
Lady Giffard had had “such a perfect afternoon.”
“I worked a great deal harder when I thought of you, dear May.”
A great diva paused a moment to listen, as she held her hostess’ hand.
“O May, dearest May, you are loblier dan de day,
Your eyes so bright dey shine at night
When de moon am gone away.”
The diva’s eyes filled with tears. “_They_ are the sweetest singers,”
she said softly, and went quickly. Miss Julia flushed delicately. She
ruled her negroes with no lax hand—but she loved them. She knew their
faults, blackberry thick! She knew their virtues, their worth and
loyalty. And she never heard their music, the blackbird music that
flutes up from their ebon throats, the music that tripped from between
their broad finger tips and their banjo-strings, without an affectionate
throbbing in her own heart.
“My massa gabe me holiday, I wish he’d gib me mo—”
Miss Julia went a step beyond the gate with Miss Ellen Hunter—for Miss
Hunter was older than herself, and very poor.
“I t’anked him berry kindly as I pushed my boat from sho—”
Miss Julia gave a Chicago banker her finger tips; the Jewish financier a
fuller clasp.
“And started for my dear one I longed so for to see—”
The sunset was fainting on the river’s breast. The banjos thrummed more
softly, the sugared, golden voices sank almost in a whisper. Servants
were hanging here and there a lantern on a low-branched tree—long,
iron-ringed, glass, plantation lanterns. That, too, was a signal—not a
signal to go; a signal to stay. It meant that there would be supper
presently for a favored few—youngsters probably. Julia Townsend loved
to gather “boys and girls” about her for a more intimate hour when her
statelier hospitalitied had been banjo-dismissed, and already she had
told one here, one there, “I hope you can stay until ten.” And they knew
there’d be fried chicken and quivering icy jellies, and _perhaps_ a
little dancing on the lawn—and a punctilious, if pompous, darky servant
to see you home, if you were a girl whose chaperon had been delicately
and tunefully sent home.
“And ’twas from Aunt Dinah’s quilting party I was seeing Nellie home.”
Lena Blackburn looked at Miss Julia longingly. Miss Julia wished her
good-by very kindly. Mr. Sên saw the tiny comedy, and so did Ivy
Gilbert. Their eyes met—just that.
“On my arm her light hand rested, rested light as ocean foam.”
The last sent-home had gone, and Miss Townsend turned back towards the
house.
“I want to be in Dixie——”
Julia Townsend stood at attention—and so did the remaining guests
gathered near her. Ulysses S. Grant and Philip Sheridan must have done
that in the presence of Julia Townsend listening to “Dixie”—and the
soldier who rode a breathless twenty miles from Winchester to Cedar
Creek would have done it with the sunny sweetness of a prince—like the
prince he was. The South had its Barbara Frietchies—the North had its
Stonewall Jacksons.
“I want to be in Dixie——”
The brown English eyes and the black Chinese eyes met again. Something
nearly a smile touched the girl’s lips. And she noticed that the
Chinese—Senn, she thought Lucille had said his name was—held his hat
in his hand.
Was _he_ staying to supper then—a Chinese? Surely not.
But, as it proved, he was. He not only stayed, but he sat on Miss
Gilbert’s left hand. She was not over-pleased.
Of course it was for Miss Julia to select her own guests. That was
understood and accepted. But the nursery governess did a little resent
the supper seating arrangements. Miss Julia herself made them.
Ivy Gilbert was too thoroughly English to draw the social color-line as
white Americans drew it. She had seen Hindoos and Japanese on a
perfect—or so it seemed—parity with the other undergraduates at Oxford
and Cambridge. A duchess, who was an acquaintance of Lady Snow’s, had,
to Ivy’s knowledge, made straining and costly efforts to secure as her
guest a Persian prince not many seasons ago, and on doing it had been
both congratulated and envied. She had seen her own Royal Family in
cordial conversation with a turbaned Maharajah, even the royal lady who
was reputed most exclusive and proud. And, though her own small
experience of social functions at home had been rather of Balham and
West Kensington than of Mayfair, she would have been not only interested
but flattered to know well any Indian—of sufficient rank and European
or Europeanized education . . . but a Chinese—well, really!
However, the fault was far more Miss Julia’s than his—he couldn’t help
being Chinese, of course—and since he was here, Miss Julia’s invited
guest, it was for her, another guest, not to be impolite. So, perhaps
feeling that a more brilliant remark would be a _faux pas_, too unfair a
strain on Chinese _savoir faire_, she turned towards Sên King-lo
slightly and asked him pleasantly, “How do you like America?”
A smile flickered across the man’s mouth.
“Very much as the curate liked his egg, Miss Gilbert,” he told her
gravely, then added with a franker smile, “which is how I like most
countries, I think.”
“Ah! You are homesick!” But having said it, the girl blushed
angrily—angry with herself for having said what she felt, as soon as
she’d said it, to have been far from in good taste.
“Terribly,” Sên said gravely—“sometimes.”
“I’m sorry I said that,” she said quickly. “I ought not,” she added with
a little guilty sigh.
“But,” he disputed her courteously, “I am glad to answer any question
you are good enough to ask. And, if there is _one_ thing of which no man
should be ashamed, it is being homesick, surely. And you made me no risk
of criticizing your country—since you are not American—but English.”
“How do you know?”
“You told me.”
“I? We never have spoken to each other until now.”
“But you told me yourself, Miss Gilbert. I heard you speak as General
Cordez and I were walking together. I heard you say several words. If I
had heard you speak but one, I’d have known that you were English. An
English voice in English speech is one of the few things that cannot be
mistaken.”
The girl flushed again—delicately this time, and with pleasure.
“We Chinese,” he continued, “have a proverb, ‘If one word misses the
mark, a thousand will do the same.’ And, if one English word spoken by
an educated English voice does not proclaim nationality as nothing else
can, it is because it falls on very dull or quite deaf ears.”
“Have you many proverbs in your language?” she asked, fishing about a
little desperately for her next thing to say.
“Millions,” he said decidedly. “And we all know them all, and all say
them at once. Probably at this moment, in China, four hundred millions
of people are saying, ‘He that grasps, loses,’ or ‘The knowing ones are
not hard, the hard ones are not knowing,’ or ‘The serpent knows his own
hole,’ or ‘Those who know how to do a thing do not find it difficult;
those who find it difficult know not how to do it,’ or ‘Even the tiger
has his naps.’ No, though, I am wrong. It is both night-time and
day-time in China now—my country sprawls so wide from East to West—but
I have no doubt that at home, easily a hundred million Chinese are
quoting time-honored adages and proverbs at this moment.”
“How perfectly terrible!” she laughed.
Sên King-lo laughed back with her. There was no familiarity in his
laughter, but a good deal of deferential good-fellowship.
“I have never heard Chinese spoken,” Miss Gilbert told him. “It is a
terribly difficult language to learn—for a foreigner, I mean, isn’t
it?”
“No,” Sên said stoutly. “That is always said—has been said ever since
Marco Polo’s time. But it is not true. Chinese is very easy to learn
really.”
“I have never heard it,” she repeated.
“Would you care to? Shall I?”
“Please.” She scarce could make any other answer.
He said something in a low, clear voice. It ought to have reached her
alone under the hum of the general table talk. But at Miss Julia’s board
no one spoke shrilly, and, whatever happened in China, in the
dining-room of Rosehill all did _not_ speak at once. And the inevitable
rise and fall of intonation—which is nine-tenths of the Chinese
vocabulary—rang it through to others. Two or three people stopped
talking, and half a dozen pricked up questioning ears.
Miss Julia challenged her guest frankly. “What are you saying?” she
demanded.
Sên King-lo bowed his head towards his hostess, and answered:
“Something that Confucius said a long time ago, Madame. This: ‘Our
greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we
fall.’ ”
“True and admirable!” Miss Julia said proudly. Her old eyes flashed. She
was thinking of Appomattox—of a cause that she never would yield as
permanently lost. And Sên King-lo, a far-off look in his dark, masked
eyes, was thinking of Shantung. The East and the West do meet sometimes
in the selfsameness of human emotions.