As they sat at breakfast—Miss Julia and the girl—Lysander brought his
mistress, and proffered on a great silver salver, a florist’s
ribbon-bound box. There were carnations in it, great dusky, imperial,
wine-deep carnations, ruby red ones, flaming scarlet, blush pink and
lemon, and a handful just the color of tomatoes. Julia Townsend gathered
them up in her hands with a murmur of delight—as many of them as her
hands could hold, and hung her pleased face over their sumptuous
fragrance.
“I never give a friend’s gift away—or any part of it,” she said, “or
you should have half of these. They belong to youth,” she added a little
sadly—but quite bravely. “But you shall smell them.”
The girl could not help smelling them. They scented the room.
Miss Julia took the visiting-card from the box as if she knew whose it
would prove, read it with a smile, and passed it—as if proud of it—to
Ivy.
Beneath his engraved name, on the bit of social pasteboard, as correct
in Western convention as his coat, Sên King-lo had written, “With
gratitude for rice, and always to you, Madame, with my homage.”
Ivy Gilbert looked at the card, passed it back—scarcely touching
it—looked at the flowers, then looked at Miss Julia, trying to think of
some pleasant and satisfactory comment to make—she thought one was
expected—failed, and so “Thank you,” lamely, was all she said.
Miss Townsend was simple in the best and finest sense of simplicity, but
what she knew she knew rather thoroughly, and she was not inexperienced
in girls.
“Why do you not like Mr. Sên?” she asked.
“I’ve not said so.” Ivy flushed a little.
“I say so,” Miss Julia retorted with gentle decision.
“But,” the girl demurred, “I’m not sure that I don’t.”
“You are not sure that you do,” the woman insinuated with a smile.
“That is perfectly true,” the girl owned. “I don’t know whether I like
or dislike him. I hope I did neither. I’d not care to believe that I
either liked or disliked him.”
“Why not, girl?”
“I’m not sure I can explain. I—yes, that is it; I resented him.”
“Resented him?” Miss Julia spoke warmly. “Why?”
“His color, I suppose,” Ivy said hesitatingly. “For I can’t think of any
other reason. I don’t feel as you do, Miss Townsend, about colored
people and all that—we don’t in England. But still—I don’t quite take
it lying down, I suppose, when I see one of them, not only evidently
thinking himself as good as we are, but assuming that we think so too.”
“Sên King-lo is very much better than most of _us_,” Miss Townsend said
quietly, “and far too intelligent not to know it.”
The girl stared in astonishment. She was wordless.
The woman laughed. “Don’t be a goose, Ivy,” she advised good-humoredly.
“And don’t talk about ‘colored people’ as if Mr. Sên were one. He is
nothing of the sort.”
“He is blacker than I am,” Ivy laughed.
“Well, how would you like to be called a ‘colored person’?”
“But I’m not. And calling me so wouldn’t make me one.”
“And he is not one. And calling him so doesn’t make him one.”
“He’s Chinese,” Ivy persisted.
“Who said he wasn’t?” Miss Julia persisted too. “And—if I get at your
meaning, and I think I do—you think it inappropriate that you should
associate with a Chinese gentleman on just the same terms as with a
French or Spanish gentleman. Isn’t that it?”
“There is a difference,” Ivy urged.
“Humph!” said Miss Julia.
“I don’t think Uncle Lysander liked waiting on him,” the girl ventured.
“Indeed?” Miss Townsend spoke crisply. “I give my blacks their orders. I
am not concerned with their race-prejudices, or disturbed by their likes
or dislikes—so long as they do not display them. And it never has
occurred to me to consult Lysander as to what guests I should or should
not receive.”
“Don’t be angry with me, please,” Ivy pleaded. “I only said what I did
because you asked me.”
“That’s true,” the hostess admitted promptly. “And I daresay you are not
the only one that is surprised and not too approving of my friendship
with Sên King-lo.”
“Oh, I hope I didn’t even hint that!”
“You didn’t mean to, I’m sure. But you felt it. And,” she added dryly,
“you did rather hint that my Chinese guest was not good enough for Uncle
Lysander.”
“Oh—” Ivy began—and broke off lamely with, “I wish I’d held my
tongue.”
“I don’t,” Miss Julia told her. “We may as well get it clear. There are
two parts to it: the very different attitude of my mind to the darkies
and to Asiatics, and my personal regard for Mr. Sên individually. I love
my negroes, just as I love my dogs and all horses. In a certain way, or
rather in certain ways, I respect them—sometimes, some of them. I
respect their loyalty, when they are loyal. (Mine have to be, or go.)
But the best of them are a cross between babies and useful domestic
animals. The negro race has no past, and will have no future. It has
certain knacks of mind, but no intellect. It is of peasant breed through
and through. Lysander and Peter probably would be eating each other, or
breakfasting off Dinah this very day, and doing it stark naked somewhere
in Africa, if their ancestors had not been captured, carried over here,
and sold as slaves to my ancestors. The nigger rose to his highest place
and development under the rule of the Southern master. What’s going to
happen to him now? One of three things. Either he’ll die out, starved to
death by his own laziness and exterminated by consumption; or he’ll
deteriorate into a despised and despicable, contemptibly employed
pariah, crushed and wretched, his hand against every one of us, and most
of all against himself; or he’ll ruin this country and exterminate _us_.
He can teach us nothing and the North-fangled teaching is going to
corrupt him and corrupt him very far and very fast. It isn’t a matter of
skin, I tell you, it isn’t a matter of color; it is a matter of
character, of mind and of social fitness—the difference between the
negroes and the Asian. Asia can teach us a great deal. And some of us
are just beginning to suspect it. Sên King-lo’s ancestors were
_gentlemen_, and were scholars and statesmen and artists when yours and
_mine_ were living in a tadpole state of human existence. We have
risen—you and I. The darkies can’t rise—not an inch higher than they
have. We never—if we’ve got a sane hair on our head—can treat the
negroes as our equals; for the reason that they never by any possibility
or miracle can rise to or approach equality. They can go down, in my
opinion they will—but they never, never can go up—any farther. Many
Asiatic peoples had ‘gone up’ very far when we were still wallowing. Not
many of us Americans know this—or are willing to realize it. I happen
to. They are _different_ from us. They are _not_ inferior. Now, about
Mr. Sên—individually about him. When he first came here the present
running after yellow officials had not begun. It is only a smart-set
fad—like the tango and indecently short skirts, or a dash of rum in
tea—to spoil it—we had that a few years ago, or eating asparagus with
your fingers. It’s only froth—and not the creditable thing it looks. No
one ran after him then, or asked him to dinner. I had to. To be fair, I
didn’t like it. But I was in debt to him, and, of course, I had to pay.”
Ivy was interested now—and looked it.
“His grandfather saved my great-uncle Julian’s life. Yes!”—for the
girl’s amazement showed her almost incredulous. “In Pekin. What my
great-uncle was doing there I don’t remember—something about some sort
of concession somebody wanted about something or other—opium, I
daresay, or tea, or tea-pots, or ivories, or hemp—anyway, he was there.
And you English were there too—and not popular—and the Chinese didn’t
see any more difference between a nice simon pure American like my
great-uncle Julian and an Englishman than some people can see between a
woolly negro house-servant and a Chinese gentleman. Two of the English
got themselves into a bad scrape of some sort; the Chinese locked them
up in a cage, and fed them through the bars, and didn’t feed them
particularly well or particularly much—two Englishmen named—let me
see—Lord? No—Lock—Lock and Parkes—yes, that’s it; at least I think
one was named Lock, and I know the other man’s name was Parkes. Well,
the Chinese were going to do the same to my great-uncle, and to cut off
his head into the bargain. I’m sure I don’t remember why, if I ever
heard. And they very nearly did. But a Chinese man—you needn’t ask me
why, for I’ve no idea, helped Uncle Julian to escape, and sent him home
to Virginia. His name was Sên—Sên Ch’ang Tso, and his memory has been
kept green by all of us—we Townsends—ever since. And when I saw in the
_Post_ that a Mr. Sên had come over as a secretary or something to the
Chinese Minister here I went and called. They were not going to let me
in—but they did. The boy—Sên King-lo, was surprised at my visit. Well,
that didn’t matter. He was polite—they always are—and I sat down and
asked him if he had had a relative in Pekin in 1860, a relative named
Sên Ch’ang Tso, and he said, ‘Yes, my grandfather.’ And then I told him
about my great-uncle Julian. He never had heard of that. But he said he
was pleased to have met me—and I think he was—afterwards. And we have
been friends ever since. I asked him here, because I felt I ought
to—but now I ask him because I want him. He had no other
friend—outside of his own people—in Washington then. Now he has more
than he can do with. But he never forgets me. He never lets many days go
by without showing me one of the small, pretty attentions that mean so
much to women, and mean most to old, unmarried women who can’t be said
to get the lion’s share of carnations and chocolate creams.” She sniffed
at the flowers again, and nodded at Ivy across them.
“Thank you—for telling me,” the girl said.
“Well, what is it? You are thinking something you don’t like to say. Out
with it, my dear.”
“I was wondering,” Ivy said slowly, “that Mr. Sên cared to sing darky
songs, and wondering if he quite liked borrowing one of the negroes’
banjos, and playing on it?”
Miss Julia laughed. “That color question again! Don’t let how that
affects Sên King-lo trouble you. It does not affect him at all. He may
or may not realize that a good many people class him and all his
countrymen with the blacks—probably he does. He can see through a
church door when it is open. But, if he does, he leaves it for what it
is worth. Sên King-lo knows what he _is_.”