The Duke of Dorset had gone to tea on the American yacht. It was a
thing which he had not intended to do when he came to Oban. The general
conception of that nation current on the Continent of Europe had not
impressed him with the excellence of its people. The United States of
America was thought to be a sort of Spanish Main, full of adventurers,
where no one of the old, sure, established laws of civilization ran.
A sort of "house of refuge" for the revolutionary middle class of the
world--the valet who would be a gentleman, the maid who would he a lady.
It was a country of pretenders, posers, actors. Those who came out of
it with their vast, incredible fortunes were, after all, only rich
shopkeepers. They were clever, unusually clever, but they were
masqueraders.
But, somehow, he could not attach either the one or the other of these
two persons to this conception of the United States of America.
He did not stop to consider whether this curious old man, whose face,
whose body, whose big, dominant manner recalled in suggestion those
stone figures covered with vines forgotten in Asia, was a mere powerful
bourgeois, grown rich by some idiosyncrasy of chance, a mere trader
taking over with a large hand the avenues of commerce, a mere, big
tropical product of a country, in wealth-producing resources itself
big and tropical; or one of another order who had drawn this nation of
middle class exiles under him, as in romances some hardy marquis had
made himself the king of outlaws.
Nor did he stop to consider whether this girl was a new order of woman
evolved out of the exquisite blend of some choice alien bloods.
The thing that moved him was the dominion of that mood already on him
when the Marchesa Soderrelli came so opportunely through the shop door.
Let us explain that sensation as we like. One of those innumerable
hypnotic suggestions of Nature drawing us to her purpose, or a trick of
the mind, or some vagrant memory antedating the experiences of life. The
answer is to seek. The philosopher of Dantzic was of the first opinion,
our universities of the second, and the ancients of the third. One may
stand as he pleases in this distinguished company. Certain it is, that,
when human reason was in its clearest luster, old, wise men, desperately
set on getting at the truth, were of the opinion that some shadowy
memories entered with us through the door of life.
Caroline Childers poured the tea and the Duke of Dorset sat with his
eyes on her. He seemed to see before him in this girl two qualities
which he had not believed it possible to combine: The first delicate
sheen of things newly created, as, for instance, the first blossom
of the wild brier, that falls to pieces under the human hand, and
an experience of life. This young girl, who, at such an age in any
drawingroom of Europe, would be merely a white fragment in a corner, was
here easily and without concern taking the first place. The little party
was, in a sense, a thing of fragments.
Cyrus Childers was talking. The Duke was watching the young girl, and
replying when he must. The Marchesa Soderrelli sat with her hands
idly in her lap and her eyes narrowed, looking out at something in the
harbor.
It was an afternoon slipped somehow through the door of heaven. The sea
dimpled under a sheet of sun. The bay was covered with every manner of
craft, streaming with pennants, yachts from every country of Europe in
gala trimmings. It was as though the world had met here for a festival.
Crews from rival yacht clubs were rowing. The bay was full of music,
laughter, color, if one looked straight out toward Loch Lynne, but, if
off toward the open water, following the Marchesa's eyes, he saw on the
edge of all this music, these lights, this color, this swimming fête,
the gray looming bulk of a warship, with her long, lean steel back, and
her dingy turrets, lying low in the sea, as though she had this moment
emerged from the blue water--as though she were some deep-sea monster
come up unnoticed on the border of this festival.
The Marchesa interrupted the conversation.
"Do you know what that reminds me of?" she said, indicating the warship.
"It reminds me of the silent _Iroquois_ that used always to attend the
Puritan May Days."
Cyrus Childers replied in his big voice.
"Are you seeing the yellow peril, Marchesa?" he said.
"I don't like it," she replied. "It seems out of place. Every other
nation that we know is here, dancing in its ribbons around the May pole,
and there stands the silent _Iroquois_ in his war paint."
"Perhaps," said Caroline Childers, "the little brown man came in the
only clothes he had."
"I think Miss Childers has it right," said the Duke of Dorset. "I think
the brown man came in the only clothes he had, and he has possessed
these clothes only for a fortnight."
"Is it a new cruiser, then?" said Mr. Childers.
"It was built on the Clyde for Chile, I think," replied the Duke, "and
the Japanese Government bought it on the day it was launched."
"How like the Oriental," said the Marchesa, "to keep the purchase a
secret until the very day the warship went into the sea. Other nations
build their ships in the open; this one in the dark. She pretends to be
poor; she shows us her threadbare coat; she takes our ministers to look
into her empty treasury, but she buys a warship. How true it is that the
Anglo-Saxon never knows what is in the 'back' of the oriental mind."
"Perhaps," said Caroline Childers, "we are quite as puzzling to the
Oriental."
"That is the very point of it," replied the Marchesa. "They do not
understand each other and they never will. They are oil and water; they
will not mix. They can only be friends in make-believe, and therefore
they must be enemies in reality. Why do we deceive ourselves? In the end
the world must be either white, or it must be yellow."
"Such a conclusion," said the Duke of Dorset, "seems to me to be quite
wrong. Certain portions of the earth are adapted to certain races. Why
should not these races retain them, and when they have approached a
standard of civilization, why should they not be admitted into the
confederacy of nations?"
"I do not know a doctrine," replied the Mar-chesa, "more remote from the
colonial policy of England."
"Do you always quite understand England?" said the Duke. "Here, for
instance, is a new and enlightened nation, arising in the East. We do
not set ourselves to beat it down and possess its islands. We welcome
it; we open the door to it."
"And it will enter and possess the house," said the Marchesa. "What the
white man is now doing with his hand open, he must, later on, undo with
his hand closed. Look already how arrogant this oriental nation has
become since she has got England at her back. It was a master play, this
alliance. The white man had all but possessed the world when this wily
Oriental slipped in and divided the two great English-speaking people.
He was not misled by any such sophistry as a brotherhood of nations.
He knew that one or the other of the two races must dominate, must
exterminate the other. He could not attack the white man's camp unless
he could first divide it. Now, he has got it divided, and he is getting
ready to attack. Can one doubt the menace to the United States?"
Cyrus Childers laughed. "Oh," he said, "the United States is in no
danger. Japan is not going to try a war with us. It is all oriental
bravado."
"But he is creeping in on the Pacific Coast already," said the Marchesa.
"He is getting a footing; he is establishing a base; he is planting a
colony to rise when he requires it; so that when he makes his great move
to thrust the white man's frontier from the coast back into the desert,
there will already be Japanese colonies planted on the soil. You have,
yourself, told me that they are always arriving and spreading themselves
imperceptibly along the coast."
"My dear Marchesa," said Mr. Childers, "the little Japanese is only
looking for employment. He has none of your big designs. His instincts
are all those of the servant." He looked at the Duke of Dorset. "If
Japan," he continued, "wishes to extend her territory, she will wish to
extend it in that part of the world which the Oriental now inhabits. If
there is really any menace, my dear Marchesa, it is a menace to England,
and not to us. If Japan had a great design to dominate the world, would
she not undertake to weld all the oriental races into a nation of which
she would be the head? Would she not go about it as Bismarck went
about the creation of Germany? That, it seems to me, would be the only
feasible plan for such an enterprise."
"And do you think for a moment," said the Marchesa, "that she has not
this very plan?"
"I do not believe that Japan has any such plan," replied the Duke of
Dorset.
"And you," said the Marchesa, "who have lived in the East, who have
assisted England to make this alliance, do you, who know the Oriental,
believe that he does not dream of overrunning the world?"
"Dream!" replied the Duke of Dorset. "Perhaps he dreams. I was speaking
of a plan, and a plan means a policy that one may carry out. Japan
cannot move in India because there is England in India."
"Not yet," said the Marchesa, "but when she shall have made the
white men enemies; when she shall have grown stronger under English
friendship. She cannot yet depend on these oriental states. They are
still afraid of the white man. She has encouraged them by her victory
over Russia, but not enough. She must give them another proof that the
yellow race is not the inferior of the white one. If she can crush the
white man in North America, the yellow man will rise in Asia. Then the
dream becomes a plan; then the plan becomes a reality."
"My dear Marchesa," said Caroline, "you must not so berate the little
yellow brother in the house of his friends."
"Different races are never friends," replied the Marchesa. "I know
because I am a woman, and have lived among them. The Latin does not like
the Teuton, nor either of them the Saxon, and yet, all these are of the
Caucasian race. Add to this the inherent physical repugnance which
exists between the colored races and the white, and this natural dislike
becomes a racial hatred. It is no mere question of inclination; it is an
organic antipathy running in the blood. Ministers who draw treaties may
not know this, but every woman knows it."
"Then," said Caroline, "there can be no danger to us in England's treaty
with Japan."
"And why is there no danger?" said the Marchesa.
"Dear me," said the girl, "if I could only remember how Socrates managed
arguments." She took a pose of mock gravity. "I think he would begin
like this:
"You hold, Marchesa, that the hatred of one race for another increases
with the difference between them?"
"I do," replied the Marchesa.
"Then, Marchesa, you ought also to hold that the love between nations
increases as that difference disappears."
"I do hold that, too, Socrates," said the Marchesa.
"Also, Marchesa, it is your opinion that of all races the oriental is
least like us?"
"It is."
"And of all races, the Briton is most like us?"
"Yes."
"Then the Jap ought to hate us with all his heart?"
"He ought, Socrates," said the Marchesa. "And," continued the girl,
making a little courtesy to the Duke of Dorset, "the Briton ought to
love us with all his heart?"
The Marchesa laughed. "I leave the Duke of Dorset to answer for his
people."
The Duke put down his cup. "With all our heart," he said.
But the Marchesa was not to be diverted. "I think," she said, "you
are sounding deeper waters than you suspect. We know how General Ian
Hamilton said he felt when he saw the first white prisoners taken by the
Japanese in Manchuria; and we know that Canada has had the same trouble
on her Pacific Coast as the United States. This family feeling of the
white man for the white man may prove stronger than any state policy."
She turned to the Duke of Dorset. "The riots in Vancouver," she said,
"are the flying straws."
"Both nations," said the Duke of Dorset, "ought firmly to suppress these
outbreaks. Vancouver ought no more to be permitted to jeopardize the
policy of England than California or Oregon ought to be permitted to
involve the foreign policy of the United States. I am going out to
Canada to look a little into this question for myself."
"And you will find," said the Marchesa, "what any woman could tell you,
that these outbursts are only the manifestations of a deep-seated racial
antipathy; an instinctive resistance of all the English-speaking-people
alike to having the frontier of the white man's dominion thrust back by
the Asiatic."
Caroline Childers interrupted. "You are a hopeless Jingo, my dear
Marchesa," she said. "Let us go and see the regattas."