Читать книгу Mr. & Mrs. Sên - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 7

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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.”