Towns was surprised. “What, has he discovered the etiological factor? I had not heard.”
“No, not yet, but he’s a step nearer.”
For a few moments Matthew was talking eagerly, until a babble of unknown tongues interrupted him across the table.
“Proust is dead, that ‘snob of humor’—yes, but his Recherche du Temps Perdu is finished and will be published in full. I have only glanced at parts of it. Do you know Gasquet’s Hymns?”
“Beraud gets the Prix Goncourt this year. Last year it was the Negro, Maran—”
“I have been reading Croce’s Aesthetic lately—”
“Yes, I saw the Meyerhold theater in Moscow—gaunt realism—Howl China was tremendous.”
Then easily, after the crisp brown fowl, the Princess tactfully steered them back to the subject which some seemed willing to avoid.
“And so,” she said, “the darker peoples who are dissatisfied—”
She looked at the Japanese and paused as though inviting comment. He bowed courteously.
“If I may presume, your Royal Highness, to suggest,” he said slowly, “the two categories are not synonymous. We ourselves know no line of color. Some of us are white, some yellow, some black. Rather, is it not, your Highness, that we have from time to time taken council with the oppressed people of the world, many of whom by chance are colored?”
“True, true,” said the Princess.
“And yet,” said the Chinese lady, “it is dominating Europe which has flung this challenge of the color line, and we cannot avoid it.”
“And on either count,” said Matthew, “whether we be bound by oppression or by color, surely we Negroes belong in the foremost ranks.”
There was a slight pause, a sort of hesitation, and it seemed to Matthew as though all expected the Japanese to speak. He did, slowly and gravely:
“It would be unfair to our guest not to explain with some clarity and precision that the whole question of the Negro race both in Africa and in America is for us not simply a question of suffering and compassion. Need we say that for these peoples we have every human sympathy? But for us here and for the larger company we represent, there is a deeper question—that of the ability, qualifications, and real possibilities of the black race in Africa or elsewhere.”
Matthew left the piquant salad and laid down his fork slowly. Up to this moment he had been quite happy. Despite the feeling of being out of it now and then, he had assumed that this was his world, his people, from the high and beautiful lady whom he worshiped more and more, even to the Egyptians, Indians and Arab who seemed slightly, but very slightly, aloof or misunderstanding.
Suddenly now there loomed plain and clear the shadow of a color line within a color line, a prejudice within prejudice, and he and his again the sacrifice. His eyes became somber and did not lighten even when the Princess spoke.
“I cannot see that it makes great difference what ability Negroes have. Oppression is oppression. It is our privilege to relieve it.”
“Yes,” answered the Japanese, “but who will do it? Who can do it but those superior races whose necks now bear the yoke of the inferior rabble of Europe?”
“This,” said the Princess, “I have always believed; but as I have told your Excellency, I have received impressions in Moscow which have given me very serious thought—first as to our judgment of the ability of the Negro race, and second”—she paused in thought—“as to the relative ability of all classes and peoples.”
Matthew stared at her, as she continued:
“You see, Moscow has reports, careful reports of the world’s masses. And the report on the Negroes of America was astonishing. At the time, I doubted its truth: their education, their work, their property, their organizations; and the odds, the terrible, crushing odds against which, inch by inch and heartbreak by heartbreak, they have forged their unfaltering way upward. If the report is true, they are a nation today, a modern nation worthy to stand beside any nation here.”
“But can we put any faith in Moscow?” asked the Egyptian. “Are we not keeping dangerous company and leaning on broken reeds?”
“Well,” said Matthew, “if they are as sound in everything as in this report from America, they’ll bear listening to.”
The young Indian spoke gently and evenly, but with bright eyes.
“Naturally,” he said, “one can see Mr. Towns needs must agree with the Bolshevik estimate of the lower classes.”
Matthew felt the slight slur and winced. He thought he saw the lips of the Princess tighten ever so little. He started to answer quickly, with aplomb if not actual swagger.
“I reckon,” he began—then something changed within him. It was as if he had faced and made a decision, as though some great voice, crying and reverberating within his soul, spoke for him and yet was him. He had started to say, “I reckon there’s as much highborn blood among American Negroes as among any people. We’ve had our kings, presidents, and judges” He started to say this, but he did not finish. He found himself saying quite calmly and with slightly lifted chin:
“I reckon you’re right. We American blacks are very common people. My grandfather was a whipped and driven slave; my father was never really free and died in jail. My mother plows and washes for a living. We come out of the depths—the blood and mud of battle. And from just such depths, I take it, came most of the worthwhile things in this old world. If they didn’t, God help us.”
The table was very still, save for the very faint clink of china as the servants brought in the creamed and iced fruit.
The Princess turned, and he could feel her dark eyes full upon him.
“I wonder I wonder,” she murmured, almost catching her breath.
The Indian frowned. The Japanese smiled, and the Egyptian whispered to the Arab.
“I believe that is true,” said the Chinese lady thoughtfully, “and if it is, this world is glorious.”
“And if it is not?” asked the Egyptian
