“It is perhaps both true and untrue,” the Japanese suggested. “Certainly Mr. Towns has expressed a fine and human hope, although I fear that always blood must tell.”
“No, it mustn’t,” cried Matthew, “unless it is allowed to talk. Its speech is accidental today. There is some weak, thin stuff called blood, which not even a crown can make speak intelligently; and at the same time some of the noblest blood God ever made is dumb with chains and poverty.”
The elder Indian straightened, with blazing eyes.
“Surely,” he said, slowly and calmly, “surely the gentleman does not mean to reflect on royal blood?”
Matthew started, flushed darkly, and glanced quickly at the Princess. She smiled and said lightly, “Certainly not,” and then with a pause and a look straight across the table to the turban and tunic, “nor will royal blood offer insult to him.” The Indian bowed to the tablecloth and was silent.
As they rose and sauntered out to coffee in the silk and golden drawing-room, there was a discussion, started of course by the Egyptian, first of the style of the elaborate piano case and then of Schönberg’s new and unobtrusive transcription of Bach’s triumphant choral Prelude, “Komm, Gott, Schöpfer.”
The Princess sat down. Matthew could not take his eyes from her. Her fingers idly caressed the keys as her tiny feet sought the pedals. From white, pearl-embroidered slippers, her young limbs, smooth in pale, dull silk, swept up in long, low lines. Even the delicate curving of her knees he saw as she drew aside her drapery and struck the first warm tones. She played the phrase in dispute—great chords of aspiration and vision that melted to soft melody. The Egyptian acknowledged his fault. “Yes—yes, that was the theme I had forgotten.”
Again, Matthew felt his lack of culture audible, and not simply of his own culture, but of all the culture in white America he had unconsciously and foolishly, as he now realized, made his norm. Yet withal Matthew was not unhappy. If he was a bit out of it, if he sensed divided counsels and opposition, yet he still felt almost fiercely that that was his world. Here are culture, wealth, and beauty. Here was power, and here he had some recognized part. God! If he could just do his part, any part! And he waited impatiently for the real talk to begin again.
It began and lasted until after midnight. It started on lines so familiar to Matthew that he had to shut his eyes and stare again at their swarthy faces: Superior races—the right to rule—born to command—inferior breeds—the lower classes—the rabble. How the Egyptian rolled off his tongue his contempt for the “r‑r‑rabble”! How contemptuous was the young Indian of inferior races! But how humorous it was to Matthew to see all tables turned; the rabble now was the white workers of Europe; the inferior races were the ruling whites of Europe and America. The superior races were yellow and brown.
“You see,” said the Japanese, “Mr. Town, we here are all agreed and not agreed. We are agreed that the present white hegemony of the world is nonsense; that the darker peoples are the best the natural aristocracy, the makers of art, religion, philosophy, life, everything except brazen machines.”
“But why?”
“Because of the longer rule of natural aristocracy among us. We count our millenniums of history where Europe counts her centuries. We have our own carefully thought-out philosophy and civilization, while Europe has sought to adopt an ill-fitting mélange of the cultures of the world.”
“But does this not all come out the same gate, with the majority of mankind serving the minority? And if this is the only ideal of civilization, does the tint of a skin matter in the question of who leads?” Thus Matthew summed it up.
“Not a whit—it is the natural inborn superiority that matters,” said the Japanese, “and it is that which the present color bar of Europe is holding back.”
“And what guarantees, in the future more than in the past and with colored more than with white, the wise rule of the gifted and powerful?”
“Self-interest and the inclusion in their ranks of all really superior men of all colors—the best of Asia together with the best of the British aristocracy, of the German Adel, of the French writers and financiers—of the rulers, artists, and poets of all peoples.”
“And suppose we found that ability and talent and art is not entirely or even mainly among the reigning aristocrats of Asia and Europe, but buried among millions of men down in the great sodden masses of all men and even in Black Africa?”
“It would come forth.”
“Would it?”
“Yes,” said the Princess, “it would come forth, but when and how? In slow and tenderly nourished efflorescence, or in wild and bloody upheaval with all that bitter loss?”
“Pah!” blurted the Egyptian—“pardon, Royal Highness—but what art ever came from the canaille!”
The blood rushed to Matthew’s face. He threw back his head and closed his eyes, and with the movement he heard again the Great Song. He saw his father in the old log church by the river, leading the moaning singers in the Great Song of Emancipation. Clearly, plainly he heard that mighty voice and saw the rhythmic swing and beat of the thick brown arm. Matthew swung his arm and beat the table; the silver tinkled. Silence dropped on all, and suddenly Matthew found himself singing. His voice full, untrained but mellow, quivered down the first plaintive bar:
“When Israel was in Egypt land—”
Then it gathered depth:
“Let my people go!”
He forgot his audience and saw only the shining river and the bowed and shouting throng:
“Oppressed so hard, they could not stand,
Let my people go.”
Then Matthew let go restraint and sang as his people sang in Virginia, twenty years ago. His great voice, gathered in one long deep breath, rolled the Call of God:
“Go down, Moses!
Way down into the Egypt land,
Tell Old Pharaoh
To let my people go!”
He stopped as quickly as he had begun, ashamed, and
