# Dark Princess/Part 1

PART I
THE EXILE
PART I
THE EXILE
August, 1923
Summer is come with bursting flower and promise of perfect fruit. Rain is rolling down Nile and Niger. Summer sings on the sea where giant ships carry busy worlds, while mermaids swarm the shores. Earth is pregnant. Life is big with pain and evil and hope. Summer in blue New York; summer in gray Berlin; summer in the red heart of the world!
I
Matthew Towns was in a cold white fury. He stood on the deck of the Orizaba looking down on the flying sea. In the night America had disappeared and now there was nothing but waters heaving in the bright morning. There were many passengers walking, talking, laughing; but none of them spoke to Matthew. They spoke about him, noting his tall, lean form and dark brown face, the stiff, curled mass of his sinewy hair, and the midnight of his angry eyes.
They spoke about him, and he was acutely conscious of every word. Each word heard and unheard pierced him and quivered in the quick. Yet he leaned stiff and grim, gazing into the sea, his back toward all. He saw the curled grace of the billows, the changing blues and greens; and he saw, there at the edge of the world, certain shining shapes that leapt and played.
Then they changed—always they changed; and there arose the great cool height of the room at the University of Manhattan. Again he stood before the walnut rail that separated student and Dean. Again he felt the bewilderment, the surge of hot surprise.
“I cannot register at all for obstetrics?”
​“No,” said the Dean quietly, his face growing red. “I’m sorry, but the committee—”
“But—but—why, I’m Towns. I’ve already finished two years—I’ve ranked my class. I took honors—why—I— This is my Junior year—I must—”.
He was sputtering with amazement.
“I’m sorry.”
Hell! I’m not asking your pity, I’m demanding—”
The Dean’s lips grew thin and hard, and he sent the shaft home as if to rid himself quickly of a hateful task.
“Well—what did you expect? Juniors must have obstetrical work. Do you think white women patients are going to have a nigger doctor delivering their babies?”
Then Matthew’s fury had burst its bounds; he had thrown his certificates, his marks and commendations straight into the drawn white face of the Dean and stumbled out. He came out on Broadway with its wide expanse, and opposite a little park. He turned and glanced up at the gray piles of tan buildings, threatening the sky, which were the University’s great medical center. He stared at them. Then with bowed head he plunged down 165th Street. The gray-blue Hudson lay beneath his feet, and above it piled the Palisades upward in gray and green. He walked and walked: down the curving drive between high homes and the Hudson; by graveyard and palace; tomb and restaurant; beauty and smoke. All the afternoon he walked, all night, and into the gray dawn of another morning.
II
In after years when Matthew looked back upon this first sea voyage, he remembered it chiefly as the time of sleep; of days of long, long rest and thought, after work and hurry and rage. He was indeed very tired. A year of the hardest kind of study had been followed by a summer as clerical assistant in a colored industrial insurance office, in the heat of Washington. Thence he had hurried straight to the university with five hundred dollars of tuition money in his pocket; and now he was sailing to Europe.
He had written his mother—that tall, gaunt, brown mother, hard-sinewed and somber-eyed, carrying her years unbroken, who still toiled on the farm in Prince James County, Virginia—​he had written almost curtly: “I’m through. I cannot and will not stand America longer. I’m off. I'll write again soon. Don’t worry. I’m well. I love you.” Then he had packed his clothes, given away his books and instruments, and sailed in mid-August on the first ship that offered after that long tramp of tears and rage, after days of despair. And so here he was.
Where was he going? He glanced at the pale-faced man who asked him. “I don’t know,” he answered shortly. The good-natured gentleman stared, nonplused, Matthew turned away. Where was he going? The ship was going to Antwerp. But that, to Matthew, was sheer accident. He was going away first of all. After that? Well, he had thought of France. There they were at least civilized in their prejudices. But his French was poor. He had studied German because his teachers regarded German medicine as superior to all other. He would then go to Germany. From there? Well, there was Moscow. Perhaps they could use a man in Russia whose heart was hate. Perhaps he would move on to the Near or Far East and find hard work and peace. At any rate, he was going somewhere; and suddenly letting his strained nerves go, he dragged his chair to a sheltered nook apart and slept.
To the few who approached him at all, Matthew was boorish and gruff. He knew that he was unfair, but he could not help it. All the little annoyances, which in healthier days he would have laughed away, avoided, or shortly forgotten, now piled themselves on his sore soul. The roommate assigned him discovered that his companion was colored and quickly decamped with his baggage. A Roumanian who spoke little English, and had not learned American customs, replaced him.
Matthew entered the dining-room with nerves a-quiver. Every eye caught him during the meal—some, curiously; some, derisively; some, in half-contemptuous surprise. He felt and measured all, looking steadily into his plate. On one side sat an old and silent man. To the empty seat on the other side he heard acutely a swish of silk approach—a pause and a consultation, The seat remained empty. At the next meal he was placed in a far corner with people too simple or poor or unimportant to protest. He heaved a sigh to have it over and ate thereafter in silence and quickly.
So at last life settled down, soothed by the sea—the rhythm and song of the old, old sea. He slept and read and slept; ​stared at the water; lived his life again to its wild climax; put down repeatedly the cold, hard memory; and drifting, slept again.
Yet always, as he rose from the deep seas of sleep and reverie, the silent battle with his fellows went on. Now he yearned fiercely for some one to talk to; to talk and talk and explain and prove and disprove. He glimpsed faces at times, intelligent, masterful. They had brains; if they knew him they would choose him as companion, friend; but they did not know him. They did not want to know him. They glanced at him momentarily and then looked away. They were afraid to be noticed noticing him.
And he? He would have killed himself rather than have them dream he would accept a greeting, much less a confidence. He looked past and through and over them with blank unconcern. So much so that a few—simpler souls, themselves wandering alone hither and thither in this aimless haphazard group of a fugitive week—ventured now and then to understand: “I never saw none of you fellers like you—” began one amiable Italian. “No?” answered Matthew briefly and walked away.
“You’re not lonesome?” asked a New England merchant, adding hastily, “I’ve always been interested in your people.”
“Yes,” said Matthew with an intonation that stopped further conversation along that line.
“No,” he growled at an insulted missionary, “I don’t believe in God—never did—do you?”
And yet all the time he was sick at heart and yearning. If but one soul with sense, knowledge, and decency had firmly pierced his awkwardly hung armor, he could have helped make these long hard days human. And one did, a moment, now and then—a little tow-haired girl of five or six with great eyes. She came suddenly on him one day: “Won’t you play ball with me?” He started, smiled, and looked down. He loved children. Then he saw the mother approaching—typically Middle-West American, smartly dressed and conscious of her social inferiority. Slowly his smile faded; quickly he walked away. Yet nearly every day thereafter the child smiled shyly at him as though they shared a secret, and he smiled slowly back; but he was careful never to see the elaborate and most exclusive mother.
​Thus they came to green Plymouth and passed the fortress walls of Cherbourg and, sailing by merry vessels and white cliffs, rode on to the Scheldt. All day they crept past fields and villages, ships and windmills, up to the slender cathedral tower of Antwerp.
III
Sitting in the Viktoria Café, on the Unter den Linden, Berlin, Matthew looked again at the white leviathan—at that mighty organization of white folk against which he felt himself so bitterly in revolt. It was the same vast, remorseless machine in Berlin as in New York. Of course, there were differences—differences which he felt like a tingling pain. He had on the street here no sense of public insult; he was treated as he was dressed, and today he had dressed carefully, wearing the new suit made for the opening school term; he had on his newest dark crimson tie that burned with the red in his smooth brown face; he carried cane and gloves, and he had walked into this fashionable café with an air. He knew that he would be served, politely and without question.
Yes, in Europe he could at least eat where he wished so long as he paid. Yet the very thought made him angry; conceive a man outcast in his own native land! And even here, how long could he pay, he who sat with but two hundred dollars in the world, with no profession, no work, no friends, no country? Yes, these folks treated him as a man—or rather, they did not, on looking at him, treat him as less than a man. But what of it? They were white. What would they say if he asked for work? Or a chance for his brains? Or a daughter in marriage? There was a blonde and blue-eyed girl at the next table catching his eye. Faugh! She was for public sale and thought him a South American, an Egyptian, or a rajah with money. He turned quickly away.
Oh, he was lonesome; lonesome and homesick with a dreadful homesickness. After all, in leaving white, he had also left black America—all that he loved and knew. God! he never dreamed how much he loved that soft, brown world which he had so carelessly, so unregretfully cast away. What would he not give to clasp a dark hand now, to hear a soft Southern roll of speech, to kiss a brown cheek? To see warm, brown, ​crinkly hair and laughing eyes. God—he was lonesome. So utterly, terribly lonesome, And then—he saw the Princess!
Many, many times in after years he tried to catch and rebuild that first wildly beautiful phantasy which the girl's face stirred in him. He knew well that no human being could be quite as beautiful as she looked to him then. He could never quite recapture the first ecstasy of the picture, and yet always even the memory thrilled and revived him. Never after that first glance was he or the world quite the same.
First and above all came that sense of color: into this world of pale yellowish and pinkish parchment, that absence or negation of color, came, suddenly, a glow of golden brown skin. It was darker than sunlight and gold; it was lighter and livelier than brown. It was a living, glowing crimson, veiled beneath brown flesh. It called for no light and suffered no shadow, but glowed softly of its own inner radiance.
Then came the sense of the woman herself: she was young and tall even when seated, and she bore herself above all with a singularly regal air. She was slim and lithe, gracefully curved. Unseeing, past him and into the struggling, noisy street, she was looking with eyes that were pools of night—liquid, translucent, haunting depths—whose brilliance made her face a glory and a dream.
Matthew pulled himself together and tried to act sensibly. Here—here in Berlin and but a few tables away, actually sat a radiantly beautiful woman, and she was colored. He could see the faultlessness of her dress. There was a hint of something foreign and exotic in her simply draped gown of rich, creamlike silken stuff and in the graceful coil of her handfashioned turban. Her gloves were hung carelessly over her arm, and he caught a glimpse of slender-heeled slippers and sheer clinging hosiery. There was a flash of jewels on her hands and a murmur of beads in half-hidden necklaces. His young enthusiasm might overpaint and idealize her, but to the dullest and the oldest she was beautiful, beautiful. Who was she? What was she? How came this princess (for in some sense she must be royal) here in Berlin? Was she American? And how was he—
Then he became conscious that he had been listening to words spoken behind him. He caught a slap of American English from the terrace just back and beyond.
​“Look, there’s that darky again. See her? Sitting over yonder by the post. Ain’t she some pippin? What? Get out! Listen! Bet you a ten-spot I get her number before she leaves this café. You’re on! I know niggers, and I don’t mean perhaps. Ain’t I white. Watch my smoke!”
Matthew gripped the table. All that cold rage which still lay like lead beneath his heart began again to glow and burn. Action, action, it screamed—no running and sulking now—action! There was murder in his mind—murder, riot, and arson. He wanted just once to hit this white American in the jaw—to see him spinning over the tables, and then to walk out with his arm about the princess, through the midst of a gaping, scurrying white throng. He started to rise, and nearly upset his coffee cup.
Then he came to himself. No—no. That would not do. Surely the fellow would not insult the girl. He could count on no public opinion in Berlin as in New York to shield him in such an adventure. He would simply seek to force his company on her in quite a natural way. After all, the café was filling. There were no empty tables, at least in the forward part of the room, and no one person had a right to a whole table; yet to approach any woman thus, when several tables with men offered seats, was to make a subtle advance; and to approach this woman?—puzzled and apprehensive, Matthew sat quietly and watched while he paid his waiter and slowly pulled on his gloves. He saw a young, smooth-faced American circle carelessly from behind him and saunter toward the door. Then he stopped, and turning, slowly came back toward the girl’s table. A cold sweat broke out over Matthew. A sickening fear fought with the fury in his heart. Suppose this girl, this beautiful girl, let the fresh American sit down and talk to her? Suppose? After all, who—what was she? To sit alone at a table in a European café—well, Matthew watched. The American approached, paused, looked about the café, and halted beside her table. He looked down and bowed, with his hand on the back of the empty chair.
The lady did not start nor speak. She glanced at him indifferently, unclasped her hands slowly, and then with no haste gathered up her things; she nodded to the waiter, fumbled in her purse, and without another glance at the American, arose and passed slowly out. Matthew could have shouted.
​But the American was not easily rebuffed by this show of indifference. Apparently he interpreted the movement quite another way. Waving covertly to his fellows, he arose leisurely, without ordering, tossed a bill to the waiter, and sauntered out after the lady. Matthew rose impetuously, and he felt that whole terrace table of men arise behind him.
The dark lady had left by the Friedrichstrasse door, and paused for the taxi which the gold-laced porter had summoned. She gave an address and already had her foot on the step. In a moment the American was by her side. Deftly he displaced the porter and bent with lifted hat. She turned on him in surprise and raised her little head. Still the American persisted with a smile, but his hand had hardly touched her elbow when Matthew's fist caught him right between the smile and the ear. The American sat down on the sidewalk very suddenly.
Pedestrians paused. There was a commotion at the restaurant door as several men rushed out, but the imposing porter was too quick; he had caught the eye and pocketed the bill of the lady. In a moment, evidently thinking the couple together, he had handed both her and Matthew into the taxi, slammed the door, and they had whirled away. In a trice they fled down the Friedrichstrasse, left across the Französische, again left to Charlotten, and down the Linden. Matthew glanced anxiously back. They had been too quick, and there was apparently no pursuit. He leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur, and they drove up to the curb near the Brandenburg Gate and stopped.
“Mille remerciements, Monsieur!” said the lady.
Matthew searched his head for the right French answer as he started to step out, but could not remember: “Oh—oh—don't mention it,” he stammered.
“Ah—you are English? I thought you were French or Spanish!”
She spoke clear clipped English with perfect accent, to Matthew's intense relief. Suppose she had spoken only French! He hastened to explain: “I am an American Negro.”
“An American Negro?” The lady bent forward in sudden interest and stared at him. “An American Negro!” she repeated. “How singular—how very singular! I have been think​ing of American Negroes all day! Please do not leave me yet. Can you spare a moment? Chauffeur, drive on!”
IV
As they sat at tea in the Tiergarten, under the tall black trees, Matthew’s story came pouring out:
“I was born in Virginia, Prince James County, where we black folk own most of the land. My mother, now many years a widow, farmed her little forty acres to educate me, her only child. There was a good school there with teachers from Hampton, the great boarding-school not far away. I was young when I finished the course and was sent to Hampton. There I was unhappy. I wanted to study for a profession, and they insisted on making me a farmer. I hated the farm. My mother finally sent me North. I boarded first with a cousin and then with friends in New York and went through high school and through the City College. I specialized on the pre-medical course, and by working nights and summers and playing football (amateur, of course, but paid excellent ‘expenses’ in fact), I was able to enter the new great medical school of the University of Manhattan, two years ago.
“It was a hard pull, but I plunged the line. I had to have scholarships, and I got them, although one Southern professor gave me the devil of a time.”
The lady interrupted. “Southern?” she asked. “What do you mean by ‘Southern’?”
“I mean from the former slave States—although the phrase isn’t just fair. Some of our most professional Southerners are Northern-born.”
The lady still looked puzzled, but Matthew talked on.
“This' man didn’t mean to be unfair, but he honestly didn’t believe ‘niggers’ had brains, even if he had the evidence before him. He flunked me on principle. I protested and finally had the matter up to the Dean; I showed all my other marks and got a re-examination at an extra cost that deprived me of a new overcoat. I gave him a perfect paper, and he had to acknowledge it was ‘good,’ although he made careful inquiries to see if I had not in some way cribbed dishonestly.
“At last I got my mark and my scholarship. During my sec​ond year there were rumors among the few colored students in the clinical hospital, especially with white women patients. I laughed. It was, I was sure, a put-up rumor to scare us off. I knew black men who had gone through New York medical schools which had become parts of this great new consolidated school. There had been no real trouble. The patients never objected—only Southern students and the few Southern professors. Some of the trustees had mentioned the matter but had been shamed into silence.
"Then, too, I was firm in my Hampton training; desert and hard work were bound to tell. Prejudice was a miasma that character burned away. I believed thoroughly. I had literally pounded my triumphant way through school and life. Of course I had made insult and rebuff here and there, but I ignored them, laughed at them, and went my way. Those black people who cringed and cowered, complained of failure and 'no chance,' I despised—weaklings, cowards, fool! Go to work! Make a way! Compel recognition!
"In the medical school there were two other colored men just managing to crawl through. I covertly sneered at them, avoided them. What business had they there with no ability or training? I see differently now. I see there may have been a dozen reasons why Phillips of Mississippi could neither spell nor read correctly and why Jones of Georgia could not count. They had no hard-working mother, no Hampton, no happy accidents of fortune to help them on.
"While I? I rose to triumph after triumph. Just as in college I had been the leading athlete and had ridden many a time aloft on white students' shoulders, so now, working until two o’clock in the morning and rising at six, I took prize after prize—the Mitchel Honor in physiology, the Welbright medal in pathology, the Shores Prize for biological chemistry. I ranked the second-year class at last commencement, and at our annual dinner at the Hotel Pennsylvania, sat at the head table with the medal men. I remember one classmate. He was from Atlanta, and he hesitated and whispered when he found his seat was beside me. Then he sat down like a man and held out his hand. ‘Towns,’ he said, ‘I never associated with a Negro before who wasn't a servant or laborer; but I've heard ​of you, and you've made a damned fine record. I'm proud to sit by you.’
“I shook his hand and choked. He proved my life-theory. Character and brains were too much for prejudice. Then the blow fell. I had slaved all summer. I was worked to a frazzle. Reckon my hard-headedness had a hand there, too. I wouldn't take a menial job—Pullman porter, waiter, bell-boy, boat steward—good money, but I waved them aside. No! Bad for the soul, and I might meet a white fellow student.”
The lady smiled. “Meet a fellow student—did none of them work, too?”
“O yes, but seldom as menials, while Negroes in America are always expected to be menials. It's natural, but—no, I couldn't do it. So at last I got a job in Washington in the medical statistics department of the National Benefit. This is one of our big insurance concerns. O yes, we've got a number of them; prosperous, too. It was hard work, indoors, poor light and air; but I was interested—worked overtime, learned the game, and gave my thought and ideas.
“They promoted me and paid me well, and by the middle of August I had my tuition and book money saved. They wanted me to stay with them permanently; at least until fall. But I had other plans. There was a summer school of two terms at the college, and I figured that if I entered the second term I could get a big lead in my obstetrical work and stand a better show for the Junior prizes. I had applied in the spring for admission to the Stern Maternity Hospital, which occupied three floors of our center building. My name had been posted as accepted. I was tired to death, but I rushed back to New York to register. Perhaps if I had been rested, with cool head and nerves-well, I wasn't. I made the office of the professor of obstetrics on a hot afternoon, August 10, I well remember. He looked at me in surprise.
“‘You can't work in the Stern Hospital—the places are all taken.’
“‘I have one of the places,’ I pointed out. He seemed puzzled and annoyed.
“ ‘You'll have to see the Dean,’ he said finally.
“I was angry and rushed to the Dean's office. I saw that we had a new Dean—a Southerner.
“Then the blow fell. Seemingly, during the summer the ​trustees had decided gradually to exclude Negroes from the college. In the case of students already in the course, they were to be kept from graduation by a refusal to admit them a certain course, particularly in obstetrics. The Dean was to break the news by letter as students applied for the course, I had been accepted before the decision; so now he had to tell me. He hated the task, I could see. But I was too surprised, disgusted, furious. He said that I could not enter, and he told me brutally why. I threw my papers in his face and left. All my fine theories of race and prejudice lay in ruins. My life was overturned. America was impossible—unthinkable. I ran away, and here I am.”
V
They had sat an hour drinking tea in the Tiergarten, that mightiest park in Europe with its lofty trees, its cool dark shade, its sense of withdrawal from the world. He had not meant to be so voluble, so self-revealing. Perhaps the lady had deftly encouraged confidences in her high, but gracious way. Perhaps the mere sight of her smooth brown skin had made Matthew assume sympathy. There was something at once inviting and aloof in the young woman who sat opposite him. She had the air and carriage of one used to homage and yet receiving it indifferently as a right. With all her gentle manner and thoughtfulness, she had a certain fainty air of haughtiness an dwas ever slightly remote.
She was “colored” and yet not at all colored in his intimate sense. Her beauty as he saw it near had seemed even more striking; those thin, smooth fingers moving about the silver had known no work; she was carefully groomed from her purple hair to her slim toe-tips, and yet with few accessories; he could not tell whether she used paint or powder. Her features were regular and delicate, and there was a tiny diamond in one nostril. But quite aside from all the details of face and jewels—her pearls, her rings, the old gold bracelet—above and beyond and much more than the sum of them all was the luminous radiance of her complete beauty, her glow of youth and strength behind that screen of a grand yet gracious matter. It was overpowering for Matthew, and yet stimulating. So his story came pouring out before he knew or cared to whom he ​was speaking. All the loneliness of long, lonely days clamored for speech, all the pent-up resentment choked for words.
The lady listened at first with polite but conscious sympathy; then she bent forward more and more eagerly, but always with restraint, with that mastery of body and soul that never for a moment slipped away, and yet with so evident a sympathy and comprehension that it set Matthew’s head swimming. She swept him almost imperiously with her eyes—those great wide orbs of darkening light. His own eyes lifted and fell before them; lifted and fell, until at Jast he looked past them and talked to the tall green and black oaks.
And yet there was never anything personal in her all-sweeping glance or anything self-conscious in the form that bent toward him, She never seemed in the slightest way conscious of herself. She arranged nothing, glanced at no detail of her dress, smoothed no wisp of hair. She seemed at once unconscious of her beauty and charm, and at the same time assuming it as a fact, but of no especial importance. She had no little feminine ways; she used her eyes apparently only for seeing, yet seemed to see all.
Matthew had the feeling that her steady, full, radiant gaze that enveloped and almost burned him, saw not him but the picture he was painting and the thing that the picture meant. He warmed with such an audience and painted with clean, sure lines. Only once or twice did she interrupt, and when he had ended, she still sat full-faced, flooding him with the startling beauty of her eyes. Her hands clasped and unclasped slowly, her lips were slightly parted, the curve of her young bosom rose and fell.
“And you ran away!” she said musingly. Matthew winced and started to explain, but she continued. “Singular,” she said. “How singular that I should meet you; and today.” There Was no coquetry in her tone. It was evidently not of him, the hero, of whom she was thinking, but of him, the group, the fact, the whole drama.
“And you are two—three millions?” she asked.
“Ten or twelve,” he answered.
“You ran away,” she repeated, half in meditation.
“What else could I do?” he demanded impulsively. “Cringe and crawl?”
“Of course the Negroes have no hospitals?”
​“Of course, they have—many, but not attached to the great schools. What can Howard (rated as our best colored school) do with thousands, when whites have millions? And if we come out poorly taught and half equipped, they sneer at ‘nigger’ doctors.”
“And no Negroes are admitted to the hospitals of New York?”
“O yes hundreds. But if we colored students are confined to colored patients, we surrender a principle.”
“What principle?”
“Equality.”
“Oh—equality.”
She sat for a full moment, frowning and looking at him. Then she fumbled away at her beads and brought out a tiny jeweled box. Absently she took out a cigarette, lighted it, and offered him one. Matthew took it, but he was a little troubled. White women in his experience smoked of course—but colored women? Well—but it was delicious to see her great, somber eyes veiled in hazy blue.
She sighed at last and said: “I do not quite understand. But at any rate I see that you American Negroes are not a mere amorphous handful. You are a nation! I never dreamed—But I must explain. I want you to dine with me and some friends tomorrow night at my apartment. We represent—indeed I may say frankly, we are—a part of a great committee of the darker peoples; of those who suffer under the arrogance and tyranny of the white world.”
Matthew leaned forward with an eager thrill. “And you have plans? Some vast emancipation of the world?”
She did not answer directly, but continued: “We have among us spokesmen of nearly all these groups—of them or for them—except American Negroes. Some of us think these former slaves unready for coöperation, but I just returned from Moscow last week. At our last dinner I was telling of a report I read there from America that astounded me and gave me great pleasure-for I almost alone have insisted that your group was worthy of coöperation. In Russia I heard something, and it happened so curiously that—after sharp discussion about your people but last night (for I will not conceal from you that there is still doubt and opposition in our ranks)—that I should meet you today.
​“I had gone up to the palace to see the exhibition of the new paintings—you have not seen it? You must. All the time I was thinking absently of Black America, and one picture there intensified and stirred my thoughts—a weird massing of black shepherds and a star. I dropped into the Viktoria, almost unconsciously, because the tea there is good and the muffins quite unequaled. I know that I should not go there unaccompanied, even in the day; white women may, but brown women seem strangely attractive to white men, especially Americans; and this is the open season for them.
“Twice before I have had to put Americans in their place. I went quite unconsciously and noted nothing in particular until that impossible young man sat down at my table. I did not know he had followed me out. Then you knocked him into the gutter quite beautifully. It had never happened before that a stranger of my own color would offer me protection in Europe. I had a curious sense of some great inner meaning to your act—some world involvement. It seemed almost that the Powers of Heaven had bent to give me the knowledge which I was groping for; and so I invited you, that I might hear and know more.”
She rose, insisted on paying the bill herself. “You are my guest, you see. It is late and I must go. Then, tomorrow night at eight. My card and address— Oh, I quite forgot. May I know your name?”
Matthew had no card. But he wrote in her tiny memorandum book with its golden filigree, “Matthew Towns, Exile, Hotel Roter Adler.”
She held out her hand, half turning to go. He slenderness made her look taller than she was. The curved line of her flowed sinuously from neck to ankle. She held her right hand high, palm down, the long fingers drooping and a ruby flamed dark crimson on her forefinger. Mathew reached out and shook her hand heartily. He had, as he did it, a vague feeling that he took her by surprise. Perhaps she shook hands too hard, for her hand was very little and frail. Perhaps she did not mean to shake hands—but then, what did she mean?
She was gone. He took her card and read it. There was a little coronet and under it, engraved in flowing script, “H.R.H. the Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur, India.” Below was written, “Lützower Ufer, No. 12.”
VI
Matthew sat in the dining-room of the Princess on Lützower Ufer. Looking about, his heart swelled. For the first time since he had left New York, he felt himself a man, one of those who could help build a world and guide it. He had no regrets. Medicine seemed a far-off, dry-as-dust thing.
The oak paneling of the room went to the ceiling and there broke softly with carven light against white flowers and into long lucent curves. The table below was sheer with lace and linen, sparkling with silver and crystal. The servants moved deftly, and all of them were white save one who stood behind the Princess' high and crimson chair. At her right sat Matthew himself, hardly realizing until long afterward the honor thus done an almost nameless guest.
Fortunately he had the dinner jacket of year before last with him. It was not new, but it fitted his form perfectly, and his was a form worth fitting. He was a bit shocked to note that all the other men but two were in full evening dress. But he did not let this worry him much.
Ten of them sat at the table. On the Princess' left was a Japanese, faultless in dress and manner, evidently a man of importance, as the deference shown him and the orders on his breast indicated. He was quite yellow, short and stocky, with a face which was a delicately handled but perfect mask. There were two Indians, one a man grave, haughty, and old, dressed richly in turban and embroidered tunic, the other, in conventional dress and turban, a young man, handsome and alert, whose eyes were ever on the Princess. There were two Chinese, a young man and a young woman, he in a plain but becoming Chinese costume of heavy blue silk, she in a pretty dress, half Chinese, half European in effect. An Egyptian and his wife came next, he suave, talkative, and polite—just a shade too talkative and a bit too polite, Matthew thought; his wife a big, handsome, silent woman, elegantly jeweled and gowned, with much bare flesh. Beyond them was a cold and rather stiff Arab who spoke seldom, and then abruptly.
Of the food and wine of such dinners, Matthew had read often but never partaken; and the conversation, now floating, now half submerged, gave baffling glimpses of unknown lands, ​spiritual and physical. It was all something quite new in his experience, the room, the table, the service, the company.
He could not keep his eyes from continually straying sidewise to his hostess. Never had he seen color in human flesh so regally set: the rich and flowing grace of the dress out of which rose so darkly splendid the jeweled flesh. The black and purple hair was heaped up on her little head, and in its depths gleamed a tiny coronet of gold. Her voice and her poise, her self-possession and air of quiet command, kept Matthew staring almost unmannerly, despite the fact that he somehow sensed a shade of resentment in the young and handsome Indian opposite.
They had eaten some delicious tidbits of meat and vegetables and then were served with a delicate soup when the Princess, turning slightly to her right, said:
“You will note, Mr. Towns, that we represent here much of the Darker World. Indeed, when all our circle is present, we represent all of it, save your world of Black Folk.”
“All the darker world except the darkest,” said the Egyptian.
“A pretty large omission,” said Matthew with a smile.
“I agree,” said the Chinaman; but the Arab said something abruptly in French. Matthew had said that he knew “some” French. But his French was of the American variety which one excavates from dictionaries and cements with grammar, like bricks. He was astounded at the ease and the fluency with which most of this company used languages, so easily, without groping or hesitation and with light, sure shading. They talked art in French, literature in Italian, politics in German, and everything in clear English.
“M. Ben Ali suggests,” said the Princess, “that even you are not black, Mr. Towns.”
“My grandfather was, and my soul is. Black blood with us in America is a matter of spirit and not simply of flesh.”
“Ah! mixed blood,” said the Egyptian.
“Like all of us, especially me,” laughed the Princess.
“But, your Royal Highness—not Negro,” said the elder Indian in a tone that hinted a protest.
“Essentially,” said the Princess lightly, “as our black and curly-haired Lord Buddha testifies in a hundred places. But”—​a bit imperiously—“enough of that. Our point is that Pan-Africa belongs logically with Pan-Asia; and for that reason Mr. Towns is welcomed tonight by you, I am sure, and by me especially. He did me a service as I was returning from the New Palace.”
They all looked interested, but the Egyptian broke out:
“Ah, Your Highness, the New Palace, and what is the fad today? What has followed expressionism, cubism, futurism, vorticism? I confess myself at sea. Picasso alarms me. Matisse sets me aflame. But I do not understand them. I prefer the classics.”
“The Congo,” said the Princess, “is flooding the Acropolis. There is a beautiful Kandinsky on exhibit, and some lovely and startling things by unknown newcomers.”
“Mais,” replied the Egyptian, dropping into French—and they were all off to the discussion, save the silent Egyptian woman and the taciturn Arab.
Here again Matthew was puzzled. These persons easily penetrated worlds where he was a stranger. Frankly, but for the context he would not have known whether Picasso was a man, a city, or a vegetable. He had never heard of Matisse. Lightly, almost carelessly, as he thought, his companions leapt to unknown subjects. Yet they knew. They knew art, books, and literature, politics of all nations, and not newspaper politics merely, but inner currents and whisperings, unpublished facts.
“Ah, pardon,” said the Egyptian, returning to English, “I forgot Monsieur Towns speaks only English and does not interest himself in art.”
Perhaps Matthew was sensitive and imagined that the Egyptian and the Indian rather often, if not purposely, strayed to French and subjects beyond him.
“Mr. Towns is a scientist?” asked the Japanese.
“He studies medicine,” answered the Princess.
“Ah—a high service,” said the Japanese. “I was reading only today of the work on cancer by your Peyton Rous in Carrel’s laboratory.”
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 high-born 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 worth-while 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 icily.
“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 peo​ples 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 beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. Still there was silence—silence almost breathless. The voice of the Chinese woman broke it.
“It was an American slave song! I know it. How—how wonderful.”
A chorus of approval poured out, led by the Egyptian.
“That,” said Matthew, “came out of the black rabble of America.” And he trilled his “r.” They all smiled as the tension broke.
“You assume then,” said the Princess at last, “that the mass of the workers of the world can rule as well as be ruled?”
“Yes—or rather can work as well as be worked, can live as well as be kept alive. America is teaching the world one thing and only one thing of real value, and that is, that ability and capacity for culture is not the hereditary monopoly of a few, but the widespread possibility for the majority of mankind if they only have a decent chance in life.”
​The Chinaman spoke: “If Mr. Towns’ assumption is true, and I believe it is, and recognized, as some time it must be, it will revolutionize the world.”
“It will revolutionize the world,” smiled the Japanese, “but not—today.”
“Nor this siécle,” growled the Arab.
“Nor the next—and so in saecula saeculorum,” laughed the Egyptian.
“Well,” said the little Chinese lady, “the unexpected happens.”
And Matthew added ruefully, “It’s about all that does happen!”
He lapsed into blank silence, wondering how he had come to express the astonishing philosophy which had leapt unpremeditated from his lips. Did he himself believe it? As they arose from the table the Princess called him aside.
VII
“I trust you will pardon the interruption at this late hour,” said the Japanese. Matthew glanced up in surprise as the Japanese, the two Indians, and the Arab entered his room. “Sure,” said he cheerily, “have any seats you can find. Sorry there’s so little space.”
It was three o’clock in the morning. He was in his shirt sleeves without collar, and he was packing hastily, wondering how on earth all these things had ever come out of his two valises. The little room on the fifth floor of the Roter Adler Hotel did look rather a mess. But his guests smiled and so politely deprecated any excuses or discomfort that he laughed too, and leaned against the window, while they stood about door and bed.
“You had, I believe,” continued the Japanese, “an interview with her Royal Highness, the Princess, before you left her home tonight.”
“Yes.”
“I—er—presume you realize, Mr. Towns, that the Princess of Bwodpur is a lady of very high station—of great wealth and influence.”
“I cannot imagine anybody higher.”
The elder Indian interrupted. “There are,” he said, “of ​course, some persons of higher hereditary rank than her Royal Highness, but not many. She is of royal blood by many scores of generations of direct descent. She is a ruling potentate in her own right over six millions of loyal subjects and yields to no human being in the ancient splendor of her heritage. Her income, her wealth in treasure and jewels, is uncounted. Sir, there are few people in the world who have the right to touch the hem of her garment.” The Indian drew himself to full height and looked at Matthew.
“I’m strongly inclined to agree with you there,” said Matthew, smiling genially.
“I had feared,” continued the younger Indian, also looking Matthew squarely in the eye, “that perhaps, being American, and unused to the ceremony of countries of rank, you might misunderstand the democratic graciousness of her Royal Highness toward you. We appreciate, sir, more than we can say,” and both Indians bowed low, “your inestimable service to the Princess yesterday, in protecting her royal person from insufferable insult. But the very incident illustrates and explains our errand.
“The Princess is young and headstrong. She delights, in her new European independence, to elude her escort, and has given us moments of greatest solicitude and even fright. Meeting her as you did yesterday, it was natural for you to take her graciousness toward you as the camaraderie of an equal, and—quite unconsciously, I am sure—your attitude toward her has caused us grave misgiving.”
“You mean that I have not treated the Princess with courtesy?” asked Matthew in consternation. “In what way? Tell me.”
“It is nothing—nothing, now that it is past, and since the Princess was gracious enough to allow it. But you may recall that you never addressed her by her rightful title of ‘Royal Highness’; you several times interrupted her conversation and addressed her before being addressed; you occupied the seat of honor without even an attempted refusal and actually shook her Highness’ hand, which we are taught to regard as unpardonable familiarity."
Matthew grinned cheerfully. “I reckon if the Princess hadn’t liked all that she’d have said so—”
The Japanese quickly intervened. “This is, pardon me, be​side our main errand,” he said. “We realize that you admire and revere the Princess not only as a supremely beautiful woman of high rank, but as one of rare intelligence and high ideals.”
“I certainly do.”
“And we assume that anything you could do—any way you could coöperate with us for her safety and future, we could count upon your doing?”
“To my very life.”
“Good—excellent—you see, my friends,” turning to the still disturbed Indians and the silent, sullen Arab, “it is as I rightly divined.”
They did not appear wholly convinced, but the Japanese continued:
“In her interview with you she told you a story she had heard in Moscow, of a widespread and carefully planned uprising of the American blacks. She has intrusted you with a letter to the alleged leader of this organization and asked you to report to her your impressions and recommendations; and even to deliver the letter, if you deem it wise.
“Now, my dear Mr. Towns, consider the situation: First of all, our beloved Princess introduces you, a total stranger, into our counsels and tells you some of our general plans. Fortunately, you prove to be a gentleman who can be trusted; and yet you yourself must admit this procedure was not exactly wise. Further than that, through this letter, our reputations, our very lives, are put in danger by this well-meaning but young and undisciplined lady. Her unfortunate visit to Russia has inoculated her with Bolshevism of a mild but dangerous type. The letter contains money to encourage treason. You know perfectly well that the American Negroes will neither rebel nor fight unless put up to it or led like dumb cattle by whites. You have never even heard of the alleged leader, as you acknowledged to the Princess.”
“She is evidently well spied upon.”
“She is, and will always be, well guarded,” answered the elder Indian tensely.
“Except yesterday,” said Matthew.
But the Japanese quickly proceeded. “Why then go on this wild goose chase? Why deliver dynamite to children?”
“Thank you.”
​“I beg your pardon. I may speak harshly, but I speak frankly. You are an exception among your people.”
“I’ve heard that before. Once I believed it. Now I do not.”
“You are generous, but you are an exception, and you know you are.”
“Most people are exceptions.”
“You know that your people are cowards.”
“That’s a lie; they are the bravest people fighting for justice today.”
“I wish it were so, but I do not believe it, and neither do you. Every report from America—and believe me, we have many—contradicts this statement for you. I am not blaming them, poor things, they were slaves and children of slaves. They cannot even begin to rise in a century. We Samurai have been lords a thousand years and more; the ancestors of her Royal Highness have ruled for twenty centuries—how can you think to place yourselves beside us as equals? No—no—restrain your natural anger and distaste for such truth. Our situation is too delicate for niceties. We have been almost betrayed by an impulsive woman, high and royal personage though she be. We have come to get that letter and to ask you to write a report now, to be delivered later, thoroughly disenchanting our dear Princess of this black American chimera.”
“And if I refuse?”
The Japanese looked pained but patient. The others moved impatiently, and perceptibly narrowed the circle about Matthew. He was thinking rapidly; the letter was in his coat pocket on the bed beyond the Japanese and within easy reach of the Indians if they had known it. If he jumped out the window, he would be dead, and they would eventually secure the letter. If he fought, they were undoubtedly armed, and four to one. The Japanese was elderly and negligible as an opponent, but the young Indian and the Arab were formidable, and the older Indian dangerous. He might perhaps kill one and disable another and raise enough hullabaloo to arouse the hotel, but how would such a course affect the Princess?
The Japanese watched him sadly.
“Why speak of unpleasant things,” he said gently, “or contemplate futilities? We are not barbarians. We are men of thought and culture. Be assured our plans have been laid with care. We know the host of this hotel well. Resistance on your ​part would be absolutely futile. The back stairs opposite your entrance are quite clear and will be kept clear until we go. And when we go, the letter will go with us.”
Matthew set his back firmly against the window. His thoughts raced. They were armed, but they would use their arms only as a last resort; pistols were noisy and knives were messy. Oh, they would use them—one look at their hard, set eyes showed that; but not first. Good! Then first, instead of lurching forward to attack as they might expect, he would do a first-base slide and spike the Japanese in the ankles. It was a mean trick, but anything was fair now. He remembered once when they were playing the DeWitt Clinton High— But he jerked his thoughts back. The Japanese was nearest him; the fiery younger Indian just behind him and a bit to the right, bringing him nearer the bed and blocking the aisle. By the door was the elder Indian, and at the foot of the bed, the Arab.
Good! He would, at the very first movement of the young Indian, who he instinctively knew, would begin the mélée, slide feet forward into the ankles of the Japanese, catching him a little to the right so that he would fall or lurch between him and the Indian. Then he would with the same movement slide under the low iron bed and rise with the bed as weapon and shield. But he would not keep it. No; he would hurl it sideways and to the left, pinning the young Indian to the wall and the Japanese to the floor. With the same movement he would attempt a football tackle on the Arab. The Arab was a tough customer—tall, sinewy, and hard. If he turned left, got his knife and struck down, quick and sure, Matthew would be done for. But most probably he would, at Matthew’s first movement, turn right toward his fellows. If he did, he was done for. He would go down in the heap, knocking the old Indian against the door.
Beside that door was the electric switch. Matthew would turn it and make a last fight for the door. He might get out, and if he did, the stairs were clear. The coat and letter? Leave them, so long as he got his story to the Princess. It was all last desperate throw. He calculated that he had good chances against the Japanese’s shins, about even chances to get under the bed unscathed, and one in two to tackle the Arab. He had not more than one chance in three of making the door un​scathed, but this was the only way. If he surrendered without a fight— That was unthinkable. And after all, what had he to lose? Life? Well, his prospects were not brilliant anyhow. And to die for the Princess—silly, of course, but it made his blood race. For the first time he glimpsed the glory of death. Meantime—he said—be sensible! It would not hurt to spar for time.
He pretended to be weighing the matter.
“Suppose you do steal the letter by force, do you think you can make me write a report?”
“No, a voluntary report would be desirable but not necessary. You left with the Princess, you will remember, a page of directions and information about America to guide her in the trip she is preparing to make and from which we hope to dissuade her. You appended your signature and address. From this it will be easy to draft a report in handwriting so similar to yours as to be indistinguishable by ordinary eyes.”
“You add forgery to your many accomplishments.”
“In the pursuit of our duty, we do not hesitate at theft or forgery.”
Still Matthew parried: “Suppose,” he said, “I pretended to acquiesce, gave you the letter and reported to the Princess. Suppose even I told the German newspapers of what I have seen and heard tonight.”
There was a faraway look in the eyes of the Japanese as he answered slowly: “We must follow Fate, my dear Mr. Towns, even if Fate leads—to murder. We will not let you communicate with the Princess, and you are leaving Berlin tonight.”
The Indians gave a low sigh almost like relief.
Matthew straightened and spoke slowly and firmly.
“Very well. I won’t surrender that letter to anybody but the Princess—not while I’m alive. And if I go out of here dead I won’t be the only corpse.”
Every eye was on the Japanese, and Matthew knew his life was in the balance. The pause was tense; then came the patient voice of the Japanese again.
“You—admire the Princess, do you not?”
“With all my heart.”
The Indians winced.
“You would do her a service?”
​“To the limit of my strength.”
“Very well. Let us assume that I am wrong. Assume that the Negroes are worth freedom and ready to fight for it. Can you not see that the name of this young, beautiful, and high-born lady must under no circumstances be mixed up with them, whether they gain or lose? What would not Great Britain give thus to compromise an Indian ruler?”
“That is for the Princess to decide.”
“No! She is a mere woman—an inexperienced girl. You are a man of the world. For the last time, will you rescue her Royal Highness from herself?”
“No. The Princess herself must decide.”
“Then—”
“Then,” said the Princess’ full voice, “the Princess will decide.” She stood in the open doorway, the obsequious and scared landlord beside her with his pass-keys. She had thrown an opera cloak over her evening gown, and stood unhatted, white-slippered, and ungloved. She threw one glance at the Indians, and they bowed low with outstretched hands, She stamped her foot angrily, and they went to their knees. She wheeled to the Arab. Without a word, he stalked out. The Japanese alone remained, calm and imperturbable.
“We have failed,” he said, with a low bow.
The Princess looked at him.
“You have failed,” she said. “I am glad there is no blood on your hands.”
“A drop of blood more or less matters little in the great cause for which you and I fight, and if I have incurred your Royal Highness’ displeasure tonight, remember that, for the same great cause, I stand ready tomorrow night to repeat the deed and seal it with my life.”
The Princess looked at him with troubled eyes. Then she seated herself in the only and rather rickety chair and motioned for her two subjects to arise. Matthew never forgot that scene: he, collarless and in shirt sleeves, with sweat pouring off his face; the room in disorder, mean, narrow, small, and dingy; the Japanese standing in the same place as when he entered, in unruffled evening dress; the Indians on their knees with hidden faces; the Princess, disturbed, yet radiant. She spoke in low tones.
“I may be wrong,” she said, “and I know how right, but ​infinitely and calmly right, you usually are. But some voice within calls me. I have started to fight for the dark and oppressed peoples of the world; now suddenly I have seen a light. A light which illumines the mass of men and not simply its rulers, white and yellow and black. I want to see if this thing is true, if it can possibly be true that wallowing masses often conceal submerged kings. I have decided not simply to send a messenger to America but shortly to sail myself perhaps this week on the Gigantic. I want to see for myself if slaves can become men in a generation. If they can—well, it makes the world new for you and me.”
The Japanese started to speak, but she would not pause:
“There is no need for protest or advice. I am going. Mr. Towns will perform his mission as we agreed, if he is still so minded, and as long as he is in Europe, these two gentlemen,” she glanced at the Indians, “will bear his safety on their heads, at my command. Go!”
The Indians bowed and walked out slowly, backward. She turned to the Japanese.
“Your Highness, I bid you good night and good-by. I shall write you.”
Gravely the Japanese kissed her hand, bowed, and withdrew. The Princess looked at Matthew. He became acutely conscious of his appearance as she looked at him almost a full minute with her great, haunting eyes.
“T thank you, again,” she said slowly. “You are a brave man—and loyal.” She held out her hand, low, to shake his.
But the tension of the night broke him; he quivered, and taking her hand in both his, kissed it.
She rose quickly, drew herself up, and looked at first almost affronted; then when she saw his swimming eyes, a kind of startled wonder flashed in hers. Slowly she held out her hand again, regally, palm down and the long fingers drooping.
“You are very young,” she said.
He was. He was only twenty-five. The Princess was all of twenty-three.