The Open Question Part 65

"Yes'm," said Emmie, meekly.

"Why do you bow to him?"

"Oh, I know him."

"We all _know_ him, but that's no reason you should recognize him out of the store."

"I don't see why--" began Emmie.

"I've told you before, you do not know such persons except in their capacity of salesmen."

"He bowed to me, grandma."

"Impertinence! Teach him a lesson next time. Don't notice him."

Mrs. Gano's point of view not only seemed to Val quite natural, but this very same conversation, with some immaterial variation, had taken place too often to merit notice. Cousin Ethan, however, was looking from one to the other in frank amazement.

"'Tisn't as if Peter Hall was a servant," said Emmie, appealingly.

"I've given up bowing to the Otways' coachman."

"Isn't all this very undemocratic?" Ethan asked.

"It's a most essential consideration in a democracy."

"But do you realize that it shows a degree of cla.s.s prejudice that doesn't exist in the older, the monarchical countries?"

"Quite possible. Where the differences are broadly and indelibly stamped, there's no need to remind anybody that they exist."

"Three months ago," said Ethan, meditatively, "I should have called such considerations absolutely un-American. However, a season at Newport, not to speak of glimpses of life in the Boston clubs and on Beacon Hill, have helped to readjust my views. Still, I didn't think I should find out here in the West"--some quick look in Mrs. Gano's face made him modify--"out here in the Great Middle States--"

"You forget your father's family are Southerners, root and branch. But as to that, you will leave distinctions behind when you reach heaven, not before. And even there we are told one star differeth from another star in glory."

"Well," said Ethan, smiling, "I only wish I'd brought Drouet."

"A friend of yours?"

"Well, yes, if I may be so bold. A more necessary friend than most. I rather missed him at first. Drouet is my valet."

"There would have been accommodation for him."

"You see, I didn't know. I thought you would have been scandalized."

"I don't see why you should think that. My father never travelled without his body-servant. You must have had the Tallmadges in mind.

They, you know, thought themselves wiser than the prophets. There was no need of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Every one would be free and equal once black slavery was abolished. Childishness! Three-fourths of the human race is in bondage to the other fourth. Whether your servant is a Frenchman and white, or an African and black, the root of the matter is the same. We exact menial services of our inferiors, being of the dominant race."

The carriage drew up before the ruinous Fort, and "the dominant race"

got out, while two black faces and a colored turban went scuttling back to the rear. John Gano, in a shabby old coat with a tear in the sleeve, was standing on a step-ladder, lopping off twigs with a huge pair of garden shears.

"John--John! What a mad proceeding! You will take your death!" cried his mother from the carriage window.

The gentleman so addressed climbed carefully down the step-ladder, while Emmie tumbled out of the carriage and ran to meet him.

"What do you think, father?" she said, confidingly. "Cousin Ethan's got a valet."

"A what?"

"A valet," whispered Emmie.

"Valet! What does he want a valet for?"

In vain Emmie squeezed his arm. He spoke in a loud, astonished tone.

"Ah ha! I felt it wouldn't do to produce Drouet in New Plymouth," said Ethan, who was conducting Mrs. Gano to the porch.

"Well," answered his uncle, dryly, "if you were too old or too ill to wait on yourself, I should understand it."

"Do come in out of the draughts, John, and don't stand talking nonsense.

Your father had his body-servant before he was either old or ill, and so did my father."

"That was in the antebellum days, before men realized they couldn't oppress their fellows with impunity."

"What _do_ you mean?" asked Mrs. Gano, turning sharply on her son.

"I mean that if our forefathers had realized what an awful inheritance they were laying up for their children in the negro problem, they would have gone without their valets and left the negro in his native wilds."

"Oh, if you only mean that the initial mistake was in having the s.h.i.+ftless creatures here at all, I agree. The negro enslaved was a care and a drag on the South; the negro free is a menace to all America."

She opened the door of the long room and rang for Venus to take off her shoes.

"Yes, the Color Question," said John Gano, sitting down heavily on one of the fleur-de-lis chairs--"the Color Question is just one of the forms of ferociously usurious interest one generation has to pay on the debts incurred by another. The world learns its lessons with infinite pains.

The same thing happens over and over again, and no one raises a finger."

He sat gazing at some impending peril with prophetic gloom.

"What is happening over again?" asked Ethan, divesting himself of his outer coat.

"The importation of ignorant debased foreigners to do the work that the American born not only won't do himself, but won't, in his haste to get rich, allow to remain undone. Why do the offscourings of the earth flock to America? Not because it's any longer the New World. They don't go to Australia or South Africa in the same numbers. They come _here_ because the American born is more of an arrant fool and sn.o.b than any creature G.o.d permits to breathe. Hardly any one so poor but he will pay the highest wages for the worst alien service."

"Father!" Val, half-way up-stairs, came running back to her country's rescue. "Cousin Ethan won't understand you are just arguing. Father doesn't really think Americans are sn.o.bs."

"Yes, sn.o.bs of the worst kind! What respect have we for the laboring man? What do we know or practise of healthy German industry, of the thrift of the French?"

"I thought our industries were our strong point."

"Industries, yes--not our industry. We can establish mills and manufactories, and then get s.h.i.+p-loads of Teutons and of Irish to come over and work them."

"If they'd only be content with that," said Ethan, "but they end by working our munic.i.p.alities too and running our country."