Samuel Merwin - In Red and Gold

This giant, standing there in sweater and knickerbockers, bareheaded, gazing out at the dark river, was not sentimentalizing. He knew well enough the present problems. But he saw them with half-Eastern eyes; he saw America too, with half-Eastern eyes – and so he could not talk at all to the very able man beside him who saw the West and the world with wholly Western eyes. No, it was futile. Even when the great New Yorker, who had just won two thousand dollars, gold, spoke with wholly unexpected kindness, the gulf between their two minds remained unfathomable.

“I want you to forgive me, sir – I do not even know your name, you see – but, frankly, you interest me. You are altogether too much of a man for the work you are doing here. That is clear. I would be glad to have you tell me what the trouble is. Perhaps I could help you.”

This from the man who held General Railways in the hollow of his hand, and Universal Hydro-Electric, and Consolidated Shipping, and the Kane, Wilmarth and Cantey banks, a chain that reached literally from sea to sea across the great young country that worshiped the shell of political freedom as insistently as the Chinese worshiped their ancestors, yet gave over the newly vital governing power of finance into wholly irresponsible private hands.

The situation, grotesque in its beginning, seemed now incredible to Doane. He drew a hand across his brow; then spoke, with compelling courtesy but with also a dismissive power that the other felt: “You are very kind, Mr. Kane. At some other time I shall be glad to talk with you. But my hours are rather exacting, and I am tired.”

“Naturally. You have given a wonderful exhibition of what a man of character can do with his body. I wish I had you for a physical trainer. And I wish the example might start my boy to thinking more wholesomely… Good night!” And he extended a friendly hand.

Mr. Kane’s boy presented himself on the following morning as an acute problem. He was about the deck, shortly after breakfast, playing with the Manchu child. Then, after eleven, Captain Benjamin handed his mate a note that had been scribbled in pencil on a leaf torn from a pocket note-book and folded over. It was addressed:

“To the Chinese Lady who spoke English last night.” And the content was as follows: “I shouldn’t have been rude, but I must see you again. Can’t you slip around the canvas this evening, late? I’ll be watching for you.” There was no signature.

“Make it out?” asked the captain. “Old Kang sent it up to me – asks us to speak to the young man. But how’m I to know which young man it is?”

“Do you know how it was sent?”

“Yes. The little princess took it back.”’

“It won’t be hard to find the man.”

“You know?”

“I think so.”

“Well, just put him wise, will you?”

“I’ll speak to him.”

“Wait a minute! You thinking of young Kane?”

The mate inclined his head.

“Well – you know who he is, don’t you? Who they are?”

Doane bowed again.

“Better use a little tact.”

Doane walked back along the deck to cabin sixteen. A fresh breeze blew sharply here; the chairs had all been moved across to the other side where the sunlight lay warm on the planking. Within the social hall the second engineer – a wistful, shy young Scot – had brought his battered talking machine to the dining table and was grinding out a comic song. Two or three of the men were in there, listening, smoking, and sipping highballs; Doane saw them as he passed the door. Through the open but shuttered window of cabin number twelve came the clicking of a typewriter and men’s voices, that would be Mr. Kane, discussing his “autobiography” with its author.

Before number sixteen, Doane paused; sniffed the air. A curious odor was floating out through these shutters, an odor that he knew. He sniffed again; then abruptly knocked at the door.

A drowsy voice answered! “What is it? What do you want?”

“I must see you at once,” said Doane.

There was a silence; then odd sounds – a faint rattling of glass, a scraping, cupboard doors opening and closing. Finally the door opened a few inches. There was Rocky Kane, hair tousled, coat, collar and tie removed, and shirt open at the neck. Doane looked sharply at his eyes; the pupils were abnormally small. And the odor was stronger now and of a slightly choking tendency.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” cried young Kane, shrinking back a little way.

“I think,” said Doane, “you had better let me come in and talk with you.”

“What right have you got saying things like that? What do you mean?”

“I have really said nothing as yet.”

Kane, seeming bewildered, allowed the door to swing inward and himself stepped back. The big mate came stooping within.

“Your note has been returned,” he said shortly; and gave him the paper.

Kane accepted it, stared down at it, then sank back on the couch.

“What’s this to you!” he managed to cry. “What right… what do you mean, saying I wrote this?”

“Because you did. You sent it back by the little girl.”

“Well, what if I did! What right – ”

“I am here at the request of his excellency, the viceroy of Nanking. You have been annoying his daughter. The fact that she chooses, while in her father’s household, to wear the Manchu dress, does not justify you in treating her otherwise than as a lady. Perhaps I can’t expect you to understand that his exellency is one of the greatest statesmen alive to-day. Nor that this young lady was educated in America, knows the capitals of Europe better, doubtless, than yourself, and is a princess by birth. She went to school in England and to college in Massachusetts. Take my advice, and try no more of this sort of thing.”

The boy was staring at him now, wholly bewildered. “Well,” he began stumblingly, “perhaps I have been a little on the loose. But what of it! A fellow has to have some fun, doesn’t he?”

The mate’s eyes were taking in keenly the crowded little room.

“Well,” cried Kane petulantly, “that’s all, isn’t it? I understand! I’ll let her alone!”

“You don’t feel that an apology might be due?”

“Apologize? To that girl?”

“To her father.”

“Apologize – to a Chink?”

The word grated strangely on Doane’s nerves. Suddenly the boy cried out: “Well – that’s all? There’s nothing more you want to say? What are you – what are you looking like that for?”

The sober deep-set eyes of the mate were resting on the high dresser at the head of the berths. There, tucked away behind the water caraffe, was a small lamp with a base of cloisonné work in blue and gold and a small, half globular chimney of soot-blackened glass.

“What are you looking at? What do you mean?”

The boy writhed under the steady gaze of this huge man, who rested a big hand on the upper berth and gazed gravely down at him; writhed, tossed out a protesting arm, got to his feet and stood with a weak effort at defiance.

“Now I suppose you’ll go to my father!” he cried. “Well, go ahead! Do it! I don’t care. I’m of age – my money’s my own. He can’t hurt me. And he knows I’m on to him. Don’t think I don’t know some of the things he’s done – he and his crowd. Ah, we’re not saints, we Kanes! We’re good fellows – we’ve got pep, we succeed – but we’re not saints.”

“How long have you been smoking opium?” asked the mate.

“I don’t smoke it! I mean I never did. Not until Shanghai. And you needn’t think the pater hasn’t hit the pipe a bit himself. I never saw a lamp until he took me to the big Hong dinner at Shanghai last month. They had ‘em there. And it wasn’t all they had, either – ”