Sing Sing Nights

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  AT THE THIRD KNOCK

  AT Barton’s knock the voices stopped suddenly and a profound silence followed. A second later the door swung open a bare crack, revealing an obviously elderly Chinese woman in quaint Chinese costume. Even before she had a chance to open her mouth Barton spoke rapidly:

  “Madam, Jason H. Barton is my name. I represent the American Press — the Chicago Evening Dispatch. The American people are more than anxious to — ”

  “No unlestan’,” she said helplessly. She started to close the door in his face, but the movement seemed to be interrupted by a sudden command in unintelligible words. The maid, for such it must have been, looked back in indecision as though ordered not to close out the visitor. Then she swung the door wide open, and Barton, his heart beating rather wildly, stepped inside.

  He found himself in the usual stuffy hotel parlour, furnished with red plush furniture of an undoubted expensiveness, yet chilling from its very absence of any homelike aspect. And standing in the centre of the floor, her back turned to a great pier glass, was a Chinese girl.

  She was slender — as slender as any American girl. She was clad in a most ornate Chinese costume, the pantaloons and blouse of which were covered with tapestry threads of gold and silver and multi-coloured silk, with here and there a bit of carved jade hanging pendant. Her little feet were encased in slippers of gold thread, but they were not deformed, Barton noted at once, for the two steps that she took toward him were the steps of normal feet. Her cheek-bones were a trifle high, revealing the Celestial blood in her, but her complexion, soft and smooth, was a remarkable combination of cream and pink, with the pink blending at the mouth into a pair of the rosiest red lips. Long black eyelashes shaded the most alluring of violet-brown, almond-shaped eyes. For a second it seemed to him somehow that he was gazing upon a transplanted bud from a clime of sun and flowers.

  “You — you are newspaper man?” she asked curiously, even timidly.

  “Jason H. Barton is my name, Princess. I am with the Dispatch of this city.”

  The Princess studied the card closely, then looked up smilingly. “I think I like talk one of you newspaper men, Mr. Jason H. Barton. Everywhere I go I am cooped up and never get a chance to see or talk or live while I in this country. I speak English, you see. I educated in English in China, and I study much about it. Won’t — won’t you sit down?”

  Rather bewildered, Barton sat down in the nearest chair, studying the girl across from him. The elderly Chinese woman had already closed the door and slipped over in one corner, where she sat like a graven image. Barton suddenly spoke:

  “Princess O Lyra, your guardian, Mr. Tsung, has given to the Press a statement that you would furnish no interviews while in this country. But this country is terribly interested in people of importance from other lands — and also in what they think of America. I should be highly honoured if you would talk to me for a few minutes upon subjects which I might write up and print in my paper. Is — is this asking too much?”

  She pouted a delightful little pout. She dropped into one of the unfriendly plush chairs near her. “Honourable Tsung,” she said slowly, “does not want me to see American Press. His words did not come from I. He thinks interviews not thing. Perhaps, though, that is command from my honourable father. I do not know. Yet I like talk to you. And if you not stop me, I tell you all I think and know. I am girl, you see,” And she smiled sweetly at her feminine joke.

  Barton laughed from sheer glee as much as from the joke. He could scarcely realise yet that matters had turned out as they had. He had fully expected to be ordered out long since — yet here he was, sitting in the room with the only daughter of the Emperor of China. He reached into his pocket and drew forth his notebook and pencil.

  “Princess O Lyra,” he asked, “what is your opinion as to the value to China of monarchy against republic?”

  “Oh, I am very radical little girl,” she replied promptly. “I read and study too much in China. I think. Mr. Jason H. Barton, that there must a day come when every country is republic. I am not in favour of monarchy anywhere.” She made a sweeping gesture with her slender hand. “But my people — 426,000,000 of them — are still for most part in ignorance and superstition. Everything they do is controlled by good and bad ‘feng-shui,’ or what you might call — might call — ’aspects.’ You, over here, hear of few thousand Chinese college graduates — a few hundred military generals — a diplomat or two — and you think China is at last come out of her shell of centuries. But no — it is not so. They to whom the light has come are but few thousand. There are millions — hundreds of millions in the great interior — that interior inaccessible even by oxen-cart — who have never even heard of other part of world — who do not know there is an America, or an England, or anything. Until great school system can be start that will educate, there is no hope for them to think for themselves. And creation of great school system with necessary tens of thousands of teachers will take decades yet — twenty — fifty years to accomplish. Until the masses in the interior can be educate away from their ‘feng-shui,’ I do not believe they can rule themselves. It is ‘feng-shui’ that has kept in China wooden railroads and wooden ploughs for all these years.”

  He listened carefully. “Princess, you surprise me. I did not expect, when I first began, to find our interview going into such channels as it has.” He paused. “Then may I ask in all politeness what your opinion is of one of the biggest questions in the life of — the race question? How do you think it will ever be solved?”

  “Of that, too, have I thought much,” she returned fervently. “Yes, the race question will be solved. It will not be ten years — nor hundred — nor thousand. It will be solved in but one way — not by science, by social laws, by partition, by world government, by universal disarmament, nor by international policing. Yes, Mr. Jason H. Barton, the race question, if solar system not destroyed through some ca — ca — cataclysm, will be solved one day through one process only.”

  “And the solution?” he asked eagerly, forgetting for a second even to wield his pencil. “What is your solution Princess, of the race question — the biggest question in the history of civilisation?”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  A FLOWER UNFOLDS

  THE Princess O Lyra Seng dropped her eyes to the floor for one brief second. Then she raised them and faced the reporter bravely, a barely perceptible flush mounting to her cheeks.

  “My solution is a radical one — but only one,” she said simply. “And I think, Mr. Jason H. Barton, that you will agree with me. What is race? It is not colour — although colour is always one of visible characteristics. As to colour — pigmentation — science will overcome that in less than few hundred years. Science will make us all of one shade. But race is something deeper — far deeper — than mere colour. Racial distinctions date back thousands of years; they are rooted too deep to be out-weeded by professors working in laboratories. And my solution is so — so simple. It is intermarriage! Intermarriage must take place between all races of the earth until so-called racial distinctions are breeded out. Then, when in a thousand or five thousand years a great homo — homo — oh, dear, what is that terrible word in English? — homogeneous race shall people the earth, then shall there no longer be any race but human race. Then shall there be no race hatred — no war. You see, Mr. Jason H. Barton, so long as the desire for war may remain in hearts of men, even though war itself is made impossible, then humanity is not yet even on road to reach its — its capabilities. Race antagonism must go, you see. Hence race and pride of race must disappear!”

  He studied her for a long time before he spoke. “Princess, you are what we know in this country as an idealist. You have stated a daring theory which would be scoffed at if broached in this present year. You astound me by the very depths of your thoughts. Yet I believe you have stated the problem and its solution.” He paused. “May I ask, therefore, what are your views on love? One out of every two read
ers of the American newspaper is the American woman. She, Princess O Lyra Seng, will be greatly disappointed unless she learns the opinions on love from one of her own sex — from far across the seas.”

  The Princess smiled sweetly in his direction, and stared dreamily off into space. The maid still remained like a graven image of, perhaps, a female Buddha, never moving, never blinking an eye.

  “Love!” said O Lyra Seng softly. “And if I speak on that, then will you say still more that O Lyra Seng is idealist. Love, Mr. Jason H. Barton, is a real, such a real thing in life. It is the biggest thing. I think I know what love should be — although it has never been satisfactorily defined. Plato try to define it — and come near it. He merely say it is attraction of opposites. But he not analyse it deeply, so like I. Love, I believe, is perception by a personality of its complementary personality.”

  She paused, then went on breathlessly: “In marriage — that free-choice sort which you American may enjoy, you do not always study and analyse the other’s personality — hence you do not always secure your complementary personality. In China do we not even have any choice in the matter. Yet I believe in this heart of mine that in the whole, great, wide world is there but one personality that exactly supplies the opposite characteristics to our own personality. If we can find that — then have we love. If we marry that — then do we have real marriage, incidentally physical — but really the marriage of the soul. It is mutual understanding, mutual supplying of the opposite characteristics, mutual appreciation of human qualities in each other, Mr. Jason H. Barton, that makes this thing called love.” The Princess paused again, quite carried away by her convictions. “And — and will that satisfy the American woman, Mr. Jason H. Barton?”

  “That is a splendid, wonderful answer,” he returned, raising his pencil from his pothook-strewn notebook. “You are indeed an idealist — a thinker — a poet. Please do not be angry when I make this remark; but I want to say to you that you should not have been the daughter of the Emperor of China. For your personality — your own unique personality — cannot find its complementary personality on account of your rank.”

  Her face grew sad. “Yes, I fear you have stated the tragedy, Mr. Jason H. Barton, in life of O Lyra Seng.”

  He changed the subject hastily. “You are quite happy under Mr. Li Hwei Tsung’s guardianship, are you Princess?”

  She looked at him curiously. Then she shook her head slowly. “I not like honourable Tsung. And — ” She studied him closely. “Mr. Jason H. Barton, I am girl who trust everybody. Perhaps that why they don’t let me see reporters. Yet I know by your eyes you are man to be trusted. If — if I make statements to you, you will promise not to put in your paper?”

  He shut his notebook with a sharp snap and leaned forward. “Absolutely.”

  “Honourable Tsung,” she said, “is not in heart like I. He hate America and Americans — he hate them bitterly. He hate England and Englishmen — just so bitterly. He hate all English-speaking white races and English-speaking countries. And I talk to him so much trying to get him to think different. But for reasons, far, far back — reasons I know not — he not like the people I have just describe.”

  Barton restrained himself with difficulty from letting loose a whistle of astonishment. He recalled Li Hwei Tsung’s sugared address to reporters at New York wherein the Chinese dignitary had pronounced the warmest and most cordial of sentiments for Americans. Almost a similar address had he given previously in London, which sentiments, somewhat condensed, had been duly printed on the American side of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet here the guileless Princess O Lyra Seng had given information quite to the contrary: that Mr. Tsung had his tongue in his cheek when he beamed gracious urbanities on either Uncle Sam or John Bull. But Barton knew one thing — and that was that not one word of her statement was going into the paper. Indeed, he seemed to feel himself slipping under a spell that he could not understand — and the more he looked and talked with the girl across from him, the more deeply the magic of her grew upon him. Reluctantly he opened his notebook again and resumed the interview. He would have liked to talk with her of many things that could be of no interest to the world; but he was Jason H. Barton, a newspaper reporter, and he could not forget that he had a job to hold and a Frangenac to overwhelm.

  “Such a student as you, Princess, has perhaps heard of psychotherapeutics — the most recent development in medicine. Two of the most prominent forms are Christian Science and Mental Healing. Do you account for the cures in any way?”

  “Of them all I have read,” she returned, her eyes brightening enthusiastically. “The Christian Science book I perused six times, trying to understand it. But it is very hard for Chinese girl, you know. This terrible English language! But while I do not yet fully grasp it, I think your Mary Baker Eddy and your Mental Healers and your psychotherapists, whether right or wrong, have uncovered great germic principle underlying all nature — that mind is more powerful than anything else in universe. I have vision of something back of it all — that what we want to be, we are. Does not the mind in its dreams assume the identities and the triumphs it wish to enjoy? In German I read Freud — also Jung and Adler — and I perceive then something that no one yet perceive — that the various phases of psychotherapy and the action of the subconscious mind, according the Freudian theories, are all connect by something — not apparently grasped by anyone. And so — ” She stopped. “Mr. Jason H. Barton, I afraid I talk too much to you. I never get chance to talk of these things — of the things I feel and think. And it will be read by every one in Chicago?” she asked, awestricken.

  He set aside his notebook. “By everyone in Chicago?” he echoed enthusiastically. “Why, Princess, this interview will be syndicated — it will be published in a paper in every city in the United States of America. It will be devoured by every man, woman and child. A new conception will rattle across the ocean about the daughter of the new Emperor of China. An ordinary interview would never have gone farther than Chicago; but this splendid exposition of yourself — why, it will be read by forty million people. It’s a world-beater. Princess, you have made life very pleasant for one poor reporter.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  STARTLING INFORMATION

  BARTON paused. A silence fell between him and the Princess O Lyra Seng. Finally he spoke again.

  “And may I make a statement without offending you, Princess?” She nodded wonderingly. “I want to tell you — for you will never see Jason H. Barton again — that you are a very wonderful girl; that there are few such as you in the world. In you mingle femininity, beauty, youth, personality and insight into life and its grave questions. Princess, the man who gets you will be a very fortunate man. This is the verdict of the poor Chicago newspaper reporter who interviewed you!”

  Her face was the picture of amazement. “And, Mr. Jason H. Barton, you think I am wonderful girl?” Her tone betrayed the utter incredulity in her.

  “Indeed, yes,” he said fervently.

  She clasped her hands closer together. “And to me that is wonderful. All my life, Mr. Jason H. Barton, have I wanted to meet someone who did think I was wonderful — who could see me down to my soul. No one has ever said that to me before. Oh, but you cannot dream how I have wanted to be understood. Even my honourable father does not know his O Lyra Seng. And you really think that, Mr. Jason H. Barton? That — this — is wonderful to me. Somebody — somebody at last understands O Lyra Seng.” She paused. “I feel like I like to talk more to you — again to you. I think — I think I see way down in you, Mr. Jason H. Barton, that thing called personality; but you so anxious to put me down on paper that you all business and not Jason H. Barton at all.”

  A sudden daring idea shot into Barton’s brain like a bolt from a clear sky. Over in the corner he saw a telephone. He quickly wrote a word and a number on the bottom of one of his notebook pages and tore it off. Then he leaned forward and handed it to the Princess.

  “Princess, if in the next days you feel that y
ou would like to see Jason H. Barton again, and the honourable Tsung is not here, just raise that receiver over there, ask for this magic number in English, and ten seconds later you will be talking to me — or else to someone who can give you another magic number in place of it. And I’ll be here. I’ll — ” He stopped short, in trepidation at his own boldness.

  She seized the fragment of paper and tucked it in a quaint blue-silk pocket of her Chinese costume. “I so lonely, Mr. Jason H. Barton, that minute honourable Tsung go — then I likely to do as you say. I like much to talk to those who understand me — but nobody ever quite understand O Lyra Seng yet. I am so young I live always in hope that man who marry me in China will understand me. I long to be of life, to do, to see, to think, to read, to act — yet I so unlucky as to be princess of royal blood, only daughter of my honourable father.”

  Barton glanced uneasily at his watch. It came suddenly to him with disturbing force that if Li Hwei Tsung should return during his visit it might lead to unfortunate — even embarrassing — complications. So he hurriedly opened his notebook to a blank page, and uncorked the end of his fountain-pen.

  “Princess, will you sign this interview? Your signature, through what is known as a zinc cut, will be reproduced under your words, and you may feel sure that those words will be only those which you have given me. And, if you will, I should like to to sign further down again, so that I may keep your signature as a perpetual remembrance of a mighty pleasant meeting.” He held it out to her.

  Daintily she took the notebook and with the fountain-pen signed in great childish handwriting: “O Lyra Seng, Daughter of Seng Hoang-Ti of China.” Beneath it she deftly made two intricate Chinese characters. Then lower down on the same page, she duplicated the whole thing. “There,” she said to him, smiling, as she handed it back to him, “I have made signature both in Chinese and American handwriting.”