[Editor: This is a chapter from the novel The Coloured Conquest (1904) by “Rata” (Thomas Richard Roydhouse).]
Chapter II.
Mabel Graham’s gift of a bunch of red rambler roses to a Japanese officer causes a fracas in the Hotel Australia. Major Matte Yoko’s threat.
Even at that stage the Japanese were fated to overshadow my life.
Mabel Graham and I were to have been married in 1904, and it was arranged between us that our honeymoon should be extended into a tour of the East.
But there was no wedding, and consequently no honeymoon. Instead there was trouble between Mabel and I, and then a complete rupture of our relations.
It came about in this way:
Mabel, who since the visit of the squadron to Sydney, had always been enthusiastic about the Japanese, became acquainted with a number of the principal men of the nation resident in different parts of Australia.
Whenever a prominent Japanese visited Sydney, Miss Graham would be among the ladies who made his acquaintance. Not that she ran after these men of the East, but she was associated with a little set that had become quite “Japanesey,” and introductions followed naturally.
I had never dreamt I should be jealous of a Japanese. In fact, no thought of such a ridiculous kind had ever presented itself for discussion by my inner personality and myself.
The mere mention of such a possibility would have been treated as a joke of a somewhat impertinent flavour.
Yet it is the unexpected that happens — sometimes.
I do not desire to infer that I was not of a jealous temperament. Indeed, as a matter of fact, I had been despairingly jealous of Lieut. Thomas, R.N., until Mabel had actually endorsed me as her promised husband.
He was a bright, brave lad, was Thomas — worthy of any woman. I had to admit that. But when, as the result of the difference between Mabel and myself, over a certain Japanese gentleman, he later on became regarded, by the public at least, as her prospective life’s partner, that fact more than any other resolved me to quit Australia for a time, and chew the cud of bitterness amid other scenes, where I might eventually lose it.
* * *
But that is before my story.
I desire to preserve the proper sequence of events, for, linked in their proper order, they make a very plain account of all that led up to the Colored Conquest; at the same time showing how it affected myself and those near and dear to me.
Would to God there had never been material for such a history! Would — but there, I have undertaken the task, and must go through with it. But is it surprising if I sometimes curse through my clenched teeth the Colored men and women who will read these lines, when I remember that it is now impossible that any White men or women have sufficient liberty even to do that? And my own relatives! My friends!
And Mabel! ——
Well, Yellow, Brown and Black readers, laugh as you will at this evidence of a tortured heart of “the last free White man,” as you choose to call me — and as in truth I am.
As ’tis written, let it stand. The whole history, as I am preparing it, will be in the rough; but the facts are there; in due course the necklace of epoch-making events that turned the world upside down will be found quite complete, in this simple, unpretentious volume.
* * *
There had been a reception at the Japanese Consulate in Sydney in connection with the Mikado’s birthday, and there had been much animated conversation about the war that was still being vigorously prosecuted, and the future of Japan.
There had also been more wine than usual drunk. Nevertheless, still more was opened by a little party of us, including some Japanese from another State of the Commonwealth, and others direct from Japan, that drifted after the reception to the Hotel Australia.
The conversation continued in a similar strain to that followed at the Consulate.
The Japanese were very elated, and as they drank more wine became fountains of loquacity and conceit.
[I do not know whether you will pass this, Mr. Japanese Censor, but I am recording facts and “conceit” should stand.]
“Your people have stepped in one stride to the level of the world’s leading nations,” remarked a prominent Sydney merchant, who was one of the party. “I don’t think history holds a parallel to their achievements.”
“True, quite true!” said Major Matte Yoko, one of the Japanese invalided from the front, but now fully recovered. “And so for what we will yet do the searcher of history will find no parallel.”
“You are now honoured the world over,” continued the merchant, “Britishers are proud to take you by the hand and acclaim you brave men, and British ladies, too,” with a smile, “are ready to do you honor. Did I not see one of Sydney’s fairest belles, standing with your Consul’s lady, decorate you with that buttonhole of red rambler roses you are now wearing? Ha, Ha! Lucky dog,” he laughed. “We Whites — I mean, we ordinary fellows — are not in the running now!”
A cloud gathered on the brow of Major Matte Yoko.
“White! There it is again!” he said, angrily. “Always harping on the White! As though the fact that your faces are a shade or two lighter than ours make you superior beings! I hate to hear the word.”
“Hold your horses, old chap,” said the merchant, jocularly. “You fellows don’t worry much about your skins as a rule, judging by the way you fight! And, anyhow, a man can be a White man, and yet have a Brown skin, or a Black one either, for that matter!”
“Hear, hear,” we chorused.
“Still there is the inferential slight from Europeans when they speak of the White and so-called Colored races,” persisted Matte Yoko; “there is an assumption of superiority on the part of the White people, and I for one don’t admit the superiority. In fact, I claim a superiority for our people.”
“Oh, say an equality, old chap,” laughed the jolly merchant, “let us down at that.”
“There you are once more,” snarled Matte Yoko, “there is a covert sneer in that joke.”
He jumped up and paced the room. As he did so the pretty bouquet fell from his coat to the floor, and he almost trod upon it.
“Look out!” I said, laughing, “you nearly squashed your trophy.”
He picked it up hastily and restored it to his lapel.
“Ah! it won’t do to lose that,” he said, with a grim smile, “I regard it as a pledge. I registered an oath with that little bunch of flowers.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” remarked a barrister who had been enjoying the exhibition of pride and temper. “Well, let’s have it. But remember anything you say may be used against you.”
It was the harmless chaff of the smoke-room.
“Yes,” said Yoko, looking from one to another of the party with a peculiar expression. “Well, if it interests you, hear it.”
He paused.
“Go on,” said the barrister, “you are now a witness in the box; you will please relate to the Court the oath you took in connection with that gift of a buttonhole of red rambler roses.”
“I swore,” said Yoko, and paused again. Then with slow distinctness: “I sworn that one day the girl who gave me those roses should be mine.”
“Ho, ho!” laughed the merchant, “another British-Japanese alliance, eh? But what of the lady? It takes two to make an alliance, you know. Has she given a promise to one day accompany you to the altar?”
“The altar? — for a marriage you mean?”
“Certainly! What do you mean?”
Yoko did not answer for a moment, and a tension seemed to be on the little gathering. Men lifted their glasses in a strained sort of way, as though finding it necessary to do something.
“I mean,” said Yoko presently, still cutting off his words as though with a machine, “I mean that I shall one day, not far distant — not far distant, gentlemen — possess indisputable evidence, not of the equality of the Japanese with the so-called White races, but of the superiority of the Japanese.”
“And that evidence?” asked the barrister in tones cold and stern.
“The White lady who gave me the flowers.”
“That is to say that you hope to possess a White wife?”
“Not so.”
We were all looking at him now, and anon glancing at each other.
No man was smoking.
The cigars were dying between our fingers.
“I shall possess a White woman — yes, as so many White men have possessed Brown women, as you call them, in my country; held them till they no longer attracted, then cast them — and their children — off to make room for another!”
“By God! That’s a foul insult on Miss Graham,” roared the merchant.
I leapt to my feet.
“Miss Graham!” I shouted. “Was it she who gave him those roses?”
“Yes, and in as innocent a way as ever a bright good-hearted girl paid a compliment to a man whom she believed had suffered in the war,” said the barrister. “That was just all there was in it. And this scoundrel! ——”
By this time my hands were on Yoko’s throat.
His companion threw himself on me. But I had not boxed with Foley and other champions of the roped arena for nothing.
I flung Major Yoko from me, yards away, and swinging on my heel let out my right at the other’s jaw. He went down with a crash on the floor, and stayed there.
The smoking-room door was open, and a party of ladies and gentlemen passing by to the winter garden for afternoon tea involuntarily paused and gazed wide-eyed at the scene.
In their midst was Mabel Graham, her face expressing wild alarm.
Hostilities ceased.
Yoko picked himself up, and bowed elaborately to her. Then he helped his friend to his feet, and led him staggering to the door.
He paused and took the flowers from his coat; looked at us while a sinister smile lit up his face — now horribly pale and distorted with passion — then spoke:
“Some day I will drain your heart’s blood for this, Mr. Danton,” he said in tones so even and calm, and in such marked contrast to his features that they astonished us.
He might have been thanking us for a pleasant afternoon.
Then he turned to the group outside the door.
“And Miss Graham,” he said, “I salute you, and look forward with confidence to a certain future day that these gentlemen — these White gentlemen — know of.”
He kissed the flowers while looking her full in the eyes, then strode from the hotel.
“The merry-go-round or what-you-may-callem of time brings many rather somewhat extreme changes, as your poet says. Look out for them!” said Yoko’s companion, who had encountered my fist. Then he, too, left.
* * *
“Frank!”
It was Mabel calling me. We had not spoken for months.
“Frank! What have you done? That man will murder you!”
I looked at her, and — God forgive me — I believe my eyes spoke contempt.
And that was my only answer.
* * *
Years elapsed before I again met Major Matte Yoko; but the furnace of hate in my breast had not cooled.
Source:
Rata, The Coloured Conquest, Sydney (NSW): N.S.W. Bookstall Co., 1904, pp. 11-19
Editor’s notes:
anon = soon, shortly (can also mean: at another time, later; an archaic meaning is: at once, immediately)
belle = a very beautiful and charming female, especially referring to the most beautiful and charming woman in a crowd or group (e.g. as used in the phrase “the belle of the ball”)
Hotel Australia = the Australia Hotel, also known as the Hotel Australia, a hotel in Castlereagh Street, Sydney (NSW), which was opened in 1891, and closed in 1971; at the time of its construction, and for a long time afterwards, it was regarded as the top hotel in Australia (a different Hotel Australia was built in Melbourne in 1939, and was demolished in 1989)
See: 1) “Hotel Australia”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008
2) “The Australia Hotel”, Wikipedia
3) “Hotel Australia”, Wikipedia
Lieut. = an abbreviation of “Lieutenant”
R.N. = (abbreviation) Royal Navy (of the United Kingdom)
See: “Royal Navy”, Wikipedia
’tis = (archaic) a contraction of “it is”
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