“And then it is true, all they said there,” continued Kora; “that is why––why I had let you see me cry; what he said is true––and I––I belong in his country where the yellow jasmine grows. There are times when I never stop to think––weeks when I am satisfied that I have money and a fine 84 apartment. Then, all at once, in a minute like this, I see that it does not weigh down the one drop of black blood in my hand there. Sometimes I would sell my soul to wipe it out, and I can’t! I can’t!”
Her emotions were again overwhelming her. The Marquise watched her clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings, the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for such as he!
“An oriental prince was entertained by the Empress last week,” she remarked, abruptly. “His mother was a black woman, yours was not.”
“I know; I try to understand it––all the difference that is made. I can’t do it; I have not the brain. I can only”––and she smiled bitterly––“only learn to dance a little, and you don’t need brain for that. My God! How can they expect us to have brain when our mothers and grandmothers had to live under laws forbidding a slave to dispute any command of a white man? Madame, ladies like you––ladies of France––could not understand. I could not tell you. Sometimes I think money is all that can help you in this world. But even money can’t kill the poison he spoke of. We might be free for generations but the curse would stay on us, because away back in the past our people had been slaves.”
“So have the ancestors of those men you listened to,” said the Marquise, and the girl looked at her wonderingly.
“They! Why, Madame!”
“It is quite true. Everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the past. Every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger nation. Many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. Think of that when they taunt you with slavery!”
“Oh! Madame!”
“And remember that every king and queen of Egypt for centuries, every one told of in their bibles and histories, would look black beside the woman who was your mother! Chut! do not look so startled! The Caucassian of today is now believed by men of science to be only a bleached negro. To be sure, it has taken thousands of years, and the ice-fields and cave dwellings of the North to do the bleaching. But man came originally from the Orient, the very womb of the earth from which only creatures of color come forth.”