“What’s wrong about it, Johnnie Evans? If you want to insult me, say it out. If you can’t be a gentleman, at least be a man.”
“Pretty fine gentleman,” sneered Johnnie Evans, jerking a thumb towards the receding Chinaman.
“He can teach manners to the likes of you, at any rate,” cried Gwinnie Bates, and went off triumphant with her head in the air.
Thus, through the courteous demeanour of Quong Ho on this and subsequent occasions, Water-End became divided into two camps—Sinophile and Sinophobe. The latter party asserted that such heathen smiled most when their designs were most criminal, and carried out their activities to the accompaniment of unholy mirth. Was he ever seen at church or chapel? His admirers confessed this abstention from the means of grace. Did he ever speak of the doings of his master with the outlandish name, and himself, in the middle of the moor? Quong Ho was admitted to be a museum-piece of discretion. And as time went on, although his ways were marked by the same perfect courtesy, he lost favour amongst his party, through a bland taciturnity and a polite rejection of conversational advantage.
Now for this taciturnity there were excellent reasons: none other than the commands of John Baltazar. When Quong Ho returned the first time to the farm with the jeering laughter ringing in his ears, he bewailed the impoliteness of the inhabitants of Water-End. Said Baltazar in Chinese:
“Dost thou not know the proverb, Quong Ho, ‘A man must insult himself before others will?’ And again, what saith the Master? ‘Rotten wood cannot be carved, and walls made of dirt and mud cannot be plastered.’ By acting against my orders and striving to plaster the muddy walls of these rustics with ceremonial politeness, you have insulted yourself and therefore exposed yourself to rudeness.”
“Master,” said Quong Ho, “it appears that I have erred grievously.”
“Listen again,” said Baltazar, with a twinkle in his eyes unperceived by the downcast Quong Ho, “to what the Master saith: ‘The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyse what I have learnt, the inability to move towards righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults—these are the causes of my grief.’ ”
Quong Ho replied that although his deviation from the path of virtue was glaring to the most myopic vision, he nevertheless was in a dilemma, inasmuch as he had followed the precepts of Western courteous observance, the ceremonial, for instance, of the hat-salutation, laid down for him by his illustrious teacher.
Baltazar, always in Chinese, replied kindly: “O youth of indifferent understanding, is it not written in the Shû King in the Charge to Yüeh: ‘In learning there should be a humble mind and the maintenance of a constant earnestness: in such a case improvement will surely come. When a man’s thoughts from first to last are constantly fixed on learning, his virtuous cultivation comes unperceived’?”