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author: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-01-16 18:55:59 -0800
committer: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-01-16 18:55:59 -0800
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+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77722 ***</div>
+
+
+<p class='center'>
+This eBook was created in honour of<br>
+Distributed Proofreaders’ 25th Anniversary.
+</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp47" id="cover" style="max-width: 92.625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Book cover">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[i]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h1 class="nobreak" id="RUBEN_AND_IVY_SEN">
+    RUBEN AND IVY SÊN
+  </h1>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[ii]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='poetry-container'>
+<div class='booklist bbox'>
+  <p><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p>
+<hr class='full'>
+<div class='poetry-container'>
+<div>
+<ul>
+  <li><span class="smcap">The Soul of China</span></li>
+  <li><span class="smcap">In a Shantung Garden</span></li>
+  <li><span class="smcap">Mr. and Mrs. Sên</span></li>
+  <li><span class="smcap">The Feast of Lanterns</span></li>
+  <li><span class="smcap">Mr. Wu</span></li>
+  <li><span class="smcap">The Green Goddess</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[iii]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='poetry-container'>
+<div class="title-page">
+<div class='title-page-inner-box'>
+
+<p class="t1">RUBEN AND<br>
+IVY SÊN</p>
+
+<p class="t2">BY</p>
+
+<p class="t3">LOUISE JORDAN MILN</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp-colophon" id="colophon" style="max-width: 37.0em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/colophon.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent5">“<i>I go to prove my soul!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I see my way as birds their trackless way.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent6"><i>I shall arrive!</i>”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="t4">NEW YORK</p>
+<p class='t5'>FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</p>
+<p class='t6'>MCMXXV</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[iv]</span></p>
+</div>
+<div class='copyright'>
+<p class='c1'>
+  <i>Copyright, 1925, by</i><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</span></p>
+<hr class='r5'>
+<p class='c2'>  <i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+
+<p class='c3'>  <i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='author-note'>
+<p>    <i>Had the date of the death of Sên King-lo,
+    the father of Ruben and Ivy, as implied in
+    “Mr. and Mrs. Sên,” been adhered to strictly in
+    this present novel, it would open considerably
+    later than 1925. The author has preferred to
+    ignore the dates of the previous story rather
+    than to place this story in years of which she
+    can know nothing. “Ruben and Ivy Sên” is not
+    intended as a sequel to “Mr. and Mrs. Sên,”
+    though it grew out of the earlier story.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dedication'>
+<p><span class='allsmcap'>TO MONA FROM HER MOTHER</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+  <p class='half-title'>
+    RUBEN AND IVY SÊN
+  </p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The servant who let him in one Tuesday in May knew
+that Whitmore had come to make Mrs. Sên an offer of
+marriage, and when the man let the peer out half an hour
+later, Jenkins had no doubt that his mistress had refused the
+offer.</p>
+
+<p>How he knew, Jenkins could not have told you. It was
+years since Jenkins had listened at door ajar or keyhole—not
+since he’d been a very under footman. Mrs. Sên did not
+hobnob with her maid. Avenues of intimate information
+open to servants in many households simply did not exist in
+Mrs. Sên’s homes. But Jenkins knew.</p>
+
+<p>Every one had known that Lord Whitmore was going to
+propose to Ruby Sên. It had been patent for more than a
+year. And only three people had been at all doubtful of
+what Mrs. Sên would answer: the three who knew her best.
+Sir Charles Snow, his wife, and Ruben—Ruby’s son—had
+wondered whether or not Mrs. Sên was going to marry Whitmore.
+Ivy had no doubt that her mother would. Society
+took it for granted, and, since Whitmore never had shown the
+slightest inclination to let any other woman lead him to the
+matrimonial altar, Society approved the prospective arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The Sên servants had had no doubt of what was coming,
+not even Tibbs, a recent acquisition below stairs, who had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>
+only seen her mistress once and by luck, through the larder
+window.</p>
+
+<p>When Jenkins had announced Whitmore in the morning-room
+the man had been as confident as the suitor. Half
+an hour after, when Jenkins let lord Whitmore out, Jenkins
+had been as surprised as Whitmore, and very much
+more disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Jenkins had served Mrs. Sên for nearly ten years, and
+it was his uniform experience that when Mrs. Sên said a
+thing she meant it—and went on meaning it. When Jenkins
+closed the front door on Lord Whitmore’s departure,
+Jenkins had given up the match.</p>
+
+<p>John Whitmore had done nothing of the sort. He had
+never asked a woman to marry him before, and he had no
+intention of letting this one woman off from doing it. Give
+her time he’d have to, that was obvious. But he was going
+to make her marry him, and before very long. A man does
+not need to delay his wedding day needlessly at fifty. He
+cared everything for this one woman. He was determined
+to have her for his wife, and greatly as he wished it for
+himself, his determination was in no way selfish.</p>
+
+<p>He was sure that their marriage would be almost as much
+for her happiness as for his own, and even more for her advantage,
+a satisfactory and comfortable settlement. It was
+all very well for her now, but she’d grow old some day like
+the rest of the world. It stood to reason her two children
+would marry. She’d be far happier with him ten or twenty
+years from now than she would alone. And in the meantime,
+whether she knew it or not, it would be a great advantage
+to Ruben and Ivy and a very great help to their mother,
+for the boy and girl to have a father—such a father as he’d
+be to them. He was very fond of little Ivy, and any man
+would be proud to have Ruben call him father.</p>
+
+<p>When they learned that their mother had refused Lord
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
+Whitmore—it was he himself, not Mrs. Sên, who told them
+and told the Snows that she had done so—Ivy was furious
+and bitterly disappointed, but Ruben was glad.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow was disgusted, but she was not surprised; Ruby
+Sên never would surprise Emma Snow again. Emma always
+had known how apt Sir Charles’ cousin was to take life’s bit
+resolutely in her teeth. Once at least she had bolted with
+it. And in all their almost lifelong acquaintance, which
+from the first had been a sisterly intimacy, Emma only once
+had known Ruby to change her mind. Lady Snow had no
+hope that Mrs. Sên would change it now.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow was not surprised either, and he was glad
+in spite of his sincere liking and respect for Whitmore. He
+doubted if any second marriage could satisfy a woman who
+had been the wife of Sên King-lo. But he saw as clearly as
+Lady Snow the advantage to his cousin of marriage with
+Whitmore. He believed that the friendship and support of
+such a husband as John Whitmore would be a very great
+advantage and bulwark to Ruby in the difficult times he
+foresaw when Ruben and Ivy were a little older. He knew
+how such a marriage and stepfather would soothe Ivy. Sir
+Charles Snow was very sorry for her, and tried his manliest
+to love misplaced little Ivy as much as he pitied her. He
+tried to love her even half as much as he loved Ruben—and
+failed.</p>
+
+<p>Snow in some half obscure way felt that the sacrifices Sên
+King-lo had made—the sacrifice of life itself and the heavier
+sacrifice of bitter exile—were in part justified, a little atoned
+for, by his wife’s refusal to marry again.</p>
+
+<p>When Ruby Gilbert, living there with them, had convulsed
+Washington by marrying a Chinese, Sir Charles Snow had
+disliked it even more than his wife had, and had opposed it
+strenuously. But he had opposed it from a sense of cousinly
+duty and not because he had much hope that his opposition
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>
+would have any effect. He had disliked it most for his girl
+cousin, but he had dreaded its consequences most for his
+friend Sên. He had been sure that its consequences would be
+disaster and that it was Sên who would pay. Lady Snow
+had not opposed it at all. She was ultra-practical and she
+had seen no reason to attempt the impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Snow had proved right, as he often did. It was Sên
+King-lo who had paid and not the English girl whom he
+had married. Charles Snow and a wise old woman in Ho-nan
+and Kow Li, Mr. Sên’s servant in Washington, who had a
+Chinese curio shop now in a side street near the British
+Museum, knew that Sên the Chinese had paid. No one else
+knew—unless Sên’s widow did. Charles Snow often wondered
+whether his cousin Ruby ever had had even an inkling
+of what the marriage that her husband had kept so happy
+for her had cost Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+<p>For Sên’s sake Charles Snow, though it grieved him, had
+not exactly regretted Sên King-lo’s death—fourteen years
+ago now—in Surrey. Emma Snow had liked Sên cordially;
+she had had to go on doing so even after the “abominable”
+marriage; but she had not been able to ignore—in her own
+cool head, for she never had voiced it—that King-lo’s death
+had cleansed her kinswoman’s social slate of a regrettable
+record. In her own way, lighter than Snow’s but as sound,
+Lady Snow had been staunchly loyal to Ruby and King-lo
+and to the marriage that never had ceased to rasp her. But
+she had hated it from first to last. She had always felt it
+a detriment not only to herself but to her two children,
+Blanche and Dick, and had felt that it would have injured
+and compromised any social standing less secure than
+Charlie’s and hers. And because she felt as she did about
+their cousin’s Chinese marriage, Emma Snow’s sunny, unflinching
+loyalty had been a braver thing than Sir Charles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>
+Snow’s. Lady Snow felt that Ruby had made a sorry sacrifice
+and had lost caste, had taken an appalling risk with
+criminal willfulness. Snow had had no doubt that the sacrifices,
+the smirch of caste, the ghastly risk, had been Sên’s
+tenfold more than Baby’s.</p>
+
+<p>Only one detriment remained to Ruby now in Lady Snow’s
+opinion—Ivy. Mr. and Mrs. Sên had had two children, both
+living now with their mother in old Kensington. Ruben the
+elder was Saxon fair, a very charming boy. Ivy, two years
+younger than Ruben, was intensely Chinese in appearance,
+and a handful. Lady Snow loved Ruben and was proud of
+him; but she was ashamed of Ivy Sên, because of what the
+girl’s unmistakably Chinese face told and emphasized. Emma
+Snow was clear-eyed enough to see that the Chinese-looking
+half-English girl was almost incredibly lovely; and the
+woman was too well experienced in social England to have
+any doubt that Ivy, rich, accomplished and quick, would be
+a social sensation and success. But Emma Snow could not
+forgive the girl her Chinese face, though Heaven knows she
+tried to. After all, Lady Snow was not responsible for an
+adamant prejudice that was also a wholesome common sense—something
+she was unable to shake off because it was
+stronger than she and part of her own not inconsiderable
+strength. Even that wise old diplomat, Charles Snow, who
+made no mistake about the greatness and fineness of the Chinese,
+who admired and loved them, and who held himself
+honored in his many Chinese friendships, winced at Ivy’s
+slant black eyes, yellow skin and the pretty musical lilt of
+her up-and-down “courtyard” voice.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Mrs. Sên regretted her only daughter’s Chinese
+appearance, or was gratified that Ruben her son looked and
+seemed so English, not even her Cousin Charles knew, who
+knew her better than any one else, not even excepting Ruben.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></p>
+
+<p>But both Sir Charles and his wife knew that Mrs. Sên
+loved her children passionately and they believed, mistakenly,
+that she gave them an equal love.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên worshiped his mother; he gave her a tendance
+and fealty that a Western mother rarely wins. And not even
+Sir Charles Snow—always watching, because of a promise
+he had given dead Sên King-lo—suspected that there was
+one thing that Ruben Sên, even now, loved more passionately
+than he did his mother.</p>
+
+<p>We are so used to ourselves, so accustomed to our own
+blemishes of mind and body that we carry them tranquilly
+enough until some sharp knock shows them to us vividly,
+somewhat as others see them. Little Ivy Sên was self-centered
+and self-satisfied, even for one of her sex. And
+though looking in the glass was one of her most favored
+pastimes at a very early age, she was ten or twelve before she
+once wondered why she looked so little like her mother, or
+realized in the least how queerly her face differed from all
+the other girls’ faces! When she did realize it a looking
+glass tortured her. But she looked into it more than ever,
+obsessed by it much as lepers are!</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên both loved and hated her mother, and Mrs. Sên
+knew it. She accepted her child’s love gratefully; suffered
+her child’s hatred and gave no sign. Ruby Sên did all that
+she could to lighten the cross that she knew Ivy carried.
+But there was one thing that she would not do for Ivy; she
+would not marry Lord Whitmore—or any other man.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The day that Ivy came to her, appealing for her help to
+overcome “Mother’s wicked obstinacy,” and broke down
+and wept out what until now she had never told any one,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>
+Lady Snow came nearer really caring for Chinese-faced Ivy
+than she ever had before, and much nearer than she could
+have believed possible.</p>
+
+<p>“I could almost forgive her; I think I could,” Ivy pleaded,
+“if she would marry him. Why doesn’t she? There is every
+reason why she should—and not one single reason not to!”</p>
+
+<p>“Forgive your mother! You have no right to say that,
+or to think it,” Lady Snow said sternly—more sternly than
+she felt.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>You</i> know that I have!” the girl insisted passionately.
+“How would you like to have a Chinese face? You’d loathe
+it, as I do. You do not like me; and I like you for it—for
+not liking me—not liking me because I look Chinese.”</p>
+
+<p>“Haven’t I been good to you, Ivy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes,” the girl’s shrug of contempt was Eastern—a
+“courtyard” petulance—“as good as ever you could bring
+yourself to be. But you’ve had to <i>try</i>—had to <i>remember</i> to
+be kind to me every time. Every one is good to me. I’m
+rich and so is Mother, and she goes everywhere and knows
+every one worth knowing—that’s why. I don’t want people
+to be good to me. I could kill people when they pity me—and
+perhaps some day I will.”</p>
+
+<p>“No one pities you, child. No one could.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do!”</p>
+
+<p>Emma Snow made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Everybody pities me that has any sense. I have no doubt
+that my own mother does. She ought to. Ruben doesn’t—he
+envies me. But Rue’s mad. Cousin Charles never shows
+that he does, but of course he pities me too, for all his liking
+for Chinks. Every one <i>must</i> pity me who cares for me the
+least little bit—every one who isn’t a lunatic like Ruben. I
+don’t want people to be good to me. It’s impudent of them,
+and it is not what I want. There is only one thing on earth
+I want. I want to be English!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You are half-English, Ivy,” Lady Snow reminded her
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Half!</i>” All the agony of the sore old interracial tragedy
+was packed in the girl’s one bitter word.</p>
+
+<p>Emma Snow’s heart ached for the girl and she said the
+most healing thing she could think of. “You are very beautiful,
+Ivy.” She laid a caressing hand gently on Ivy’s
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>They were alone in Lady Snow’s own sitting-room, she
+with a bit of embroidery she’d taken up desperately, as a
+refuge for her eyes, when Ivy’s words had become dangerous.
+The girl was hunched on a stool at the other’s knee in a
+willowy attitude that was pretty but not Western. Ivy was
+facing the other, and not so near that she could not look up
+at her very directly.</p>
+
+<p>“I used to think so,” Ivy Sên said sadly, “when I used to
+look in the glass years ago—saw how I looked, and didn’t
+know what I looked <i>like</i>. But now I do know and my own
+face is the most repulsive sight I ever see. I dare say I’ll
+be the rage—for one Season—when Mother presents me; but
+what sort of a rage? A joke! People will like to look at
+me and laugh and point me out to each other as the daughter
+of the English woman who married a Chinaman. ‘Miss Sên
+the Society mongrel’; that’s what they’ll call me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s what I am. And it’s what they’ll call me. ‘See!
+there she is—the mongrel beauty!’ Oh, I’ll be the rage all
+right! How would you like to hear Blanche called a mongrel?
+Do you think that Rupert Blake would have fallen in
+love with her, let alone married her, if she’d been a half-caste—<i>and</i>
+looked it!”</p>
+
+<p>The woman’s eyes filled with tears. She knew that her
+easygoing but socially exigent son-in-law certainly would not,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>
+and she bent her eyes on her work, and hastily stitched a
+blue petal on a red rose.</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy,” she said slowly, “I want to help you—truly I do,
+dear. I want to persuade you to help yourself; it’s the only
+way, your only way out. Accept it, Ivy, once for all and
+make the best of it. You don’t like it; a great many girls
+would. Take the good of it, Ivy—there’s lots of good, and
+good-luck too, in it—and put your foot on the rest of it—what
+you think the bad of it. Don’t let it lame you. Really
+you shouldn’t! Above everything else, don’t let it make you
+bitter. Nothing spoils a girl like being bitter. Begin on
+little things. Don’t say ‘Chink,’ dear. It isn’t nice. Your
+cousin Charles won’t even let me say ‘Chinaman’; he broke
+me of it years ago. Say ‘Chinese,’ dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Chinks!” the girl on the stool retorted viciously. “That’s
+what they are. I loathe them. I am a Chink, Cousin Emma;
+and it won’t wash off. Pretty! Oh, yes, I dare say I am
+pretty in an odious Chink way. But there isn’t a girl in
+England who is English and looks English, that I wouldn’t
+change places with to-morrow—now—this hour—and thank
+God for letting me do it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would! Have you seen our new kitchen maid? Her
+name is Tibbs, Ada Tibbs; she has a bad cast in one eye; she
+hasn’t any eyebrows—scarcely any eyelashes. I nearly had
+a fit when I saw her. She has the most hideous face I have
+ever seen. But it is English! I would change places with
+Ada Tibbs, and be thankful and glad of the chance to.”</p>
+
+<p>“You wouldn’t like it when you had,” Lady Snow said
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>“I’d like it better than being what I am—looking as I
+do.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know what you are saying, dear.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I know what I am feeling.”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow sighed.</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t you make Mother do it? Can’t you? She ought
+to. It wouldn’t wash the Chinese off my face—nothing ever
+will do that—but it would whitewash it a little. Mother
+owes it to me. I could almost forgive her, if she would.
+And I want to love my mother! Can’t Cousin Charles make
+her?”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow shook her head slowly, folding away her needlework,
+smiling sadly. She was thinking of twenty years ago,
+when Sên King-lo and Ruby Gilbert had fallen in love, and
+had married.</p>
+
+<p>“I have known your mother for more than thirty years,
+Ivy, and I never have known any one even once able to
+‘make’ her do anything against her will. I can’t quite see
+why you are so terribly anxious that your mother should
+marry Lord Whitmore. Your mother has about everything
+that a woman can have to make life comfortable and interesting
+and beautiful too—for her and for you and Ruben.
+She is enormously rich. She still is a beautiful woman. Her
+position is as secure and desirable as any woman’s in England.”</p>
+
+<p>“Because her Chinese husband is dead!” the girl interjected.</p>
+
+<p>“Listen to me, Ivy. Your father was a very great gentleman
+and I never knew a more charming man. Sir Charles
+loved and respected him. Sên King-lo was a great man, Ivy;
+a noble by birth, and entirely noble in nature.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t! Don’t tell me about him. I can’t stand it.”</p>
+
+<p>Emma Snow’s eyes fell at the tragedy in the girl’s. “He
+loved you very dearly,” she said sorrowfully. She was too
+bitterly sorry for Ivy Sên to reproach her beyond that.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t!” the girl shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow unfolded her needlework again, to steady herself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
+with something mechanical and because she could think
+of nothing not quite hopeless to say.</p>
+
+<p>“Why did Mother do it?” the passionate voice went on
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>“Do what, dear?” But Emma Snow knew.</p>
+
+<p>“Marry a Chinese man!”</p>
+
+<p>“They loved each other very dearly.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was horrible!”</p>
+
+<p>“You might not have thought that if you could have
+known him and seen how he was held, dear. I’ll be honest
+with you, Ivy; we were not glad but it was impossible to feel
+that our cousin had married beneath her. Why are you so
+anxious to have a stepfather, Ivy? Most girls are not.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am—to have an English father—and to have an English
+name.”</p>
+
+<p>“But your mother changing her name wouldn’t change
+yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d see that it did! He’d be willing. I know he would.
+To be his daughter, and be called by his name, would make
+me seem a little more English. That’s what I want, above
+everything on earth.”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow doubted if Ruby Sên would allow her children
+to discard their father’s name—felt rather sure that Ruby
+would not—even if she did marry Whitmore. But there was
+no need to annoy the excited girl by telling her so, particularly
+as Emma was convinced that Mrs. Sên never would
+marry Lord Whitmore.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Ivy suspected the other’s thought for she demanded,
+“Do you know what I am going to do, the day I
+am twenty-one? I am going to call myself by some other
+name—some decent English name. And I shall marry the
+first Englishman that asks me the day after I’m of age and
+my own mistress, if any <i>Englishman</i> ever does—<i>any</i> Englishman—a
+footman, a sweep or a potman!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow laughed lightly though she could have cried
+more easily, and touched the other’s face softly with her
+hand. “Don’t be a goose, little one,” was all she said. But
+Lady Snow’s heart ached bitterly for Ivy Sên.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>On the surface Mrs. Sên lived pleasantly and calmly, as
+scores of such Englishwomen do—London, Surrey,
+moderate travel, ample means, good health, “troops of
+friends,” not a worry; a radiant, if placid, life, peculiarly
+free from grave care or petty annoyances. At forty she was
+much more than good-looking and she had charm, the personal
+charm that had been hers from childhood, and the
+deeper charm of the woman who has accepted experience and
+has assimilated and used it wisely. Sir Charles Snow, probably
+her most trusted friend as well as her kinsman, often
+questioned if his cousin lived less smoothly in her hidden
+depths of being than on the untroubled surface. After
+fifteen years of identical questioning Snow had found no
+answer, reached no conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The rich widow was completely her own mistress; by her
+husband’s gift wealthy in her own right, her fortune under
+her sole control, she the only guardian of their two children.
+To be sure, her husband had died as he had lived, a Chinese
+subject. By Chinese law—and international equity could not
+well have disputed it—all that Mr. Sên had left, including
+even his widow and their children, belonged to his family in
+Ho-nan. Whether or not those British-born children could
+have maintained British citizenship as against Chinese allegiance,
+had the Sêns in Ho-nan raised and pressed the point,
+Ruby, the dead Chinese man’s widow, was indubitably a Chinese
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>
+subject. She could only regain the British rights of her
+birth by remarriage with a British subject, or possibly, in the
+new dispensation which has given woman so much—and taken
+from her so very much more—by naturalization. Mrs. Sên
+had shown no disposition to do either; and the question of
+her right to the guardianship of her boy and girl, her right
+to bring them up in England, and as English, had never been
+raised. The Sêns in China had made no move, expressed no
+wish, offered no advice. Gifts came to Kensington once in a
+great while, always gifts of value. But with one exception
+all those gifts had been sent to Mrs. Sên herself and not to
+her children. Mr. Sên’s grandmother had sent Ivy Sên some
+splendid birth-gifts, too priceless to have passed into the
+girl’s own keeping even yet. Except for that, no Chinese
+relative of Ruben and Ivy Sên had approached them even
+indirectly. Chinese minds had enough upheaval to contemplate
+at home now without reaching across the world for
+more. Mrs. Sên’s rule of them and her own life was undisputed.</p>
+
+<p>But Snow often wondered.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that Ruby had not forgotten the man she had
+so willfully married. The woman was no ingrate, nor was
+she dull. Only an abnormally treacherous woman could have
+put such a mate out of her life, merely because he had died
+bodily. And only an inordinately dull soul could have forgotten
+in the bagatelle of fifteen years the charm and chivalry
+that had never failed her in the crucible of married intimacy.
+The heyday of so great a spirit as Sên King-lo’s can know
+no passing. It cannot die. Ruby Sên was neither treacherous
+nor dull.</p>
+
+<p>But had she ever realized all that her Chinese husband had
+been? While he lived had she suspected anything of what
+he had given her, done for her, sacrificed for her? Snow
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>
+believed that she had not. But had it come to her, even in
+part, since Sên’s death, as past truth often does come to us
+after many years? He could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>How much did Ruby Sên look ahead—<i>how clearly</i>? She
+gave no sign.</p>
+
+<p>How were the two children of the mixed marriage going
+to turn out? What would their lives be? Motherhood had
+lain lightly upon his cousin as yet. Would it press upon her
+more heavily presently?</p>
+
+<p>When he was dying their Chinese father had insisted to
+Snow, whom he had trusted peculiarly, that Saxon-fair
+Ruben in mind and nature was intrinsically and intensely
+Chinese, but that Chinese-looking Ivy was as intensely English.
+It was clear that the dead man had been right about
+his baby daughter. Ruben was keenly interested in all things
+Chinese and eagerly anxious to learn all he could about Sên
+King-lo. Was it curiosity, or was it trend? Was it individual,
+or was it race?</p>
+
+<p>Snow was sure that there were rocks and dangerous shoals
+ahead for poor little Ivy. Did her mother know it?</p>
+
+<p>Were there rocks or shoals ahead for Ruben? Did his
+mother suspect that too?</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên had been educated chiefly by governesses and they
+had found it difficult work but never dull. Ruben had gone
+from public school to his father’s old college in the Cam-side
+’Varsity, and both at school and at Cambridge Ruben Sên
+had grooved into the life with his fellows as easily and neatly
+as any English one of them all.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Snow suspected a good deal about Ruben; but he
+<i>knew</i> nothing, except that Ruben Sên was upright, quietly
+sunny, exceptionally able, tenderly fond of his sister, lover
+and worshiper of his mother. Many English boys are fond
+of their sisters, especially an only brother of an only sister;
+and if love-of-mother is a Chinese characteristic, it is not an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>
+un-English trait. Snow understood Ivy perhaps better than
+he did Ruben. He was not sure that he understood Ruben
+at all. The old diplomat with years of Anglo-Chinese experience
+back of him, many Chinese friends, firmly-rooted Chinese
+sympathies, was sorely sorry for little Ivy Sên. Had
+he cause, he often asked, to be even sorrier for Ruben? Had
+blue-eyed, white-skinned Ruben the bitterer, deeper cup to
+drink?</p>
+
+<p>How could he best serve Ruben and Ivy Sên?</p>
+
+<p>His own children needed little even from him; nothing
+more than a fatherly and friendly hand on their shoulders
+now and then. Both Richard and Blanche were true to type
+and all went well and creditably with them. Snow still felt
+great interest in national and in international affairs. But
+he held a watching brief now. He had been out of office for
+nearly a year. He had served his king and his country truly
+and well in all four of the globe’s quarters, and in the
+cabinet as well as at the Foreign Office. But “party” no
+longer lured him. He thought not too well of either party
+now. England would “muddle through” of course. Charles
+Snow was too English to doubt it for a moment. And he
+hoped to God that old China would “muddle through” too!
+But keenly as he tried to watch and read all the shifting
+tangles of East and West, Old and New, the man’s most
+immediate interest, though he had to veil it carefully, was
+to serve Ruben and Ivy Sên, and by doing it to keep faith
+with Sên King-lo, who had trusted him and in dying had
+bequeathed to Snow a trouble that he could not take with
+him into the churchyard.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên intended to present Ivy at next season’s first
+Drawing-Room. It was about that the four women
+were talking earnestly over the strawberries and cream of tea
+in the garden one July afternoon at the Blake’s place in
+Dorset.</p>
+
+<p>Snow and his son-in-law, Rupert Blake, and Whitmore
+were more amused than interested in the keen discussion of
+the important palace toilet, but Ruben Sên lounging on the
+grass near his mother was vitally interested. Ruben “loved
+clothes” like the veriest woman. Color and line fed Ruben
+Sên, and he never was cold to ornament.</p>
+
+<p>“A débutante need not necessarily wear white,” Lady Snow
+urged, “quite a number don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; and I wish you wouldn’t,” Ruben broke in eagerly.
+“One of the lovely girlish colors would look ever so much
+better. White looks flat by artificial light, Ivy. Don’t you
+think so, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy darted her brother a tiny sinful glance from her narrow
+eyes. She knew what Rue’d like her to wear. Then she
+sighed softly, for she knew well enough that she’d look best
+dressed as Ruben would have chosen—dressed in a blaze of
+colors, shapeless sacks of gorgeous embroideries, jewels of
+three or four colors, her black hair worn in some fantastic
+fashion. But she had no intention of looking her best at the
+cost of wearing a Chinesey dress. She answered gently
+enough. This was one of Ivy Sên’s gentle days, and for all
+that she had said to Lady Snow less than a year ago, Ivy
+loved her beautiful mother very dearly, and rarely hurt her
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>“I’d rather have it all white, Mother—like other girls.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên put her hand lovingly on her daughter’s shoulder.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>
+“It shall be as white as ever you choose, Baby.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder why I never have seen you wearing white,”
+Whitmore said to Mrs. Sên, as he took her empty plate. “I
+don’t remember that I ever have.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s rather young wear for forty odd, don’t you think?”
+Mrs. Sên laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish!” Emma Snow scolded. “Mean to tell me that
+I look mutton-dressed-as-lamb?” Her cool gown was snow
+white. “I shall wear white when I’m eighty—on days like
+this.”</p>
+
+<p>“And go to dances—<i>and dance</i>, won’t you, Cousin Emma?”
+Ruben demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“I most certainly shall.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you care for white, Mrs. Sên?” Lord Whitmore
+persisted.</p>
+
+<p>“I am like Ruben, I like plenty of color. And in our
+country we only wear white for mourning!” John Whitmore
+had vexed her an hour ago, or she would not have
+answered him so. Whatever Ivy Ruby Gilbert had been, Mrs.
+Sên almost never was catty. And when she felt her daughter’s
+fingers stiffen a little under hers she wished she had left
+it unsaid. The man had been a bore of late and being bored
+always infuriated her. Ruby Sên had outlived several faults.
+She could not outgrow that one. Moreover, harmless and
+conventional enough as the man’s questions had been, his tone
+had been a little possessive, and for that she had flicked him—but
+she had not meant to touch Ivy on the raw. Ruby
+Sên looked after her child with regretful eyes as the younger
+Ivy slipped quietly away and across the garden. Oh, if only
+Ivy need not feel it so! Their lovely Ivy, ashamed of her
+own loveliness!</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên went slowly across the grass almost to the other
+side of the great garden until she was in the thick of the
+beech trees.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span></p>
+
+<p>When Lord Whitmore came upon her suddenly almost an
+hour later the girl was crying bitterly. He had seen Ivy Sên
+in a tempest of tears before this—and more than once. They
+were old friends and staunch allies. In a sense they were
+fellow conspirators. He sat down beside her on the garden
+bench and laid a fatherly arm about her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite right, dear; cry it out,” was all he said.</p>
+
+<p>The girl did. These wild tears were past gulping back.
+It would have choked her.</p>
+
+<p>“Why can’t they let me forget it—ever?” she wailed when
+her tears were nearly spent. “I was happy till they reminded
+me. I’ve loved being here; I suppose I’ve no business to feel
+at home anywhere—but I always do here with Blanche and
+Rupert. I care more for them than for any one else—next
+to mother and Rue, and I love Dorset so dearly. I wish we
+lived here always. Half the Dorset people never heard of
+China. Then they had to go on about ‘color,’ and ‘lovely
+flowing lines,’ and remind me! What they meant was that
+the clothes English girls wear would look ridiculous on me.
+‘Natives’ need lots of red and orange—that’s what they
+meant! And then Mother had to go and speak as if she
+were tar-brush too—which she isn’t!”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not. And your mother is very nearly as brunette
+as you are, Ivy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Brunette!”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you didn’t mind,” Whitmore said gently.</p>
+
+<p>“So do I,” the girl retorted bitterly. “Mind it! Girls
+born as I was ought to be smothered at birth. If my courage
+was half as much as what I suffer over it, I’d take the suicide-way
+out. Yes; I would—and have every right to—precious
+more right than they had to bring me into a world in which
+there is no place for such as Ruben and me. Perhaps I shall
+too—do it—some—time. Oh, I have thought of it. Or, I’d
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>
+be a nun—only I’d hate it! And they wouldn’t have me!”</p>
+
+<p>“No vocation? I quite agree,” Whitmore spoke lightly to
+cover an emotion of sympathy he would not show.</p>
+
+<p>“There ought to be convents for half-castes! The League
+of Nations ought to start one. That would be one useful
+thing to their credit anyway!”</p>
+
+<p>“I predict you’ll have an awfully good time—your first
+season, and afterwards—” her friend said, changing the subject
+rather lamely.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy sighed rebelliously and unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you’d smoke, and give me one.”</p>
+
+<p>Lord Whitmore obliged her in both particulars, looking
+over his shoulder in their most probably vulnerable direction
+as he held out his cigarettes to Ivy. Sixteen-year-old Ivy
+was not forbidden an occasional cigarette—but Mrs. Sên
+preferred them to be very occasional, and in selected society.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care whether I have a ripping time or a perfectly
+horrid time, Lord Whitmore—if only some one will want to
+marry me.”</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore was distressed, but he was not going to show
+it; and he only partly understood. He had no doubt whatever
+that every girl wished to be married, and that most girls
+were greedy for suitors. But it distressed him to hear any
+girl say it.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Ivy Sên divined this and probably her own taste
+also disallowed it, for she added apologetically as well as
+petulantly, “Oh, let me talk to you, say just what I want to!
+I’ve only let myself ‘go’ about it once before in all my life,
+nearly a year ago, to cousin Emma. It’s choking me—it
+often is; let me talk to you about it; do!”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course; talk away, child; say everything you wish to.
+But, Ivy, take it from me that you need not have any anxiety
+about Mr. Right; he’ll appear promptly—sure to. Give him
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>
+time to get here and give yourself time to be sure that it <i>is</i>
+Mr. Right. You’ll have dozens of suitors; be careful not to
+take the wrong one.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care whether he’s Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong—not
+tuppence. Mr. Anybody’s all I ask for, if only he’ll marry
+me. You,” she added before the man could get in a word,
+“you do still want to marry Mother, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“More than anything in all the world.” Whitmore met
+the girl’s anxious, beseeching eyes steadily.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you’d make her then.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is just what I am going to do.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder,” the girlish voice was openly dubious. “Tell
+me something—would you want to marry my mother if she
+had had a Chinese father—and looked it?”</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman laughed tenderly before he said earnestly,
+“Yes, Ivy, even if she were a Zulu lady.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe it! And I shouldn’t like you if it were
+true. You couldn’t! No nice man could. You say that
+plenty of men will be ready to marry me, and perhaps they
+will, poor men—adventurers and nincompoops. No man of
+your sort or Rupert’s will. They couldn’t. That’s why I
+say Mr. Anybody—any man that will take my money in payment
+for making me Mrs. Anybody English.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will not need to bribe your way into wedlock, Ivy.
+Many a man of our own sort will love you—bound to—and
+not give two hoots for your blessed money.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên shook her head sadly.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe it!” she said again. “I’ll have to take a
+derelict or an idiot.”</p>
+
+<p>“God forbid!”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish He had forbidden my birth; He ought to have,”
+Ivy cried passionately. “If only I <i>looked</i> English, I wouldn’t
+mind it half so much. Why couldn’t Ruben look this way?
+I believe he’d like to, and why couldn’t I look as he does?
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
+No one on earth would ever suspect Ruben of having Chinese
+blood, would they?”</p>
+
+<p>“No one,” the man admitted.</p>
+
+<p>“But I believe he <i>is</i> a little Chinese. And I am English!
+Every atom and fiber of me is English. I love every blade
+of grass that grows in England—every leaf on every tree,
+every gravestone in the old village churchyards—the cattle
+in the pastures, the little thatched cottages, the long, leafy
+lanes; even when Mother has taken us to Italy and Spain—my
+poor yellow face wasn’t quite so noticeable there, and I
+had the comfort of knowing that it wasn’t—even then, much
+as I enjoyed it, I was terribly homesick all the time for
+England. I am sorry for every one who isn’t born English.
+To me there is no other thing half so proud and beautiful
+as being an English man or woman. Oh, it’s hard to have
+to pity myself because I am only half English, and don’t
+look as if I were English at all! I wonder if you can understand,
+even a little, how hard it is!”</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore nodded. He would have given many acres to
+have known how to comfort Ruby Sên’s daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear,” he told her, with his hand on her hair, “how I
+wish you were my daughter! And I hope you will be.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy caught Lord Whitmore’s other hand and gripped it
+pathetically. “Would you truly let me <i>be</i> your daughter?
+Could you feel as if I were?”</p>
+
+<p>“Try me.” As the man looked at her, the answer was
+sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that helps me! You wouldn’t be ashamed of me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d be awfully proud of you, little daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>“God bless you!” The girl’s voice choked; her tears were
+near again. “You’d let me be called ‘Ivy Whitmore,’
+wouldn’t you?” she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Love it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Me—with an English name! a truly English name!”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>
+The girl drew a long breath, as if she were drinking slowly
+the wine of the garden’s English roses. “It—it—oh—then
+I’d wait for Mr. Right—wait ever so long. I’m not horrid
+really,” Ivy said eagerly, “but I am so hungry to have an
+English name. Our name hurts me. I loathe it. It isn’t
+fair that I should have to be called an odious thing like that—and
+Mother won’t even let us leave off that silly fool’s cap
+of a triangle on top of the E. I <i>am</i> English, Lord Whitmore,
+<i>all</i> of me except the odious yellow envelope I’m caged
+in. English!... I wonder—would you <i>adopt</i> me—make
+it my legal name?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course, little Ivy,” the man told her instantly.
+But to himself he added, “If your mother would let me
+do it.”</p>
+
+<p>Then, at the look the dark little girl paid him, Lord Whitmore
+bent down and kissed her gently on her forehead.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>They had not often seen Ivy so sweetly happy—not for
+several years. She was quietly gay all through dinner,
+and afterwards in the drawing-room, on the veranda and at
+billiards, the soft tinkle of her gentle laughter reminded Sir
+Charles Snow of another Ivy’s delicious giggle that he’d told
+her, in Washington, was like a Chinese girl’s and reminded
+him of the mirth-music a Chinese girl had made for him in
+her father’s garden in far off Pechilli many, many years ago.
+Was Lotus still living? He wondered. Even Rupert Blake,
+the least observant of them there, noticed a new ease, a prettier,
+more natural brightness and an added sweetness in Ivy
+Sên when she slipped into the drawing-room looking like an
+exquisite deep-tinted rose-and-amber tea rose nodding above
+the leaf-green of her delicate evening draperies. Mrs. Sên’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>
+face glowed softly as she watched her girl; Ruben hovered
+about his sister like a proud and happy lover and whispered
+to her as she went through the door he held open when she
+followed her mother and cousins out from dinner, “You’re It
+to-night, Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy’s bad time has passed; her cloud has lifted,” Sir
+Charles commented to his wife a day or two later. “Happy
+over her palace affair and all the junketings to follow—bless
+her!—I suppose. And a good job too.”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow smiled at her husband indulgently and gave
+no sign of disagreeing. But she did not believe for a moment
+that Buckingham Palace or the function gaieties to
+follow had anything to do with Ivy’s new and very welcome
+change of mood. Ivy was up to something. Lady Snow
+was sure of that. But of what it was she could not even
+make a hazy guess. She hoped it might last—the pleasant
+new mood—that was all! But Lady Snow did not expect
+that it would. Ivy was always happiest here, but Dorset, the
+Priory, Blanche and Rupert and the adorable twins did not
+account for this transformation. Emma Snow wondered
+what did account for it. “I’d think she was in love,” Lady
+Snow reflected to herself, “if there were any one on earth
+here for her to be in love with, and had forgotten everything
+else in it; it takes that way sometimes. But there isn’t any
+one here for her to have fallen in love with. And the change
+came <i>here</i>—on Tuesday. She was in one of her black moods
+when she went off by herself after tea; she had reached the
+danger-point then, almost a crisis. When she came down to
+dinner she was happy and companionable and <i>docile</i>. What
+happened to Ivy between tea and dinner?” Lady Snow very
+rarely, if ever, had seen Ivy docile.</p>
+
+<p>A far wiser, shrewder woman than she ever seemed, very
+plump, very pretty, her hair still naturally golden at what is
+erroneously called “the wrong side” of fifty, Emma Snow had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>
+danced through life. But thirty odd years of marriage with
+a diplomat, most of them spent in the diplomatic circles of
+important capitals in both hemispheres, had made no mean
+or shallow diplomatist of the accomplished matron who affected
+to think all things of international moment “silly old
+stuff.” Ivy Sên and her sudden reformation might deceive
+the rest of the house party, but it was many years since any
+one had pulled the wool over the blue, girl-bright eyes of the
+woman who at fifty-three looked a radiant thirty-five, felt a
+vivacious twenty and looked forward happily and gaily to
+sixty, confident and unabashed to eighty.</p>
+
+<p>On Thursday Lord Whitmore tried his luck again.</p>
+
+<p>Left to his own devices, probably he would not have done
+so just then; not until Ruben had gone back to ’varsity,
+Mrs. Sên and Ivy back to their house in Kensington, and
+until the fuss of Ivy’s presentation was well over; but Ivy
+had spurred him to immediate action.</p>
+
+<p>A burning hot day had kept every one else in the house or
+garden, even Ruben, who was a young salamander. But Ivy
+had demanded an early ride and Whitmore, always ready for
+a canter and always glad to oblige the girl, had promptly
+ordered her horse and his saddled and the two had ridden off
+together companionably after an earlier breakfast than any
+but dawn-liking Ruben had cared to share.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly noon and getting hotter, when they let their
+horses walk and turned back towards the Priory.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the girl and her companion chatted as they rode
+side by side slowly through the welcome shade of the wych-elms
+that almost interlaced across the narrow, grassy lane.
+They chatted at first of nothings and more in comradeship
+than in any quick interest in what she spoke of; then Ivy
+began to talk about the lovely county. She never tired of
+talking of Dorset. The county of infinite varieties and more
+beautiful than varied, was Ivy Sên’s Mecca. It delighted the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>
+man to realize how much she knew about it—its flowers and
+trees, its story, its coasts and streams, its wishing-wells, the
+slate roofs and narrow lanes of Fortune’s Well o’ertopped by
+the bastions of Verne, its martellos and its manors, its estuaries
+and its castles, its bridges, its people and their folk
+lore, the minster, all the tiny pictured churches, tiny cottages,
+the “big” houses, old families, high roads and byways,
+hills and woodlands. She knew the names of half the old
+inns, he found, and their bits of history. The Dorset man’s
+heart warmed at her happy, loving chatter of his county.
+Something Whitmore said about a tiny village school snuggled
+on a hillside they saw through a sudden woodland vista
+led to something about Cambridge—it had been his ’varsity
+for a few terms before he went to Woolwich; Cambridge led
+to Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you like Ruben?” Ivy demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“Thoroughly,” the man told her truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>“You are not as fond of Rue as you are of me, though?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not half as fond,” Lord Whitmore told her with a laugh.
+“There are not many people I care as much for as I do for
+you, Miss Persistence, and only just one I care more for.
+But I am very fond of Ruben, for all that; I think him a
+splendid fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>“He’s a funny fellow in some ways,” the boy’s sister said
+insistently. “Ruben—the real Ruben—isn’t much on the surface.
+I’m all on the surface, I’m afraid, but I don’t believe
+that any one knows Ruben really well—not even Mother.”</p>
+
+<p>The girl scarcely could have said anything that would have
+surprised the man more. To him Ruben Sên seemed as
+legible as a clearly printed, tersely written page, with no hint
+in his straightforward personality of the complex that Ivy
+presented. But he held his silence.</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder what Rue will be—what he’ll do. What do you
+think?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Well—you know—he’ll have a great deal to look after.
+Your place in Surrey isn’t a big one, but any property is a
+business of itself in England now; and the Sên fortune
+would keep any three men busy who looked after it properly;
+it was huge when your father left it to the three of you; and
+your mother and Snow have nursed it splendidly ever since.
+Even the bad, foolish years of the so-called Labor Government
+did not stop its growth, as they did of most such fortunes,
+and very nearly to the tune of the genuine laboring
+man’s starvation. It is one of the colossal fortunes now, and
+intricately ramified; and I don’t see Ruben neglecting anything
+that he ought not to neglect.”</p>
+
+<p>“Almost all of it is Mother’s and all of it is in her control.”</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore nodded. “Yes, I know. But I hope,” he said
+significantly, “to persuade your mother to make the bulk of
+it over to you and Ruben some day, and not too far off. Why
+shouldn’t she, if I can prevail upon her to do what I so
+much wish? In any case it’s up to Ruben to look after his
+mother’s affairs and his sister’s, as well as his own.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see Rue as a landed proprietor or interested in
+any sort of business affairs ever. Do you know what I think
+he’ll do? I think that Ruben will roam.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good gracious, Ivy; I hope not; it would grieve his
+mother, I am sure.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think so too, and Ruben is devoted to Mother. I don’t
+believe he’ll ever care for any one else half so much as he
+does for her. Ruben’s wife, if he ever has one—which I hope
+he won’t—will have to take second place to Mother, and
+second place a long way off. But I think that very soon
+Ruben will roam—almost as soon as he comes down from
+Cambridge, I suspect; and that he will rove about all his life.
+I think he will have to.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope not,” Whitmore repeated. “Why do you say you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>
+hope Ruben will never marry? You indicated the other day
+that you intend to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—and chiefly, as I told you, to get rid of my name.
+I want Ruben not to marry because I want the name of Sên
+to die out.”</p>
+
+<p>Lord Whitmore made no reply; he thought it would be
+wiser not to attempt to thrash all that out again; at least not
+now; his attempt on Tuesday had not been successful, or even
+encouraging. And they rode on in silence for several moments,
+he flicking the young leaves of the old oak trees idly,
+Ivy Sên looking off to the narrowed distance broodingly, as
+if it were the enigmatical future.</p>
+
+<p>It was she who broke their silence presently. “Did you
+know my father at Cambridge?” she asked impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>The question surprised Whitmore; that she asked it startled
+him even. In all the years he had known her—more than a
+dozen years—he never before had heard Ivy Sên voluntarily
+mention her father, and certainly had never heard her speak
+of him as “father.” What was Ivy leading up to? Something,
+he was sure.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no,” he told her, “we must have been there about the
+same time, I fancy. But I went off to cram for the Army.
+And he was at Trinity Hall and I at King’s. No; I never
+met Mr. Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder if you’d still wish to marry our mother if you
+had.”</p>
+
+<p>So—that was it! “Of course, I should,” he said. But—he
+wondered; Ivy had sown a seed—a seed that might grow
+a doubt. “Men often marry the widows of men they have
+known,” he told her, smiling at her as he said it.</p>
+
+<p>“Not often—Englishmen—the widow of a Chinaman they
+have known—have <i>seen</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman riding beside her studied his mare’s ears.
+He had no answer for Ivy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I suspect that that is why you <i>are</i> willing to marry his
+widow. Are you never jealous of his memory?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not a mite.” Whitmore looked the girl full in the face
+and smiled again as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“You could be very jealous—even of a memory, I believe.”
+Suddenly the man believed it too; he’d never given such a
+thing a thought before. He flicked meditatively at the oak
+leaves again. “Do you know <i>why</i> you are not jealous of my
+father’s memory? I do. Her marriage was so fantastic that
+you do not even think of it as having <i>been</i>. You know it
+was so, but you can’t realize it. Probably you would, if you’d
+ever seen him—Mother’s Chinese husband—and you would
+certainly realize it if you ever had seen them together after
+she was his wife. To you it never <i>was</i>, because it was impossible;
+not the hideous reality it actually was, but a girl’s
+meaningless escapade; a sort of private theatrical masquerade.
+That’s why it does not sting you more. It stings me!”</p>
+
+<p>John Whitmore flushed. He wasn’t going to admit it, but
+he knew that little Ivy had told him a truth, a hard, disconcerting
+truth, which he had not before suspected. The girl
+was making him damned uncomfortable. This subject <i>must</i>
+be changed.</p>
+
+<p>“What shall I give you to wear at the Drawing-Room, Ivy?
+Flowers to carry—whatever flowers you like, or a very special
+fan, or some pearls—or all three?”</p>
+
+<p>“What I want,” the girl retorted bitterly, “is a decent English
+name to wear at the Drawing-Room.” Her face dimpled
+suddenly, and she laughed softly at him with their yellow
+lids lifted higher from her not-straight-set black eyes
+than they often were, and he saw that her eyes were dancing
+with wicked, impish mischief. “I wish you’d marry me
+instead of Mother. Will you, if she won’t have you after
+all? Do! Let’s elope!”</p>
+
+<p>“Now?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Yes; now. I think you might. Will you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he laughed back at her, and flicked at her lightly
+with the soft loop of his crop. “I most certainly will not
+marry you, Miss Impudence.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?” Ivy pouted.</p>
+
+<p>“For—one—two—three—four,” counting them out on his
+pommel with the riding crop, “most excellent reasons. First
+and last, because I wish to marry your mother; second, because
+in the sanity of fifty-three I object to marrying a
+sixteen-year-old firebrand; third, because I should very much
+object to robbing you and Mr. Right; fourth—and perhaps
+not least—because my heart is very particularly set on having
+you for my daughter. You would make me an adorable
+daughter, Ivy; but, between you and me, I have not the
+slightest doubt that you would make me, or any other old
+chap of fifty-three ass enough to try it, an utterly abominable
+wife. And I could give you any number of other excellent
+reasons.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—don’t trouble to think them up; the four you have
+furnished will do to go on with.”</p>
+
+<p>The girl set a quicker pace then; and they went side by
+side fairly fast for a mile or two.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one in sight when they reached the Priory
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore lifted Ivy down, and she clung to him a moment,
+and said, “If only you would make her marry you before the
+Drawing-Room, I’d try to forgive you for jilting me.”</p>
+
+<p>The man laughed at her gently, patting her shoulder lingeringly
+as he said, “That would be quick work, Ivy.”</p>
+
+<p>As he went off towards the stables, a bridle in each hand,
+the girl called after him, “I wish you would try though!”</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore looked over his shoulder back at her as she still
+stood where he had set her down. A lonely looking little
+figure she seemed to him, standing there framed in the mullioned
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>
+old green arch of the doorway, framed in the wealth
+of climbing ivy that grew as it had for centuries on the old
+Priory’s walls.</p>
+
+<p>He always had known that Ivy Sên was odd; a handful
+always, sometimes a tempest. Every one knew that who knew
+the girl. But it never had occurred to him before that her
+pampered young life was lonely.</p>
+
+<p>No one had thought of her so, except the girl herself and
+her mother. The mother had known it, and grieved that it
+was so, for years.</p>
+
+<p>He thought it was a pathetic little figure standing there in
+the dim wide doorway. And the dark mutinous face was
+very wistful.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll do my best,” Whitmore called back, “if I see a ghost
+of a chance.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Lord Whitmore could not have chosen a less auspicious
+moment to urge his suit again, though it is equally true
+that he could not, as far as results went, have chosen a better
+one. But to-day Mrs. Sên resented his courtship which until
+now she merely had regretted.</p>
+
+<p>She was tired.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles had caught her at breakfast, and insisted upon
+a long morning devoted to a rigorous inspection of accounts,
+leases, securities and other documentary paraphernalia of a
+great fortune. Under her cousin’s persistent tutelage widowed
+Mrs. Sên had become an uncommonly capable business
+woman; it was in her blood, for that matter, but she never
+could see why “Charlie” and her solicitors should not manage
+it all for her, and this morning she had had other plans for
+the hours between breakfast and luncheon. But Sir Charles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>
+had insisted; and she had yielded. Ruby Sên usually did
+yield to her cousin in small things. It had been a lifelong
+habit. In big and more vital things she would yield to no
+one, not even to Snow himself. And they both knew that
+she would not.</p>
+
+<p>The day was exceedingly hot. The long business morning
+had both bored and fagged her.</p>
+
+<p>Luncheon had exasperated her; people had drifted in whom
+she particularly disliked, and had stayed for the midday meal.
+Long before peaches and finger bowls Mrs. Sên had been
+bored to tears.</p>
+
+<p>She fled to the rose-garden as soon as she half-decently
+could. And there she sank down on a comfortable bench with
+a soft chuckle of victory and a soothing feeling of security.</p>
+
+<p>In this tiny world of fragrant, glowing roses, a lovely fastness
+of color and spiced sweetness, her fag and rancor passed.
+And when a little breeze came and played with the roses,
+cooling the garden deliciously, she smiled lazily and scolded
+herself for being an impatient, ungracious woman.</p>
+
+<p>Could roses be lovelier than these of Blanche and Rupert’s,
+anywhere on earth? What about the Vale of Kashmir?
+Mrs. Sên had been in China. She knew how color could
+paint an Oriental garden, how perfume could clot one. But
+she could not think that roses <i>could</i> be lovelier, smell sweeter,
+than these.</p>
+
+<p>Roses always made her think of King-lo; all flowers did.
+He had worn a vivid red flower in his coat the day they had
+met, a carnation whose spice had reached and pleased her as
+they sat next to each other at supper. Their friendship in
+those first far-off Washington days had been a friendship of
+flowers. He had sent her violets that first time; most often
+he had sent her lilies; but often too he had given her roses,
+always exquisite of color and shape, always exquisitely perfumed,
+always with their own perfect foliage—never too
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
+many, never too few. The first roses he ever had sent her
+had been tea-roses. They were the first of his flowers she
+ever had worn.</p>
+
+<p>She left her seat and paced slowly from bush to bush,
+searching for a tea-rose she wanted—a tea-rose in memory.
+And when she found it she held the half-open bud in her
+hand a long time before she put it carefully in her gown.</p>
+
+<p>She went on through the ordered wilderness of roses, moving
+slowly, searching carefully for another rose she wanted—a
+very red rose, just the right red, just the right shape, just
+the same scent as the roses Lo had sent her long ago because
+her name was Ruby and because he had loved her, though
+neither he nor she had known then that he did.</p>
+
+<p>There! Very carefully she chose a ruby-red rose. Very
+gently she gathered it, and went back to the seat she had
+left, holding the fragrant ruby rose in fingers that caressed
+it softly now and then, and fell a-dreaming of days that were
+gone, of a man that had been dead fifteen years.</p>
+
+<p>What a lover he had been!</p>
+
+<p>And Lo had been her lover, tender and ardent and true,
+from the first to the last; from his first loving of her until
+he had died in her arms in their Surrey garden.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had been but a toddler then, Ivy a baby.</p>
+
+<p>Dear little Ivy! Ivy whom Ruby Sên knew that next to
+her husband-lover, Sên King-lo, she had loved most of all
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Partly, no doubt, it was because she had given so little to
+others that she had given King-lo so much, but far more it
+had been King-lo’s own quality that had caused her to give
+so much to her lover and husband; and Mrs. Sên knew that
+it was so.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Ruby Gilbert had been a nice girl; intrinsically nice,
+exquisitely sensitive; but she had married above her—this
+English girl who had amused Washington, appalled her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>
+friends and gravely troubled her kindred by marrying a
+Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>She had suspected at the time that he was more than she;
+she had learned it very surely during her five years of marriage.
+And now in her maturity, having seen more of her
+world and watched it shrewdly, widowed Mrs. Sên realized
+it much more deeply and consciously than she had while
+King-lo had been with her.</p>
+
+<p>She appreciated him now—a trick that death and memory
+give; and she even, remembering him, praised him for all
+his excellence more than was his individual due—held to him
+as personal virtue much that was racial trait. She was too
+Western to realize justly that Sên King-lo had been what
+he was because he was bred and born of a nation of gentlemen;
+men refined and strengthened for centuries by the
+spiritual and social good-breeding that Confucius taught.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên smiled, remembering as she drew the ruby rose
+across her face, rides they had had by the dimpled Potomac,
+through the sun-dappled woods of Virginia, on the city’s
+broad tree-shaded streets; their garden in Hong Kong, Sên’s
+grasp of her hand, the sound of his voice, the hold of his
+arms, the precious lure of his tender eyes, his patience, his
+courtesy, his exquisite charm, games they had played, confidences
+at dawn, the day he had told her he loved her—the
+radiant, secure years he had proved to her that he did.</p>
+
+<p>A squirrel scurried softly through the grass where standard
+roses grew imperially beautiful from delicate carpets of
+emerald.</p>
+
+<p>The woman watched the little furry thing, a tender smile
+on her tremulous lips, a hint of mist in her soft brown eyes.
+She sighed gently, and looked away—and saw Lord Whitmore
+coming to her through the beech trees that girdled the
+radiant rose-garden.</p>
+
+<p>She dreamed of Sên King-lo, and saw John Whitmore.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Day dreaming?” he asked, as he seated himself, and shied
+his panama hat not unkindly at a now hurrying little
+squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Mrs. Sên said crisply, “<i>living</i>. Living contentedly
+in a very beautiful castle.”</p>
+
+<p>“Enjoying it very much—you looked.”</p>
+
+<p>“Intensely,” Mrs. Sên told him.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Whitmore was not dull. When she had said “living”
+he had known that “reliving” would have been the truer
+word. He gaged her mood, he understood the cool crispness
+of her tone. And yet—he spoke and risked it; took his
+plunge, perhaps because the promise he had given little
+anxious Ivy pushed him over the brink, perhaps because the
+scent of a thousand sun-drenched roses had gone to his head,
+perhaps because he so wanted the woman who sat there only
+half the length of the garden bench away.</p>
+
+<p>“May I have it?” he asked, holding her eyes with his,
+reaching his hand for the rose she held.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head very slightly, a queer little smile answering
+him too, and fastened the ruby rose at her breast.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear—” he urged.</p>
+
+<p>Color came and went like a girl’s on the woman’s face, an
+old trick of Ivy Gilbert’s face that Mrs. Sên’s had lost for
+years till now—a lovely flushing and paling of sex; and how
+was the man to know that it was not for him?</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the other man knew—the man that the wife
+thought was there.</p>
+
+<p>How was an Englishman to know that they two were not
+alone there among the roses—he and the woman he loved?</p>
+
+<p>But the woman knew and rejoiced. And the soft glow on
+her face, the throbbing sweetness her senses felt, were for
+<i>him</i>, standing there facing them, a Chinese man—no ghost—living
+and visible to the heart of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>“Won’t you let me come into your castle—your castle of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>
+contentment—and live there with you?” the Englishman
+pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Before when he had urged it he had pressed upon her a
+dozen reasons that advocated it soundly: companionship for
+years of maturity and of age, common tastes, Ivy’s welfare
+and Ruben’s.</p>
+
+<p>To-day he urged only his love, pleaded nothing of what
+such marriage might do for her and for her girl and boy,
+pleaded what it would be to him; promised nothing but love
+and fealty. All the rest he had promised before, and knew
+that she knew that promise would hold; now he pleaded
+selfishly, showing the selfishness, the overmastering urge of
+what he asked: the strongest appeal a man can make to a
+woman; the appeal that moves and flatters when all others
+fail.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t condemn me to spend the rest of my life in loneliness.
+You must not! Until I met you, I never knew what
+loneliness was. Since I met you, I have known nothing else,
+except when I have been with you. We are a long-lived lot,
+we Whitmores, and so are my mother’s people. I decline to
+let you sentence me to loneliness for, perhaps, another fifty
+years—to punish me so for loving you!”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you would love some one else, Lord Whitmore,”
+Mrs. Sên said a little wearily.</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t oblige you—and wouldn’t if I could. You were
+the first; you’ll be the last. Oh,” he went on in retort to
+an odd little smile she gave him, “it is perfectly true. I
+was precious near forty when we met; and I never had asked
+a woman to be my wife, and I never had had the slightest
+thought of doing so—until I saw you. And I never have
+fooled about—not even as a boy. I have given you all my
+love.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I gave mine—all mine—more than twenty years
+ago.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I know,” Whitmore said nicely, but he flushed slightly,
+in spite of himself. “But Mr. Sên is dead.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not to me,” Ruby Sên said proudly.</p>
+
+<p>He waited a moment. Then he laid his hand on hers, so
+quietly that a modern woman could not resent the hand of
+an old friend that touched hers so lightly, and asked, “Can
+you give me nothing at all for the everything that I have
+given you?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên sighed. She was so pitying—not Lord Whitmore,
+but some woman who had missed him. There were so
+many lonely women now! So many nice women who would
+have valued and cherished the splendid gift she would not
+take or touch. There were not too many men such as he;
+there were not enough good and charming husbands to go
+around. Mrs. Sên’s heart ached for some lonely woman who
+had missed this man. She knew so well what marriage
+<i>could</i> be.</p>
+
+<p>But she was growing, selfishly, a trifle weary; it was so
+perfectly useless to fuss all this over again and even the
+man’s persistence revolted her taste a little. And she longed
+to be alone again in her little rose-walled castle. She did
+wish he’d take his No and go!</p>
+
+<p>“Can you give me nothing?” the man repeated. His voice
+shook in his eagerness, and his hand tightened on hers.</p>
+
+<p>The woman turned in her seat, faced him squarely and
+shook her head as she gently released her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Why?”</p>
+
+<p>The question vexed Mrs. Sên. Surely she had told him
+why clearly, already.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it because you can’t?” Whitmore demanded hotly, “or
+because you won’t?”</p>
+
+<p>“Both. I cannot give you what my husband holds, and
+always will. I choose to keep my memories untarnished.
+You forget that I am a Chinese woman by right of marriage.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
+A Chinese widow does not marry again,” she told him
+gravely and proudly. “Not women who are respected and
+who respect themselves. I do not often speak of my marriage,
+not because I forget it, but because I remember it so
+well. It was perfect. To me, Lord Whitmore, a second marriage
+would be bigamy. To me Mr. Sên is <i>not</i> dead. I am
+as much, as completely and as consciously his wife to-day as
+I was when I lived at his side. My husband has not left me.
+I shall not leave him.”</p>
+
+<p>And Whitmore realized that that was final.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted defeat gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>“I will not trouble you again,” he promised quietly.</p>
+
+<p>The brown fingers gave the white ones a friendly little
+grip.</p>
+
+<p>How enormously she liked him! And she could have cried
+then for the nice girl who had missed him.</p>
+
+<p>Whitmore chatted easily for a few moments before he
+got up and gathered himself a tea-rose bud. He threw her
+a quizzical smile as he drew it into his coat. Then he retrieved
+his panama and sauntered off cheerfully towards the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>“Done in!” he said to himself grimly as he went, “done in
+by a dead Chinaman! My word!”</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Sên stayed on in the rose-garden with her man
+who was with her there among their roses.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Fewer girls create a sensation, when they make their
+presentation curtsey at Buckingham Palace, than are
+said to have done so. Too many pretty débutantes follow
+each other to the Royal footstool for any one of them to be
+singled out very especially by those who stand watching them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Sên did not create a sensation at the court of St.
+James that night, but she was noticed and she thoroughly
+enjoyed herself through all of the function that so many girls
+find an ordeal. “I wasn’t frightened one single bit—not
+once,” she said gleefully as she drove home with her mother
+and Ruben, who had joined them as they left the Palace.</p>
+
+<p>Why should she have been—the girl who came of a clan
+whose women had been court ladies when Britain was a wilderness,
+whose women had been of rank for thousands of
+years, and one of whom had been an Empress when Chinese
+ruled in China, before the Manchu came to its throne!</p>
+
+<p>She carried her birth with her—its composure and sunny
+ease, its dignity and suavity. Sir Charles, watching her as
+the girlish figure in girlish gown swept softly across the
+palace floor and bent before the throne, said to himself as
+he had a thousand times before, “How birth tells!”—a very
+trite saying that is the truest of them all.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên did not create a sensation at the Drawing-Room,
+but she did in the season it opened for her. Society made
+much of her, perhaps largely for the reason she had given
+bitterly to Lady Snow. But what the girl had anticipated
+sorely as a very “bitter pill” she found an exceedingly sweet
+morsel. Society liked her; she loved it. Ivy scarcely would
+have exchanged places now with her mother’s pathetically
+plain kitchen maid.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy forgot her grievance, forgot to be unhappy—for a time.</p>
+
+<p>No one slighted her. Men told her that she was lovely,
+and told her that they found her charming; said it with their
+eyes, told it because they sought her.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was girlishly happy; and because she was happy,
+suddenly docile and sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên was radiant and grateful; her one trouble had
+passed. Ruben went back greatly relieved to keep his last
+term at Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Mother,” Ivy suggested at breakfast, “let’s cut everything
+out this morning and go off to the Academy early while the
+rooms are comfortably empty. I’d like to <i>see</i> a few of the
+pictures, wouldn’t you? We’ve been twice, and I haven’t seen
+a thing but other women’s hats.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have a fitting at eleven, dear; and you know the Bessingtons
+are lunching here—and Caverley.”</p>
+
+<p>“Chuck the fitting; it will keep. We’ll be back for lunch
+if we go now. You must come with me; we never have five
+minutes together now. You can’t want any more breakfast,
+you’ve had lots. Come along! I’ll race you to see who can
+change quickest and we’ll be off before the bores begin to
+gather.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên laughed and pushed back her chair obediently.
+It was nice to go off alone with Ivy for the morning—nicer
+that Ivy wished it.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll race you up the stairs,” the girl offered as they went
+through the hall. Ivy’s arm about her mother’s waist.</p>
+
+<p>“Race yourself—if you feel like it in a habit after an
+hour’s ride. I decline to run up two flights of stairs. How
+did Polyanne behave?”</p>
+
+<p>“Like a vixen, but I took it out of her—had a scrumptious
+ride.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy scurried up the stairs to change her habit. Mrs. Sên
+followed her happily, a little more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>They had breakfasted really early—as they often did even
+in the whirl of Ivy’s first season, Ivy daintily ravenous after
+her earlier ride. Burlington House was comfortably uncrowded
+when they wormed their way through the turnstile.</p>
+
+<p>They both liked pictures, of course. Who doesn’t? But
+neither mother nor daughter knew much about them. But
+one must have a look at the Academy, at least the Picture of
+the Year and the portraits. Mrs. Sên made it a rule to read
+up the Academy of the year in the <i>Morning Post</i>, and to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
+know what to look at, and what to think of them when she
+did, before she went. But she really hadn’t had time to do
+it this year—what with her clothes and Ivy’s, choosing and
+fittings, a perfect jungle of engagements to keep, invitations
+to answer and send, and all the rest of the fashionable technique
+of Ivy’s first season. She did not even know which
+was <i>the</i> picture this year or who had painted it.</p>
+
+<p>But here they were, Ivy glad to have had her way about
+coming, Mrs. Sên glad because they were together, and they
+did their duty, slowly and cheerfully and carefully, giving at
+least a glance to every picture, even marking their catalogues
+now and then, a good, useful precaution for future table talk.
+They did their duty by Rooms I, II, and III.</p>
+
+<p>“Most enough for one day?” the girl suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“Darling, we must see Maud Towner’s miniature! She’ll
+never forgive us if we don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“Run along and look at it then, you poor dear conscientious
+mother. I’ll wait here nice and comfy on this torture of a
+red bench until you come back, and then we’ll go home, don’t
+you think? You can tell me what Lady Towner’s miniature
+has on, if it has anything, and how its hair is done, and I’ll
+be able to rave about it to her every bit as well as you.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên nodded indulgently and plodded off to the Miniature
+Room.</p>
+
+<p>There were not many here yet though it was nearly noon.
+It was August; the Academy had run its course. A sprinkling
+of artists, a few country late-comers were about all
+here to-day—no one Miss Sên had ever seen before, no one
+that interested her now.</p>
+
+<p>But she noticed a thin crowd gather once or twice at a
+canvas across the room and linger there a little.</p>
+
+<p>“Think of painting <i>her</i>!” she heard a girl say indignantly
+to another as they turned out of the small group about the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No accounting for tastes!” the other stranger replied with
+a shrug.</p>
+
+<p>So it was some woman’s portrait. Was she notoriously
+déclassée, or only plain, Ivy wondered idly.</p>
+
+<p>She got up and went to have a look for herself, less because
+she was curious than because she was far from “comfy” on
+the settee which she herself had called not too unkindly a
+“torture.”</p>
+
+<p>Two men—more of her own class than any one she had
+noticed here this morning before—turned away from the
+canvas as she reached it. They both were grinning.</p>
+
+<p>“Devilish pretty Chink, I call her,” the younger man said,
+and they both laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy stiffened, gave them a cold little haughty stare, and
+passed them to the picture.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên flushed an angry crimson as she saw a very beautiful
+picture—a full-length figure of a gorgeously robed,
+richly jeweled Chinese woman; a woman with tiny deformed
+feet and embroidered trousers. She was wearing elaborate
+nail protectors, but one long-nailed finger was uncovered, a
+jeweled protector lying beside a long silver-pipe, a queer little
+musical instrument of some sort, and a squat little earthenware
+god on a table of shiny black wood. The sumptuous
+figure was not belittled by an overemphasized background,
+but the pictorial temptation of still-life accessories had been
+beyond the painter’s full resistance. A great embroidered
+curtain swept behind the girl—a great sprawling dragon of
+green and bronze on the sunflower yellow folds, and through
+an open window at the canvas’ edge a distant pagoda was
+glimpsed.</p>
+
+<p>Did she look as heathen-Chinee as that, in spite of the
+soft gray Paris frock and the girlish Bond Street hat? More
+Chinese perhaps because of the attempted disguise of her
+English clothes?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span></p>
+
+<p>Had that man with the ruddy hair meant the girl in the
+picture was a pretty Chink, or that <i>she</i> was? They had been
+coming towards her as he spoke, and not three feet away.
+If he had meant her, he had not had even the courage of his
+insufferable impudence; for the puppy had flushed a sheepish
+pink when he met her eyes and saw that she had overheard.
+She had not noticed the other man, but they both had
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên coming back was startled at Ivy’s stiffened pose
+and the chill angry misery on the girl’s face. Ivy stood with
+her back to the picture, but near it, as if defying any one to
+overlook her who looked at it. She stood very still—with a
+small bitter sneer on her small red mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of Ivy Sên’s discontent had come again.</p>
+
+<p>The mother saw that it had, and saw why.</p>
+
+<p>They appeared—the girl on the canvas and the girl in the
+flesh—as China Smiling in Sunshine and China Frozen in
+Shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên’s mother-heart stood still for a moment. Then
+she smiled and said gaily, “Here I am, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think that we are the picture of the year,” Ivy said
+clearly—others beside Mrs. Sên must have heard her—with
+a queer little gesture towards the “A Chinese Lady.”</p>
+
+<p>Then without another word Ivy led their way out of the
+rooms, down the stairs, across the entrance hall out on to the
+porch, down again and across the quadrangle. The girl
+walked proudly, and her narrow slant-set black eyes were
+sultry and bitter, hard with pain and defiance: China in
+Storm.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Piccadilly Archway Mrs. Sên stopped abruptly
+and held out her hand to one of two men who were lighting
+their cigarettes there.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Roland! It is you, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>The ruddy-haired man of Ivy Sên’s discomfiture said, with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>
+his foot on the cigarette he had flung down, hat, gloves and
+stick dexterously clutched in his left hand, that it certainly
+was.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s Roland Curtis, Ivy; Cousin Lillian’s youngest boy,”
+Mrs. Sên explained.</p>
+
+<p>Curtis went red, and dropped his gloves. But Ivy Sên
+smiled sweetly and held out a cousinly hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw you admiring my portrait in there just now, Cousin
+Roland,” Ivy said, innocently.</p>
+
+<p>Roland Curtis mumbled something—no one understood
+what; he least of all.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy laughed—a pretty, friendly laugh of sheer amusement
+And Mrs. Sên and the man who had picked up the glove
+Curtis had dropped both saw that the girl gave Roland’s hand
+a tiny friendly squeeze before she dropped it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên smothered a sigh. Ivy was up to mischief! She
+knew Ivy so well, and the quick-witted woman instantly had
+reconstructed the small incident that she had not seen in
+Room IV.</p>
+
+<p>“Your friend?” the woman said with a glance that said,
+“You may introduce him, Roland,” and, of course, had to
+be obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Roland Curtis’s only wish was to disappear quickly and
+permanently; he gave the introduction reluctantly and awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—don’t you know Tommy Gaylor?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, we never have met but I knew his father and mother
+very well indeed when I was in Madrid years ago. You must
+be Sir William’s son, Mr. Gaylor, for you might be he.
+Won’t you come with Roland to see me and tell me all about
+your people? In Delhi now, aren’t they?”</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor said that they were, and said how glad he’d be to
+call if he might—and meant it.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll come soon, won’t you, Roland?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span></p>
+
+<p>Roland promised that he would, and vowed to himself that
+he would not—soon or ever.</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you bring them home to lunch with us now?”
+Miss Sên suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; Ivy was going to make trouble! Mrs. Sên knew it,
+and Tom Gaylor suspected it.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry—awfully sorry,” Curtis hastily refused the invitation
+that Mrs. Sên had not given, and intended not to give,
+if she could avoid it gracefully. “Got to catch the one-fifteen
+at Victoria; Tommy and I are going to—to Frimley to
+cousins of his for the week-end—the Burton-Hamiltons. I’ll
+bring him to see you next week though. So jolly glad we
+ran into us—you, I mean. Can I get you a taxi, or have you
+got a car waiting? I say, Tom—we’ve cut it rather fine,
+haven’t we!”</p>
+
+<p>“We are going to walk,” Ivy said before her mother could
+speak. Mrs. Sên was half afraid Ivy was going to suggest
+walking toward Victoria. “Can I call you a taxi, Cousin
+Roland?” the girl ended concernedly.</p>
+
+<p>Curtis was speechless.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor came to the rescue. “No—thanks awfully, Miss
+Sên. Can’t afford half a taxi between us to-day. We’ve got
+to penny bus it.”</p>
+
+<p>She let her new-found cousin escape then—but she made
+him shake hands with her again.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên made no comment as she and Ivy went leisurely
+homeward. She would choose a wiser time.</p>
+
+<p>She wished they had not come to the Academy. She wished
+she had slipped past Roland Curtis without “seeing” him.
+That would have been easy and plausible enough; for she
+had not seen him for years, and had no idea that he was in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>She hoped that Ivy would be nice to the Bessingtons at
+lunch.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ivy did not come down to lunch. Her head was bursting;
+she’d have to lie down in the dark, she said as they turned
+in at their gate.</p>
+
+<p>It was true.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên knocked lightly on her girl’s door—knocked
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>But Ivy called, “Come in, Mother,” pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>A Chinese girl—in China—very much more ill than Ivy
+Sên, would have rushed to the door, would have opened it
+for the mother with grateful words and bending gesture of
+welcome. Ivy did not rise; but she turned her head a little
+as Mrs. Sên came up to her, and the mother was glad to see
+that her child’s grave eyes were not unkind.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was sitting listlessly at an open window and her
+head lay wearily against the pillow behind it.</p>
+
+<p>“It is after four, dear. Have you had any tea?” Mrs. Sên
+knew that Ivy’s luncheon tray had been refused at the door.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t want any.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought perhaps you’d let me have mine here with you.
+Don’t you think you could drink a cup, if I made it? Is
+your head no better?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes—lots better. I’ve cried the stuffing out of it.
+Ring, if you like. I’ll drink two cups of tea, if it will please
+you, Mother.” The girl’s voice was a trifle tremulous, and
+utterly weary.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên’s heart ached for Ivy; Ivy’s heart ached for her
+mother. Both presaged the talk that was coming, Ivy more
+clearly but less painfully than the woman did. They both
+knew that the talk had to come. Mrs. Sên had known that
+for a long time now. Ivy had intended that it never should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>
+come. What was the use? It would change nothing. What
+was, was. To thrash it out together would accomplish nothing
+but pain to her mother. But suddenly the girl knew
+that it had to come, and had to come now. They must talk
+it out this once or she would go mad, she thought.</p>
+
+<p>When she had rung Mrs. Sên drew a chair to Ivy’s, and
+except to give the order, when Ivy’s maid came, they did not
+speak again until the tea things came. Mrs. Sên sat with
+a hand on the girl’s knee, and presently Ivy slipped her hand
+over her mother’s, and left it so until Mrs. Sên moved to
+busy herself at the little tea table.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy kept her word. She always did. She drank two cups
+of tea and ate a little fruit.</p>
+
+<p>“I ought to like tea, oughtn’t I?” she exclaimed ruefully
+as Parker took the tray away. “How I hate it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not always have coffee, then?” Mrs. Sên spoke
+lightly, spoke very gently. But she paled a little. She knew
+what Ivy meant—knew why Ivy disliked tea. And she knew
+that it was coming now, the painful open disclosure of what
+had been so long and so bitterly pent up between them. Ruby
+Sên knew that she stood at the bar of justice and that the
+child she had borne was her accuser and her judge.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên had never been a coward. She came near to it
+now.</p>
+
+<p>A culprit mother arraigned by her own child; judged and
+pre-condemned by the child she loves! There can be little in
+life harder than that.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Sên met it quietly, with nothing but love and
+motherliness on her placid face.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên hated herself for saying it, hated to say it. But
+she had to. It was coming out now, because it was stronger
+than she; because it had been pent up too long. It was all
+coming out now. It was bursting out now—bursting into
+wretched, futile hopeless battle. Even as she spoke she tried
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
+not to—“All Chinese like tea, don’t they, Mother? All but
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Most of them do, I think, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy knotted her tiny hands together tightly, and brooded
+down at them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên longed to lay her hand on Ivy; but the mother
+did not dare touch her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“We are going to a dance to-night, aren’t we?” Ivy asked
+wearily.</p>
+
+<p>“Two—unless you’d rather stay at home—to the Graingers
+and then on to the Hillyards.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you care to take me? Do you like to take me about
+with you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I love to, Ivy,” Mrs. Sên said gently.</p>
+
+<p>“I should think you’d hate to! I wouldn’t do it, if I were
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Your eyes are a little red, dear; but they won’t be when
+you have bathed them,” Mrs. Sên replied weakly.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy laughed miserably. “I wasn’t thinking of my eyes.
+Because of my face, I mean.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên had known that, and she knew that Ivy had
+known that she did.</p>
+
+<p>It had come now—the terror was on them; Mrs. Sên faced
+it squarely, praying as she did that she might find some word
+to soothe Ivy’s sore.</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy, do you feel so badly about it? Can’t you conquer
+it, dear? It isn’t anything really. It’s just a prejudice.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may not be anything but it spoils everything for me,”
+the girl answered with slow, quiet passion, very sad to hear
+in her young voice, terribly sad for a mother to hear. “It
+spoils my life utterly. I loathe myself. It may be nothing,
+but to me it is a hideous disgrace. I’d kill myself if I had
+the pluck. I think I may some day. Oh, I know how brutal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
+it is of me to say all this to you. I know how good you are
+to me and how patient. But it has brutalized me, the shame
+and misery of it. Oh, Mother, I wish I had never been
+born! How I wish I had never been born!” The sincerity
+of the miserable, dragging voice was unmistakable. The
+very quiet with which the girl spoke was intense tragedy,
+unhappiness too great, too deep-seated, for vehemence.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên longed to cry out in her pain; she would have
+given her life to help her girl and she knew that she was
+helpless. One small thing only there was that she could
+do: she could let Ivy say it all; give the relief of open confession,
+each word of it a stab in the heart of the mother
+that listened.</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy, darling, do you think you’d feel it less in China?
+Shall we go to China, and live there—you and I?”</p>
+
+<p>“China!” The venom in the girl’s voice was sickening;
+her voice cracked with her loathing of the word she spoke—the
+name of her father’s country. “Never! I’d throw myself
+into fire before I’d do that, before I would even see the
+place. I’d rather be a pariah here as I am—oh! yes I am,
+Mother—than even see the place for a day.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên covered her shivering face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Even in her own pain, Ivy Sên pitied the mother she was
+mauling; tried to stop; and could not.</p>
+
+<p>“Why did you do it, Mother? <i>Why</i> did you do it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because I loved him very dearly, Ivy,” the mother said
+gently, but proudly too; and as Sên King-lo never had failed
+her while he lived, her memory of him did not fail her now,
+but came to her aid, braced and supported her. She was looking
+at Ivy now, tenderly and pityingly but calmly. “I married
+your father because I loved him, and because he was the
+finest man I had ever known. Your father was the noblest
+human creature I ever have known, Ivy.”</p>
+
+<p>“A noble Chink!” the girl hissed the offensive word.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span></p>
+
+<p>But Sên King-lo’s widow was patient still. “That ridiculous
+street word cannot touch him, little girl,” she said
+softly. “No one who knew him ever doubted that he was a
+noble man.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God, I can’t remember him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean it, Mother. I hate him, I loathe the thought of
+him, with a yellow, monkey face like mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên’s eyes flashed fire. And she rose from her seat,
+the accuser now, no longer the culprit.</p>
+
+<p>“Hush! You shall not speak so outrageously of your
+father in my presence—or in his house. Do you know what
+I was when he married me—and gave me everything? A
+nursery governess, living on your Cousin Charles’ charity,
+and on Emma’s good-nature—<i>pretending</i> to earn my living
+by teaching Blanche and Dick! Never enough clothes, never
+pocket money that I dared spend as I chose. Fed at their
+table, waited on by their servants, warmed at their fires.
+Your father gave me everything—and he gave me self-respect
+and happiness. All that you have he gave you, or made me
+able to give. I was earning one hundred pounds a year in
+Washington. Ruben has one thousand at Cambridge. He
+gave you everything, Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>“Including my face!”</p>
+
+<p>“A very beautiful face, my child. All the Sêns are beautiful.
+And they are nobles, older than any in Europe. You
+have no cause to be ashamed of your Chinese blood. You
+ought to be very proud of it—if you knew what the Chinese
+are—such families as ours. I made no mésalliance, Ivy; but
+your father did!”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy rose too and stood facing her mother.</p>
+
+<p>“And you never regretted it? Never once?”</p>
+
+<p>“Never once.” Ruby Sên believed it was true. She forgot
+a few days she had spent in China. They had been wiped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>
+out by a man’s invincible manliness, a Chinese husband’s
+forbearance and loyalty and lasting charm.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you not regret it now?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ten thousand times no!”</p>
+
+<p>“And you would do it again—knowing what it has cost me?
+You love me, Mother!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên’s face changed piteously. “Little girl—little
+girl, what am I to say to you! Oh, Ivy, I don’t know—I
+can’t answer that. For me it was perfect. He made it so.
+It breaks my heart to see you suffer. I believe that it hurts
+me more than it does you that you see it as you do. I think
+that you are wrong, Ivy; but that has nothing to do with
+it, really. Every human creature has to see things from his
+own individual angle; and you are not one of the sort that
+can ever change your viewpoint. But even for you—if I
+could have the choice—I do not know if I should give up
+my memories or undo the past. They are so precious, so
+infinitely sweet.”</p>
+
+<p>The girl put her hands closely on her mother’s shoulders,
+and held her so.</p>
+
+<p>They stood so, searching each other’s eyes. Ivy’s eyes were
+hard; the mother’s slowly filled with tears that did not fall.
+It was a long, hard moment.</p>
+
+<p>Gently the girl pushed her mother down into a low chair
+and knelt beside her.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot understand you, Mother.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think you will some day. And I understand you, Ivy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did no one warn you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Every one.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you took your way!”</p>
+
+<p>“I took my way—as probably you will take yours some
+day.”</p>
+
+<p>“You were in China with him, lived there for nearly a
+year once before I was born, didn’t you?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span></p>
+
+<p>“For some months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did you like it, Mother? Were you happy there? Did
+you like China—like being the wife of a Chinese <i>there</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>Slow red smirched Mrs. Sên’s pallor, but she gave no other
+sign and she did not evade Ivy’s question. “After we left
+Hong Kong—not altogether. It was all very strange to me
+up in Ho-nan, in the country, and I was young and callow,
+and very selfish then.”</p>
+
+<p>“You met his people?”</p>
+
+<p>“We stayed with them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! And they were horrible?”</p>
+
+<p>“They were extremely kind to me, Ivy. Their ways, their
+dress, all that was very strange to me; but they were charming,
+refined people. The old home was very beautiful, a
+larger estate than you have ever seen. My memories of all
+the Sêns are tender. And I often think of that old homestead,
+and wish that I had realized then, as I do now, how
+wonderful and lovely it was. It is the most sumptuous place
+I have ever seen. Compared to it our little place in Surrey
+is a village cottage with a patch of ill-kept garden in front
+of it and a dustbin at the back door. And your father’s people
+were the kindest, the most considerate I have ever met—very
+great aristocrats.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên waited miserably for Ivy to go on, for she herself
+could find nothing to say that she felt would help at all.</p>
+
+<p>They stayed silent for several long unhappy moments before
+Ivy spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Then, trying not to say the words that blurted out—“Do
+you know why I do not like to come into your own rooms?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid I do.” Mrs. Sên spoke gently, but the quiet
+words writhed through ashen lips.</p>
+
+<p>“Because there is a picture of him in each of them! Oh,
+Mother, Mother, how could you? You—an English girl!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>
+And it was not for his money! I know that. It would not
+have hurt me quite so much, if it had been!”</p>
+
+<p>“His money had nothing at all to do with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! how I hate him! I hate him—I loathe him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy!” the mother sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy broke into bitter, passionate weeping, huddled on the
+floor, her face buried on her mother’s knee. Mrs. Sên was
+crying too; their grieving shook them both. Ivy’s sobs were
+hardest, but perhaps the mother’s were the bitterer.</p>
+
+<p>“I am a beast to hurt you! But I can’t help it, I can’t
+help it!” the girl sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t want you to help it, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy sat up suddenly with her elbows on the other’s knees—searching
+her mother’s face again after she had dragged her
+loose sleeve across her eyes. “Do you suppose any Englishman—any
+nice Englishman—will ever wish to marry me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Many.” Ruby Sên smiled down at her girl tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t! But I have lots of money—or will have—that
+you can’t keep from me. Some adventurer will, perhaps. I
+shall marry the first man that asks me to—if he is English.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy! My little Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>“I will, Mother!”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t punish me that way, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are punishing me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Punishing you, Ivy—now!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes!—Mother, will you marry Lord Whitmore—for me?
+<i>That</i> would help me—make life so much easier for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot do that. I never will do that, Ivy.” Mrs. Sên
+spoke kindly, but the firmness of her will in that was unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy laughed—harder for the mother to hear than the storm
+of weeping had been. “Then you are going to go on punishing
+me!” Ivy Sên got up with a shrug, and began to pace
+the floor, up and down, like the discontented caged thing she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>
+was—caged behind bars she could not break—that nothing
+ever could break; the cruel bars of distorted, disconsonant
+race.</p>
+
+<p>“I will do anything that I can for you, Ivy. But even for
+you I will not marry again, for it could not be marriage;
+for I am your father’s wife to-day as much as I was the day
+you were born. All the world is less to me, even you and
+Ruben, than my memory of him.”</p>
+
+<p>In her hurt and rage Ivy turned to her mother to say—hating
+to say it—“Ruben hates it as much as I do, only he
+won’t tell you so. You sacrificed Ruben too.” But she kept
+the words back; conquered her impulse to be cruel this time;
+and all her life will be glad that she did.</p>
+
+<p>It is something—a sop to conscience, a tonic to self-respect—to
+be able to remember that once when we were
+cruel to one we loved we refrained from giving “the unkindest
+cut of all.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên continued her miserable pacing up and down.
+Her eyes were bad. Her face was hard.</p>
+
+<p>But in the very whirl and surge of her pain she was suffering
+for her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên was suffering for her child.</p>
+
+<p>Again the mother waited, while she could.</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy!”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy paused and turned.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên held out her arms; a mother at bay; arraigned,
+pallid from both their pains—but not resentful; unyielding
+but meek; experience and love patient with youth.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy hesitated, faltered—then went to the mother, threw
+herself down at her mother’s knees.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish I had the pluck to kill myself!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên made no protest. The only reply she made was
+the touch of her hand on Ivy’s hair.</p>
+
+<p>“We must dress now, dear,” Ivy said after a moment—a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
+moment of infinite closeness and union. “We’d better dress
+before dinner, if we are going on to two places. It’s getting
+late. Lucky we’ve got two maids, and won’t have to share
+one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you care to go—to-night?” Mrs. Sên asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course! I’m going to be such a good girl now—as
+long as ever I can. You watch and see what a good time I
+have to-night. And I am going to look ever so nice—almost
+as lovely as my beautiful mother.” She gave Mrs. Sên a
+generous hug, then jumped up and pulled her to her feet
+“Off you go!” she ordered. “Make tracks and make lovely.
+Your daughter is going to dazzle two London functions
+to-night. She is going to be the rage! Parker! Parker!
+We’ve got to be quick!” she cried, as she ran into the bedroom,
+laughing at her mother over her shoulder as she ran.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The letter began queerly, Curtis thought, and he believed
+he had never seen the handwriting before; but you
+couldn’t be too sure of that—so many girls wrote to a fellow;
+and not all of them waited for you to write first:</p>
+
+<p>“Dear 11th—or is it 10½th?—Cousin Roland”—who the
+devil? Curtis turned the page hastily. It was signed in
+full. Ivy Sên had written her name very clearly.</p>
+
+<p>Roland Curtis sank down into the big lounge chair, moistened
+his lips impatiently, and read.</p>
+
+<p>The signature had surprised him—not pleasantly. The
+contents of the note perturbed him uncomfortably—What a
+little cat!</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“What’s the use of hiding? Mabel Wade was furious that
+you backed out at the eleventh hour. She had to ask her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>
+father-in-law, whom she hates almost as much as he does
+her. And, what was worse, I had to go in to dinner with
+him. I fancy he did not like that any more than I did; he
+could not have liked it worse. You missed an uncommonly
+good dinner too. I knew when you said that you were catching
+a train to Frimley to stay with the Burton-Hamiltons
+that you were doing no such thing. The Burton-Hamiltons
+are in Lucerne. Rosemead is shut up. And you do not go
+to Frimley from Victoria! You know that I heard what
+you and Mr. Gaylor said inside Burlington House. You
+thought I cared and that I’d be glad to see nothing more of
+you. That’s nonsense. I can’t help my Chinese face, can I—any
+more than the all-Chinese girl in the picture could
+help hers? You both had a right to say what you did—and
+what you thought.</p>
+
+<p>“Mother will feel badly if you don’t come to see her. Do.
+Perhaps you’ll like me better than you think. I am English—awfully
+English. And I want to be friends. Drop in to
+lunch to-morrow, or the first day you can—won’t you? I
+want you to. Mother doesn’t know I am writing—and <i>she</i>
+wasn’t in the gallery, you know, until afterwards. She is
+expecting you to call. <i>I want you to.</i> You aren’t afraid of
+me, are you. Cousin?”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“The little yellow cat!” Curtis muttered, with an angry
+frown.</p>
+
+<p>He read the letter again—to him the most upsetting letter
+he ever had received.</p>
+
+<p>Then as he put it slowly back into the envelope, “Poor little
+girl. It’s devilish hard on her! ’Spose I’ll have to go—once.
+Hope they’re both out. The next time I go to the
+Academy, I’ll know it. Damn Gaylor. Wonder if she’s
+keener on roses or chocolates. My Chinese cousin! Great
+Scott!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span></p>
+
+<p>Roland called, but he put it off for more than a week. He
+dreaded it more each day and nearly bolted out of the gate
+after he had knocked.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên was out; Miss Sên was at home. Worse—she
+was alone.</p>
+
+<p>Curtis could have slain the man who announced him, and
+who had not said that Mrs. Sên was not at home. “Damned
+careless stupid loon,” Curtis called it; but the footman was
+a quick and excellent servant; he merely had obeyed Miss
+Sên’s explicit order.</p>
+
+<p>“Cousin Roland” was horribly embarrassed. He did <i>not</i>
+like Ivy’s face, and he was uncommonly soft-hearted. He
+was sorry for Ivy Sên; and he was very much sorrier for
+himself. With his type charity usually does begin at home.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sên met him gaily. She was not embarrassed and
+she bent herself to amuse and reassure him.</p>
+
+<p>She succeeded measurably.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room was dim. The girl, sitting in a shadowed
+corner, was lighter than he had thought; and she knew
+how to dress. He liked a woman who did that.</p>
+
+<p>“She talks all right,” he confided to Gaylor in the Club
+billiard-room that night.</p>
+
+<p>And Ivy did, for she fitted her cousinly chatter very neatly
+to its silent hearer. Her eager questions were flattering and
+the regrettable Burlington House episode was not mentioned.
+But in some subtle feminine way the girl contrived to convey
+to Mr. Curtis that she regarded it as a good joke. She had
+heard how beautifully he played tennis; Lord Dunn said he
+was almost as good at billiards. She was a terrible duffer at
+both—but she rode fairly well. She rode a lot, even here in
+London—nearly every morning <i>early</i>. You had to ride early,
+if you got it in at all, with all there was to do every single
+day. <i>Must</i> he go? Mother would be so sorry to have missed
+him. “You <i>will</i> come again, won’t you?—to see Mother—and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>
+me. I know everybody now. Cousin Roland; but I have
+not many friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is a nice little thing,” Curtis told himself as he
+turned into Kensington High Street, “’pon my word she is.
+My hat! I am sorry for her—poor little thing!”</p>
+
+<p>Roland Curtis was destined to be uncomfortably sorry for
+himself before the London season had junketed itself to its
+exhausted close, and had sped to the rest-cure of guns in
+strenuous Scotland, and Casinos in the effervescent Riviera.</p>
+
+<p>Good-natured, easy-going Curtis felt in cousinly chivalry
+bound to see something more of his lonely, dark-skinned
+cousin. He soon discovered that she was very much the
+fashion. She went everywhere, did everything—because it
+“pleased Mother”; but it was only her cousin Roland who
+interested her—it was Roland on whom and on whose judgment
+she relied. No one had such perfect taste. She never
+had known any one who danced half so well. It was selfish
+of her to let him dance with her so often, but she did so love
+to dance with such a perfect partner, and he was so kind
+about it. Did he think that her steps were improving?
+Hang it all, she was a dear little thing—when you got used
+to her. He couldn’t let her down—not when she depended
+on him so—and was his cousin too—not a first cousin, or a
+second either—but a <i>cousin</i>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The curio shop was in one of the narrow heterogeneous
+streets near the British Museum that run their short
+length north of Oxford Street and are stopped abruptly by
+wise old dingy squares and by wide newer streets that they
+have not the vitality to cross.</p>
+
+<p>It looked like a modest enough curio shop but the pundits
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>
+of porcelains and ivories and carved lacquer knew that many
+a fine thing and none that was spurious might be found at
+old Kow’s; a quiet, hard-working, unassuming man who still
+wore the garb of old China, still wore a queue, used chop-sticks,
+smoked a long-stemmed, tasseled pipe, paid sixty shillings
+a pound for his tea at wholesale in Hankow, and believed
+indeed that “thrift is blessed,” and had no doubt at all
+that it was a Chinese duty to make English shillings “breed
+as fast as ewes and rams.”</p>
+
+<p>The curio shop was distempered a pale, anæmic buff, but
+its surface was smooth and unbroken, and its plate-glass windows
+were clean. Shantung silk curtains veiled each window.
+Right or wrong, Kow Li believed in the advertisement-value
+of mystery and apparent indifference. “Chinese Curios” in
+large lettering of black and gold over the door was the only
+trade announcement Kow’s shop made. But, unlike some
+other advertisements, it was accurately true. Kow Li’s wares
+<i>were</i> Chinese. He bought none, sold none, that were not.
+Manufacturers of imitation “Oriental goods” had ceased long
+ago to attempt to do business with Mr. Kow Li. And better-class
+firms knew that it was time wasted to offer Kow Li—no
+matter how cheaply—anything of Indian, Japanese or
+Persian make.</p>
+
+<p>There were three places peculiarly dear to Ruben Sên: his
+mother’s room, the Reading Room of the great Library he
+had left a few minutes ago, and this side street shop with
+the room above it that he was going to now.</p>
+
+<p>And dearest of all to Mrs. Sên’s Saxon-faced boy was a
+fourth place—that he never had seen. At least to that Mecca
+of his he had never been. He dreamed and prayed that he
+might go to it some day. And he often saw it as he had seen
+it just now—its water-ways and temples, its palaces and
+pagodas, as he bent fascinated English-blue eyes on a map
+at reader’s desk K.17.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben pushed the shop street-door open, and went in. A
+bell tinkled musically, and two Chinese quietly busy at
+ledger and invoices looked up, slipped down from their high
+stools, and stood facing him respectfully. Neither moved
+towards him, neither spoke. But when they had bowed, one
+tried to thrust his hands inside the sleeves of his English
+coat—he was the older, and he still had an instinct for the
+old manners of his youth in China.</p>
+
+<p>Neither sought to serve Mr. Sên. There was nothing here
+that Ruben Sên could buy—for all was his if he would but
+be pleased to accept it.</p>
+
+<p>The cool of the long shady room was pleasant after the
+scorch of the narrow smelly street; its shadow was grateful
+after the fusty outer glare.</p>
+
+<p>Except for the high desk at which Kow Li’s clerks had sat
+at their work, and their stools, the sizable room was not
+furnished. The ceiling was handsomely papered with red,
+leathery, embossed Canton paper. The varnished floor was
+half covered by good Mongol rugs; modern, not-at-all priceless
+rugs, not too fine for the wear and tear of casual rough-shod
+feet. There was neither lamp nor gas and no electric
+light bulbs. Kow Li neither sold nor bought after dusk; and
+if Mr. Mug and Mr. Wat, his clerks, had to work after daylight
+failed them, they carried ledgers and papers into a room
+at the back. From floor to ceiling the shop-room was paneled.
+Kow Li and his clerks knew the trick of sliding back
+every third panel. Kow’s merchandise, wrapped in soft rice
+paper and many folds of softest cotton and thin silks, was
+stored behind the apparently immovable wall-panels. The
+room had several doors but none was visible, though Chinese
+eyes would have detected the one that was securely barred by
+what eyes less used would have thought bands of ornamental
+carving. A crimson lily bloomed in a pebble-filled bowl on
+the tall writing-desk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên greeted Wat and Mug. He spoke to them in
+Mandarin, lingered a moment to sniff the lily-fragrance before
+he crossed behind the desk and pushed back a panel; it
+opened directly on to a long flight of thickly carpeted narrow
+stairs that were broken by three landings; for Kow’s house
+was one of the small street’s tall ones—its tallest.</p>
+
+<p>Even uncouth, Bond Street, made-to-order, six-guinea boots
+could make no sound through the thick pile of Kow Li’s stair
+carpets; and Ruben did not run upstairs. He went up slowly
+and quietly, as a Chinese does in the house of a friend he
+respects; moved slowly too as one who likes his journey.</p>
+
+<p>Cramped as its space, this stair and hallway, intensely Chinese,
+looked, as it was, part of the home of a merchant prince.
+And there are stairs as narrow and steep, landings and hallways
+as niggardly of width, in many a Chinese shop and
+dwelling house in Hong Kong. Luck-flowers grew in luck-bowls
+and tubs on lacquered window ledges, carved newel
+posts and on each thickly rugged landing, for Kow Li had
+no courtyard or garden (which is where luck-flowers should
+grow) in his Bloomsbury home. He had made him a tiny
+Chinese courtyard of every landing, with a pot of luck-flowers
+in tub or bowl, and elfin-small hoary dwarf-trees and a bullfinch
+or linnet in a gilded bamboo cage. And Sir Charles
+Snow, when he had first been here and seen, had instantly
+understood; and Snow had thought it pathetic—a signal of
+homesickness made by an exiled Ho-nanese caged in a
+Bloomsbury side street.</p>
+
+<p>An old Chinese rose with a cry of welcome as Ruben Sên
+opened the door of the room that filled the topmost floor and
+laid his horn-rimmed spectacles down on the book he had
+sat reading, before he presumed to greet his dead master’s
+son.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li was richly but soberly clad in dark blue brocade.
+His coat was buttoned with delicate peach-blow corals exquisitely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>
+carved. His cap of the same blue brocade boasted
+a fine emerald. His girdle boasted a jeweled pouch from
+which dangled a green pearl that was real and half the size
+of a plover’s egg. His short, thin white beard was carefully
+kept. His hair—what was left of it—was “a sable-silver,”
+his queue began in the sable-silver of his scanty hair, was
+suddenly a brilliant black, and ended in braided strands of
+ruby-red silk. He wore one ring, a thin band of silver that
+his peasant mother had worn. His stockings were very white
+with beautifully embroidered heels, his blue-brocade padded
+shoes had red embroidered soles. His petticoat was edged with
+black embroidered bats. Bats give wealth, luck at cards and
+keep age virile. Kow’s delicate yellow hands were riddled
+with age, but the sloe-black eyes from which he had in common
+politeness removed his spectacles were as clear and as
+bright as a boy’s.</p>
+
+<p>The room was the room of a Chinese palace—Kow Li the
+Ho-nan peasant kept it so for his master’s son. For Kow Li
+the rich curio merchant had been the body-servant of Sên
+King-lo the father of Ruben; and held himself so still—a
+faithful servant of the antique world.</p>
+
+<p>The old Chinese, and the fair-faced, fair-haired boy who
+was half Chinese did not shake hands. They kept to Chinese
+ways—old Chinese ways—always when together here; the old
+man who had been a Chinese gentleman’s servant, and had
+followed him around the world in exile, and the Cambridge
+undergraduate who looked a typical English boy and whose
+voice was unmistakably English.</p>
+
+<p>They gave each other the gesture of Chinese salutations—Ruben
+as gravely as Kow Li. Kow Li bowed very low, Ruben
+bent him as far and as gravely as Kow Li had.</p>
+
+<p>That was too much for the old man’s fealty. He had no
+right to speak until his young master had spoken first, and
+bade him speak. But Kow Li was a stickler for strict etiquette
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>
+and his outraged sense of fit social behavior broke
+through his immediate sense of servitude in protesting words.</p>
+
+<p>“It is unlawful, O most glorious one, that the noble Sên,
+the high head of the illustrious House-of-Sên, should incline
+his precious person before his leprous worm of a slave.”</p>
+
+<p>“Chuck that, Kow,” Ruben answered in English—more to
+tease Kow Li than because he best liked to use his mother’s
+tongue. “You know—or you ought to—that my youth with
+all my Sênship thrown in, ko’tows in the dust before your
+august age.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben shook an affectionately impudent forefinger at Kow,
+and perched himself easily on the cherished writing-table,
+stacking his hat, his gloves and his silver-handled Malacca
+cane on the open pages of the rare and valuable book that
+Kow Li had been reading, tweaked open a table drawer, took
+from it a silver box and lit a cigarette. Kow Li did not
+smoke cigarettes but he kept the best that money and an
+expert knowledge of tobaccos could buy—for Ruben. Ruben
+Sên’s cigarettes and cigars were famous in Cambridge; Kow
+Li gave them all to him.</p>
+
+<p>Kow’s bright old eyes twinkled affectionately but he answered
+gravely, his yellow palms turned up in an entreaty
+for pardon for contradiction, “That high rule has an exception,
+sir; a young noble does not obeise himself to his servant.
+Life would be intolerable else, no matter how old the servant-one
+is.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—you’re old, aren’t you, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>“This unworthy person was born yesterday,” the man answered
+gravely, still speaking Chinese. He had spoken nothing
+else. “You, his noble and estimable master, are venerable,
+a century old.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come off it, Kow Li,” the boy chuckled, swinging a disrespectful
+leg back and forth against the costly table. “Draw
+it milder, old dear.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kow Li folded his hands in his sleeves meekly as a servant
+should when his master speaks—but he sighed; Kow Li did
+not like English slang on the lips of a Sên; he sighed a little,
+but even his sigh was indulgent, and his bright old eyes were
+full of affection and pride. Kow Li dreamed great dreams for
+Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo—celestial dreams laid in
+the land of Han.</p>
+
+<p>The Trinity Hall undergraduate looked about for some
+mischief to do. He was bubbling with health and young animal
+spirits—so glad to be here, so keen to tease his dear old
+Kow Li. He pounced on the big horn-rimmed spectacles, and
+put them on. They did not fit; Ruben’s face was thinner
+than Kow Li’s, the bridge of his nose more boldly molded.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben studied a scroll of minute characters that he pulled
+unceremoniously from under a folded fan, which he opened
+and fanned himself with elaborately, elegantly, as he read.</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t read a word!” He tossed the spectacles down on
+his hat. “What do you wear the things for? You can see
+as well as I can and better too, you old fraud? All right to
+impress Mug and Wat with downstairs; but why ruin your
+blessed old eyes with them up here?”</p>
+
+<p>“As my honorable master justly remarks, it becomes this
+person who employs them to wear scholarship-spectacles before
+his shopmen-clerks. But I need them, sir, when I read
+fine grass-characters. The God-of-sight still is gracious to
+me, and permits my eyes to do their work without a crutch,
+but when a page is fine and dim of ink these help them,
+Master.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben continued to smoke, and to fan himself as he did
+so. He looked about the room, gravely now; a room a little
+less dear than his mother’s own room, but incomparably more
+beautiful. Ruben Sên, who never had been out of Europe,
+had two homes; one, and first, at his mother’s knee, the other
+this, where the rumble of buses in Oxford Street came in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>
+from the opened fretworked lattice of the Chinese room.
+Ruben Sên never forgot his mother; he loved her as English
+mothers rarely are loved. But here he often forgot that
+London or Cambridge, England or Europe existed. The
+half-Chinese boy was in China here; which was what Kow
+Li, whose ancestors had served Sên masters for a thousand
+years, had planned and furnished and garnished it for. It
+was the chiefest object of Kow Li’s life, the supreme urge of
+his toil, that Sên Ruben should be in China.</p>
+
+<p>There was no other room like this in Europe. There were
+rooms in Mayfair that aped China apishly; but this one room
+in London—this Bloomsbury room—was China. It was
+propaganda, too, subtle and masterly, contrived by a servant’s
+burning loyalty; a loyalty not to be understood by men of
+Western breed; a loyalty as silent and selfless as it was unalterable
+and unassailable.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s blue eyes came back at last to the patient yellow
+face.</p>
+
+<p>“Top hole! The oftener I am here, the more I like it. It’s
+great, Kow; our room! I believe it’s the best room on
+earth!”</p>
+
+<p>Many a mandarin has received his yellow jacket, his button
+of coral, his double-eyed peacock feather, with less emotion
+than Kow Li felt at the boy’s words—and with not a tithe
+of the gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>But Kow Li merely smiled deprecatingly, and bowed as he
+said: “This—my lord, is a poor room indeed in comparison
+with those in my lord’s palace-home in the sacred province
+of Ho-nan.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder if I shall ever see that Ho-nan home of mine?”
+the boy said wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>“The gods are kind,” the old Chinese replied significantly.
+“And I burn much delicate incense to their propitiation.”
+He left it there. The time was not quite ripe to say to Sên
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
+Ruben all that an old-one’s heart and head planned; and, too,
+Kow Li intended the youth should fall in with an old servant’s
+scheme believing it his own.</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder!” Ruben sighed.</p>
+
+<p>“May the unworthy servant presume to ask his illustrious
+lord a question?”</p>
+
+<p>“Fire ahead! Want to know which gee is going to lick
+the favorite on Thursday? Don’t I wish I knew!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s deprecating outheld palms were denial. “Nay,
+great-one, I have no wish to make the horse-bet. That is
+riding a tiger indeed! But, oddly, the question I importune
+my lord to condescend to answer does concern itself with the
+horse animal. Could you use another mount, sir? It is a
+very beautiful horse animal. I have not seen a better.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you know as much about horses as you do about
+porcelains and paintings, don’t you, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>The old Chinese bent almost to the floor. “Next to his
+own, my lord your father trusted my judgment of horse animals,
+illustrious-one,” the man said meekly, but his voice
+creamed with pride.</p>
+
+<p>“He trusted you in all things, I think,” Ruben said gravely,
+speaking again in Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li bowed again very low; but he made no other reply.
+Sên King-lo had neither trusted Kow’s judgment, nor invited
+Kow’s advice, concerning marriage with a girl of the West.</p>
+
+<p>“He rode well, you say!”</p>
+
+<p>“My lord!” The two whispered words were a pæon of
+praise. They acclaimed Sên King-lo the greatest rider who
+ever had ridden; a <i>slight</i> exaggeration, that to Kow Li was
+none.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me about it, Kow.” And Ruben Sên sat very quiet
+while old Kow Li told him, as he had again and again, of
+the horsemanship of Sên King-lo. Ruben Sên never tired
+of hearing about the father whom he did not remember; and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>
+never Kow Li tired of telling of the master he would never
+forget. Kow Li knew no happiness so great as speaking of
+Sên King-lo to Sên King-lo’s son whom he lived to serve.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên knew, and Sir Charles Snow knew, how eager
+Ruben always was to hear of his father, and they never
+wearied of gratifying him. But it was only old Kow Li who
+understood how persistently Ruben Sên’s soul called to his
+father’s.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">
+    CHAPTER XI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>When Ruben refused the gift of the most beautiful
+horse animal—there never was question or thought of
+payment between Ruben and Kow Li; there could not be—the
+disappointment on the old man’s face was ridiculous—perhaps;
+Ruben thought it pathetic. Ivy would have thought
+it an impertinence. But Ivy did not like Kow Li and she
+had not seen him for years. Even Mrs. Sên would have
+thought it far-fetched. But Ruben Sên was in tune with
+Chinese emotion.</p>
+
+<p>What the dickens he’d do with another horse he couldn’t
+think, and he hadn’t a horse he could part with without a
+wrench. But old Kow wasn’t going to be balked of the
+pleasure of giving him twenty horses if he wished.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben thanked his stars it was only one.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait a bit, though. I <i>would</i> like to have the mare, Kow;
+she sounds a beauty.” Kow Li’s eyes sparkled. “I tell you
+what we’ll do. Ivy has a hankering for White Queen and
+the Queen and I don’t quite hit it off as well as we did.”
+White Queen had not come to him a gift from Kow. “Yes;
+I’ll let Ivy have Queen, that’s what I’ll do; for I simply must
+have the new mare. What’s her name, Kow? Where is she?
+When can I see her?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span></p>
+
+<p>The old Chinese’s face beamed with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>“Your servant has sent some wine, my lord,” Kow said
+presently. “It is excellent wine, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p>“I bet it is!” Ruben Sên’s wine was as admired at Cambridge,
+as his tobaccos were, though less lavishly used.</p>
+
+<p>“The cases,” Kow advised, “are marked ‘one,’ ‘two,’ and
+‘three.’ The wines all are excellent. But may your servant
+venture to suggest that the cases marked ‘one’ and ‘two’ are
+suitable for you and your most valued friends? He hopes
+that the wine in the cases marked ‘three’ should be reserved
+for his lord’s own august use.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben slid off the writing table, rushed upon Kow and
+threw a riotous arm across the blue brocade-clad shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>But Kow Li pulled away with a protesting cry: “My lord—my
+lord, you must not do that; the noble Sên must not
+touch his slave.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rites and flummery, rubbish! I’ll hug you all I like,
+you dear old reprobate!”</p>
+
+<p>“Reprobate indeed, O most high, but it gnaws his bowels
+that the hand of the Sên should soil itself on the coat of a
+servant. I beg you not again, noble Lord Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish the fellows at the Hall could hear you, Kow.
+They’d raise a hell of a rag.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li smiled with suave contempt—the contempt of East
+for West. Kow Li the Ho-nan peasant did not consider it
+of any concern what any number of English boys raised.</p>
+
+<p>“China!” Ruben Sên said with a laugh as he strolled to
+the window, but there was more than amusement in the way
+he said it.</p>
+
+<p>“China!” Kow Li said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben sat down on the window ledge and mused.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li waited his master’s pleasure and his mood. The
+old man sat down on a stool lower than the window ledge, lit
+his pipe, and began to smoke.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben twitched back the window’s amber curtain. “London
+is ugly—this part of London,” he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>Kow smiled—a slow, deferential, wise old smile.</p>
+
+<p>The boy studied the Bloomsbury roofs awhile, and listened
+to the jangle of the Oxford Street traffic. Then he turned
+his head again; and he sat quite still for minutes and studied
+the pipe smoker’s old wrinkled face, the face of the man
+whose race had been retainers of Ruben’s own for more than
+a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>If Kow Li understood the scrutiny, he gave no sign and
+he certainly felt no resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Ruben smiled, a very beautiful smile that rejoiced
+the narrow old eyes that watched. Sên King-lo had
+smiled so. A touch of mischief crinkled the edge of Ruben’s
+smile. Then he sighed and his face grew suddenly grave.</p>
+
+<p>“Kow Li?”</p>
+
+<p>“My lord?”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you lend me some money?”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s smile was beautiful too. “No, my lord, your
+servant cannot lend you what is yours. What sum do you
+command, my lord?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben sighed again. “A great deal of money,” he answered
+regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li beamed.</p>
+
+<p>“A million, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>“Pounds, English, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben nodded sadly.</p>
+
+<p>If Kow Li was startled he did not show it and if his old
+heart stood still for an instant’s fraction, it was because one
+million pounds would almost destroy what he had hoarded
+for Ruben Sên. But he answered instantly.</p>
+
+<p>“In a week, my lord—unless it inconveniences you to wait
+so long.”</p>
+
+<p>“I need part of it <i>now</i>, Kow. How much now?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kow Li made a quick calculation. He looked at the sky.
+Of course, it was long past banking hours. His heart was
+beating rapidly. Never before had Ruben made such a request
+of him, never before heaped such honor upon him.
+And he must not fail Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+<p>“Not quite two thousand now, my lord; seventy thousand
+to-morrow by the Hour of the Horse; all in a week.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s face rippled. “Now or never, Kow. A week’s no
+good. To-morrow at eleven’s no good; I require half a crown
+now, and by the way that’s all I do require at all, you wicked
+old spendthrift. So, dig me out two and six, and if you
+don’t fork it out, it’s all the way home I’ll have to walk.”</p>
+
+<p>It was pitiful to see; the way the old man’s face fell.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên could have thrashed himself. Never again, he
+vowed, would he tease dear old Kow Li, the truest, best friend
+a chap ever had.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li was bitterly disappointed. There was no doubt
+about that. But he was not going to spoil Ruben’s fun
+though Ruben had spoiled his; the plucky old boy smiled
+gaily, if a trifle shakily.</p>
+
+<p>“You are merry, my lord!” It was not a quotation on the
+lips of Kow Li. He read and knew his own poets, not ours.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not going to relinquish quite so easily the great
+treat, the exquisite privilege, that wicked Ruben had dangled
+so close under his nose.</p>
+
+<p>“Is there no little debt, no desirable expenditure to be
+arranged at the Cambridge forest of pencils, my lord?” The
+old eyes pleaded wistful as a dog’s, the old voice was eager.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, old friend”—and Ruben was—“but there isn’t one.
+My allowance beats me every time. My mother tells me to
+spend it all, enjoy it all; Sir Charles has never advised me
+not to; I suppose he thinks that because I’ll have so much
+to handle by and by, I’d better practice it a bit now; but,
+hang it all, a fellow can’t remember to spend <i>all</i> the time—at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>
+least I can’t—there are so many more interesting things
+to do. And money isn’t interesting, Kow Li.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your years may find it so, my lord. It is a useful
+servant, sir; a good watch dog, a universal passport, a very
+great weapon. Those who have just enough, or a little less
+than that, can find intense interest and mental development
+in its management. It is an exquisite game—playing money,
+my lord. It will be denied you, I fear; because you have
+so much. The masters of such enormous fortunes either
+grow indifferent to their ledgers, or depute their care to
+hirelings, and become the serf of their own abundance, unless
+they regard it in trust.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li did not add—“as I do mine for you”—but his
+old eyes said it, though it needed no saying. Ruben Sên
+knew it and accepted it affectionately, incapable of the churlishness
+it would have been to deprive the faithful old retainer
+of a warm happiness.</p>
+
+<p>“What am I to hold my wealth in trust for when it comes
+into my control, Kow Li?”</p>
+
+<p>“For China!” Kow’s reply was swift and grave.</p>
+
+<p>“For China,” the boy said musingly.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben looked at his watch. “Let us read now, Kow Li.
+I can stay just an hour longer. I say, don’t forget to give
+me that half crown before I go. It’s too jolly hot to walk.”</p>
+
+<p>“This inferior person will not forget,” Kow said, as he
+padded off happily to the shelves, at the back of the long
+room, that were the <i>Shu Chia</i>—the “Reverence Books”—of
+the Chinese home in a Bloomsbury side street. “What will
+his worm’s master read to-day?”</p>
+
+<p>“Bring me Mei Shêng,” Ruben commanded. It would
+have pleased him better to have waited on Kow Li than it
+did to see that ancient friend of his wait on him; but he
+knew where the old Sên retainer’s better comfort lay. And
+he had offended and grieved Kow Li enough to-day; offended
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>
+by a familiar arm about his shoulder, grieved him sorely by
+the disappointment his silly hoax of needing a large sum
+of money had entailed.</p>
+
+<p>Kow brought the precious volume—printed in Peking long
+before there had been books or side streets in Bloomsbury;
+printed five centuries before the birth of Caxton, written
+almost two hundred years before the birth of Christ; and
+they sat side by side, the fantastically capped old Chinese
+head and the young blond head bent together over Mei
+Shêng’s living, pulsing pages.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben read aloud. Kow Li corrected, but not often. Sên
+King-lo’s son knew his father’s language fairly well; he had
+not found it hard to learn; he liked its sounds. “Queer
+Chinese jargon” was music to the ears of Ruben Sên.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben knew that Kow Li loved him, but he did not guess
+the half that Kow had labored and accomplished to make
+that love useful to his young master, the only son of Sên
+King-lo, for whom his ambition was boundless, for whom
+he dreamed great dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had had but little scholarship when he had followed
+King-lo to Europe. Kow Li scarcely had known Mei
+Shêng’s name then, and scarcely could have read one of Mei
+Shêng’s pages.</p>
+
+<p>While Ruben Sên lay in his cradle Kow Li had taken his
+own education very seriously in hand. For twenty years
+now Kow had striven as diligently and carefully to master
+the Chinese classics as he had to amass fortune; and for the
+same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Two hours had gone before Ruben slowly closed the old
+book.</p>
+
+<p>“That was good!” the boy said.</p>
+
+<p>It had been good. They had read deeply. Ruben had
+questioned as they went and the old servant’s answers and
+comments must have delighted a Hanlin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben looked at his watch and laughed. “Too late to dine
+at home now. Never mind—let us eat, Kow.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li struck the gong that stood on the table at which
+they had shared and studied the five-word meter of great
+Mei Shêng. Ruben knew—and Kow knew that Ruben knew—that
+the table-gong’s note could reach no one outside the
+room, and that as he lifted the mallet in his hand, Kow Li
+had pressed a floor button with his toe. You had to avail
+yourself of Western methods of domestic convenience in
+Bloomsbury now and then, even in so East-like an interior
+as this. But in this one room at least Kow Li would not
+appear to do so. He always hit the table-gong when he surreptitiously
+pressed the electric button hidden beneath the
+carpet. And so did Ruben Sên when, sitting here alone, as
+he often sat, he chanced to wish a servant to come.</p>
+
+<p>They had not long to wait before the food Kow ordered
+was brought. Quiet speed was one of the house’s many invariable
+rules. Kow Li never hurried; those who served him
+never dawdled.</p>
+
+<p>But they waited long enough, Sên and his fatherly servant-host,
+for the younger to ask a question that he often had intended
+to ask.</p>
+
+<p>“When my mother was in China with my father,” Ruben
+said, “you were not with them, were you, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>“That one time Sên King-lo left his servant behind him.
+It was our only separation from Sên King-lo’s childhood
+till he went on-High. I stayed with you, my lord, in the
+home of the Sir Snow.”</p>
+
+<p>“They were in China nearly a year?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nine moons,” Kow told him, “from the Pomegranate
+Moon to the Moon of the Peach.”</p>
+
+<p>“My father took her to Ho-nan; to our old home there?
+Mother met our family?”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li bowed. “To the Ho-nan home of the Sêns, that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
+was their home when Marco Polo went to the Court of
+Kublai. And when the jade-like your mother stayed there in
+the courtyards of great Sên Ya Tin, Sên King-lo’s wife met
+there all the Sêns that lived then.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did my mother like China? Was she happy there?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have heard that she liked it, my noble lord.” Kow Li
+had heard Mrs. Sên say so. He also had heard, from Ho-nan,
+that she had disliked China extremely. But he did not mention
+that. “And she was with her lord, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p>“They loved each other very dearly, didn’t they, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>“They loved each other very greatly,” Kow Li said gravely.
+Sên King-lo’s marriage had cut Kow Li deeply; it had embittered
+him then; it still did. He did not like Sên Ruben’s
+mother; it was impossible that he should, since but for her,
+he believed that Sên King-lo would have taken to wife a
+Chinese bride; Sên Ruben have had a Chinese mother. But
+to no one had Kow Li ever told his dislike of Ruby Sên.
+Until his own death Kow Li would keep faith with the dead
+Sên, his master. Even Ruby Sên did not know that Kow Li
+disliked her; even Sir Charles Snow, with his quicker understanding
+of the Chinese mind, did not suspect it. And
+always he spoke her fair—and more.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben, half unconsciously, half suspected it. Kow
+did not often speak to him of his mother. Kow never came
+to Ashacres unless one of them sent for him. And—unless
+Kow liked his mother—Ruben believed that his cousin
+Blanche Blake was the only Western whom Kow Li liked at
+all. For Ruben Sên always thought of himself and his
+sister Ivy as Chinese; although again he never had realized
+that he did. But Kow Li knew, and rejoiced.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Kow Li,” Ruben laughed softly, “I wonder if I
+will love like that!” He often spoke to this old servant of
+his father with more downright boyish frankness than he
+ever did even to his mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You will love, my lord,” the old man said gravely. “You
+are a man.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder if I’ll ever love some girl greatly!” The boy
+spoke shyly now, but he laughed again softly.</p>
+
+<p>“You will love greatly, Sên Ruben,” Kow Li answered
+proudly. “You are a Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wonder which it will be?” Ruben spoke almost to himself.</p>
+
+<p>“My lord?” Kow Li said huskily.</p>
+
+<p>“An English girl—like my mother, or a girl of my father’s
+race?” Ruben explained.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li made no reply. But under his rich coat his old
+heart was beating thickly, under his brocade skirt his old
+knees trembled. Ruben Sên had prodded the raw sore of
+Kow Li’s greatest anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>“My father loved China. You have told me so, and Mother
+has. Why did they not stay there—make their home in Ho-nan?
+Was it because Mother did <i>not</i> like it?—did not wish
+to live there?”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s face was expressionless.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me, Kow,” the boy persisted.</p>
+
+<p>“My lord, this servant cannot tell what he does not know.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben left it; but he knew that Kow Li did know, and
+he believed that some day Kow would tell him. He intended
+that Kow should.</p>
+
+<p>One more question he asked though: “What really killed
+my father, Kow? He was young when he died. What killed
+him?”</p>
+
+<p>“The pill-men never knew,” Kow Li answered. “And
+they were eminent pill-men.”</p>
+
+<p>But Kow Li knew what had killed Sên King-lo; and he
+knew that some day he might tell Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>But he would not tell unless he saw it necessary, or until
+the hour had fully ripened.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p>
+
+<p>Servants came—Kow Li was amply attended and well
+served—and placed food and drink on a table. They were
+Chinese servants, clad, as Kow was, in Chinese garments.
+When the meal was served they withdrew, not to come in
+again until the pressure of Kow Li’s toe, and the beat of a
+gong they would not hear, bade them bring towels of fine,
+embroidered napery and basins of boiling water.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben fell upon the bountiful meal with boyish gusto and
+appetite.</p>
+
+<p>It was food and drink as Chinese as can be served in London.
+Much Chinese food cannot. It was delicious food,
+cooked Chinese fashion. They drank from tiny bowls. They
+ate with chop sticks. And they ate together in a parity of
+creature replenishment and enjoyment, if not of appetite;
+Ruben was vastly the hungrier.</p>
+
+<p>The Sên might not touch with his servant’s fingers, not
+brush Kow Li’s costlier brocades with his lounge-suit’s tweed.
+Kow Li must speak to Sên Ruben with words crawling-humble.
+But they might eat together, dip their fingers in
+the one dish, wipe their fingers and their food-heated faces
+on the same steaming hot towel. They might use the same
+pipe, if they would. They often ate together here.</p>
+
+<p>It was midnight when Ruben—fortified by two half crowns—left
+Kow Li bowing low at the shop’s open front door.</p>
+
+<p>The meal had not lasted so long as that. They had made
+music—Chinese music on <i>kin</i> and <i>i-pang-lo</i>, on <i>pan-kou</i> and
+thin lacquered flute, and talked again—of Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben walked home after all—slowly, thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li went upstairs again, up to the high room—to pray.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">
+    CHAPTER XII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên, in her prettiest rest gown, lounged happily
+in her favorite chair, her hand on Ruben’s hair.</p>
+
+<p>They were not talking now and had not been for some
+time. They had had a long, happy, restful day together—Ivy
+was on the river with the Blakes—and they had thrashed
+out a good many things together. They often did that, and
+always frankly and without embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>But two things of vital importance had not been mentioned
+between them, though both were thinking of them constantly
+these last weeks of Ruben’s last term at Cambridge, and had
+been thinking of them especially all day to-day: Ivy’s future
+and Ruben’s own.</p>
+
+<p>Most mothers and sons who are lovers and congenial, canvass
+together the boy’s probable future and his choices of
+future, almost from the lad’s earliest school-days. Oddly
+enough this mother and son never once had. That they had
+not Ruben had come to feel a barrier between them lately.
+He did not mean to let any barrier stand between him and
+his mother. And he thought the time had come to crash
+through it.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he believed he’d really have to crash with much
+force. It would crumble at a touch, for surely it was but a
+thing of film, an accidental, careless reticence, nothing that
+was meant.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên loved his mother’s room as much as Ivy disliked
+it. His liking of it was fourfold: it was a charming
+room, and Ruben was susceptible to all such things; it was
+his mother’s room which made it sacred to him and perfumed
+it; always they were almost sure to be left alone there,
+and most of his mother’s pictures of his father were in this
+room. That last was not the least of Ruben’s liking of his
+mother’s own sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span></p>
+
+<p>The oil portrait that they sat facing never had been hung
+at Burlington House, but it could not have been rejected
+there, even if a less distinguished painter’s name had signatured
+it. How fine it was merely as a picture neither Ruby
+nor Ruben knew, but Sên King-lo, her husband, lived on that
+canvas and for that Ruby Sên loved it. She had never kept
+even a snap-shot of King-lo that was not “just like” him.
+Mrs. Sên would tolerate no half-likeness of him of whom she
+needed none. She always could see King-lo without looking
+at photograph or canvas; and she wished their children to
+learn their father’s outer seeming as it had been in his lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben was looking up at Sên’s portrait, studying it gravely,
+as he very often did.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish I were more like him!” the boy said at last. “Don’t
+you, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” the woman answered quickly. But in her heart she
+knew that she might have felt it a handicap to Ruben if he
+had had even the unemphasized Chinese look of his father.
+And she knew that she must have resented any living replica
+of Sên King-lo. There had been only one Sên King-lo.
+She felt, as Charles Snow did, that she would not look upon
+his like again. Nor did she wish to; not even in other flesh
+that but hinted his, and that in doing so, just possibly might
+have diverted or blurred even a little her living memory of
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>“Was Father no darker than that?” Ruben asked without
+turning to her, his eager young eyes still clinging to the
+slightly smiling pictured face of his father.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” the mother told him. “The likeness could not be
+better in any particular, I think. Cousin Charles thinks so
+too; and so does old Kow Li, for all his contempt for Western
+artists. I have tried to find a fault in it and I never have
+found one. I used to make him stand beside it just as he is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
+standing there; and I could not find even the tiniest improvement
+to suggest. It is a wonderful picture, Ruben.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have no picture of Father in Chinese clothes, have
+you? Not even a photograph?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—no.” The quick reply came a shade unsteadily. And
+Mrs. Sên dreaded what Ruben might ask her next.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish you had,” Ruben said. “We ought to have. It’s an
+indignity to his memory, and to us, that we haven’t.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên was thankful that her boy’s face was still turned
+from hers—he still gazing at his father’s picture.</p>
+
+<p>“Why haven’t we, Mother?” Ruben asked it affectionately.
+But Ruby Sên felt the question ruthless. And it stung her
+conscience. She had thought little of it at the time—in
+China. She was obsessed by her own homesickness for Europe.
+But she had wondered since if King-lo had known how
+she had disliked seeing him in Chinese garments.</p>
+
+<p>“Your father never wore anything but English dress here
+or in America, Ruben, and when we were in China together
+he did not either, only in Ho-nan. Most Chinese have adopted
+Western clothes, even in China, now, I think; and, you know,
+they all wear it here—all but funny old Kow—” the half
+laugh she broke off with was a little tremulous, a trifle forced.</p>
+
+<p>“I’d give anything for a good picture of my father in his
+Chinese dress,” Ruben replied. “I say, Mater, I wonder how
+I’d look Chinese dressed!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên laughed again, softly. “Rather funny, son, I
+fancy. You are so very English to look at! Ever so much
+more English looking than I am!” She did not add how
+little she would like to see Ruben in Chinese clothes or how
+the suggestion had startled her. But she knew.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—worse luck! Did you wear Chinese things too, in
+Ho-nan, Mother? How did you look in them? Did you look
+Chinese? How I wish I could have seen you.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think I looked rather nice, dear.” Mrs. Sên’s little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>
+tinkled laugh was natural this time. “I didn’t look a mite
+Chinese though. But they were very comfortable; and they
+were very beautiful. I grew fond of my Chinese clothes. I
+felt almost sorry when I left them off.” She was glad to be
+able to add that.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a pity Ivy and I can’t change skins and faces, isn’t
+it, Mother? I can’t help envying her her Chinese look; and
+I think she envies me my Saxon appearance pretty badly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Mrs. Sên replied with a sigh, “I know she does.”
+The sigh was not all for Ivy, or for Ivy’s discontent. Ruben
+had startled her. Only once—and very briefly—in China,
+when she unexpectedly had seen King-lo in Chinese clothes,
+had it seemed to her at all unnatural that she was the wife
+of a Chinese husband. But she had been glad when Ruben
+had proved a very English baby; and even now she had no
+wish to have a Chinese son; knew that she would have not
+been proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>All but less than a year of her married life had been spent
+here in Europe. She had in no way grown Chinese. To
+many beside herself Sên King-lo had seemed almost English.
+Only Sir Charles Snow had known how little English, or any
+sort of Western, Sên ever had been.</p>
+
+<p>A great deal that is English Sên King-lo had made his
+own, liked and worn it easily, as he had English speech and
+clothes. And English and Chinese have a great deal in common—the
+two upper classes a very great deal. But Ruby Sên
+came of a race less adaptive than Sên’s. He had come to
+her, not she to him.</p>
+
+<p>American women who marry and live in England often
+grow almost English; sometimes so nearly English that
+neither their own countrymen nor English strangers discover
+that they are not. Even English women, far less adaptive,
+sometimes become surprisingly French or Slavic through such
+marriage and permanent sojourn. But it is not in any Western
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>
+woman to become an Eastern—not even the versatile
+American woman. It would be rash and unobservant to assert,
+though, that it may not befall her some day—or she
+accomplish it.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s next question startled Mrs. Sên even more and
+she had to meet his eyes when he asked it; for he turned at
+her knee, where he still sat on the floor, and faced her, looking
+up at her earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>“You wouldn’t like to live in China, would you, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think you would, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is my country,” he reminded her. But he did not repeat
+the question she had evaded.</p>
+
+<p>“I feel sometimes that I ought to be there. China needs
+her sons now.”</p>
+
+<p>“They need not all be in China to serve her,” Mrs. Sên
+said quickly. “Your father left China to do her service, and
+he never slacked in doing it, not even when we lived in Surrey.
+Kow Li loves China, I am sure. He is a very rich man
+now, Cousin Charles says. He says that Kow is worth fully
+a million.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben grinned at that.</p>
+
+<p>“Your father’s old servant a millionaire! And I suspect
+that Kow sends most of his profits to China; but I don’t
+think he ever means to go back there. And more and more
+Chinese come here to stay each year now. You have some
+Chinese friends at Cambridge, haven’t you, dear?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, I have—and out of it. I make every Chinese
+friend I can, Mother. I have so wanted to bring some of
+them home.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why haven’t you? Do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy wouldn’t like it.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is no reason for depriving you of such a pleasure.
+Bring them, your friends, home by all means. I shall love to
+make them welcome.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Ivy wouldn’t. Ivy can be trying; we both know—”</p>
+
+<p>“This is your father’s house, Ruben. While I am its mistress
+no countryman of his will receive any discourtesy in it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy can convey a good deal of insult from under the edge
+of an eyelid. I don’t think we’ll try it, Mother.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên nodded wearily. She knew only too well. She
+knew that better than Ruben did.</p>
+
+<p>“We will find a way,” she told him. “I never have wished
+to keep you from knowing your father’s countrymen.”</p>
+
+<p>“And mine!” her boy reminded her again. “I know that,
+dearest.” Then, “We won’t do anything to worry Ivy just
+now,” he added. “She is having such a ripping time since
+she was presented. I don’t think Ivy will be allowed to remain
+<i>Ivy Sên</i> very long; she’s too lovely.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Ruben! How I puzzle over that! So much depends
+upon it for Ivy—more than for most girls even. If that goes
+wrong with Ivy, it will go very wrong indeed. And I can
+help her so little, if at all.”</p>
+
+<p>That was all they said to each other of Ivy then. It was
+difficult. It was easier to long to help Ivy Sên than to plan
+how to do it.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s a chap at Trinity,” Ruben said after a little, “that
+has a great case full of ripping pictures of China—photographs
+he took there before he came over. They have made
+me homesick for my fatherland. Do you know, Mater, I
+have been a little homesick for China ever since I was a
+small boy, I think. I think that I ought to see my own
+country some day,” Ruben persisted gently.</p>
+
+<p>“And you would like to—go there?” Ruby Sên caught her
+breath a little.</p>
+
+<p>“I want to, more than I have ever wanted anything. Do
+you mind, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not!” She hoped he had not heard the tremble
+she had felt in her voice. “When?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Soon, Mother. Couldn’t I go for a few months soon after
+I come down?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?” Mrs. Sên said brightly. “Of course you shall.
+But you won’t see <i>much</i> of China in a few months, Rue. It’s
+a vast place.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will be ever so much better than nothing!” the boy said
+gleefully. “Thank you so much, dear, for letting me go.
+And it is just one part of China that I most want to see:
+Ho-nan. I want to see our home. I think that I ought to,
+and I long to, before we decide what I am going to do with my
+life, Mother.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes!” his mother agreed through lips that felt stiff. But
+her boy had said, “before <i>we</i> decide.” We—the sweetest word
+a mother can hear from a son, said as Ruben had said it.</p>
+
+<p>“You couldn’t come too? You wouldn’t leave Ivy just
+now, I suppose?” Ruben asked wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—no, Ruben! I have no fear for you—ever. I do fear
+for Ivy. I have been thinking constantly, for a long time
+now, of what life was going to do to our Ivy, and of what
+you were going to do with your life. Idle rich is no rôle for
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>“No fear!” was Ruben Sên’s sturdy answer. “May we
+leave what it is to be until I come back from Ho-nan?”</p>
+
+<p>“You will come back? You will come back to me, Ruben?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên laughed merrily, a laugh that caressed her.
+“I <i>must</i>,” he told her with his face between her palms where
+he had drawn them. “We are together for as long as we both
+live—you and I. I wouldn’t go without you this time, if
+it were not for Ivy. We’ll go home together next time.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên lifted her eyes to her husband’s—in his picture—asking
+them for something of which Sên King-lo had never
+failed her, or scanted her: sympathy and help.</p>
+
+<p>But the pictured eyes only smiled at her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">
+    CHAPTER XIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>“May I announce myself?” Sir Charles Snow asked at
+the door, ajar in the afternoon heat.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên made no reply to a question that needed none,
+and Ruben sprang up in welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Out of harness now, Snow still was a busy man, and this
+was an unusual hour for him to pay even an informal
+cousinly call. Mrs. Sên wondered what had brought him and
+Ruben said at once, “Shall I go, Sir? You want to see
+Mother alone, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“That was my idea,” Snow told him, “but much of what I
+wish to say to her, I rather thought of saying to you afterwards.
+I think you’d better stay, Ruben; three heads may
+prove even better than two; and the little diplomatic matter
+I have come about is one which I believe you might be able
+to handle better than any one else.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is it, Charlie? Who wants a new roof now, or a
+garage built and their rent reduced at the same time? Or
+have taxes gone up again?”</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause; Sir Charles seemed a little unready to
+go on.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” Mrs. Sên prompted him gently.</p>
+
+<p>“Emma has got it into her head that Ivy may be going to
+drift into an engagement with Roland Curtis. We don’t want
+that, do we? I thought we might put our heads together, and
+ease it off—if there is anything in it. Emma has a way of
+hitting the nail on the head, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Roland Curtis! That nincompoop!” Ruben blurted hotly.
+“Good Lord! She mustn’t do that!”</p>
+
+<p>“I never have known Ivy drift into anything in her life,”
+Mrs. Sên said more quietly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Well—that was just my way of putting it, perhaps,” Snow
+said uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>“Ease it off!” Ruben exploded again. “We’ve jolly well
+got to knock it on the head; and knock it hard. Not that I
+believe a word of it! Ivy couldn’t! I tell you what we’ll
+do—just in case, don’t you know. You tell Lord Whitmore
+what Cousin Emma thinks, Cousin Charles. Then he can
+sound Ivy—she will take it from him, and I don’t know any
+one else she would. If he finds that the wind blows that
+way at all, why then he can tackle Ivy good and hard. If
+any one on earth can influence Ivy, Whitmore can. <i>I’ll</i> deal
+with the young and lovely Roland. I’ll break his silly neck
+if he doesn’t listen to reason straight off when I say, ‘Go!’”</p>
+
+<p>“Two very admirable suggestions, my boy,” Sir Charles
+told him admiringly. “Break Roland’s neck by all means,
+if you can. I have no objection, if he hasn’t. But I rather
+fancy any little affair of that sort would result in his breaking
+<i>your</i> neck. There is a good deal of beef in Roland Curtis.
+Ever see him in regimental sports? I have. As for my appealing
+to Whitmore, Ruben, that would strike me as sound
+advice, if I had not already tried it out and drawn a blank.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” Ruben cried.</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Sên looked at Sir Charles in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Had it out with Whitmore two days ago. He didn’t see
+it as I do—and as I gather Ruben cordially does too. He
+seemed to think that it might be a very good thing for Ivy.
+He said so, in fact. Whitmore will not meddle in it, and
+looking at it as he does, he ought not to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Listen to me,” Mrs. Sên began. “It would be worse than
+useless for any one to speak to Ivy. If she has made up her
+mind—and I have been a little afraid of this for some weeks
+now—if she has made up her mind, nothing will change it.
+And a word might push her into it.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what Emma says,” Snow murmured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span></p>
+
+<p>“If the mischief is done,” Mrs. Sên went on, “it is done;
+and nothing will undo it unless Ivy tires of it of her own
+accord before it is too late. I don’t think she would. The
+reasons that had made her do it would keep her to it.”</p>
+
+<p>Neither asked what the mother thought those reasons were.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not want Ivy to marry Roland,” Ruby Sên continued.
+“But like Lord Whitmore, I think better of Roland
+than you do, Charlie—and,” with a wan little smile, “very,
+very much better than you do, Rue. Can we be sure that Ivy
+does not know better than we do what would work out best
+for her? I am not sure. I am desperately troubled about it
+all, Cousin Charles. You don’t know anything against Roland,
+do you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Snow answered promptly. “There is nothing against
+the fellow—except that there is nothing to him. That’s
+worse!”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you suggest, Sir?” Ruben said.</p>
+
+<p>“Counter attraction,” Sir Charles told him. “Emma did,”
+he added honestly.</p>
+
+<p>“Precisely,” Mrs. Sên agreed, “that would be the only possible
+way—if I were convinced that we have the right. But
+how? I can’t order a counter attraction from the Stores, or
+engage one from Keith Prowse. Counter attractions have to
+happen. And Ivy’s had them, if ever a girl had.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t mean a man,” Sir Charles retorted. “I was thinking
+of a yacht—for one thing. What about a long cruise—pretty
+well around the world; stopping at all sorts of interesting
+places, meeting interesting people?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mother—where are you, Mother dear?” Ivy’s voice called
+in the hall, a gay girlish voice. Ruby Sên had not heard
+that tone in Ivy’s voice for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>There was a light patter of running, and Ivy burst into
+the room, a radiant, smiling girl, a transformed Ivy; not a
+girl who was pretending to be happy, as Mrs. Sên had seen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>
+so much of late, but a girl who was happy, unaffectedly, girlishly
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên’s heart stood still. The man’s white eyebrows
+went up a line. Ruben’s hand tightened on his mother’s
+sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>They all jumped to the same conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy stood a moment in the open door, looking from one
+to the other, smiling at them saucily—but it was a sweet,
+friendly sauciness.</p>
+
+<p>“How nice! All four of us. I’ve had a ripping time,
+Mother. I have had such a day. Such cream-ices! Better
+than ours, Mother! Blanche lost her hat overboard. And
+I’ve had such an escape, Mother!” Ivy giggled half shyly.</p>
+
+<p>“An escape, dear?” her mother asked her.</p>
+
+<p>“You bet I have! I was going to marry the wrong man.
+Wouldn’t that have been awful?”</p>
+
+<p>“It would,” Snow asserted grimly.</p>
+
+<p>“Perfectly awful! And I had quite made up my mind to.
+But I never shall.”</p>
+
+<p>The mother was watching her girl anxiously. Mrs. Sên
+had paled a little as Ivy rattled on.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben spoke. “Do you mean that you have refused Roland
+Curtis?” he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“I have not!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben turned upon her almost roughly. “You have accepted
+that fool!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not!” Ivy retorted contemptuously. “<i>You</i> ought
+to be a good judge of fools, Rue; but in this instance you
+are a peculiarly poor one. Roland is not a fool—and he is a
+perfect dear. He’s my friend, I’d have you remember. You
+are not to speak of Roland like that ever again in my hearing.
+I won’t have it.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” Ruben promised good-naturedly, “I never will
+again—if you aren’t going to have him. I am quite willing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
+never to speak of him again as long as I live. I should get
+over it if I never saw him again either.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy laughed at her brother as good-naturedly as he had
+answered her. It was not in Ivy Sên to hold rancor to-day.</p>
+
+<p>“Keep calm, little boy,” she bade him. “I promise you
+that I never shall marry Roland!” Two faces cleared at
+that; but the mother’s face almost showed an added anxiety.
+She read more than the girl had told.</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, Rue, Roland hasn’t asked me—and he never
+will!”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know?”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy only laughed. She might have said, “Because I shall not
+let him.” But Ivy Sên would not say that. She was not
+that type of girl.</p>
+
+<p>“My, how late it is!” she exclaimed. “I must dress; so
+ought you, Mother. We’ve people dining, you remember.”</p>
+
+<p>They heard her laughing still as she ran down the hall—and
+the mother caught a note of tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Well!” Ruben turned to his mother. “What do you suppose
+has happened?”</p>
+
+<p>“Counter attraction,” Mrs. Sên answered gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“Another man!”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên nodded—almost sadly.</p>
+
+<p>“Was she serious?” Sir Charles asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Perfectly!” Mrs. Sên told him; her voice was low and
+strained, and her eyes were troubled.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">
+    CHAPTER XIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As Ruben turned out of Bond Street into Piccadilly and
+down it towards home he had no intention of going
+into Burlington House. He could not remember that he
+had ever gone into the Academy except under some compulsion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>
+of politeness. He never had enjoyed it; and certainly
+it was one of the last places he would choose to visit
+alone. Ruben Sên cared more for pictures than Ivy, or even
+his mother did, and he knew considerably more about them.
+But he had no liking for human crowds, except as a picture
+in the distance. He never altogether liked being one of a
+crowd. In the joyous young hurly-burly of Cambridge life
+he liked to be alone sometimes and contrived it. And he
+disliked seeing more than one picture at a time. To him they
+hurt and cheapened one another.</p>
+
+<p>He strolled on past the wide Burlington House archway
+quite indifferently, without turning his head. But suddenly
+something compelled him—compelled him as actually as a
+hand stronger than he on his shoulder might have done; and
+he turned back a few steps and went into Burlington House,
+amused and puzzled that he did so. But he knew that he
+had to.</p>
+
+<p>This was funny! And it was a bit of a nuisance too. He
+wanted to get home and write letters before he changed for
+lunch. Well—he wouldn’t stay here long, that was one thing
+sure—ten minutes at the longest.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed three hours.</p>
+
+<p>Going from room to room still puzzled and amused, scarcely
+glancing at the pictures, he came upon a picture that held
+him.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben Sên had no wish to escape from the thralldom.</p>
+
+<p>He knew why he had had to come into Burlington House;
+the boy flushed a little at the knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>He had not bought a catalogue. He went back and got
+one, and hurried again to his picture.</p>
+
+<p>When he found its number in the catalogue, it told him
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“A Chinese Lady”—he had known that. And he had recognized
+the famous R.A.’s signature scrawled on the canvas.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span></p>
+
+<p>He could find out who she was, of course—and easily
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>But he wanted to know now.</p>
+
+<p>He was going to know that girl. His countrywoman—and
+dressed as a Chinese girl should be!</p>
+
+<p>She was even lovelier than Ivy!</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên was wrong there. But he was not the first
+brother to make that mistake and he won’t be the last.</p>
+
+<p>And how much lovelier Ivy would look if she dressed like
+that!</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên was right there.</p>
+
+<p>At first Ruben thought that all his delight was in seeing
+a Chinese girl of his own caste clad in the lovely garments of
+Chinese wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Then—something throbbing in his veins told him that it
+was more than that.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she was in London even now—or had the English
+artist been in China, and painted her there?</p>
+
+<p>It didn’t matter. He would find her.</p>
+
+<p>Thank the gods, he was Chinese—and a Sên. There was
+no maid in China debarred to him by rank or wealth. Thank
+God and Sên King-lo!</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder which she’ll be—my wife—English or Chinese?”
+he had said to Kow Li one day. Kow Li’s heart had chilled
+at Ruben’s words. Kow Li’s heart would have quickened
+gladly could he have seen his Ruben now—gazing at “A Chinese
+Lady.”</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben knew that the question he had asked, almost
+idly, in Bloomsbury, was answered.</p>
+
+<p>Sên King-lo’s son would give Sên King-lo no Western
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>At first when he had come upon the portrait of “A Chinese
+Lady,” and it had caught and held him it had seemed to him
+that its appeal to him was its Chineseness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span></p>
+
+<p>And in large part it had been that at first. There was not
+a symbol pictured there or hinted—dragon’s claw on curtain,
+arabesque on carpet, pagoda among the pink flowering almond-trees
+in the distance, but spoke to him in the old language
+that his father had learned in a Ho-nan courtyard; their message
+reached him, and he called them “home.” And he understood
+them, for Kow Li had taught him well.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he sat drinking his fill of it, he knew that it was
+the girl in the picture that lured and called him: a maid’s
+appeal to a man—personality calling to personality.</p>
+
+<p>Had he thought about it he would have said that he had
+forgotten China, that there was no China, neither China nor
+England; only a girl’s proud exquisite face; as years ago in
+a Potomac woodland another Sên had known neither China
+nor Virginia but only love for Ruben’s mother.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben Sên had not forgotten China—the homeland
+he had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>It was both that called and held him; the Chinese atmosphere
+and details of her background, and the girl that embodied
+them. Both had revealed him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! he would find her. And when he had, he would greet
+her without hesitation or compunction, as he would have followed
+her, reverently, though his pulse pounded madly, if
+he had chanced to meet her on the street or at a function.</p>
+
+<p>For Ruben Sên believed that he had found his life’s meaning
+and his future.</p>
+
+<p>Boys are like that sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>He was tingling and elated from a new experience as he
+went briskly home at last; and it did not take him long to
+plan how to go about the most important thing on earth.
+Clearly the first thing to do was to make the acquaintance of
+the R.A. who had painted the portrait of a Chinese lady.
+That would not be difficult. But he hoped the fellow was in
+London or somewhere fairly accessible.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">
+    CHAPTER XV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Ruben Sên let himself in with his latchkey, threw his
+hat and gloves on the hall table, and strolled to the
+little morning-room which usually was his downstairs “den”
+when he was at home in Kensington, and stood aghast in its
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Roland Curtis was smoking in the biggest lounge chair.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello!” Curtis remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello!” Ruben replied.</p>
+
+<p>“Been waiting for you since two. Billings said you’d be
+home to lunch.”</p>
+
+<p>“Told him I would. Sorry. Hope they gave you some.”
+Ruben felt far more kindly towards Curtis now that the
+danger of having him for a brother-in-law was over.</p>
+
+<p>Curtis nodded. “Looked after me all right. Off to Africa—or
+somewhere. Wanted a talk with you first.”</p>
+
+<p>“I turned into the Academy—hadn’t had a squint at the
+pictures this year. I got interested, and let lunch slide.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish I’d never seen the place,” Curtis remarked dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t care for it this year?”</p>
+
+<p>“The Academy? Never care for it; don’t know why the
+devil I let Tom Gaylor drag me in there. I got into plenty
+of trouble going there this time. Shan’t go again—you
+watch it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ran into your biggest creditor, or ran your walking stick
+through a thousand guinea canvas?” Ruben inquired sympathetically.
+He was not interested in what evil had befallen
+Curtis at Burlington House; but the other seemed in need
+of conversational assistance. Sir Charles had spoken respectfully
+of Roland as an athlete, but Roland did not look athletic
+at the moment; he looked limp and worried.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Haven’t got a creditor. Can’t afford ’em. Can’t poke
+sticks through the pictures; take ’em away from you at the
+door,” Curtis retorted, nothing if not literal.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—so they do,” Sên admitted apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>“It was worse than that. Creditors and accidental damages
+can be squared with £ <i>s.</i> <i>d.</i> Some things can’t. This
+can’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can’t?” Ruben lit a cigarette and seated himself.
+He didn’t see Curtis getting to the point very quickly, or
+dealing with it briefly when he did get to it.</p>
+
+<p>“Me. I can’t. The way I’m feeling about it, and am going
+to go on feeling about it—don’t you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Feeling about what?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy. Supposed you knew. She won’t have me.”</p>
+
+<p>So Curtis <i>had</i> proposed to Ivy, and, of all places, at Burlington
+House!</p>
+
+<p>“Shan’t even ask her,” Roland continued. “Got the sack,
+and know it. Not going to bother Ivy any—too fond of her.
+She showed me where I got off. I got off. My word—I wish
+I’d never seen the bally Academy. Catch me going there
+again! Not if the Queen tried to take me. I’ll watch it.
+What! The King and the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t
+get me there again.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên smiled. He did not picture Her Majesty leading
+Roland by the hand through the rooms of Burlington House,
+still less the Sovereign himself dragging the reluctant and
+protesting Curtis through those picture-hung galleries. And
+he had never heard a suggestion more irresistibly funny than
+Roland Curtis and the Archbishop of Canterbury arm in arm.</p>
+
+<p>“If I hadn’t been a soft sheep and let Tommie Gaylor drag
+me in there that day I might never have seen Ivy. If I hadn’t
+seen her, it wouldn’t have happened, would it! We met there—the
+three of us, and your mother introduced us. And my
+fat was jolly well in the fire soon after, I can tell you, don’t
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>
+you know. Ivy didn’t like me, and she was mad enough at
+Gaylor to eat him. It was awkward. I lit off as soon as I
+could. Promised your mater I’d call. Didn’t mean to do
+it. Hadn’t fallen in love with Ivy then; too jolly awkward
+what had happened inside—I had put my foot in it, I can
+tell you—about a picture, and so had Gaylor.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had no idea of what Curtis was babbling, except
+that he first had met Ivy at the Academy; neither had he any
+curiosity; and the last thing he wished to do was to sidetrack
+his troubled visitor into a recital of details that would
+still more prolong a stay which promised not to be brief at
+best.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Curtis babbled on. “Had to say I’d be delighted to
+call. Didn’t have to mean it. Wild horses weren’t going to
+make me do it either. But Ivy wrote me a note. Got it yet.
+Had to call then. Didn’t want to—scared stiff, don’t you
+know. Went. Had to. My word—I didn’t stay away much
+after that. Lord! Less’n a week I was head over heels.
+Thought she liked me too. No end nice to me. I walked on
+air. Smelled roses all the time—smelled orange blossoms
+too—that’s the sort of fool I was! God knows what I didn’t
+run myself into at my tailor’s. Lord! And, she’d have had
+me, ’pon my word I believe she would! It was running along
+lovely until last Friday!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben looked up, suddenly interested. It was last Friday
+that their mother had insisted that Ivy’s cryptic announcement
+could mean but one thing—a very vital thing; that Ivy
+had met some other man who had attracted her strongly.</p>
+
+<p>“We were on the river last Friday—your cousins the
+Blakes, Ivy, me, two or three others. Ran into Gaylor on an
+island. We landed. He was mooning about there all by his
+lonesome. Punted out all alone. Funny thing for a chap
+to do—I ask you. What’s the good of the river without a
+girl, unless you’re racing or training, I ask you. What!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I thought he’d make tracks. He didn’t; he stuck. He
+joined up. I thought Ivy would freeze him out. Ivy did
+nothing of the sort. Her eyes flashed when she saw who he
+was—she remembered him all right. Her eyes flashed—and
+then she crumpled. Gaylor crumpled too—never saw Tommie
+Gaylor crumple before. It was a case. I got off the train then
+and there. No more hope for me than if I’d been—been—a
+signpost or a tadpole.”</p>
+
+<p>Much of that was Greek to Ruben Sên, but what he did
+understand fitted in with his mother’s conclusion on Friday.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is Gaylor?” he questioned.</p>
+
+<p>“A better man than I am. Better in every way. I didn’t
+come here to bleat to you, old boy. Tommie’s one of the best.
+They are both in luck, you can take it from me. But I’ve
+got to clear. Can’t stand it here just now. Going to try to
+exchange into one of the Indian regiments—or get a year’s
+leave. That’s what I want to see you about. Let’s go somewhere
+together—have a long shoot somewhere. What?”</p>
+
+<p>It was Sên’s turn to exclaim, “I’ll watch it.” He did,
+silently but most emphatically.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">
+    CHAPTER XVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>If she were in England it might delay his journeying into
+China. Most probably she was, since an English artist had
+painted her for the London Academy. If she were, he would
+know her before he went “home” to Ho-nan. In the first
+place it might be more easily accomplished here than there.
+Western ways, Western freedom for women had transfigured
+the edge of China, he knew; but he knew, too, that they had
+not penetrated far beyond the treaty ports. Not all China
+was transformed yet. And many a Chinese living now in
+Europe allowed his wife and daughters there with him rather
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
+more than a smattering of European freedom; but would insist
+that they resume Chinese ways, respect Chinese conventions
+and privacies, on their return to China. He knew
+several Chinese girls in London whom he felt sure he would
+not be able to know so, if he too were in China after their
+return there.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place he had no mind to wait; to postpone
+until he came back from China the acquaintance from which
+he hoped so much. China was an old, old country. China
+would be there when he went to her, no matter when. Love
+was young; and so was Ruben. Love and Ruben could not
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh Lester was in London. Ruben Sên did not find it
+hard to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>But there it ended.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Ruben nor any other—Sên enlisted several—could
+get from Sir Hugh the slightest information concerning the
+painter’s Chinese sitter. That was the adamant condition
+upon which he had been permitted to exhibit the portrait.
+He had given his word. And either he could not or would
+not say when or where he had painted “A Chinese Lady.”
+He would not even state that it was a portrait. He could not
+be drawn in any way. No—it was not for sale—emphatically
+no offer would secure it.</p>
+
+<p>Desperate and baffled, Ruben confided to Kow Li what he
+would rather have kept to himself. Kow failed, as Sên had,
+to find any Chinese who recognized the lady in the picture.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên had to let it go at that.</p>
+
+<p>He did not mention “A Chinese Lady” or his quest for her
+to his mother or to Ivy. Time enough to do that when he
+found her.</p>
+
+<p>He would find her first and then all would come right—it
+should!—unless she were wed or betrothed, or would have
+none of him; she or her father.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên went alone to China. He knew how much Kow
+Li longed to go with him, though Kow never said so. But
+Ruben chose to go alone, without companion or friend of any
+sort, since he could not take his mother with him.</p>
+
+<p>He wished to be alone with China at first; presently Kow
+probably might join him, since Kow so greatly wished it.</p>
+
+<p>But he would start on his pilgrimage alone.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy was furious that he went. She pleaded with him not
+to go, before she lost her temper and stormed and clamored.
+But only one, of all the world, could have kept Ruben Sên
+from China now: his mother, and she would not.</p>
+
+<p>Only she could have held him in Europe now, unless a
+Chinese girl had come from her canvas and bade him stay!</p>
+
+<p>That did not happen.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben came down from Cambridge for the last time, spent
+a week in Surrey at their place in Brent-on-Wold with his
+mother, and then the long insistent dream of his young lifetime
+crystallized into initial fact on an ocean liner. England
+faded in the distance; Sên Ruben had begun his long journey
+home.</p>
+
+<p>At Ashacres Ruby Sên grieved, but found it no great task
+to keep from Ruben that she was grieving because he was
+leaving her for so long. For her grief was not bitter, and
+moreover, her pride rejoiced that he cared to go. It seemed
+to her a beautiful loyalty to his father whom she always had
+striven to keep as real to Ruben, as dominant in Ruben’s
+life, as the living father must have been. Ruben had said
+that he would come back to her; he would come. As for his
+calling Ho-nan “home” and all that, it was nonsense, of
+course—sweet and boyish nonsense. That Ruben might wish
+to discard England for China never entered her head. But,
+though she scarcely knew it, Mrs. Sên was <i>not</i> glad to see
+Ruben go. Quite aside from the natural wrench of being
+without him for the first time since his babyhood—Cambridge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>
+is not far from London, if you have three cars and
+a telephone—Ruby Sên regretted Ruben’s going, was a little
+jealous of it, unconsciously a trifle apprehensive.</p>
+
+<p>He had said, “You wouldn’t care to live in Ho-nan?” but
+that was just a boy’s idle chatter. Ruben would loathe living
+in China—because she knew that she should. And he’d know
+that he would when once he’d been there.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow was almost, perhaps quite, as decidedly against
+it as Ivy was; and Emma Snow never was shy of saying
+what she thought if she cared to.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruby’s a fool to let him,” she told Sir Charles, “and you
+have no business to let her let him.”</p>
+
+<p>Snow rarely contradicted his wife. On occasions he could
+do it flatly.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben ought to go,” he replied. “Ruby would not have
+held him back, no matter what I had said to her, I hope and
+think. She has no right to. But I said ‘Let him go,’ when
+she spoke to me about it first. He has seen England. He
+knows what his life here will be if he concludes to throw
+his lot in with the West. It is only fair—to him, to China,
+and to King-lo—that he should see his father’s country now,
+and learn what his life there would be if he threw his lot in
+with the East. I should have suggested it myself, if he had
+not—and whether I had believed that Ruby would be willing
+or not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—would you! He’ll probably come back with a Chinese
+wife!” Lady Snow snapped.</p>
+
+<p>“The wisest thing he can do—if he must marry at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Charlie!”</p>
+
+<p>“Beyond all manner of doubt. But I hope that Ruben will
+not marry at all. And when I feel that the right time has
+come, I intend to tell him why.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lot of good it will do!”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it may. Ruben is a Chinese son—very.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Ruben is the most English thing I ever have known,”
+Lady Snow contradicted. “Even technically Ruben is half
+English. King-lo was Chinese—all Chinese. A lot of good
+it did your telling him!”</p>
+
+<p>“You are wrong, dear. Besides, I said my say to King-lo
+after the mischief was done. He had fallen in love with Ruby,
+and had given her his promise. I intend to say my say to
+Ruben before his mischief is done. But not until he has been
+in China. He shall go there as untrammeled by what I know
+must hurt him, as he has been all these years in England.
+That is only fair; and there is time enough. Ignorant as
+Ruben is of China, of Chinese ways, manners and customs
+and all that—but, by the way, Ruben knows more about his
+father’s country and countrymen than any of us suspect,
+unless Kow Li does—but ignorant as he seems, and may be,
+must be indeed, of the real China, Ruben is essentially Chinese.
+His methods of thought, his tastes, his ideals are Chinese.
+He looks English, but he is Chinese.”</p>
+
+<p>“All the more reason to keep him out of China! But,
+mind you, I don’t believe it!”</p>
+
+<p>“All the more reason to send him to China. You may not
+believe that Ruben Sên is a Chinese, but I know it.”</p>
+
+<p>“All the more danger—but, I tell you, I won’t believe it—of
+his bringing home a Chinese wife. That would break
+Ruby’s heart. If you want to do that, why, go ahead!”</p>
+
+<p>“Why should it break Ruby’s heart? She’d have no right
+to feel that way about it.” Secretly Sir Charles feared that
+Emma was right there. “She of entirely English blood chose
+to marry a Chinese. What right has she to expect Ruben
+not to, who is only half English, and is half Chinese? She
+preferred King-lo, a Chinese husband, to any other. What
+right has she to dictate which of his blood-strains Ruben shall
+choose to strengthen? None.”</p>
+
+<p>“She’d feel rotten over it—if Ruben <i>did</i>.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span></p>
+
+<p>“She never regretted her Chinese marriage. And God
+knows she never had any reason to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish! How do we know what she felt in China? I
+grant you Ruby was happy with King-lo here. But King-lo
+was exceptional. And I tell you she has regretted it with
+every breath she drew ever since Ivy was born. Oh, you
+needn’t look at me like that. Ruby hasn’t blabbed it—no
+fear! She has never said one word to me, not given a look
+that hinted it. But I know.”</p>
+
+<p>“How?”</p>
+
+<p>“She must!”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“And if she hasn’t, she ought to!”</p>
+
+<p>“You are incorrigible!” Snow laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“I can see Ruben bringing a Chinese girl back with him,
+and I can see Ruby’s face when he does. She’ll look nice with
+two Chinese daughters—Ivy on one arm and Plum Blossom
+or Perfumed Dragon Fly on the other arm! Poor, poor
+Ruby! Oh—I could shake you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Do—by all means, if you’d like to. You have, you know,
+several times and I always enjoy it. But, Ruben will bring
+no wife home with him, of any sort or description. He will
+not marry without his mother’s permission.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish! Won’t he! Ruby didn’t marry without yours,
+did she?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not happen to be Ruby’s father.”</p>
+
+<p>“Same thing,” Lady Snow interjected.</p>
+
+<p>“Not quite. And Ruby was not Chinese. My dear child,
+if only I could get it through your head that Ruben is Chinese!
+He is a Chinese son. While he lives he will do nothing
+that his mother asks him not to.”</p>
+
+<p>“And do you think she’ll ask him not to marry a Chinese
+girl if his heart is set upon it? She’d think it disloyal to
+King-lo, for one thing.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p>
+
+<p>“And so it would be; and it would be damnably unfair to
+Ruben—unless she asked him not to marry at all. And <i>that</i>
+is what I am going to do and I think that Ruben will yield
+to me, no matter what it costs him, when he has heard what
+I have to tell him.”</p>
+
+<p>Emma Snow caught her husband’s hand in hers. “Charlie,”
+she whispered hoarsely, her eyes wide with fear, “is
+there insanity in the Sên blood? Tell me! You know that
+you can trust me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Most certainly not,” Snow answered emphatically. “There
+is no taint in the Sên blood—unless ours has tainted it with
+unhappiness, as in poor Ivy. There is almost no insanity
+among the Chinese now—almost none among those who have
+stayed at home, and have given the precious treaty ports a
+wide berth. In the old days there was no insanity in all
+China. I believe that no well authenticated case can be
+proved of insanity in purely Chinese blood before the Yang
+dynasty in the seventh century, and almost none until recently.
+I don’t know whether that is true of any other race
+on earth, but I suspect not. Certainly no white race can
+boast it. Big fact, isn’t it? And it might go farther to rid
+humanity of its greatest scourge if we could find its true
+significance, learn its secret. Is it something in the predominance
+of the white corpuscles in our veins, some abnormal
+susceptibility in our not sun-tanned skins, or—as I incline
+to believe—is it Nature’s indignation and scourging of
+the jangle of Western life? I tell you, Emma, I believe that
+if fifty of our best alienists would chuck glands and psychic
+oddments and falderals for a few years and go and live in
+China among inner-country Chinese who never have seen a
+European, scarcely heard of Europe, they might get on the
+right track at last—learn from China how to stamp out the
+greater of our two most hideous and menacing diseases; learn
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
+how to stamp it out in a few generations, by learning its prevention.
+Insanity in its worst forms may or may not be susceptible
+of cure, but I suspect it is susceptible of prevention;
+and that is what science and philanthropy ought to be aiming
+at. Equally true of all disease, no doubt: lock the stable
+door before the horse is stolen, say I! No—there is nothing
+against the Sên blood as it was when King-lo came to Washington.”</p>
+
+<p>“Charles, I believe sometimes that you are crazy!” Lady
+Snow wearied occasionally of her husband’s reiterated pæans
+of Chinese superiority. She could not accept them.</p>
+
+<p>“I dare say you do,” Sir Charles Snow told her smoothly.
+“I suspect that most wives think that of most husbands now
+and then. And it is just possible that some husbands believe
+it of their wives occasionally.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me then,” Lady Snow demanded—she was not going
+to be side-tracked—“why you are set on Ruben’s not marrying
+at all? I could understand if you took that stand about
+Ivy. Her children may look Chinese. That would be a
+tragedy. But Ruben! With his yellow hair, blue eyes, skin
+as white as mine—surely Ruben is safe enough!”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what you think, is it? My dear one, you are
+sorely ignorant of the unaccountable vagaries of atavism.
+Ruben’s children are every bit as apt to revert to Chinese
+type as Ivy’s—more apt, I believe; because Ruben thinks of
+his father’s people as his, likes to let his thought dwell upon
+them, picture them; and Ivy thinks only of her mother’s
+race as hers. She has barred her soul and, as far as she
+can, her being, against her Chinese ancestry. But to save
+the sour conflict, that has spoiled poor little Ivy, from belching
+up again after several generations, as it may—Nature
+is like that—I would do any earthly thing I could to prevent
+Ivy from marrying. But there is nothing I can do—nothing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>
+that any one can do. I might hasten Ivy into marriage—the
+first that offered—but I cannot, in any way, delay it. I
+will not rasp her to no avail; she is raw enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me,” his wife repeated, “<i>why</i> are you so opposed to
+Ruben’s ever marrying?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ruby is not to hear it—nor any one.”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow nodded. It was promise enough to the man
+who knew her.</p>
+
+<p>“When he was dying, Sên King-lo charged me to prevent
+both Ruben and Ivy from ever marrying, if I could. And
+I promised him.” Emma Snow made no comment. Voluble
+as she was, she knew when to save her breath. What Charles
+had promised he would do. And any promise he had made
+to Sên King-lo was, she knew, doubly sacrosanct.</p>
+
+<p>But her husband’s confidence had startled her, and in her
+a new and disconcerting thought.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean to tell me that King-lo was not happy with
+Ruby; that he regretted their marriage?”</p>
+
+<p>“He never told me so. He gave Ruby a great love and it
+never changed or wavered. When Sên King-lo was dying he
+loved Ruby as deeply and as tenderly as he did the day he
+married her—more! But all his life with her was a sacrifice.
+There must be great sacrifice in every such marriage.
+In theirs it was King-lo who made it. He paid a terrible
+price for his wife’s happiness. And he paid it gaily—and to
+the last farthing.”</p>
+
+<p>“What did he sacrifice?” Lady Snow asked gently.</p>
+
+<p>“China; his own inclination, a love of his that was even
+stronger than his love for Ruby. Have you never wondered
+what killed King-lo?”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow shook her head. She rarely indulged in idle
+speculations. Why should she have bothered her head over
+what, as she knew, had completely baffled the doctors? An
+opinionated woman, whose mind was as shrewd as it was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
+opinionated, hers was in no way one of the all too prevalent
+crass lay minds that set their own conclusions against and
+above the opinion of scientific experts. Emma Snow often
+argued hotly with her dressmaker, sometimes—but more deferentially—even
+with her <i>chef</i>, but never with her dentist or
+her physician.</p>
+
+<p>“Sên King-lo died of homesickness,” Sir Charles told her
+gravely. “I feared it before their marriage and I feared
+other things a thousand times worse, which never came, thank
+God, and thank Sên King-lo! Oh, my wife, Sên King-lo
+paid! Ruby’s kindred can never pay to his children, or in
+their service, the debt we owe to Sên King-lo—we and Ruby.
+I would to God I could. I often torture myself by trying
+to think of something I ought to have said to King-lo, and
+didn’t, when they were first engaged. But, I am sure that
+I need not. For I am sure that there was nothing and no
+one who could have influenced Sên King-lo then, unless his
+mother had been alive to do so. He would have refused his
+mother nothing.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">
+    CHAPTER XVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Ruben Sên had no grief at going. He was so filled
+with anticipation that it left no chink or crevice for
+regret or sadness.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow and Kow Li saw him off; Ivy wouldn’t.
+Mrs. Sên felt that she could not.</p>
+
+<p>All that mattered nothing to Ruben. His heart was singing—all
+the way to China.</p>
+
+<p>They three stood together on the great boat’s deck until
+“All off for the shore!” had been cried twice; Ruben in his
+English traveling gear, radiant-faced and eager-eyed, Snow
+trying to look far less grave than he felt; Kow Li a brilliant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>
+figure of Oriental splendor, almost broken up by the wrench
+of parting with his young master, tremulous too with his joy
+and triumph that at last the Sên was going home to Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had made the toilet of his life. No noble of
+Genghiz Khan’s sumptuous court ever went to the throne-room
+of his liege more richly attired or more noticeably.
+And this was not the throne-room in the Forbidden City,
+but the simple British deck of a P. &amp; O. Old Kow Li was
+a gorgeous medley of rose and crimson satins, thick-padded
+embroideries, dangling chain and wallet, many sparkling
+jewels; snow-white embroidered stockings, purple padded
+shoes with scarlet heels. He carried a small but very costly
+blue and green umbrella. Its stick of gold lacquer was a
+radiance, and its open top was a peril, both to his own hat,
+and to all less splendid hats that ventured near him. He
+wore his “pig-tail” almost lacquered with pigments, and
+lengthened nearly to his heels with plaited crimson silk. He
+wore his most scholarly spectacles, and his hat beggars description.
+And Kow Li fanned himself incessantly with an
+exquisite tiny fan; he bowed low when Sir Charles spoke to
+him; when Sên Ruben deigned to speak to him Kow Li
+ko’towed profoundly.</p>
+
+<p>Several people tittered as they watched him. Kow Li
+heard and saw them, but it did not annoy or disconcert him
+in the least. He knew that they knew no better. And to
+Kow Li the best of them were foreign-devils, and the rest
+were nothings.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow and Ruben Sên did not titter at Kow Li,
+or wish to; nor did they smile or suppress a smile.</p>
+
+<p>And they both knew that the odd signs boldly embroidered
+across the back of his satin jacket from shoulder to shoulder,
+was the Sên crest of servitude, the <i>chop</i> that marked Kow Li
+the servant and thrall of the great clan of Sên—theirs from
+birth till death—and after.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span></p>
+
+<p>As the boat pulled slowly out, Ruben Sên leaning uncovered
+over the rail, Kow Li broke into uncontrollable sobbing.
+Sir Charles Snow laid his hand softly on the old Chinese’s
+shaking satin shoulder. Sir Charles Snow was not ashamed
+of Kow Li.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben Sên’s eyes misted.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>No one stood waiting on the Victoria City pier to welcome
+him to China.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had wished it so.</p>
+
+<p>They sighted China in the early morning. Ruben had
+risen with the sun to look for the first thin line that might
+be China in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>He stood motionless, immovable, hour after hour, until they
+sighted China. He neither moved nor spoke until the boat
+was berthed. But he lifted his eyes to the hills of China.
+That was what the Peak was to him as he lifted his eyes to
+its blue-misted green; the hills of China; not the homes-park
+of Western affluence and comfort. This was his portal to all
+that lay beyond and to him that one lovely hill meant all the
+mountain ranges of China, all the flowers that grew at their
+slopes, all the snows that crowned them, the torrents that
+poured from them, the tiny laughing rills that slid leaping
+and singing through the hillside verdures down into the valleys
+and lakes that nestled at the fragrant feet of the encircling
+mountains. The bund, the buildings thick behind it,
+all meant a great deal to Ruben because they spoke of the
+teeming life at this sea-washed edge of his old, old homeland,
+but it was the feathered crest of the Peak that claimed and
+welcomed him, claimed him a prodigal son of Han home-come
+at last, caught him close in a vice of filial love. Trees,
+flowers and running water Ruben had loved from his babyhood;
+he had liked to finger the roses in his mother’s garden
+in Brent-on-Wold, had liked to lie for hours on the birch-shaded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>
+grass, watching the clouds drift, lazy as he, across the
+blue of the sky; watching the birds busied up in the trees,
+flying securely through the still summer air. But in their
+Surrey garden, what leapt in him now had been an enjoyment
+intense but quiescent, almost unconscious, quite inarticulate,
+a pleasant personal enjoyment, not an emotion. He
+had liked the flowers and the leafage, the birds in song and
+in flight, the drip of the fountain, the sky’s soft pageant,
+but he had not thought of Nature. He had laved in her
+bounty, not bowed down to her. This was his baptism at the
+font of Nature—a hill-cupped font, green with the lace of
+the slender bamboos that quivered over the Peak, hiding its
+pathways, veiling its bungalows, cooling and decking it all.
+His heart leapt to it devoutly. And it baptized him, a Chinese
+worshiper of Nature, one with his people, of their unalterable
+fellowship, in their one true religion—the worship
+of Nature. And he throbbed at the sacrament and was
+grateful. It was ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>No boy entirely, or fundamentally, Western could have
+felt so, or have been so unashamed that he did feel so.</p>
+
+<p>There are only two peoples who so worship Nature, only
+two who so find her; the Chinese and their neighbors of the
+Island Kingdom; and it is with the Chinese that it is predominant
+and intensest.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his eyes to the bamboo belaced and lacquered
+green and gold-gray hillside, and was glad!</p>
+
+<p>Then he went slowly across the deck, down the gangway.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben Sên was in China.</p>
+
+<p>What would he think of China? His mother had wondered,
+and Lady Snow had, and even Sir Charles a little—though
+Sir Charles had had but little doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had not wondered. Kow Li had known. And
+when the wireless told him, not an hour later, that Sên Ruben
+was in China, Kow Li sobbed for joy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p>
+
+<p>It did not seem strange to Sên as he stepped ashore—neither
+the place nor its jabbering yellow crowds.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange and an enormous experience, but there
+was nothing weird about it; it was a sudden delightful restfulness,
+uplifting, too big for excitement. Sên Ruben had
+none of the chilled and baffled feeling, almost a sense of
+mental apprehension that one so often feels when first reaching
+a strange city; still more when first stepping on foreign
+soil.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben stood on the Hong Kong landing stage, waiting for
+his luggage to find him. He never had been more at ease,
+never before had felt so entirely, or half so deeply, at home.
+China had received him.</p>
+
+<p>His was an experience as indescribable as it was enormous.
+But it is not inexplicable, for it was his by birthright.</p>
+
+<p>But it comes a freer gift—an interracial soul-dole to some—once
+perhaps in a lifetime. Once (before the Manchu
+fell) a Western woman standing just where Ruben Sên stood—a
+woman who had realized no special wish to visit China
+nor been conscious of any quick interest in the Chinese above
+other alien peoples—instantly felt at home. She came in
+after years to believe it a message, and received it gratefully.
+Places have individuality, mind, soul, character as surely as
+human creatures do. It is not always our relatives that we
+like best, are in closest touch with, <i>know</i> soonest or surest.
+And so it is with countries and places. Home and nativity
+are not always synonyms. Scott’s popular dictum beginning,
+“Breathes there the man with soul so dead,” is, one ventures
+to think, arguable.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy would have writhed at China. China would have bored
+Emma Snow. Ruben knew that he loved it; knew that he
+had come home. And he knew that this would have been as
+true, as instant and direct, if he never had heard of China,
+or if he had not known in what country he had landed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had labored incessantly, but quite unnecessarily, to
+make Sên Ruben a Chinese—for a greater craftsman than
+Kow Li had done it thousands of years before.</p>
+
+<p>Sên made no acquaintances in Hong Kong. He avoided
+doing so. He did not wish to meet even Chinese, yet; but to
+be alone with China.</p>
+
+<p>That was friendship and companionship enough.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Ruben spent a week in Hong Kong, and then went
+slowly to Peking.</p>
+
+<p>Ho-nan was his objective; but he wished to seem less a
+stranger in the Sên-land than he could hope to seem just
+yet, and he felt, as both Snow and Kow Li had counseled,
+that he should see Peking first—the throne-place for so many
+centuries of all the vast domains of Han.</p>
+
+<p>Peking baptized Ruben Sên with fire.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that to himself he never again would be Ruben
+Sên but—as he was recorded on the tablets of his race—Sên
+Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>He would not emphasize it in Europe, for he knew that
+while she lived he would do nothing that he believed would
+hurt his mother.</p>
+
+<p>But he had definitely taken his place among his people,
+his father’s people, when he reluctantly passed through the
+Ch’ien Mên and joyously took his way to Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Much as Peking had hurt him, it had given him his manhood.</p>
+
+<p>He had come to Peking adolescent; he left it full grown,
+adult, as a Chinese of twenty should be.</p>
+
+<p>He was barely nineteen in England, but here, a Chinese
+in China, Sên Ruben was twenty, since he had been one year
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>
+old at his birth, in the somewhat illogical way that the Chinese
+count the years of human lifetimes.</p>
+
+<p>He found his patriotism there. It was the Western encroachments
+and devastations that stung it into life, and
+ripped from him the European garments that not only his
+body but his soul, of necessity, had somewhat worn until now.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben discarded Europe in Peking.</p>
+
+<p>He was going back to England presently, to companion and
+cherish his mother in the environment she preferred. It
+never would occur to him to evade or delay doing that. But
+his own life was garnered up in China—now—and he knew
+that wherever his husk of life might be spent, its core of
+being would be grappled to China, and that in his mother’s
+drawing-room in Kensington <i>he</i> would be in China as truly
+as he was to-day standing in the lee of the Ch’ien Gate’s battlements,
+on the Wall’s broad footway, looking down on garden
+squares, on the yellow-tiled roofs of the vast Imperial
+Palaces, and on the hideous encroachment of ugly Western-like
+buildings huddled assertively up against the Sacred Gate.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely a self-centered, self-absorbed European, standing
+on the Peking outer wall, could look down on that storied
+tapestry of stone, wood and gleaming colored tiles, great
+patches of liquid green where squares of verdure interspersed
+houses and temples, quite unmoved; towers, pagodas, gleam
+of many waters, roofs of many colors; Tartar City, Chinese
+City, Manchu City, Forbidden City each segregated by its own
+wall; picturesque rectangles all girdled by Peking’s sumptuous,
+outer Great Wall.</p>
+
+<p>To Ruben it was greatly more than it can ever be to any
+non-Chinese. It was an epitome of China and all her story.
+Its beauty enswathed and electrified him; but, too, his very
+soul was gripped and his pride embittered by old landmarks
+gone, old monuments torn and desecrated, Western interspersements
+that blotched and disfigured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span></p>
+
+<p>The patriotism that Peking engendered in Sên Ruben was
+a gritty patriotism that quickened with big intention: a more
+conscious love of country than many of the family-absorbed
+Chinese consciously felt, or, if they felt it, defined, until the
+un-Christian stranglehold of Christian peoples, and of a people
+nearer and less liked, far less scrupulous, cut into them
+a belated understanding of their entire country’s peril and
+need. China has called her sons about her by the trumpet-call
+of impertinent, self-seeking internationals. England for
+one? Of course not. England never “slipped” into Wei-hai-Wei,
+or forced China to borrow at usurious rates, did she?
+America for one? No! The streets of San Francisco never
+ran red with Chinese blood, did they? America has not misdealt
+with the Chinese in Honolulu and Manila, has she?
+Japan for one? Certainly not. Japan can do no wrong.
+Japan is the one perfect flower of Asia; to her own incomparably
+greater virtues she has added all our smaller virtues—and
+already betters and outstrips us in every one of them.</p>
+
+<p>A pacific son of a pacific people, Ruben’s most urgent
+thought as he walked on the o’ertowering machicolated walls
+of old Peking, day after day, was that he longed to <i>fight</i> for
+China—not to fight in one of her own fratricidal wars, but
+to fight those who had despoiled her, had interrupted and
+deflected, and had tainted the old flow of her ways. In his
+heart he could have performed the seven labors of a Chinese
+Hercules for China. He forgot that he was English. He
+thought of Sir Charles Snow as a true and valued foreign
+friend, not as his kinsman, and his mother, never for a moment
+forgotten, he thought of as the White Rose of China.</p>
+
+<p>He could not fight for China, perhaps. Indeed, for China’s
+sake, he hoped that he could not. She was not ripe for any
+advantageous or possibly decisive warfare yet. Her loins were
+not girded; fresh raw sores not healed; wearied, overstrained
+sinews not rested or strengthened. Her purse-pouch hung flat
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>
+at her lean hungry side, her commissariat was not now—or
+soon to be—on an adequate war-footing. International chess
+was the hidden warfare for China now; hers to play a waiting
+game, and a watching, on the World’s great gaming board.
+Well, he could live for China—a greater, longer tribute to
+pay. He made his vow that he would. It might not be here
+in China that he could live for China, probably could not be—at
+least for long years, for not for one moment, in the
+exquisite birth-pangs of this new quivering patriotism that
+came as he strolled at sunset on the Great Wall of Peking
+watching the javelins of gold and green pelt down from the
+going day-star on to the pink walls of the Forbidden City,
+did Ruben forget his mother, or his hot boy-soul contemplate
+that he could—even for China—forsake or displeasure his
+mother. That was no part of Chinese patriotism. His
+mother had given him birth; his father’s death had made
+him his mother’s guardian, and doubly her vassal. But living
+with her, sharing her English life, clad again in Bond Street
+tweeds and broadcloths, he could live for China, serve China,
+work for China. He would sacrifice environment and outer
+seeming for his mother if he need and while it was her need,
+but the seed of his being, the wish of his soul, he need not
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">
+    CHAPTER XIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>When Mrs. Sên’s letter reached the Sêns in Ho-nan
+it filled them with consternation. Sên C’hian Fan
+read it twice and then again before he summoned all the
+family—more than a hundred of them—to the <i>T’ien Ching</i>,
+read it to them, translating slowly as he read, and bade them
+council with him.</p>
+
+<p>Should he speed to Hong Kong, greet their white kinsman
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>
+as he landed, dissuade him diplomatically, if he could,
+from journeying on to Ho-nan? Or—there was smallpox in
+Ho-nan now. Should they intercept their undesired kinsman
+with news of it at Hong Kong? There was no necessity to
+state how far from their gates it was that the pox raged, or
+to call his attention to Ho-nan’s area. He was more English
+than Chinese—his mother’s countryman, not his father’s.
+Undoubtedly he was ignorant of China—crassly ignorant of
+Ho-nan. Should they await his approach, let him come? He
+might not come, might not find his way even, might change
+his mind; he might linger at Hong Kong, in Peking, in treaty
+ports until the months of his stay in Asia all were gone; he
+might discover in Hong Kong itself the sorry inconvenience
+of being a white Chinese in China. Kow Li, the peasant who
+had amassed wealth in England and who sent such lavish
+tribute back to their temples here, had written that Sên
+Ruben was very fair, very English. No doubt it was true;
+and he, Sên C’hian Fan, made little of Kow Li’s added statement
+that at heart and in mind Sên Ruben was Chinese and
+every inch a Sên, for Kow Li, for all that he had prospered,
+was a peasant, one of their hut-born “babies,” and no doubt
+his baby-intelligence had been warped and enfeebled by the
+almost lifetime that the baby-one had lived in England and
+other heathen countries.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Jo Hiêsen spoke first. “It is not desirable,” he began,
+“that this Englishman who calls himself a Sên should come
+here. It must be prevented. He can claim his share of all
+we have. And though the English woman whom Sên King-lo
+in his folly took for his Number One makes no hint of
+this in her long, ill-written letter—not one classical allusion
+in it, scarcely a courtesy, not one respectful obsequiousness—no
+doubt that is her son-one’s object in coming here. What
+love can he have of his father’s people, of our homestead or
+its temples, he who was born of a white-skinned woman, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
+suckled of her Christian milk? He comes to inventory and
+to claim. Or, if perchance he does not, it is what he will do
+when he sees how great our possessions are. The English
+are avaricious. They have found pretext to seize our island
+of Hong Kong, land, by so-called rental, in a dozen treaty
+ports and half the fructive wealth of Yangtze valley. They
+have robbed China of her jades and her lacquers, her bronzes
+and her precious porcelains. There are silks of Chao Mêngfu’s
+and of Ma Yuan’s, of Chien Shun-Chu’s in London; and
+in a savage place called Chick-cow-go, I am told, a score of
+our most rare beautiful jades are kept in a case of cheap
+glass in a public place where heathen, barbarian men and
+women—men and women linked together by their immodest
+arms—may look and gape at what once were treasured in
+our sacred palaces and temples. When this white-skinned
+one sees our store of treasure here, will he not, in spite of the
+great wealth already by our holy Old-one sent to his father,
+claim his birthright share—Sên King-lo’s full one-seventh
+share—in all that is ours? I doubt it not! And when he
+does we cannot withhold, not a millet seed, not one tea-brick,
+not a glass bangle, not our cheapest laziest god, not an old
+cracked tea-bowl, not the oldest house-broom; for his father’s
+full share is his by our immemorial ancestral law, which no
+Sên may break or disobey.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will he cut our gods into seven pieces—the profane
+heathen one?” a woman shrilled in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>“He will demand his seventh share of all!” Sên C’hian
+Fan asserted bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>An old man who had grown toothless in the service of the
+Sêns—as his peasant fathers for long generations had—rose
+from the corner he had squatted in, limped heavily to where
+Sên C’hian Fan sat in the <i>T’ien Ching’s</i> honorable-rule-place,
+and ko’towed thrice before he begged with wheezy labored
+breath, “Grant, lord-one most high and ancient, that this thy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>
+bug go now to the City of Victoria in our desecrated, stolen
+island of Hong Kong, and slay the white robber-dog-one as
+he leaves his ocean fire-boat.”</p>
+
+<p>The Sên senior in the main line, and therefore regnant,
+motioned the old decrepit back—but Sên’s gesture was as
+affectionate as it was peremptory, and his eyes lingered kindly
+on the candidate for murder.</p>
+
+<p>“We will set our dogs upon him at the outer gate,” a Sên
+stripling cried hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Some counseled gentler methods, one spoke of fire, two
+suggested poisons.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us keep him our prisoner,” spoke another.</p>
+
+<p>That was how the Sêns in Ho-nan took the news of Sên
+Ruben’s coming.</p>
+
+<p>They would have none of him. They rejected and forbade
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan had summoned them while the Hour of
+the Hare was young, the great day-star pricking but sickly
+through the bat-black of the night; gathered them together
+here in the <i>T’ien Ching</i> on the first thin edge of daybreak,
+as serious Chinese conference should be held. But the day-star
+rode high above the mid-time of the Horse noon hour
+before their talking of “how” so much as dwindled. For all
+their unanimity of purpose they visioned and advocated
+method in almost as many ways as there were Sêns and
+faithful Sên retainers here. They canvassed it, tore and
+discussed it with hot, endless words as only Chinese do. The
+Sêns themselves, those of them who were man and adult,
+calmly and without gesture—for only when their kindred die
+may girdle-wearers gesture or show distraction; the peasant-born
+retainers less mannerly in face and demeanor.</p>
+
+<p>Then a woman, smiling coldly, rose and stood before Sên
+C’hian Fan, gestured them imperiously, contemptuously to
+silence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span></p>
+
+<p>Instantly all were still.</p>
+
+<p>The widowed concubine La-yuên rarely spoke now; when
+she spoke no Sên would ignore her words or interrupt them—and
+no retainer dared do either.</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên’s place was great in Sênland.</p>
+
+<p>Once half the mirth and music of the flowery courtyards,
+now, almost with Sên C’hian Fan himself, she was their law-giver,
+almost with the gods and Sên Ya Tin their oracle.</p>
+
+<p>Every tongue was silenced as she rose, every hand hidden
+in a sleeve, every eye riveted on the paintless face of the
+coarse-robed concubine, La-yuên.</p>
+
+<p>When her lord Sên Po-Fang had died La-yuên had wailed
+loudest, torn her flesh fiercest. When he lay new-buried in
+the graveyard where they had left him, she had crept back
+to him, dug her a grave at his feet, hurled herself into it,
+pulled down the wormy earth upon her until it palled her
+in an airless prison and death-bed. She had been missed.
+Then, what she had done was suspected, and she had been
+hastily ungraved, brought back to consciousness after several
+days, and forced to swear before her lord’s tablet that she
+would make no second attempt. And the concubine that Sên
+Po-Fang had loved had kept her word, for she was not highly
+educated, and did not know that Confucius had taught that
+the gods keep no record of enforced oaths. It had been impossible
+to let her die, for La-yuên had been big with child—but
+all the Sêns loved and reverenced her for the attempt she
+had made to follow her lord down to the Yellow Springs,
+there to solace his purgatorial hours and serve him. The Sêns
+would build for her a <i>pai-fang</i> memorial-arch when she went
+on-High, and she had great place and voice among them while
+she lived.</p>
+
+<p>In her unhemmed one garment of rough hemp-cloth La-yuên
+cut a beggar’s figure, and looked an aged shriveled
+woman. By years, she was younger than Ruby, Sên King-lo’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>
+English widow, but grief had blasted her, self-burial had
+blanched and lined her, persistent fasting and self-tortures
+had bent and grizzled her—and La-yuên looked a grandmother
+of grandmothers.</p>
+
+<p>But she stood her full height now, the little “secondary”
+wife of Sên Po-Fang who had loved and pampered her—stood
+facing the Sêns, defying and rebuking them.</p>
+
+<p>“Curses be upon you,” she shrilled, one skinny arm extended
+imperiously toward Sên C’hian Fan himself, her tear-worn
+eyes fierce on his. “You will give Sên Ruben great
+welcome and most honorable tending; Sên Ya Tin would
+have commanded it. Who here dares disobey our jade-and-lotus
+Old-one? Is this the mat-hut of some scurvy peasant
+woman, or is it the queendom of celestial Sên Ya Tin? There
+among the lemon trees stands the temple Sên Ya Tin builded
+to the honor of Sên King-lo, perfume gushing from the
+fountains among the yellow roses in its courtyard, wine in
+his feast-cup always before his memorial-truth-stone amid
+the snow azalias at the temple door. Shall you ill-welcome
+or misuse Sên King-lo’s son in the very shadow of Sên King-lo’s
+temple, carved of alabaster and jasper at the command
+of great Sên Ya Tin our queen-one? Are you Sêns, or are
+you Nippon vermin?”</p>
+
+<p>Not one answered. Sên Ya Tin, the easy-going tyrant who
+had ruled them, had spoken to them through the paintless
+lips of her grandson’s angered concubine.</p>
+
+<p>They had cowed them—the old queen-one who had wailed
+Sên King-lo’s death as a god’s and the concubine who had
+hallowed herself forever with the suicide she had offered at
+the grave of Sên Po-Fang whom she had loved.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ya Tin and La-yuên had spoken, and none of all here
+dared dispute them—regnant ancestor and regnant concubine—until
+one brasher than all the rest—a woman, for in China
+only woman’s tongue knows no bridle, ventured, “<i>Is</i> the man
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>
+who comes a Sên? We know he is white-faced and has yellow
+hair that ripples. Why should we think that the foreign-devil,
+she who bore him—”</p>
+
+<p>An Pin’s question was not finished. La-yuên caught a
+bamboo from Kow Yong Shu—the <i>doyen</i> of the dog-keepers—and
+smote An Pin across the mouth. Blood, not
+words, rushed from the mouth of An Pin. But La-yuên
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Vile one! Scavenger and lobster! Dirt-of-dirts! Liar!
+She was a pearl! There are more here than La-yuên who
+remember Sên Ruby. Her lord loved her. Heaven-like Sên
+Ya Tin received and acknowledged her, piled soft words and
+great privilege about her, gave her welcome, bade her god-speed.
+Sên King-lo walked beside his wife-one’s litter when
+they went from the great gate, and Sên Ya Tin stood and
+watched them smiling, till the distance stole them, and she
+our old queen-one blessed them as they went. Always, until
+she went on-High, when Sên Ya Tin sent a token to Sên
+King-lo she sent a token to Sên Ruby. Where is the stomacher
+of diamonds that the Ming gave his favorite daughter
+when she came here a bride in her bride chair six hundred
+years ago? Where is Ya Tin’s priceless gold-lacquer tobacco-box
+with the lizard of rubies on its lid? They are in the
+England, in the casket-for-jewels of the girl child of Sên
+Ruby, sent when the ruby-one bore her lord a daughter—a
+daughter whom Sên Ruby, whom her lord loved and honored,
+carried between her heart and girdle even here in the
+courtyards and pavilions of his people. Go! Go, thou stink-one,
+wash thy blood-dripping mouth in vitriol of snakes!
+Crawl in the presence of Sên Ruben who bears his mother’s
+jewel-name—crawl in his presence, lest I slay thee. Sên
+Ruby is a white rose—the White Rose of China. Our lord her
+son comes not to take even his own from us. He comes to
+see the birth-place of his father, to worship by the grave of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
+our old queen-one Sên Ya Tin, and to greet his kindred.
+The Sên shall have a Sên welcome.”</p>
+
+<p>After that no more was said of slaying or rejecting him.
+And even did Sên C’hian Fan give order that the rooms and
+the pavilion of Sên King-lo should be readied and garnished
+for Sên King-lo’s son.</p>
+
+<p>But when a letter came from Peking, beautifully brushed in
+Chinese, a letter from Sên Ruben to his kinsman Sên C’hian
+Fan, telling that ere the fourth moon had come Sên Ruben
+would crave entrance at the great gate of his kindred, more
+than one of the Sên men frowned, and many of the women
+contrived to secure hide-holes and put their best jewels in
+them. That is how the Sêns in Ho-nan took it.</p>
+
+<p>But An Pin kept from La-yuên’s path.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">
+    CHAPTER XX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>When Ruben tore himself away from Peking he still
+was wearing English dress.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese as he was, and still more Chinese as he liked to
+believe himself, there was considerable Englishman in Ruben
+Sên—Sên Ruben. Had there been none, he could not have
+fitted so perfectly into English life as he had at public school
+and ’varsity, in the counties and in London. Half his blood
+was English, and sluggish as it ran now, it took some toll of
+his inclinations. Habit chained him—to his London tailor
+among other things. And English schoolboy-like, he knew
+himself a little shy of “fancy dress,” especially of petticoats
+and rampant colors. But chiefly he still dressed as he always
+had, because both Sir Charles Snow and Kow Li had advised
+it—at least until he reached the interior where Young China
+was both less existent and less clamorous.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span></p>
+
+<p>Both had advised it as a diplomatic compliance with the
+sartorial edicts of that same Young China which both disliked
+and distrusted almost equally. For Snow knew that the
+strident new dispensation must run its course—brief or long;
+and Kow Li quoted the old saying that he who rides a tiger
+must sit very tight, and dismount with great discretion.
+Nothing would be served by antagonizing any Chinese faction
+in these days of broil and flux, they both counseled. And Sir
+Charles had had another reason—he had seen no cause to
+state it—for urging his young kinsman to discard neither
+boots nor trousers. Snow remembered how the pallid-skinned
+American missionaries had been despised for wearing petticoats
+and “pig-tails” in Shanghai a decade or two ago—how
+it had offended many of the very Chinese they aped to propitiate.
+And Sir Charles knew that white-skinned, blue-eyed,
+fair-haired Ruben would look not more but even less Chinese
+clad in Chinese raiment.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben had no mind to cross his fathers’ threshold
+wearing Western garments.</p>
+
+<p>In the guest-room of a little hill-perched temple, at which
+he lingered some days—partly that his chairmen might rest,
+partly because in some odd way the eerie place seemed to claim
+him—he changed into some of the garments that Kow Li had
+given him in London lest his young master might find such
+shopping an embarrassment in China, and prove inept at it,
+if not quite helpless. Kow Li knew what a Sên lord should
+wear in Sênland, and he was tremulously anxious that Sên
+Ruben should be branded by no avoidable solecism.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had made perhaps a third of his slow cross-country
+journey from Peking to his father’s birthplace in
+Ho-nan, when he looked up and saw the tiny cloister built
+on the crest of a low hill, smiling in the sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>It called him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên bade his bearers lower his litter, and leaving it bade
+them wait—he might be some time.</p>
+
+<p>Little loath his retinue—they were a score, all told—lit
+their brazier of charcoal, glad of its warmth, for the dawn
+was chill, and squatted about it smoking and chattering while
+their kettle-pot boiled, and their fish and rice cooked; and
+Ruben went alone to make his way to the temple, knock on
+its gate, and crave to rest and, if he might, explore. Zigzagging
+steps of flat irregular stones—but easy enough, save
+for their length—led through hills of churned and broken
+rocks up to the little cloister. It was a small rectangular
+encampment, walled in here and there, of one-story tent-roofed
+buildings—all small. The monks’ gardens were outside,
+one of vegetables and pot-herbs, one of lusty flowers,
+and the hills behind, misted and soft in the early pearl-tinted
+light, were verdure clad.</p>
+
+<p>The monks had hewn their path and builded their steps
+through the up-thrown belt of rocks belched up æons ago by
+some fever of earth; hewn and builded so perhaps to remind
+that those who would climb to the plane of the gods must go
+on foot, almost in single file, and must tread a hard, rough
+way.</p>
+
+<p>It was poor enough a place as Chinese temples go. Not
+many monks could house here or live on such scant garden
+produce. But the softly sparkling sunrise and its own jumble
+of picturesque lines gave it beauty, and an old majolica
+pagoda, that the centuries scarcely had tarnished, gave it
+character and dignity—and too, Ruben thought, significance
+and individuality. Such pagodas are not built in China now,
+and have not been for several centuries. The up-tilt-roofed
+low buildings clustered about it might have been run up
+yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Nine-storied, up-tapering, the pagoda, like the temple and
+out-houses, was angular; like them its roof dipped down in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
+delicious curves, but jutted out sharply to East and to West.
+A small company of “lions” and birds made of stone and of
+clay, such as are seen on almost every orthodox Chinese roof,
+sat upright and vigilant on the roof’s ridges—guarding and
+befriending the humans that dwelt beneath—and the gods
+housed there. They were queer little symbolical animals
+jaunty and fierce, China’s domestic dogs of spiritual war—often
+so tiny that a casual glance may not see them, but
+greatly essential to all that dwell beneath a Chinese roof.</p>
+
+<p>The pagoda was bell-hung, and the two middle stories were
+windowed and balconied with rectangular lattice-work. Except
+the roofs, all its lines were straight and sharply angled.</p>
+
+<p>There was no temple-gate, and Ruben hesitated to strike on
+the metal gong that swung at the open door; for, soaked as
+his mind was, and had been for years, in the ways and manners
+of China, yet he wondered whether the gong stood there
+on the temple’s doorstep as a convenience for visitors or was
+a household utensil by which the abbot summoned his monks
+from their outer tasks to rice or to prayer. More likely that,
+he thought, for he suspected that few from “the world” ever
+came here. The temple stood alone and remote, far from
+even such half-beaten paths as Ho-nan can boast. Ruben had
+traveled by compass—as nearly as impassable barriers of rock
+and of turbulent streams would let him—rather than by any
+sort of roadways; which is how most who foot it in China
+must journey. The canals and streams are the roads of
+China.</p>
+
+<p>He rather thought that the gong was not for wayfarers;
+he would wait, at least for a time, until some one came. It
+was pleasant here on the steps, and he was Chinese enough to
+feel neither in haste nor impatient. He squatted him down
+near the huge incense-holder of carven stone that stood at
+the temple’s entrance, and lit a cigarette. Why not? The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
+temple priests smoke their pipes so—when they have the
+tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>Matins! The priests were singing in the temple.</p>
+
+<p>The rite was not long; and presently they came to sniff
+the early day’s fragrance or to forecast the day’s humor.</p>
+
+<p>They were four, all yellow gowned: a fine-faced old abbot,
+a squat-faced boy novice, two others—one old and jolly, one
+middle-aged and sear; the entire community.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben rose, and bowed them the obeisance of respect.</p>
+
+<p>Three returned it but the novice only stared.</p>
+
+<p>As it chanced, none of them ever had seen a European or
+European garments before; but, except the uncouth boy-priest,
+they showed no surprise, no embarrassment and no
+displeasure—perhaps because being Chinese, their courtesy
+was entire and an instinct; perchance, because their life had
+disciplined and drilled them against resentment of aught the
+gods or earth-years sent them; a little, it may be, because a
+guest or chance wayfarer so rarely came to fleck the gray
+monotony of their solitude with a gleam of the outer world
+that any guest—even the oddest and most incomprehensible—was
+welcome; a drink in the desert.</p>
+
+<p>They made him welcome. The abbot, surprised and pleased
+that one who looked so amazingly strange could speak their
+tongue, bade him stay as long as he chose; there was rice to
+spare, the temple boasted a guest-room, the room a mat and
+pillow.</p>
+
+<p>The novice boy was sent down the long way Ruben had
+climbed to bid the traveler’s servants wait while their master
+who, at least, would lie in the holy house to-night, tarried
+here. And the lad went readily enough to carry a message
+to the Chinese coolies below; scampered off with little of
+priestly dignity and with no reluctance at all to gossip a
+while with peasant-ones who lived in the world from which
+his parents’ poverty had driven him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span></p>
+
+<p>Three days, three nights Sên Ruben lived the guest of the
+temple priests; anxious to reach his goal—the home of his
+fathers—yet glad to postpone so long what he knew might
+prove an ordeal. Both Snow and Kow had warned him of
+that, warned him that he might have to win and earn his
+welcome before his kinsmen gave it him—now that Sên Ya
+Tin was dead.</p>
+
+<p>He was glad to serve a novitiate of his own here, in place
+and circumstance so peculiarly Chinese; and in serving it, to
+tune himself, he hoped, to the Chinese home to which he had
+crossed the world in pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>He shared their “rice”—vegetables chiefly, appetizing
+enough to the priests, but always the same—and as he ate,
+squatted with them on the floor, he smiled a little, more than
+once. Thinking of some woman-one, three of them made no
+doubt, but the abbot whose mind was sweeter and shrewder—two
+human qualities that often go hand in hand—saw that
+the stranger’s smile was edged and was quizzical, and it was
+no heart-affair or tender dalliance that flitted across Sên
+Ruben’s face. The old abbot was right. Ruben had smiled
+into his basin of carrots and cabbage chopped up in <i>soy</i> because
+of a thought that came of London restaurants, lobster
+mayonnaise, Perrier Jouet ’76, pêche Melba, his mother’s
+<i>chef</i>, the service her butler gave.</p>
+
+<p>Eton, Cambridge, and Kensington pricked him now and
+then as he lounged smoking on a pagoda balcony the next
+day watching the monks at work, almost knee-deep in their
+paddy bed. And at vespers in the gods-room, although it
+stirred him as no service at Queen’s ever had, Ruben Sên
+knew that homesickness twinged him—a longing to see his
+mother and Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>For always the way of the Eurasian is hard and perplexed—a
+taint of his blood, a taint in his mind: canker.</p>
+
+<p>The gods-room intrigued Sên Ruben and it rested and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>
+soothed even more than it interested him. It appealed to him
+more—very much more—than had the larger, richer god-rooms
+of the Peking temples; perhaps because it seemed to
+him so truly apart from the secular world, so set apart, remote,
+dedicated, a little room to which rarely any but the
+four priests vowed to its service ever came; the solitary house
+of a solitary community, in a place of solitude far from the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>It was packed with gods though only two or three were of
+fine workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>A gorgeous belly-god, whose inordinate paunch was supported
+by his sacrificial table, whose ears were elongated
+balloons, whose very hands were mountainous with fat, was
+beautifully molded and exquisitely colored, and for all the
+billows of fatness that half hid them, his eyes, by some deft
+contrivance of fine artistry, sparkled and laughed. Sinister,
+that the starveling four who lived on rough vegetables, millet,
+occasional rice, infrequent inferior fruit, should needs serve
+the obese belly-god of gluttony; sinister and searching that
+they should serve him with chanted prayers, incense, flowers
+in his vases, red candles to make his glowing rubicon face
+still redder, and serve him with offerings of flesh tit-bits and
+wine that they themselves might not taste except at the Lanterns’
+once-a-year Feast, and then but scantily! Such is
+religion—in the East!</p>
+
+<p>The wealth-god, cut from perfect ivory, had a sweet and
+saintly face. His monk-like white robes were severe and
+simple; he carried a flail in his thin, priestly hand: a chaste,
+immaculate figure, as beautiful as it was ridiculous!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lung Wang</i>, the god of clouds and water, was lacquer, and
+very lovely.</p>
+
+<p>The other gods—more than forty—were tawdry and
+hideous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kuan Ti</i> above the high-altar was but a fresco, ill-drawn,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
+badly colored—as were his wife on his left hand and his concubine
+on his right.</p>
+
+<p>All the others, cheap and nondescript, little creditable to
+any heaven, scarcely creditable to any joss-house, were stacked
+on shelves, on the floor and in dark and dusty corners.</p>
+
+<p>But Sên Ruben loved and revered them all for what they
+symboled; for the Chinese fellowship they kept; for the
+service that these loyal priest-ones paid them.</p>
+
+<p>Thrice from sunset to sunset the second priest struck the
+temple gong, and the four “yellow-robes” gathered here for
+chant and prayer; censed their gods, offered them wine and
+meat and cakes, lit their tapers, made them obeisance, recited
+droningly their ritual, and proffered silently, perhaps, prayers
+more individual and personal, if aught of personal wish that
+was more than the animal craving for food, or anything of
+true personality, could persist in lives so cramped and circumscribed.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben doubted it of the younger three. The abbot he
+gaged higher; a soul attune to the sweet uses of solitude; a
+mind capacitated to profit by the discipline of meditation.</p>
+
+<p>On the high-altar, an animal-headed god with attendants
+guarding it on both sides, stood a score of gigantic brass and
+stone candlesticks, many of them candleless—for the priests
+were poor; two small incense-holders, a beaten tray of joss-sticks,
+beautiful vases crammed with hideous artificial flowers,
+a small table-gong and mallet—used to call a drowsy god-one’s
+attention; a drum of mother-o’-pearl and embossed and
+painted parchment—used for the same purpose; and the three
+wine cups of the chief god and his wife and concubine. Near
+the altar, tasseled silver lamps hung down low on either side.
+There were tassels hanging down from almost every one of
+the crowded temple’s ornaments. A few feet from the North
+and South walls two pillars supported the arabesqued ceiling,
+one of rough stone, crudely carved, one of jasper pricked with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>
+gold-stone and bits of turquoise color laid in in a delicate
+bamboo-shaped tracery. Around each of the pillars writhed
+an open-mouthed dragon, its scaled throat and horned head
+thrust out toward the altar, its great claws clasping the pillar
+firmly.</p>
+
+<p>What did English-born, London-bred Ruben think of it all?</p>
+
+<p>He thought it pathetic—at least, the human life-husks of
+the yellow-clad brethren. He thought the heterogeneous gods
+absurd—but yet—he thought them eloquent, felt them sacred.
+They emphasized to him a great people’s—his people’s—fealty
+to nature, China’s sense of communion with wind and
+rain, things that grow, beasts that stalk, birds that fly. And
+he had seen “holy” figures every bit as ugly and preposterous
+on the continent of Europe. Sên Ruben was not ashamed of
+these gods of China.</p>
+
+<p>One long night through he sat under the cherry trees beneath
+the glittering panoply of stars with his host, the abbot.
+And their talk was intimate. And when the sun crept up
+behind the pagoda Sên Ruben had thought of things he never
+had thought of before, and had learned, and learned to sense,
+things of China that neither Kow nor Snow ever had whispered
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He had gained a lasting memory; he had made a lasting
+friend, even though they two never met again.</p>
+
+<p>Something of his story he told to the monk, who heard
+him gravely and then warned him, as Snow and Kow had,
+that his kinsmen might give him but scant welcome.</p>
+
+<p>“Should it prove so, and you still are loath to leave China,
+come back to me, and be my son—while you will. Always
+your share of our all will await you here. And, if you come
+not, always at the Hour of the Dog prayer-time I will ask
+of our gods your welfare.”</p>
+
+<p>But Sên Ruben knew that he should not tarry long in
+China, now; knew that he should keep his tryst in London
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>
+with his mother, whether his kinsmen hailed and claimed
+him or rejected and forbade him.</p>
+
+<p>Another day he lingered, “worshiping” in the temple
+prayer-room, working in the garden with the four priests.
+Then he left them, clad in his unaccustomed Chinese garments—beneath
+his vest a scapular the old abbot had blessed
+and given—left them, and went on towards “home,” determined
+and anxious; going down the hill stairway a little
+awkwardly in his Chinese petticoat.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben felt queer—and looked it.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if he could carry it off and wished that he
+had served some sort of private novitiate for this, by wearing
+padded shoes and all the rest of these in the seclusion of Kow
+Li’s upper room in Bloomsbury.</p>
+
+<p>The novice grinned like the ape he was, the young monk
+frowned, but the old head-monk gestured kindly approval,
+and blessed Sên Ruben gravely, and bade him gods’-speed.</p>
+
+<p>One of the chairmen giggled like a girl, the others looked
+at him sourly, when Sên came into the temple courtyard
+where they waited for him. The abbot had sent for them.
+But the old monk walking beside Ruben rebuked them
+sharply and at that their faces turned again to the accustomed
+stolid indifference which is the livery of such servant-faces.
+They despised the old monk, because he was a monk,
+but they had no disrespect for the ill-charms he might work
+upon them. And whatever they thought or felt of the foreign
+devil dressed in finest Chinese clothes, he would see nothing
+of it again, for the monk-one had potentially cursed them
+hideously. A Chinese will risk most things for a laugh—but
+not an unmourned grave or a fire-crackerless burial.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben would not ride while the abbot walked. Presently
+the abbot blessed and left wine. Sên seated himself
+carefully and as easily as he could wound up in petticoats;
+the bearers lifted the chair-poles on to their shoulders and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>
+trudged slowly down the rough path and off across Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>The old monk stood in the temple door and watched them
+out of sight; then went in to give Sên Ruben the best red
+candle of their poor votive store, for he had liked the fair-haired
+boy who had given them great largesse, and more
+courtesy than Chinese monks are often paid.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">
+    CHAPTER XXI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Li Ch’un is a movable feast, and the Sêns and all their
+vassal villages were celebrating it several moons later
+than it is most often held. The month of the Double Cherry
+had almost passed when they went forth to meet the Spring.</p>
+
+<p>At sunrise—everything that does not begin earlier begins
+at sunrise in the land of the pagoda—the great gates were
+opened, and Sên C’hian Fan and all the thousand of his
+patriarchal household came slowly forth to wend their way
+to the eastmost point of the vast domain, to meet and greet
+the Spring as she came from Hu-peh to the fields and forests
+of their clan: an immense cortège to be swelled and lengthened
+two-score times as it wended its slow, ceremonial way—joined
+and augmented every few <i>li</i> by the outpouring of some
+village or townlet; all coming forth to keep the Beginning-of-Spring
+festival.</p>
+
+<p>A man who had paused to rest at the white and silver
+pagoda, not knowing that as he left his litter not far from
+there, his foot fell for the first time on the ancestral lands
+of his own people, saw the endless processional coming in the
+distance, and drew into the vantage of a great catalpa’s leafy
+shade, and waited, shadowed there to watch and listen, wondering
+what festival this gay-clad multitude was keeping; for
+Sên Ruben knew that the year’s first moon was the keeping
+time of <i>Li Ch’un</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span></p>
+
+<p>Behind a busied conclave of musicians—horn-men, drum-men,
+gong-men, lute-players, music-basket carriers and boys
+who blew on flutes and silver-stringed shells—walked ten
+score of servants carrying flower-wreathed staves, tiny silken
+pouches, birds in splendid cages and trays of paper money,
+and looking down on them from his catalpa-shaded hill-slope,
+Sên Ruben’s heart leapt when he saw stamped or sewn on
+each blue coat’s back the servant-crest of his father’s house.</p>
+
+<p>Women and children had thronged out of the homestead’s
+gates close beside the men; women and children had poured
+forth from every village and farm with the headsmen and all
+the headsmen’s tribal following. But Sên Ruben saw neither
+woman nor child here. The way had been too long for all
+but sturdiest feet. And no woman might go with the joyous
+solemn processional to its end, for often miracle is vouchsafed
+at the ultimate moment when Spring and China meet; and
+no miracle can be consummated in the presence of a cat, a
+hen or a woman. Women and all the toddle-feet children had
+fallen out a few or a score at a time to wait in the meadows
+and near the path’s sides, resting, munching sweetmeats and
+melon-seeds, gossiping and telling tales until they straggled
+back to join the home-returning of the men folk and older
+boys privileged to meet the Spring as it came into Sênland
+through the plum trees that behind the pagoda screened the
+Sên’s Eastern flower-land from the woodlands of the family
+of Kem.</p>
+
+<p>Inconspicuous—or so he hoped—in his dark plum-colored
+garments, the sober, traveling garb of a Chinese gentleman,
+Sên Ruben risked skirting the edge of the great jabbering
+throng, interested in seeing where they were going, and in
+watching what they did—more interested in watching them,
+for all were his clansmen or their vassals, he made no doubt,
+and some among them his close of kin. Which? Sên Ruben
+wondered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span></p>
+
+<p>There were no blue eyes here; he saw no hair that was fair;
+but now and then a man passed close to him almost as fair
+of skin as he—fair-skinned as his mother. No one had told
+him that some Chinese were so nearly white. He was glad
+to find it so—seeing it for the first time here in the home
+province of his own people. He was glad, because it made
+him feel his own face less of an ugliness (and Sên Ruben
+worshiped beauty); less an offense to other Chinese eyes; less
+the bar-sinister that, in spite of his loyal love of his mother,
+it always had seemed to him.</p>
+
+<p>They began to sing a hymn of Spring, a welcome-song to
+the flowers, an invocation to all the honorable grains—the
+millet, buckwheat, maize, rice and wheat; a prayer and a
+propitiation to sun and rain, soil and wind, to the spirits that
+dwelt in them, and ruled them, giving the command to yield
+the honorable ground’s best plenty to these the worshiping
+sons of Han, or to shrivel the Earth’s fruits in her womb,
+that famine and want might stalk through the fields and
+gardens of Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Those following there were actors he knew—he had seen
+too many pictures of their fantastic head-dresses and elaborate
+costly apparel, so unlike the every-day garb of every-day
+Chinese, not to be sure of that. They sang and gesticulated
+as they walked but Ruben could not catch the words. He
+had caught most of the Ho-nanese folk-songs and hymns, and
+he thought he should have understood Mandarin, even sing-songed.
+But the Pekinese the actors chanted he could not
+understand, except here and there a word and that it was
+Peking-tongue—probably the only one of China’s many languages
+that the stage-folk knew, since they are for the most
+an ignorant lot, though technically exquisitely skilled. Almost
+invariably now a Chinese actor is a native of Pechilli
+province.</p>
+
+<p>Those carried there in their sedan chairs were gentlemen—not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
+because their raiment was fine, and they wore jades in
+their caps—but because of their great repose, the clear command
+in their quiet eyes, and the clean-cut chiseling of features
+and motionless hands. They were Sêns, some of them,
+no doubt; probably most of them; Sêns, and he was a Sên!
+Most of them were old enough to remember his father,
+to have been at home with Sên King-lo there when he
+had brought Sên Ruby, the White Rose of China, to his
+home and his people here in Ho-nan. Sên Ruben’s soul
+kindled.</p>
+
+<p>Another cohort of musicians followed the litters; musicians
+playing softly as they went, softly as if to woo the timid
+spring from her vestal hiding behind a veil of snow-gauze
+from the crabbed breath of winter.</p>
+
+<p>Hello! What was that?</p>
+
+<p>Not—but it must be—the Spring-Ox! So—this was <i>Li
+Ch’un</i>, the great greeting-of-Spring festival, oddly belated till
+now.</p>
+
+<p>The gigantic, grotesquely painted Ox, which, for all that
+body and bones, was but paper, was carried by more than
+twenty men and its weight required them all.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben did not smile at the weird absurd Spring-Ox,
+for he knew what it meant—and he was Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>If ever he had doubted that in England, he did not doubt
+it now as his heart leapt to the Spring-keeping of his race.
+And his English mother could not have doubted it, never
+again could have doubted it, if she could have watched him
+now, as his eyes leapt, and his fair face lit.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had come home.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben knew that he had come home.</p>
+
+<p>The soft dry air, still with a gentle tang of racier Winter
+in its sweet bouquet, that rippled through the varnish-trees
+and elders, was mother’s milk to the eager, quivering sense
+of Sên Ruben. The place, the time, the thronging Chinese
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>
+people, the eager, symbolical procession—all were sacramental
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>Standing here, quick to it all, he thought as he watched
+his kinsmen’s leisurely litters, of taxis in Piccadilly, trams
+on the Embankment, ’buses in the Strand. His lip curled a
+little. He thought that Ho-nan kept the seemlier, manlier
+pace, and he saw more reasonableness, more health, more dignity,
+many times more beauty in this bedecked and musicked
+threading of life’s twisted maze than he ever had in the push
+and tangle of London’s harder ways, London’s more emphatic
+thoroughfares.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben did not follow on with them to the climax and
+end of their road. He felt that a Sên should not do that on
+foot. He did not care to stand there in the crush of the outer
+crowd. He would present himself to his kindred, as a home-returned
+prodigal should, within the walls that girdled the
+dwelling house, or at the great ceremonial gate. He would
+not stand aside with their retainers—still less with the peasants
+and villagers not of their blood, but only of their thrall—nor
+would he intrude his presence and kinship upon them,
+the seniors of his clan, until they had accepted his credentials
+and anointed him with welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Next year perhaps—some year certainly—he would ride
+with them, his litter carried among theirs, as they went in
+state to meet and welcome the Spring.</p>
+
+<p>He knew every item of the climax of the ceremony when
+at the Eastern edge of their land they met the Spring. Another
+year he would share it, have in it his part, return to
+the great house with them, pass in with them to the great
+decked garden, help to beat the Ox, to drive it to work hard
+and well—a symbol that all the agriculturists who tended the
+fields and orchards of Sên would be industrious through all
+the moons of planting, tending and reaping, until the Feast
+of Lanterns came to give a nation of faithful husbandmen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>
+almost a moon of festival and holiday. He would help to
+slaughter and burn the gigantic Ox and the <i>Mang-Shên</i>—the
+huge paper man that was following it there, its driver
+and plowman, the hardworked god of agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>For all the Chinese gods work; they have but little playtime;
+less even than the busy-bee people of China do; and
+of China’s many gods the god of agriculture and <i>Ts’ai Shên</i>,
+the god of wealth, work hardest of all. <i>Mang-Shên</i> rarely
+rests, <i>Ts’ai Shên</i> never rests at all.</p>
+
+<p>The head of the Ox was painted a glowing yellow, a sign
+to the watching peasants that the coming summer would be
+greatly hot. But there would be days of heavy rain, too, for
+<i>Mang Shên</i> was hatless, but wore very stout shoes. The inordinate
+number of <i>Mang’s</i> garments repeated the yellow-headed
+Ox’s promise of intense heat; the scarf of white that
+belted <i>Mang Shên’s</i> coat and loins promised long moons of
+good health—for the gods are spirits, and reverse all the sartorial
+customs of men, wearing white for joy and red for woe.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was glad to see <i>Mang</i> girdled with white, and
+was glad of the promise of heat that the Ox and its driver
+gave; Sên Ruben rejoiced in heat.</p>
+
+<p>Not to-day would he seek or ask admission into that great
+home of his that shone down there in the wood-girthed
+meadows like a jewel in an exquisite setting of green—not
+to-day when all the vast place was a-seethe with the keeping
+of <i>Li Ch’un</i>.</p>
+
+<p>His home-coming should be in some tranquil hour of quiet.</p>
+
+<p>To-night he would lie where his chairmen were camped
+beside a willow-hung gurgling stream where the pink-backed
+trout were snoozing.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben, with a last long wistful look after his kindred
+as they went, turned and slipped away, his going as unnoticed,
+he thought, as his presence had been unmarked.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">
+    CHAPTER XXII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Long before he reached his camp Ruben knew that some
+one was following him.</p>
+
+<p>At first he thought that some other was taking by chance
+this same path as he; but he thought it odd that even one of
+all that countryside had kept apart from the jubilant anxious
+throng that went forth to meet the Spring and to bring Ox
+and Ox-driver back to the cremation that would send down
+their ashes to till and to urge under the ground, sending up
+the fructified grains to bulge the bins of the Sêns. Some
+woman or child, perhaps weary of waiting for the procession’s
+return, or sent on some imperative errand, it might be;
+for the tread that followed his was light.</p>
+
+<p>Then he knew that whoever it was was following him; told
+it by the inexplicable, voiceless oracle that we never see, but
+that always we feel—and usually heed.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben swung round and waited.</p>
+
+<p>A woman—in mourning! Excluded for that from the
+day’s jollification? He never had heard though that they
+that mourned might not worship; and <i>Li Ch’un</i> was a worship
+of Spring.</p>
+
+<p>The woman came more quickly on, and when she had
+gained to where he stood waiting, ko’towed and threw herself
+at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>In trouble? Wanted his help? he wondered.</p>
+
+<p>She should have it! The first of his race who had claimed
+his succor here in the Province of his fathers!</p>
+
+<p>“What would you?” Sên Ruben asked—and his voice was
+a promise.</p>
+
+<p>The woman lifted up her head, reached up towards him
+her close-clasped hands, in gestures of salutation and of fealty—and
+she still knelt at his feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Hail, lord-one! Nine times three times welcome home,
+noble son of thy celestial father!” the woman cried, half sobbing.
+Ruben saw the wet on her face.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you?” he questioned her gently.</p>
+
+<p>“Thy slave!” the kneeling woman told him passionately.
+“I am your slave-one, noble lord of our noble clan—your
+slave and the widowed concubine of the pure and elevated,
+honorable Sên Po-Fang who keeps his fragrant state on-High
+now with his holy hand on great Ya Tin’s girdle.”</p>
+
+<p>“How comes it that you know me?”</p>
+
+<p>“That, great lord, La-yuên the concubine-one cannot say.
+She thinks the trembling leaves of the soap-tree whispered it
+to her as you passed her, she sitting there in the cool of its
+fragrant shadow waiting to see <i>Mang-Shên</i> come back. I
+know that the lotus-like lord-one is Sên Ruben, the son of
+Sên King-lo whom Ya Tin so loved that she builded for him
+a temple lovelier, costlier than all other temples here in our
+Queendom. Ya Tin, the green jade of all women, rules us
+now from on-High, as she ruled us here in her house and
+courtyards, because her soul is great and her heart a day-star
+and of infinite wisdom. Hail and welcome! Sên Ruben, son
+of Sên King-lo, son of Sên Ruby, the White Rose of China—Sên
+Ruby whom La-yuên the concubine loved with a great
+love that was humble.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben flushed. He had thought that his own name for
+his mother, though never, for some deep hidden reason, to
+her had he called her so. And now this widowed “secondary”
+of a dead Sên, crouching down in the dust at his feet, clad
+in the coarse unbleached sackcloth-like stuff of Chinese
+widowhood, spoke of his mother so. Perhaps his father had
+called her so!</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben bent and lifted La-yuên up to her almond-nut-shaped
+feet. And she giggled a little as he did so, because
+since she had come to Sên Po-Fang’s harem, little more than
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>
+a pretty painted child, no hands of a man, save only the
+hands of Sên Po-Fang, had touched her before.</p>
+
+<p>“You have not her deep beautiful color,” the woman said
+commiseratingly, “but something you have of her face-features,
+this concubine-person thinks, and I hear in you her
+voice, though deeper since a man’s. However, I know, I
+know, my lord-one, that you are hers, as surely as I know
+that you are lord Sên King-lo’s. She spoke not our tongue
+of Ho-nan, but my ears hear her voice in yours. Comes not
+my lord now to his home? Your feet go from it as you went,
+before you turned at the sound of mine. There”—she
+pointed—“behind that glade of oak and sycamore lies the
+great gate of your people’s wall. This way you went leads
+to nowhere, honorable lord Sên Ruben.”</p>
+
+<p>“It leads to my camp,” Ruben told her. “There I will lie
+to-night, and to-morrow, when their busied time of <i>Li Ch’un</i>
+is past, will I beg the welcome at the gate of our house.”</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên screamed in dismay. “Lord-one, lord-one,” she
+protested, “it is not for you to lie out in the open wild like a
+coolie who toils for his rice. Come in through your own
+walls, La-yuên implores, and this your slave will do all for
+your honorable comfort until those more fit to welcome you
+come home with <i>Li Ch’un</i> and <i>Mang-Shên</i>. True, there are
+few there to serve the lord Ruben, but at the Hour of the Hen
+those noble ones will come, and until their fragrant return
+the larders of the kitchens are bursting with succulent salt-things,
+or if my lord eats sweet, as do the white tribe of his
+honorable mother, there are cases and cases of sweetmeats.
+Your slave, the widowed concubine-one, has the keys of the
+wine-room; she will draw for you flasks of the golden wine
+of Shantung, and when she has washed from your beautiful
+feet the dust of the way that has presumed to approach their
+elegant loveliness, she will coax her lute to sing to you.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
+La-yuên is skilled in the touch of the music lutes. I entreat
+you, come home!”</p>
+
+<p>“To-morrow, kind widow-one, I will come, and then you
+shall make me sweet music, and give me the flowers-and-jades
+of the larder—I too ‘eat salt’ more often than I ‘eat sweet,’
+and we will drink together, you and I, to the souls of our
+ancestors.”</p>
+
+<p>“My lord! my lord”—La-yuên did not giggle now; La-yuên
+was painfully shocked—“speak not such uncouth thing
+in the ears of Sên C’hian Fan and Sên Jo Hiêsen! They
+would misjudge it. The concubine may not moisten her lips
+in the presence of a lord-one!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben laughed. “I will maintain the greatest circumspection
+in the presence of my august kinsmen, doubt not
+you that. And for that same estimable reason—our Sage
+would command it—Sên Ruben will not break in among his
+kinsmen like some wolf of the forest that prowls at the night
+hours—see, already the day-star turns and bends lower up in
+the heaven clouds—but will come as a Sên should come to
+the Sêns when the star rises up trailing its jeweled robes
+behind it, throwing them before it—rises up from the East
+side of our Earth ball.”</p>
+
+<p>“Must so it be, great lotus bud of a lotus clan?” La-yuên
+asked sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>“It must, kind widow-one; for I know that so it should be.
+Turn you back now; retrace your way to the others who
+watch at the wayside for the return of <i>Mang-Shên</i>; I go on
+to where my camp waits my return. I bade that it waited
+until I came or sent. To-morrow you shall greet me again
+within the gates of our people.”</p>
+
+<p>“Show me first,” the woman pleaded, “where your place
+of halt lies, that I may find it. Then will this slave-one obey
+you and leave you—not to go again to the throng of women-ones
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>
+and babe-ones that wait chattering at the waysides and
+on the hill-slopes for the procession’s come-back, but to
+hasten her to the home-place, that she may bring to her lord-one
+Sên Ruben comforts for his night-time, basins of fit eat-things,
+flasks of rich drink-things, soft mats for his lie-on,
+warm rugs that he be covered, for the night dew is chill,
+lord-one. All that she can carry she will bring, making
+the journey again and again.”</p>
+
+<p>“That you shall not,” Ruben said gently, “none of it! I
+forbid it.”</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên held out her hands in entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>“I forbid it! Truly, kind-one, my camp-place is well
+furnished with all that I need.”</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên wrung her hands.</p>
+
+<p>She no longer disputed his decision, but she murmured
+despairingly, reproachfully too—for all her voice’s humility,
+“If our great Old-one were here with us, she would beat me
+that I lay on my soft mat while the son-one of the lord Sên
+King-lo lay without his own walls. Nor will I! All this
+night-time I will lie out in the cotton garden with the scarecrows,
+where the night-bats make the sleep-hours a flap-noise
+with the clamor of their leathern wings. And I will fast
+until you come, for so Sên Ya Tin would command, the jade-like
+Old-one who so loved Sên King-lo that she builded to
+him a temple the fairest in Ho-nan, and so loved his wife Sên
+Ruby, the White Rose of our clan, that always, by Sên Ya
+Tin’s command, in the temple of Sên King-lo burns a ruby
+candle to the honor of the lady Sên Ruby.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would see it,” Sên Ruben said eagerly. “Can I see it
+from yonder hill-slope?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, lord-one; but if you will suffer this secondary to
+lead you but a short space beyond those walnut trees there
+by the water, you shall see its roofs shining like golden water
+rippled in the sunshine.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben caught his breath, turned and followed La-yuên
+without a word.</p>
+
+<p>Even when they had reached the summit of the hillock
+carpeted with Spring’s wild flowers, beyond the walnut grove,
+and the woman paused, neither spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did La-yuên look at Sên Ruben. It was not for her
+to watch his face as he looked on the temple that old Sên
+Ya Tin’s love had builded in bribery to the gods for the purging
+of Sên King-lo’s soul, that it might be received on-High
+at last, all its soil of Western sojourn, Western marriage
+forgiven; all his stain washed away by the purification of
+her prayers, the vigils she had kept, the incense she had
+burned, the costliness and beauty of the dedicated temple.
+Yellow roses sprang across from a trellis of lacquer to a
+trellis of jasper and roofed with a mat of leaves and buds
+and blooms incense burners of silver and of jade; it was a
+temple of indescribable loveliness.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">
+    CHAPTER XXIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>La-yuên the concubine had not overpraised it; Ya Tin
+had not overpromised it when she had said to Sên
+King-lo at their parting, “I will raise a <i>pai-fang</i> for thy
+pardon of our gods; I will build a great temple on the hill
+where the peach-trees cram the melons on its slope and the
+cypresses wear the winter snow on its crest.”</p>
+
+<p>In all China—where man’s hands have achieved the most—no
+lovelier thing than this ever was achieved; not even when
+Marco Polo, whose eyes had surfeited on the sumptuous
+beauty of Venice, saw Hangchow the jewel city of earth, as
+it was.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had seen it before in his dreams. For often Kow Li
+had boasted and crooned to him of the pearl-of-all-temples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span></p>
+
+<p>But Ruben Sên had not seen this!</p>
+
+<p>Matched to the reality, the dream was poor and cheap; for
+the boy dreaming in London had had but his knowledge of
+the tawdrier buildings of Europe from which to filch the
+fabrics of his dream temple.</p>
+
+<p>High on the hill slope, in a garden of peach trees, Ya Tin
+had builded of marbles and ivory the temple whose incredible
+cost was small in comparison to its beauty; a great low, one-storied
+temple that lounged on the peach-tree hill like a great
+sprawled, sun-drunk dragon of ten thousand glittering jeweled
+scales.</p>
+
+<p>Winds and rains and the heat-torrents of summer had
+stained the twisted ivory columns a delicate apricot, but the
+marbles of the alternate pillars—white, pink, green, one blue,
+one gold, two red-veined black, one of gold-stone from Kokonor,
+two the color of blood—were as undiscolored as when
+Sên Ya Tin’s workmen had heaved them into place, fresh
+and virgin from mallet and chisel.</p>
+
+<p>The few broad steps that led up to the temple door were
+of solid malachite, their edges encased in lead open-work.
+The temple’s windows—four at the East to welcome the day-star’s
+coming, four at the West to hold the stain of his going
+as long as they could on the temple’s lacquered floors—were
+latticed with lace insertions of silver, threaded with wires of
+gold and paned with painted and embroidered silk.</p>
+
+<p>The temple roofs of pale-bronze tiles looked like tents of
+scaled gold. Little beasts of clay and of pottery squatted and
+perched and lolled on its ridge poles and corners. Long
+tassels of iridescent glass dangled from the roof’s up-curved
+lips, lamps and lanterns of elaborate workmanship hung and
+swung from its eaves. The under-sides of the fluted out-jutting
+roofs were intricately carved and inlaid, their very
+edges delicately scalloped.</p>
+
+<p>About three of the great outer pillars enormous metal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
+clinging dragons twisted and writhed, their heads of gold
+thrust out, their open, coral-lined snarling mouths and angry
+red-lacquer tongues menacing all evil-comers, their restless
+jeweled eyes aflame in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Two great pelicans—one of burnished steel and copper and
+bronze, one of chisel-feathered stone—stood on either side of
+the temple’s approach. One held in his polished beak the
+chains of a gong, the other a hanging incense-holder; and
+the pelican of stone itself was an incense-burner so cunningly
+contrived and wrought that up through his feathers always
+twisted thin spirals of perfumed smoke-burning incense never
+suffered to burn out and die; for Sên Ya Tin dying nearly
+a dozen years ago had willed and charged it so.</p>
+
+<p>The sky above was cloudless molten blue; the trees behind
+were a tapestry of splendid greens, from the nearly black of
+the cypress trees to the apricot-green of the peach-trees’ baby
+leaves; jade and emerald bamboos, moss and sea-greens; a
+lovely jumble of green that ravished the eye and rested the
+soul and mind; a gentle, quivering, imperial arras behind the
+loveliest temple in China, built by a Chinese woman for a
+Chinese man who had erred in marriage, and strayed and
+stayed in barbarian heathen lands and ways.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the temple a <i>pai-fang</i> spanned a gurgling stream
+that sang and danced over its bed of pebbles beneath soft
+banks of violets and ferns, forget-me-nots and tiny musk
+roses sewn thickly with little wild lilies and nodding, head-heavy
+daffodils.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben could not hear the music the brook made, but
+he saw its bubbling dance of green and blue and gold and
+pearl. He knew his father had dabbled baby hands in it. He
+knew that temple and costly crimson <i>pai-fang</i> were a prayer
+for the peace of his father’s soul.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben gazed and knelt, looked long, and covered his
+face with his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was utter silence here.</p>
+
+<p>The bamboos bent and swayed as if in welcome and kindly
+attendance. The foliage of oak and cinnamon-maple stirred
+a little in the Spring’s pleasant air. Violets and anemones
+quivered gratefully in the grass. A squirrel watched shyly,
+very still up in a silver-stemmed red beech.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben looked again.</p>
+
+<p>His face was as still as the squirrel’s, almost as soft and
+shy, but his heart was quivering; his being shook.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty over there on the hill of peach-trees with tiny
+green, new-come melons lumping the vines and cluttered between
+the peach-tree trunks moved him; but a thousand
+times more he was moved because of what <i>pai-fang</i> and temple
+said to him.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke; he heard.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben thought that his father Sên King-lo and old
+Sên Ya Tin, who had loved and not misunderstood, stood on
+the temple porch and smiled at him.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall say?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Sên Ruben rose.</p>
+
+<p>The dress he wore no longer seemed strange to him. He
+drew his fan from his sash and gestured with it respect and
+fealty—and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“Can you lead me there?” Ruben asked, without turning
+his head or his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“This slave can lead you, flower-like lord,” La-yuên did
+not turn towards him or lift her eyes from the ground as
+she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“I would go,” Ruben murmured.</p>
+
+<p>“It is no too far,” the woman answered.</p>
+
+<p>“I would lie there to-night—alone. I wish that none may
+know.”</p>
+
+<p>“No one need know,” La-yuên told him. “It is this same
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>
+concubine widow-one who feeds at sunset the belly of the incense
+pelican. She will lead you, sir; and when at the Hour
+of the Hen she has filled it with adequate powdered sandalwood,
+she will leave her lord, not to return to him until the
+hour he has bade that she should.”</p>
+
+<p>“To-morrow’s morrow at the Hour of the Snake I would
+go as I have come—unseen, unknown.”</p>
+
+<p>“It shall be,” La-yuên said.</p>
+
+<p>“Lead me the way.” Ruben turned to her.</p>
+
+<p>And La-yuên lifted then her face and looked at the lord
+Sên Ruben—and she smiled. No one had seen La-yuên
+smile since Sên Po-Fang had died—not even Sên O-i-t’ing
+her son, for the babe she had borne her dead lord had died at
+its birth and lay in an unmarked grave at a far edge of the
+Sêns’ garden of tombs.</p>
+
+<p>Then La-yuên—when she had ko’towed, once to Sên Ruben,
+twice to the temple Sên Ya Tin had builded of marble and
+jasper, of ivory and brass and lead, jade, malachite, and of
+prayer and love—turned and went through the lemon and
+<i>ginko</i> trees, on through the camphor trees, through a glade
+of golden willows, through a world of wild white roses, over a
+meadow of violets until they came to a vine-hidden lane that
+led to the temple.</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên’s heart sang as they went—as it had not since her
+lord had died. But the heart of Sên Ruben was so full that
+it ached.</p>
+
+<p>The tender, red-tipped leaves of the peach-trees were uncurling
+in the warming spring; here and there on their
+glossy stems of spray a little soft clot of velvet thickness, the
+size of a baby nut, was a peach that before Autumn had come
+would swell into a wrinkled ball of luscious meat covered in
+sumptuous colors of ripeness. Blue and jade butterflies were
+taking their first flight. The grass belched out the sweetness
+of mignonette, thyme and verbena underneath the easy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>
+crunch of their padded feet as the man and woman went across
+it, and in Ho-nan even the grass is sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke as they went. It was not for La-yuên to
+speak to the lord she guided unless some word or gesture of
+his bade her speak; and Sên Ruben was speechless.</p>
+
+<p>The day-star marked the Hour of the Hen on the temple
+eaves and stained its gold on the green of the temple steps.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben stood and watched the woman while she replenished
+the fragrant smoldering fire stored in the gray stone
+pelican’s body.</p>
+
+<p>Then she left him without a word passing between them.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that she would come as he had bade. La-yuên
+knew that he would keep his vigil alone.</p>
+
+<p>And the woman knew that he would fast here at his lord
+father’s temple and arch. It was not for her to bring him
+food here. His thoughts and his pious fealty would feed and
+strengthen him.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben would not touch coarser food than meditation
+and prayer here. But perchance he would bathe his brow and
+his wrists, and would drink at the bubbling silver brook that
+danced and laughed between the crimson shafts of Sên King-lo’s
+<i>pai-fang</i>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">
+    CHAPTER XXIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>On a garden bench in Surrey, the seat on which her father
+had died in her mother’s arms—but the girl did not
+know that—Ivy Sên sat leaning against her lover. His arms
+were about her, his face on her hair.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor was very fond of the girl he was going to marry in
+less than a week, in the gray village church back of Mrs. Sên’s
+rose garden.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ivy Sên loved fiercely—so intensely that everything else
+was wiped from her consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The girl’s burning happiness frightened her mother, who
+knew how terrible the disillusion would be, if disillusion ever
+came. And Ruby Sên knew how few marriages ever escaped
+disillusion for all time—knew that every human relationship
+must walk on the ground now and then. She feared what it
+would do to Ivy, if but once the ecstasy that so intoxicated
+the girl now were to sicken or dull.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruby Sên was pathetically thankful that Ivy was going
+to marry a man whom she loved, simply and sweetly as happy
+girls did.</p>
+
+<p>Against any adventurer or one he had suspected of that,
+Charles Snow would have set a face of flint; would have
+tightened relentlessly the strings of the Sên purse over which,
+by King-lo’s will, he had considerable control. But his one
+semi-official interview with Gaylor had given Sir Charles no
+loop-hole for that.</p>
+
+<p>He was convinced that Gaylor would go on with the marriage
+even if Ivy were to receive not a penny of income from
+her father’s estate, not so much trousseau as a small tradesman’s
+daughter. All ground for financial objection was cut
+from under his feet.</p>
+
+<p>To Gaylor he could find no objection.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, he told the other plainly, he should prefer Ivy
+not to marry, and told him why. But he did it altogether
+in loyalty to a promise he had made to dying Sên King-lo
+and not because he believed that it might affect Gaylor.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor took it more gravely than Sir Charles had expected.
+But he gave no sign that he would retract because of what
+Snow had said, and Snow left it at that. He had put up no
+such fight as he had with young Sên King-lo years ago in
+Washington. He had loved the Chinese boy who was far
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
+from home and kindred; he did not love this Englishman
+who was in his own country, and presumably able to look after
+himself. The Gaylors had greeted Ivy cordially. Lady Gaylor
+was “a hard-pated mondaine” whom Snow much disliked,
+but he believed that Ivy would more than hold her
+own against any mother-in-law. She had expressed herself
+delighted at her son’s engagement, and seemed to mean
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow pounced upon her husband as soon as Gaylor
+had gone. The interview had not been long.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“Right enough, I think,” Sir Charles said a trifle drearily,
+“at least he is, I mean.”</p>
+
+<p>The wife nodded contentedly. Whatever dear old Charlie
+wished, Emma Snow wanted Ivy to have her chance, and
+had no doubt at all that Ivy’s only chance of happiness lay
+in a successful marriage. Certainly Tom Gaylor was right
+enough, and a bit more than that, she considered. Ivy would
+marry some one; that was written; and surely the poor little
+thing had a right to her one chance if ever a girl had. Life
+had been hard luck on Ivy. But in Gaylor the queer child
+had chosen rather wisely. And all might be well with her
+now. London did not mind Ivy’s Chinese face; evidently
+Tom Gaylor didn’t either. And that was that. Lady Snow
+wished them both luck.</p>
+
+<p>“So—” she purred, “you didn’t turn him down!”</p>
+
+<p>“Gave me no chance to. He is a nice fellow. I’ve no
+doubt of that. Not too much mind, but breeding, of course,
+and more than the average share of character. A bit thick-skinned,
+but good-hearted—very. Well, his thick skin, if I
+am right there, may come in very useful to him; and his
+goodness of heart useful to her! He is only moderately in
+love with Ivy, Emma.”</p>
+
+<p>“Charlie!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It’s true, dear. I am sure that he does not know it; but
+I do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why did he propose to her then? You say he has character;
+every one who knows him well says that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I said that I believed he had more than the average share.
+In my opinion the average share is very little.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you think he will find a thick skin useful?”</p>
+
+<p>“Often is.” And Lady Snow knew that, try as she might,
+she could drag no clearer answer than that from her husband.</p>
+
+<p>“Why does he want to marry Ivy, if he is not in love with
+her?”</p>
+
+<p>“I did not say that he was not in love with her. He is—moderately.”</p>
+
+<p>“Moderate love!”</p>
+
+<p>“Wears best sometimes; very often stands most strain,
+comes through disillusion best. Oh, Gaylor is fond of her.
+And I have no doubt that he always will play the gentleman.
+That is the best security their future has.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy loves him very much. She is a changed creature.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Snow agreed. “And I suspect that is what has
+done it. Ivy, impetuous in love, as in everything else under
+her sun, fell madly in love with Gaylor from the word go.
+I was with Ruby the day they met, Ivy and Gaylor. She
+broke into her mother’s room—a new girl—and as good as
+told us. She was out on the river with Blanche and Blake;
+they ran into him—Gaylor; Ivy clapped her eyes on him,
+and made him a present of her heart then and there, gave it
+to him with both hands. Blanche saw it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t mean—” Emma Snow began miserably.</p>
+
+<p>“That little Ivy ‘ran after’ Gaylor? Certainly not. But
+what Blanche saw—not a very observing woman, dear—probably
+Gaylor felt and it drew him. That is how I read it then,
+Emma, and how I read it to-day. It drew him, and he warmed
+to it; caught fire more or less from her, and from her appealing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>
+loveliness of a type he never had seen. There is only
+one Ivy Sên in London Society. That accounts for a lot.
+Besides, his chivalry was stirred. He felt it was up to him
+to make the running. He’s that sort. She fascinated him
+and allured him. But—probably without knowing it—Gaylor
+pitied Ivy and played up. And that is the great danger I
+see for their future—and I see several. Love is not akin to
+pity. That is a flabby, putrid theory, Em. Pity creates a
+pseudo-love—a poor weak sort—fragrant and pretty while
+it lasts; but it never lasts—can’t last, for it has no root.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope you are wrong!”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope I am. Time will show.”</p>
+
+<p>Blanche Blake had seen how it was with Ivy that first day
+on the river; Gaylor had not. He had thought Miss Sên
+a great good sport, and very sweet, to meet him as she did
+after their sorry encounter at Burlington House. And he
+instantly had thought that what he unfortunately had said
+there would have remained unsaid and unthought if the
+Chinese lady on the R.A.’s canvas had been one-tenth as
+pretty as Miss Sên was.</p>
+
+<p>The rest had followed as most such conflagrations do. And
+theirs had had fuel and to spare. It still burned brightly
+six months later, warming them both, heart and body, as
+they sat together in the moonlight in the garden at Ashacres
+on almost their wedding eve.</p>
+
+<p>It had surprised Mrs. Sên almost as much as it had pleased
+her that Ivy had chosen to be married quietly in Brent-on-Wold
+parish church instead of elaborately in London. Lady
+Gaylor had protested almost violently. A number of people,
+with much less right to dictate or meddle, had also protested;
+several had coaxed. Ivy had smiled, and taken her way. Ivy
+Sên’s heart was too full for her to tolerate a “function.” She
+felt that she must be alone, as nearly as she could—alone with
+her joy and her lover on her wedding-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s face when he read his mother’s letter telling him of
+Ivy’s unexpected decision quivered tenderly, and his blue
+eyes misted. “How she must love him!” he whispered to the
+roses in the old Ho-nan garden. A fear for his sister that
+had cut chill at his heart for years melted and went as he
+read his mother’s letter. He wished he had known Gaylor.
+His heart was warm to the man who, the mother wrote, had
+made life a new and sweetened thing to Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>The moon flooded the fragrant garden and did its best
+to make the old and rather ugly church beautiful—a squat,
+ordinary building with a square disproportioned battlemented
+clock tower. The Brent-on-Wold church had but two beauties:
+the ancient yew that almost dwarfed it—a yew from
+which the loyal parishioners had paid their tribute of bow-and-arrow
+wood to their King centuries ago—and the great
+stained-glass East window that would have jeweled any
+cathedral in England. It was the window that Ruby Sên
+had given as a memorial of her Chinese husband.</p>
+
+<p>The man drew the girl still closer, and she buried her face
+on his coat with a little fluted sob.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">
+    CHAPTER XXV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Sêns were washing their cats.</p>
+
+<p>The Sêns were not cat worshipers, but a royal-born
+Sên woman had been, and the clan revered her memory, and
+clung to her old custom religiously—and half in prank.
+They washed their cats once a year. A Chinese cat rarely is
+loved—but almost invariably it is cherished.</p>
+
+<p>The older and uglier the cat, the greater its value; for the
+old and ugly ones are those efficacious in their performance
+of the destiny for which they are born—the driving off and
+holding at bay every evil demoniac influence that threatens
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
+the dwelling’s outer gate or door. Old cats are sacrosanct,
+most especially those that are fierce-faced, loud-voiced and
+ill-tempered; kittens are tolerated. For it is as difficult to
+achieve an old and venomous cat without the antecedent of
+kittenhood as it is to make an omelette without breaking an
+egg or two.</p>
+
+<p>The Sêns were proud of their birds and their dogs, their
+cattle and deer, and were fond of them too, but they had
+scant affection for their cats—except here and there an indiscriminating
+little toddler who “liked little pussy” because
+its coat was soft and warm and its temper, not yet infuriated
+by the bondage and indignity of being chained, was bent on
+frolic. But since cats are a necessary adjunct of every great
+Chinese establishment, the house-and-yard-proud clan liked
+their cats to be particularly well kept. And to-day—the second
+day after <i>Li Ch’un</i>—was a great day in the princely
+Ho-nan homestead.</p>
+
+<p>Like every great function in China, Wash-the-Cats had
+begun almost before dawn’s first faint crack.</p>
+
+<p>The wash place steamed and smelt of soap. More than
+a hundred cats yowled—not in unison. Most of them struggled,
+many of them scratched, some of them bit.</p>
+
+<p>The Sêns, a great and puissant family, enormously rich,
+cultured for centuries, squatting on the ground or kneeling,
+vigorously labored at scores of small wash-tubs. They were
+doing it with serene good-temper and with as much gentleness
+as the struggling and squirming of five score well-soaped
+and soaked cats allowed.</p>
+
+<p>Because their Wash-the-Cats was somewhat sacerdotal, men,
+as was fit, were doing the work, while the women lounged
+about them, watching, advising, criticizing and chattering
+almost faster and shriller than yowled and swore the angry
+and disgusted cat-ones.</p>
+
+<p>The children ran and toddled and crawled in and out
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>
+among their mothers, between the tubs, off to the flowers;
+chasing the butterflies, romping with each other, trying to
+romp with the puppies and dogs; but that could not be accomplished
+to-day! The most frolicsome dogs in Ho-nan
+had something far more delectable than playing with children
+and babies to-day! The day of the cats’ martyrdom
+was the great joy-day of the dogs. Each kept as close to
+the soapy fray as it was allowed, and watched with delighted,
+bulging eyes, gloating over the suffering, angered cats. Even
+the puppies were tense and quiet, held tight and fixed in the
+leash of their own appreciative excitement. Not that the
+Sên dogs ever annoyed, much less tortured, the cats of the
+place; the Sên dogs were too well bred and far too well
+trained for that. But the ancestral enmity that had raged
+and waged when China was a manless forest of wild things,
+perhaps, persisted despite the human discipline that veiled
+it; and the Sên doggies loved “Wash-the-Cats” and hugged
+as close as they could to its strident core, feeding fat the
+ancient grudge of the old primeval days.</p>
+
+<p>It was a busy scene, unique perhaps in Earth’s civilization;
+such a scene as only one country—China—ever shows; and
+there only to be seen in such great and conservative households
+as this, a family of Chinese nobles earnestly washing
+their cats—doing it carefully and gravely; men whose fathers
+had been kings, whose nursing mothers had been queens before
+China was an empire.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said, in Western print, that there is no caste
+in China. In every essential sense no land has ever had
+more caste than that greatest of all the democracies, the Chinese
+Empire. Though to-day no longer an empire in name
+it is not yet in soul—perhaps never will be—the social tatterdemalion
+that the gossipy press of Europe and America judge
+and report it. Caste in China is not as caste in India, even
+less as caste in Europe, but it exists, and it is adamant.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>
+Wealth does not touch it, poverty cannot tarnish it; ancestry,
+education and character make and uphold it—nothing else
+enters into or approximates it at all. Even the Chinese cats
+have caste. Chinese dogs are demarked by it sharply; from
+the flea-bitten and flea-biting pariah-mongrels of wharf-side
+and alley to the sleeve-dogs accouched by royal midwives and
+reverently portrayed by China’s greatest artists. But Chinese
+cats wear their caste with a difference. One cat passes
+through many castes; some Sên cats through as many as
+the ages of man once were counted on Avon.</p>
+
+<p>But the seven castes of these being bathed may be roughly
+grouped into three: the kittens not yet promoted to active
+service, the slayers of mice and rats, the door-and-gate
+guardians.</p>
+
+<p>Mere servants were washing the kittens, those callow, untried,
+mischievous youngsters not yet trusted or tested in
+either of the two honorable cat industries—the slaughter of
+vermin and the keeping out of evil spirits. The younger and
+lesser Sêns were washing the mousers. The old men and
+those of established influence were washing the “guardians.”
+Sên C’hian Fan himself was struggling with the temple cats.</p>
+
+<p>Sên King-lo was not the only man of his blood who had
+gone afar and had sojourned in the West. Sên P’ei-yü,
+home-come but yesterday, had a Harvard degree; Sên T’sung
+had spent three years in Oxford and two in St. Petersburg.
+And two here had served the Manchu at European courts.
+Sên P’ei-yü still wore the Western garb he had journeyed in;
+he was not washing, and Sên T’sung smiled a little grimly
+as he bent over the almost boiling soap-suds in which he was
+rubbing and scrubbing a wild-eyed striped black-and-white
+that lashed his hands fiercely with her tail. It was the best
+fight she could put up, because she was securely muzzled and
+her feet were securely tied in thick socks; a precaution that
+had to be taken with several of the older and more embittered
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>
+cats, lest human eyes pay the penalty of lost sight for
+the observance of an old custom.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan was washing the most honorable and honored
+of all the hundred-odd, a mild-faced, venerable tortoiseshell,
+so imperially yellow that it was named “Palace Sun
+Flower,” kept its state on a chain of gold at the foot of the
+Ancestral Temple steps, had a cushion to lie on, several cat
+assistants to keep watch and ward when Sun Flower slept,
+was pampered in diet, often caressed, wore a jewel in its left
+ear, and twice a day was let at large in the netted-over cattery-courtyard.
+But the mildest cat may turn. The Flower, turning
+his handsome leonine head suddenly to see how his friend
+and light o’ love, a silver fiend named “Perversity,” was enjoying
+her bath at the hands of Sên Tom Young, Sên C’hian
+Fan’s sponge and hand slipped, almost blinding poor old Sun
+Flower with astringent soap; and Sên C’hian Fan’s hand and
+arm ran with blood. The honorable Sun Flower-one was
+neither muzzled nor stockinged.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the only scratch inflicted as the cleanly work
+went on; but the Sêns worked steadily.</p>
+
+<p>If the castes of the Sên cats were few, their breeds were
+many—chinchillas, smokes (blue, silver and bronze), silver-flecked,
+cream-grays, and several more.</p>
+
+<p>There was a terrible din of fire-crackers and drums. Noise
+is not quite so sure a driver-away of ill-spirits as old cats are,
+but it is the next best substitute, and wherever a cat was
+kept on its chain ordinarily, serving boys were lighting fire-crackers
+now and beating drums as fast and hard as they
+could.</p>
+
+<p>If it could in no way be described as a leisurely function,
+without exaggeration it was a slow and long one. More than
+one Sên would feel the pangs of hunger before the last cat
+was washed and dried and restored to its vocation and chain.</p>
+
+<p>If there were but the long cue of a hundred cats here, there
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>
+were four times a hundred tubs, sometimes. Each cat had its
+own tubs, and each cat had four; stout little tubs on four or
+six tough squat legs, each tub with two flat but spike-like
+handles standing opposite each other on its rim, in each
+handle a round hole through which ropes are threaded for
+convenience in carrying away when the good work is done.</p>
+
+<p>Tub number one was the long-soak-and-first-scrub tub. It
+was filled with steaming hot water. “Cat” was immersed and
+held down—all but its nose, ears and eyes—for several minutes
+religiously measured by a diminutive hour-glass that
+stands on the bathman’s low table of varied impedimenta.
+Then a strong hand rubbed a cake of strong soap—sometimes
+a ladle of softer and stronger soap—well into fur, skin and
+crevices. Cat’s face was washed, a human thumb of a kneeling
+servant lad held over each angry eye to save it a painful
+soaping; washed with a well-soaped, thoroughly plied rag.
+Next the impatient sufferer was lifted out of tub number one
+and thrust firmly down into tub number two, a trifle larger,
+a trifle hotter, and all was done again. A good massaging the
+animal got this time from pungent soap and skillful fingers.
+Tub number three was the hot-water rinse-tub; a long immersion
+this time, and puss was tightly grasped by the back
+of its neck and its horrified head plunged in and out of the
+almost bubbling rinse water a number of times. Tub number
+four was filled with almost cold water, for anti-tuberculous
+reasons. The yells that went up from those cold water number
+four tubs shivered the ears of all who heard them; would
+destroy the hearing of ears less inured to the blasting noises of
+China.</p>
+
+<p>But the worst is over. The well-washed cat is swathed in
+a hot towel from stacks ready on a brazier of red hot charcoal.
+Then number two hot towel, and cat gets such a rubbing as
+mere words cannot tell. When every hair is dry as a tinder,
+feet, claws and ears are attended to and eye corners are not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>
+forgotten. The toilet of the ears is a terrible business; a
+careless pen stated prematurely that the worst was over.</p>
+
+<p>But every sorrow has its end—even in the life of a cat in
+China.</p>
+
+<p>Beside each table of tools and et ceteras, a great wicker cage
+awaits the completed toilet, and when a microscopic inspection—a
+search for parasites that, to do the Sên cats mere justice,
+rarely resulted in a find—had been followed by a prolonged
+combing, each cat was bolted in its wicker cage, the
+cages put in the sunniest places possible, and the Sêns, weary
+but triumphant, retired to their own tubs and a really needed,
+well-earned breakfast, while the attendants removed tubs,
+tables and all the soapy litter of the multiple feline toilets.</p>
+
+<p>But that was still an hour or two in the future—and Chinese
+hours at that. Each hour has one hundred and twenty
+of our minutes.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was rising in splotched and crimsoned splendor.
+The young pink and green leaves glistened softly on the beech
+and walnut trees that rimmed the great sweep of grass doing
+duty for bath-room. Birds began to tweet, then to sing.</p>
+
+<p>An old, old monkey—but impish still and prankish—dangled
+from the tallest nut tree, jabbering and pelting cats
+and Sêns impartially with twigs and soft just-forming baby
+nuts. He aimed with fiendish exactitude, but none rebuked
+or complained, for Yam Sin had been the privileged toy of
+Sên Ya Tin, and since that Queen-one’s going on-High had
+neither been chained nor punished.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan spluttered an angry oath. Sun Flower had
+given him the slip; Sun Flower the great green-eyed, needle-clawed
+temple tortoiseshell. The huge beast was well-nigh
+as strong as a tiger-cub; suddenly it had wrenched and wriggled
+its soap-slippery body out of Sên’s half-scalded and now
+half-numbed hands, plunged and hurled itself free of man
+and water, overturning its tub as it sprang, drenching Sên
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>
+C’hian Fan’s feet, shoes, and quite a length of Sên’s legs too,
+and splashing the man’s face, eyes and nostrils with the soapy
+bath-water.</p>
+
+<p>Then they raced—the cat and the man. The Sêns rocked
+with laughter—all but Sên C’hian Fan. Sên C’hian Fan’s
+well-soaped shoes slipped on the wet, soapy grass; Sên slid,
+slipped—fell; measured his long length face-down on the
+soap-pooled ground. The first lap was Sun Flower’s; nine
+score Sêns and twice as many servitors squealed a hurricane
+of glee.</p>
+
+<p>Sun Flower flew towards the temple—the temple that Sên
+Ya Tin had builded to Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan sprawled up unsteadily and made after.</p>
+
+<p>The onlookers were hushed and appalled.</p>
+
+<p>If a cat entered the temple, the temple would be defiled,
+and from that the gravest disasters might be piled upon all
+the clan and crush it to the dust. Cats are the outer guardians
+of many holy places, but must not enter them.</p>
+
+<p>All who dared leave their own immediate charges—the cats
+they were tubbing—ran pell-mell by twenty short cuts to
+head off Sun Flower, if they could, before he gained the temple
+steps; for that Sên C’hian Fan should overtake a cat
+going at such a pace and with such a start was palpably impossible.
+In their frantic eagerness to avert a great family
+disaster several had dragged the cats they were washing out
+of the water, and gave chase with soaped and squalling wet
+cats clasped to their manly breasts—in several instances a
+valor ill-rewarded, for more than one lost the wet puss he
+had so brashly extracted from its bath and that meant a
+bath all over again.</p>
+
+<p>The cat won.</p>
+
+<p>Sên dashed after him into the temple.</p>
+
+<p>Again the cat dodged the man, hurtled out of the temple
+it had defiled, down the steps and up a lemon tree.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span></p>
+
+<p>None followed Sên C’hian Fan into the temple—none might
+do that unless he, the head clansman, bade it.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan lingered in the temple.</p>
+
+<p>They made no doubt that he was burning prayer-papers
+and sticks to purge and purify, kneeling at the altar of Sên
+King-lo, whom Sên Ya Tin had so loved; propitiating and
+beseeching the gods to forgive the desecration; and they
+waited with bated breath and grave eyes to learn when he
+came to them again if the gods had vouchsafed some sign
+of their forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>They were wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan there in the temple had forgotten the very
+existence of Sun Flower, all thought of the peccant tortoiseshell
+blotted out in the sharpest amazement he ever had experienced.</p>
+
+<p>He had approached the altar, as the cat scurried out, to
+make such atonement as he could. But as he stretched out
+his still wet hand toward the prayer box he started, stiffened,
+his outstretched hand fell to his side, his eyes were glazed in
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>A man lay fast asleep before the altar—a Chinese gentleman
+by his garb. Sên C’hian Fan could not see the face
+snuggled down on a plum-colored sleeve as on a pillow.</p>
+
+<p>Then he saw the ring the sleeper wore—a signet of the
+Sêns, centuries old, an heirloom of great pride that Sên
+C’hian Fan knew—they all knew it—that Sên Ya Tin their
+queen old-one had given to her favorite grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên C’hian knew that Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo
+had reached the homestead of his kindred—knew that
+Ruben the white Sên had come home to Ho-nan, for ill or
+for good.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">
+    CHAPTER XXVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan’s face softened.</p>
+
+<p>He was not glad that Ruben had come, but he could
+hold no bitterness to the boy who, garbed so, slept so at the
+foot of a father’s altar, who wore the signet of the Sêns on
+his hand—not at least until the stranger kinsman had earned
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>Here in the temple that old Sên Ya Tin had builded to
+the father of Sên Ruben, Sên C’hian Fan could feel no
+rancor towards the young kinsman who had journeyed so
+far to do worship to a father, who had crept so untrumpeted
+to pray beside his father’s tablet. The older Sên had no
+doubt that the boy had done that—and praying had fallen
+asleep, overcome by the weariness of long and arduous travel.
+A great heap of perfumed ashes in the ash-catcher of an
+incense burner, another such ash-heap and another, testified
+for Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese heart of Sên C’hian Fan could not keep cold
+or hard to a kinsman young-one who had so proved his first
+of all the virtues, filial devotion; and in proving that had
+proved, too, his very Chineseness. The heart of the man
+watching the other as he slept might sour or harden to Sên
+Ruben under stress or rasp of future circumstance or discord—but
+not here, not now.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Ruben felt his kinsman’s presence—perhaps he
+had slept his sleep out. He rolled over, gave a sleepy sigh of
+contentment, and opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Blue English eyes and Chinese black eyes met—and locked.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>“Greeting!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben sprang to his feet, sprang up to make the salutations
+of respect and obedience to his elder and kinsman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan bowed in return to Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>“Thou art welcome, far-come one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thy servant has come home, sir my lord,” the boy said
+pleadingly but proudly.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan smiled. “Come to thy rice, boy-one kinsman
+from beyond the edge of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian knew that the earth we live on did not, firmly
+as his ancestors for centuries had believed that it did, end
+abruptly just beyond the Great Wall, just yonder over Nippon,
+a little south of Ind, a long throw west of Persia; but
+he chose to use speech of old days to his new-come kinsman.</p>
+
+<p>How in all the devils had this pale-one contrived to enter
+their gates or scale their high walls; how contrived to find
+his way all undetected, undebarred, to the temple of Sên
+King-lo?</p>
+
+<p>But he would not question him here. Already they had
+chattered more than was fit in the temple of a sacred tablet.</p>
+
+<p>And he would question him of nothing until he had fed
+him. The traveler who had slept from great weariness must
+hunger for his rice. Sên C’hian Fan hungered for his and
+was minded to have it now; even if Wash-the-Cats was incompleted.
+One cat certainly would have to be washed all
+over again to-morrow! Well, let it. It was high rice-time
+now. Sên C’hian had done a hard day’s work, young though
+the day still was; his hands bled, a rough scratch athwart
+his nose tingled uncomfortably; he needed the stimulant and
+refreshment of scalding tea, the reënforcement of snail-and-rice
+pancakes, the sedative and consolation of many pipefuls.</p>
+
+<p>He took Ruben’s hand in his own, and led him out, down
+the temple steps to where those gathered at the temple spirit-wall
+stood watching amazed and in consternation.</p>
+
+<p>And some of the peasant-ones fell down on their faces,
+prostrating themselves half in fear, half in worship, thinking
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>
+that a spirit-one had come to them with Sên C’hian Fan
+from the temple of Lord Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben knew that the lord-one and <i>doyen</i> of their
+most noble tribe did him great honor, gave him high welcome,
+since Sên C’hian Fan led him hand-in-hand, hailed him and
+crowned his home-coming by the touch of flesh and flesh; an
+intimate token that even close kinsmen rarely—very rarely—give
+or brook.</p>
+
+<p>None dared follow them, for Sên C’hian Fan had bade
+none do so as he and Ruben passed between the little human
+throng that parted at their coming. But twenty heads turned
+to watch them as they went, twenty tongues fell a-chattering
+as soon as C’hian Fan and his unaccountable companion had
+passed them. And the Sun Flower, crouched up on the old
+lemon tree, waved his tail to them as they went, an orange
+plume of victory; tauntingly at Sên C’hian Fan, and to Sên
+Ruben in defiance—or in greeting.</p>
+
+<p>Devastated Wash-the-Cats was completed that day without
+the presence of the clan’s headsman; most irregular!</p>
+
+<p>And when they had bathed their hands and faces—C’hian’s
+needed it the more—C’hian Fan and Ruben breakfasted alone
+in one of the smaller <i>k’o-tangs</i>, waited on ceremoniously by
+soft-footed, deft-handed house-servants, men and boys expressionless
+of face, but whose yellow bosoms were almost
+bursting with curiosity, whose thin small ears bent obsequiously
+to catch every word they could. What a Chinese
+house servant cannot hear when he really listens rarely is
+worth hearing.</p>
+
+<p>There would be weird tales to tell and to hear to-night
+when the servants of the great household pulled their pipes
+in the courtyard in which they took their leisure—and chattered
+of their masters—telling each other of all the girdle-wearer
+ones had said and done all day long.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span></p>
+
+<p>Host and guest faced each other across a small marble-topped
+table. Their seats were stools.</p>
+
+<p>That they directly faced each other was a rudeness to
+Ruben. But the elder Sên believed that the ignorant one
+from across the seas would not know that; and it was easier
+to study the stranger’s face seated so.</p>
+
+<p>At first they said but little; C’hian Fan was hungry, Ruben
+after his long fast was famished.</p>
+
+<p>But the man who was at home and accustomed here watched
+the other with devouring curiosity, although he did not appear
+to watch him.</p>
+
+<p>But when a course or two—a dozen small bowls of heaped-up
+food and sauces to a course—had been removed, and their
+hunger a little appeased, Sên C’hian began to question, deeply
+curious to learn more of this unwelcome-one, and, too, because
+an interchange of questions is the preliminary politeness
+of every Chinese conversation. Interchange of thought,
+discussion of affairs or business may follow on—usually does
+to endless length of words—but questions and answers must
+have the first, and no short, place.</p>
+
+<p>The more Sên C’hian Fan watched and listened the more
+he was puzzled. Where had this kinsman who had lived in
+the West until a few weeks ago learned to use Chinese words
+and Chinese chopsticks as if he always had used them? Sên
+King-lo had died in Sên Ruben’s babyhood, and C’hian knew
+that Sên Ruby had neither liked nor adopted Chinese manners
+or customs. And Ruben knew the names of dishes that
+the older Sên was sure the other never could have eaten in
+Europe. He even knew how to answer Chinese questions, and
+to return them—the prescribed, stereotyped interrogations of
+Chinese politeness.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he asked, Ruben told him; gave the credit
+where it was due.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Kow Li—yes, I recall that one of our ‘babies’ followed
+Sên King-lo, your noble father, on all his wanderings. I
+think I have heard that Kow often writes even now to his
+family here—and that he prospers.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has prospered exceedingly,” Ruben stated. “Li is a
+very rich man—and a staunch friend!”</p>
+
+<p>“Many of our servants are that,” C’hian replied both indifferently
+and cordially, accepting serf-devotion as the
+gentle’s merest right, but claiming it proudly as a race virtue.</p>
+
+<p>“Can I see his family—his relatives?” Ruben asked. “I
+should like to greet them; and dear old Kow will like to hear
+of them from me—hear more than letters often tell—when
+I am back in London.”</p>
+
+<p>“What if I will not permit you to go back?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben smiled a question—what did his kinsman mean?</p>
+
+<p>“In China it is the host who gives the guest leave to go,
+not the guest who takes it. He who comes unbidden may not
+go untold to go.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I know. I have been taught that. But my mother
+wants me, cousin; and no Chinese will ask a son to overstay
+the liberty his mother has granted him.”</p>
+
+<p>“No Sên will!” C’hian Fan answered. “When must you
+leave us, Sên Ruben?”</p>
+
+<p>“Long before the <i>ying su</i> moon, I fear.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan devotedly hoped so! How soon, he wondered,
+would Sên Ruben demand to see the estate account-books,
+how soon demand his seventh share of all their wealth—his
+by right. One seventh! It would tear an ugly gap in
+their splendid fortune. And to have it taken out of China!
+China needed all her wealth now. Money was strength—the
+greatest, surest of all the international strengths—and the
+giant nation beset by all the pygmy peoples of jealous East
+and avaricious West needed strength as in all her smoldering
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>
+flaming history she never before had needed it. It was
+not in Sên C’hian Fan to be dishonest—it is in few Chinese;
+still less was it in him to repudiate an ancestral debt—that
+is in no Chinese. And on the death of Sên Ya Tin one-seventh
+of all the Sên fortune belonged to the estate of Sên
+King-lo. Sên C’hian Fan had no thought, no wish, to deny
+it. But he grudged that such potential power should go from
+China in this day of national factions, threatening civil war,
+alien encroachments and—as he saw it—stupendous and
+thievish trickeries.</p>
+
+<p>However, Sên Ya Tin had charged them when she lay
+dying that one-seventh of their all was Sên King-lo’s son’s
+and should be given when he claimed it.</p>
+
+<p>Did this pale, half-Chinese, half-Sên deem that they might
+dispute what indeed he might in this time of schism and
+transition find insuperably difficult to wrench from them
+against their will? Did Sên Ruben fear that it would take
+time, address, cajolery? Only so could C’hian Fan read it
+that the blue-eyed one thought to tarry here until such time
+as the cooling moons approached the frozen Poppy Month.
+Pah! Had the white half-Sên never heard of honor? Did
+not Sên King-lo’s son know that Sên honor neither caviled
+nor flinched?</p>
+
+<p>When would the English Sên speak? The sooner the better—speak,
+take, and go!</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian’s fine lacerated hand clenched on the ivory
+stem of the ginger help-spear as he pronged up the best lump
+of the ginger and thrust it into Ruben’s bowl of chicken, rice
+and mushrooms.</p>
+
+<p>“You can have speech of all the Kows when you will, most
+eminent cousin-one. I will bid them attend you when you
+will. Some of them are near, some farther off, at the edges
+of the domain; but it will not take many hours to fetch them
+to your heel. Kow Yong Shu, to whom Kow Li indites his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>
+not altogether infrequent letters, is our head dog-keeper.
+There is little he knows to do beyond his office, I fear, but he
+is trustable and discreet, and you may care to attach him to
+your personal service while you are here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, my honorable cousin, this person requires no servant
+here—save only the general service of the household attendants,
+if you grant it to him. I have come to be your servant,
+cousin, here in the house of our fathers. It is that I ask—that
+and to stay awhile here one of my own people, to live their
+life and share it, to see and know my homeland that I have
+loved and longed for since my birth day.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is what you wish?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is what I ardently wish, Sên C’hian Fan. I have
+crossed the world for that; it is my soul’s desire.”</p>
+
+<p>“And—what else?” The question slipped from Sên C’hian
+Fan before he could check it. He would have recalled it if
+he could. C’hian’s teeth bit his tongue as he waited Sên
+Ruben’s answer.</p>
+
+<p>The answer was prompt. “Only that, nothing but that,”
+Ruben said simply.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên C’hian Fan did not believe Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>“When I am wedded—” Ruben began. He started a little,
+started more than a startled Chinese girdle-wearer should, as
+something rough and heavy fell imperatively on his shoulder.
+Ruben turned abruptly, more nearly turned his back upon
+his elder and kinsman than a Chinese gentleman under any
+circumstances should; turned and saw a bright brown bear
+sitting close beside him, sitting upright on its haunches, opening
+and closing its mouth in unmistakable appetite; staring
+at him gluttonously with its avid little eyes, its nostrils quivering,
+its tongue beckoning to Ruben’s food-bowls hungrily.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan was watching Ruben intently.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello, old bean!” he said in English.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span></p>
+
+<p>Bruin growled at the unaccustomed speech—or perhaps at
+the easy mockery in the white man’s voice.</p>
+
+<p>But it did not reject the sugared sweetmeat Ruben gave it;
+and Sên C’hian Fan saw that the white hand did not flinch
+from the edge of the sharp-fanged drooling jaws; saw how
+confidently the younger Sên tweaked caressingly the beast’s
+up-set pointed ear as it munched, one mean red eye cocked
+sharply on Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>This stranger, who had come to spy and to despoil, was
+Sên-like, in some ways!</p>
+
+<p>“You were about to tell me a thing of great interest and
+importance, when Lung Tin thrust his ugly snout into our
+conversation. You are affianced? And will wed, on your
+return to England, the distinguished English maiden of your
+lotus-like mother’s selection! This kinsman, your poor and
+inadequate host, makes you his humble and ardent congratulation,
+honorable Sên Ruben.”</p>
+
+<p>“The gods forbid,” Ruben exclaimed quickly. “I am not
+affianced, my venerable cousin and most indulgent host. When
+I am, my bride will be of my father’s race. Believe me, O
+my cousin, I am Chinese for all that my bleached skin belies
+it; and rather will I die unwedded, to lie for all time unmourned
+in a dishonorable grave, a poor pariah of the hell
+underworld, than marry with any but a Chinese maid.”</p>
+
+<p>That might not be so easy, Sên C’hian Fan reflected cynically,
+especially if this human oddity had any thought of
+marriage with a maiden of repute and family, and it could
+not be gainsaid that he wore his robes and used his chop-sticks
+like a true sash-wearer. But etiquette forbade C’hian Fan
+the discourtesy of saying aloud that Sên Ruben might not
+find the first Chinese gentleman he approached eager to accept
+a son-in-law from the West.</p>
+
+<p>But he did venture a question that his seniority and their
+kinship gave him full right to ask.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You have seen the maiden you desire?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not met her—yet,” Sên Ruben said softly.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan was much puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>When this other had denied that in coming to Ho-nan he
+had had no motive more ulterior than to visit the home of his
+father and of his ancestors, to see and know his Sên kindred,
+to take for a time his place, a Chinese in China, Sên C’hian
+Fan had not believed him. But the sincerity blazoned in the
+voice that had said, “My bride will be a Chinese maid,” had
+rung its message through to Sên C’hian Fan. C’hian Fan
+knew that Sên Ruben meant it.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben appeared to worship his mother; and C’hian
+remembered how little King-lo’s English wife had liked
+China and ways Chinese! How would she welcome a Chinese
+daughter-in-law?</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan was very puzzled—so puzzled that he
+thrust his fingers in the rinse-cup, and lifted the soaked,
+steaming towel to his lips before his guest had used either of
+his.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">
+    CHAPTER XXVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>La-yuên had taken no part in Wash-the-Cats, nor had
+watched it. Such things were nothing to her now.
+Only the Feast of Lanterns lured her now, of all China’s
+fairyland, jeweled functions, and it only because she knew
+that Sên Po-Fang came back to Ho-nan then, and that his
+spirit was near her when the scintillating great dragon,
+eagerly chasing the Pearl-of-Perfection, snorted out its fire-stars
+and <i>ruyie</i>. But for it, functions were husks to La-yuên
+the widowed concubine.</p>
+
+<p>Her children were dead—her babe whom Sên Ruby had
+played with, and her babe she had borne her dead lord.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span></p>
+
+<p>When Sên Po-Fang had died, La-yuên his concubine had
+died too!</p>
+
+<p>But a woman can die—lose all appetite for life and for
+life-things—and yet hold her friendships. There are such
+women and La-yuên was one. One may perish in self and
+yet one’s loyalty live on, for true loyalty cannot die. There
+are many such Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Loyalty to her lord’s house bade her serve Sên Ruben.
+Loyalty to the will of Sên Ya Tin commanded it. For Lord
+King-lo’s wife, the white Lady Ruby, La-yuên the young
+and happy concubine, radiant in her lord’s favor and in his
+number-one’s, radiant in her girl-motherhood, had felt a
+peculiar friendship, tender, respectful, protective, as Chinese
+servitors so often do for those over them. There are no class
+hatreds in China—unless we have brought and taught them.
+Moreover, La-yuên in those bygone days had pitied what
+she had clearly seen was Sên Ruby’s loneliness, aloofness,
+discontent in the house of her husband; and the lady Sên
+Ruby had sent gracious words and rich gifts to La-yuên from
+Hong Kong when King-lo and his wife were sailing back
+to the West—gifts of garments and baubles that had seemed
+ten times gracious and rich to the concubine because the
+giver had worn and used them. And La-yuên’s gratitude held.</p>
+
+<p>The woman had taken some risk in admitting strange Sên
+Ruben surreptitiously into the homestead. But personal risk
+of her own was nothing to the seared woman; had it been
+much, La-yuên would have taken far more bitter risk than
+that for the son-one of Sên Ruby, the White Rose of China.</p>
+
+<p>She busied herself in the house and courtyards. There
+was enough for willing spare hands to do when almost all
+were gathered to do, or to serve or to watch, Wash-the-Cats;
+and always La-yuên was willing to work—for the Sêns. She
+had parted with joy, but she clung to service, and found it
+an almost pleasant bridge from Now to Hereafter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span></p>
+
+<p>Wash-the-Cats did not interest her. The welfare and order
+of larder and <i>k’o-tang</i> did. And when she had done all she
+could find for her care—all of the myriad this-and-thats of
+housewifery and supervision, as perpetual and imperative for
+human home comfort in China as in Christendom—she fetched
+her spinning-wheel into the dove’s courtyard, scattered their
+corn, lit two notched candles, shielded from any stray puff
+of air that might come, and sat her to spin.</p>
+
+<p>It was not dark, or even dim, in the courtyard; the sun
+was up; La-yuên needed no light beyond what the glowing
+day-star gave her. The candles were her timepiece—the
+common timepiece of old conventional China. Each notch,
+when the candle was lit, told that an hour’s quarter had been
+burnt up—thirty minutes as time is told at Greenwich.
+Frugal as the Chinese are, they usually light twin candles
+on shop counter or home casement, when they light candles
+for clocks, that their track of time shall not be lost, should
+by any accident one candle be extinguished. And La-yuên
+lit her brace of clocks because such accidents, take what precaution
+you may, inexplicably do happen now and then.</p>
+
+<p>When the Hour of the Snake had come, she laid down her
+spindle, and rose to keep her tryst with Sên Ruben; to show
+him a way from the temple and out of a tree-shrouded gate,
+helping him to go as he had come, secretly and unsuspected,
+that he might return in more circumstance to greet his kindred,
+and to ask greeting and welcome of them.</p>
+
+<p>All others that were not ill or imperatively held to work
+in the house, or far off in the estate, would be at Wash-the-Cats.
+By the route she would lead Sên Ruben, none would
+see him.</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên had counted without Sun Flower the meek-faced,
+tiger-like tortoise-shell.</p>
+
+<p>In the temple doorway she paused, and looked toward the
+tablet-altar. It was there that Lord Sên Ruben would be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>
+waiting for her, keeping his vigil in its filial sacredness to
+its last instant.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was not there.</p>
+
+<p>The woman paled.</p>
+
+<p>She searched the temple anxiously, searched it repeatedly,
+though where she could expect to find him, when she did not
+instantly see him, were hard to say. The lovely prayer-room
+was not vast and its exquisite, priceless furnishings were few.
+There was not a coign there where a human body much
+smaller than Sên Ruben’s could hide or be hidden. The largest
+object the temple held—a great incense burner of Satsuma,
+crystal and gold—would not have screened or coffined a man
+half his size.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was not there!</p>
+
+<p>Had he gone? Or had he been found and dragged away?</p>
+
+<p>Where was Sên Jo Hiêsen; where was An Pin? But
+she knew that they both were at Wash-the-Cats, were at it
+hard.</p>
+
+<p>Who had done this thing?</p>
+
+<p>What had befallen Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo?</p>
+
+<p>Trembling and shivering she left the temple, searched frantically
+about its garden, its courtyard, its marble steps and
+carven terraces, searched among the lemon-trees, searched
+everywhere, no place within many rods too improbable for her
+now frenzied fear to investigate.</p>
+
+<p>Alack! Not here, not there!</p>
+
+<p>She would to P’wing Nog; only P’wing Nog could help
+her now, the <i>hsien-jen</i> who lived in the cave in the sulphur-hill,
+and who knew all things—and could tell them, if he
+would.</p>
+
+<p>P’wing Nog should tell her where and how was Sên Ruben.
+She would make P’wing Nog tell her—only the gods knew
+how. But nothing should hide Sên Ruben from her, or keep
+him from her succor and service.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span></p>
+
+<p>Fast as her binded feet and her beating heart would let her,
+she sped down the birch-lined path, through ferns, over violet
+beds just pimpled shyly with hooded baby buds. For all that
+is said of such feet (deformities not to be defended—though
+probably less injurious than Western footgear sometimes is)
+La-yuên had been lapwing gaited once, and still had fleet
+pace when she chose.</p>
+
+<p>Almost breathless, but toddling on valiantly and rapidly,
+she reached the avenue of crab-apple trees, turned the twisted
+path’s corner sharply, checked herself and her running with
+a little quickly smothered cry of surprise and relief just in
+time to escape colliding with a friendly party of three walking
+slowly toward the gold-fishes’ alabaster tank.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan and Lord Sên Ruben were speaking together
+gravely, but unmistakably their speech was amiable,
+and Sên Ruben was walking in the place of honor on C’hian
+Fan’s left hand, and Sên Ruben’s left hand rested companionably
+on Lung Tin’s shaggy coat. Lung Tin waddling with
+much dignity and pressed as close as he could against his new
+friend-and-patron’s silk-clad flank. Sên Ruben accepting and
+caressing the spoilt tame bear who had been the chief minor
+torment of Sên Ruby’s Ho-nan ordeal!</p>
+
+<p>La-yuên bowed, almost knelt, as she drew aside for C’hian
+Fan and his companion.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben half-checked his pace, but the woman’s eyes before
+they fell meekly to the ground warned and implored him to
+give her no hint of recognition, and she gave him none.</p>
+
+<p>“Whither goest thou so hastening?” C’hian demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“To the eel pond, eminent Sên C’hian Fan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thou liest,” C’hian laughed. “Coming from it mayhap,
+but thou art not going to it, not as thy lilies ran.”</p>
+
+<p>“First I go to the flax-shed—but for a no-length moment.
+Then go I to the pool of the eel-ones,” the concubine retorted,
+minding her points of the compass more astutely this time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lung Tin turned his head and growled at her insolently.
+La-yuên cuffed him soundly on his pointed ear.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan threw her a kindly gesture. Lung Tin
+growled more discreetly; and they went their ways, La-yuên
+towards the flax-shed until she was from their view, the men
+and the bear on to the gold-fish tank, Ruben a little flushed
+with guilt and remorse that, in his joy at his kinsman’s
+gracious welcome, and in spite of such unceremonious arrival,
+he had quite forgotten the woman and that she was to seek
+him in the temple when the Hour of the Snake was ripe.</p>
+
+<p>And what, he wondered, should he say in explanation, if
+Sên C’hian Fan questioned him about how he had found
+his way to the temple, how gained over the homestead’s walls,
+or through one of its close-kept gates?</p>
+
+<p>He would not lie to the Sên who had received and welcomed
+him—fed him but now. He would not betray the concubine
+who had befriended and indulged him.</p>
+
+<p>It was a poser!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">
+    CHAPTER XXVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Very slowly, but quite surely, Ruben won them—won
+even Sên Jo Hiêsen and the servitor who had begged
+to be sent to Hong Kong to assassinate the English intruder.
+Of them all, only An Pin never quite “took to” him—the
+phrase is as current in Ho-nan as it is in Dublin and Chicago.
+That one dislike persisted in direct descent of La-yuên’s smack
+far more than it existed against Sên Ruben himself.</p>
+
+<p>There were days when Ruben Sên was homesick for England.
+You can’t nursery a boy, half English by blood to
+start with, in a Surrey garden, “breech him,” as it were, at
+Eton, give him his fresh young manhood at Cambridge, and
+thrust him across the world, and leave him alone in China
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>
+for the most of a year—in a Chinese domain in far Ho-nan
+where few others even thought of Europe, where English news
+rarely came, and never an English book or newspaper—and
+have him take firm and satisfied root at once. Ruben Sên
+did take root, but in rooting there in the home of his people
+he had twinges of “growing pain”—some of them sharp
+ones. Not even China can quite wipe England out from
+the thought and longing of one who has lived in England as
+Ruben had. It seemed to him preposterous not to know
+whether his ’Varsity or the Oxford crew had won the race.
+He missed his mother and he wondered and worried a good
+deal about Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the whole, he was happier here in China than he
+ever had been before, for he knew that he should find <i>her</i>
+some day, and his young masculine heart was confident that
+he should win her. And he knew also that but for his mother
+he never would leave Ho-nan again; not even for Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>There were difficulties in his stay here, of course, his ingrowth
+in so unaccustomed a human environment. And
+there were social and personal quicksands that might have
+engulfed him, and might have divorced him entirely from
+the kin of his with whom he so earnestly wished to amalgamate.
+Kow Li had done wonders, but not even that astute
+and devoted “baby”—the old Chinese millionaire of Bloomsbury
+who after almost his lifetime of exile was fanatically
+Chinese—could give to the eager and quick-minded half-caste
+what thousands of years and cultured establishment,
+sacrosanct family conventions and, most potent of all, natural
+environment had given to the Sêns here in Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>But La-yuên, the widowed concubine who neither could
+read nor write and did not know that China was a republic—or
+know what a republic was—constituted herself his mentor,
+philosopher and slave and kept near him always when she
+could—so unobtrusively that the Sêns scarcely noticed it.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>
+And La-yuên steered him past the snags and drew him away
+from the quicksands. Sên Ruben was the white son of her
+adoption and love, the last love of her loyal life. She guarded
+him at every point, and, although he never knew it, curbed
+and prompted him constantly.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: Ruben never knew that it was something
+that La-yuên had said, as she knelt in the aviary path one
+day dusting the earth and the dew from his shoes with her
+sleeve, that caused him to say to Sên C’hian Fan, as they sat
+smoking in the moonlight among the musk-roses and globe-flowers
+that ran perfumed riot all over the marble terrace that
+circled the apricot hill, “What a wealth of heritage—this!”</p>
+
+<p>So! It was coming at last. Well—he had known it would
+come; and it was but just, and the law, that it should.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew that my father’s people were very rich, that their
+holding here in Ho-nan was almost a kingdom—”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a kingdom, Sên Ruben. Every great patriarchal
+Chinese home-place is that,” C’hian Fan interpolated quietly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—yes,” Ruben agreed, “and in a way and to an extent
+that even a Chinese who was born and always has lived in
+the West and largely among Westerns could not understand
+until he came back home.”</p>
+
+<p>“Home? You mean <i>here</i>, Sên Ruben?”</p>
+
+<p>“Assuredly. This is my home, Sên C’hian Fan, as truly,
+as deeply as it is yours. But I again must leave it, go back
+to exile, as my father did. I marvel that he chose to live so
+long in exile; wonder and wonder <i>why</i> he did. But for me
+it is the only path; the road my feet must walk and keep to
+while my mother lives. I beg all the gods that my exile may
+be long; but if my mother goes before me to the spirit of
+noble Sên King-lo on-High, then will I come back to Ho-nan,
+and keep my old years and my burial in this our home.”</p>
+
+<p>“Widow-ones re-wed in England, I have heard, and that
+it is held not dishonorable to do so there.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span></p>
+
+<p>“That is truth. But my lily-mother will not wed again.”</p>
+
+<p>“Art sure?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite sure, I thank all the gods. And I would choose to
+go on-High hand-in-hand with her, leaving my sons to mourn
+and worship at our graves; would so choose it that she need
+not cross the cold death-lake alone, or journey alone into the
+under forest until my jade-like father meets and greets her.
+But if so the gods do not grant it, then will I return to Ho-nan;
+nor will I come empty-handed; my father left a not
+mean fortune—half mine when I shall be orphaned; not
+wealth perhaps matched with thine—but still a sum that
+not even the coffers of the Sêns could despise. What is our
+wealth here, Cousin? It would give me pride to know, if
+you could name it.”</p>
+
+<p>C’hian smiled. He did not doubt it!</p>
+
+<p>“Sên Yung-lin can tell you that better than I can—in
+terms of money, Sên Ruben. Yung-lin is our accountant.
+He will go through the books and deeds whenever you choose
+that he should do so. Roughly—but in this disrupted China
+of to-day it will be difficult to put a firm value on anything
+that is not actual money, and not even that by any money
+standard of yours, because the <i>yuan</i> is so disestablished and
+fluctuating in sterling exchange—roughly, as nearly as I can
+guess it, our fortune to-day—land, claims, interests, shares,
+money, jewels, other treasures, buildings, crops stored and
+growing, and all altogether—is not less than seventy million
+<i>yuan</i>, growing towards much more than that amount if this
+present threatening of civil war comes to nothing, and provided
+China is developed not on insane chimerical lines but
+on sane lines and on sound foundations.”</p>
+
+<p>“Seventy million <i>yuan</i>! About seven or eight million
+pounds! What a fortune! Splendid! By the way, C’hian
+Fan, it is cackled in the courtyards—and I hate to be so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
+wronged in the courtyards of Sên Ya Tin—that I have come
+to claim my seventh share in the family wealth.”</p>
+
+<p>“I supposed you knew the law—and the family practice,”
+C’hian said smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Yes, I know that much of Chinese law. I have had
+a good tutor, Cousin C’hian Fan.”</p>
+
+<p>“So did I suppose it. But I am not sure that you could
+enforce it—the old Chinese law of equi-distribution—in this
+new Republic of China.” C’hian Fan laughed as he spoke,
+but he was watching Ruben’s face more narrowly than he
+showed.</p>
+
+<p>“But that does not matter,” Ruben laughed back.</p>
+
+<p>“It does not matter,” Sên C’hian Fan said gravely. “We
+shall not repudiate your claim; you will not need to urge it.
+The edicts of Sun Yat-sen and the edicts of Tsao Kun are
+nothing to us, not theirs nor any other upstart’s; but the
+family laws of our great clan hold, and we obey and honor
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>“You!”—Ruben’s voice cracked in his surprise and hurt—“Sên
+C’hian Fan, you! <i>You</i> have not harbored that thought?
+Tell me that you could not! Oh—forgive me, Sên; you were
+laughing at me—laughing at me that I cared what foolish
+idle women-ones chattered in their courtyards—and I deserved
+it. I would have battered in the face of any man-one
+who had said or thought it; but one should not feel anything
+at the follies of serving women. You were ‘pulling my leg’
+as we say in England.”</p>
+
+<p>“It sounds a Western expression,” C’hian Fan remarked
+silkily. Why did this white-faced stripling hide behind the
+peacock so; did he expect them to offer his heritage to him,
+entreat him to accept it, force him to take it? If he did, he
+had mistaken his kinsmen. Sên C’hian Fan would not smooth
+his way for him! Did this young, beardless one think to cross
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>
+wits with <i>the</i> Sên, blind him with willow leaves! A half-Chinese
+outwit in indirection a Chinese whose beard was
+gray!</p>
+
+<p>Then—suddenly—Sên C’hian Fan thought of Sên Ya Tin
+on her death mat, and of what had been her last commandment
+as she rigored in the death-angel’s clutch. And—“I do
+not see,” he said gravely, “why you should not wish to have
+what is yours, Sên Ruben, why you should not take it—even
+if you do not need it. Wealth has the heartier appetite
+for wealth, the world over, I have heard; of a certainty it
+is so in China.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben’s fair face flamed, his blue eyes glinted like
+rapiers. “I see!” he said fiercely. “That I am rich, in England,
+has nothing to do with it; I agree with you there. If
+I were here practically a beggar and without one cash beyond
+my journey-money back to my mother, I would not take so
+much as a ‘shoe’ from China—not a <i>yuan</i>—not a brass cash.
+It is not that I would not take from you, from the family,
+what I know is my rightful share, if I might stay in Ho-nan;
+it is that I will not rob China. Never will I take one piece
+of Chinese money into the West.”</p>
+
+<p>“We should not miss it, Ruben,” the older Sên said oddly.</p>
+
+<p>“China would miss it—or lack it. China needs her all now,
+and more. I will not rob China’s birthright of my birthright.
+The West will bleed her white unless she has a care,
+Sên C’hian Fan. It has made my blood boil to see some
+of our treasure filched, and held in Europe; ivories, pictures,
+bronzes, silks, needleworks, locked in Western museums, decking
+English merchants’ houses, bartered for across the counters
+of London shops. It has angered and hurt me, my cousin-one;
+now to see it again when I go back will be unendurable.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan saw the moisture that had gathered in
+Ruben’s wide blue eyes. And Sên C’hian knew that Sên
+Ruben had spoken sincerely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+<p>But, being Chinese, a great generosity quickened and
+swelled in C’hian Fan in answer to Ruben’s, in emulation of
+Sên Ruben’s. And he urged, eagerly, sincerely, what but a
+few moments ago had seemed to him a catastrophe and unfairness
+and to be avoided if Chinese honor—and a Sên’s—could.</p>
+
+<p>“Hear me, I charge thee. Sên Ruben whom I love well,
+whom I honor with great and tender honor. I am the chief
+of all our house. I speak to you for our noble ancestors, and
+I speak to you with the voice of our old holiest, the incomparable
+Sên Ya Tin. It was her wish that the share of eminent
+Sên King-lo never should be deviated from the fruitage
+of his loins. We must not disregard her wish or disobey it.
+I dare not; you must not—lest disaster fall on all our house,
+our ancestors be disennobled, our graves desecrated. What
+Sên Ya Tin spoke must be!”</p>
+
+<p>“Hear me now, O Sên C’hian Fan, kinsman and headman
+whom I love and honor humbly.” Sên Ruben, sitting a little
+lower on the sloping sward, turned on his stool and laid his
+hand with an impulsive boyish gesture more English than
+Chinese on his cousin’s silk sleeve. “Even because I so
+revere her jeweled memory, and because I love her—the very
+thought of her—for her goodness to my mother, I dare disobey
+our great old-one Sên Ya Tin the Queen of Sênland. <i>I disobey
+her.</i> In this thing I disobey her now and always. Already
+before her passing did she give great wealth to my
+father; she favored him beyond strictness of balance when
+she willed him also one full seventh. Let that pass; Sên
+King-lo, who would have had it otherwise, brooked it—brooked
+the great gifts of Sên Ya Tin, and it is not for me
+to cavil at them. But he held them in trust for China always;
+Sir Charles Snow, of whom I have told you——”</p>
+
+<p>“An honorable gentleman,” C’hian said, “he is held high
+in China.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span></p>
+
+<p>“He has told me that over and beyond the great provision
+that Sên King-lo made for my mother, and the good dower
+he locked for my sister, he intended all he had to flow back
+to its home-source—here in the queendom of Sên Ya Tin.
+Even when I was a babe-one he sensed that, in spite of my
+long nose and colorless skin, I his son was <i>all Chinese</i>. He
+expected me to live and work for China—” and Ruben believed
+it. Sir Charles had faltered from telling Ruben uselessly
+that Sên King-lo had feared to have Ruben go to
+China; had believed it useless because he saw that Ruben
+<i>would go</i>. “He augmented all that his own father left to
+him, and all the great pouring of Sên Ya Tin’s golden largesse.
+By Sên law—sacred to you and to me—one-seventh
+of all here is mine. Keep it for me, cousin-one and headman.
+I forbid that a <i>yuan</i> of it journey—as I must—from our own
+country. Keep it for me to thrive and wax here, or to be
+spent for China’s preservation. I will come for it, or send
+my sons for it; not to take or dissipate it, but to nurse and
+pile on to it, when I come again to live with mine own people
+in my old age, as now in my youth I long to, or send my sons
+to take their place here in service of our family and of China.
+Haply, I may visit you again, crave again your love and welcome,
+bringing my bride with me to dwell a time in the
+courtyards of our women. I dream it—I pray the gods to
+grant it.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan longed to question Sên Ruben of that
+bride of whom he spoke so softly—almost as if he held her
+hand in the early morning time of marriage. But he could
+not. The look in Sên Ruben’s blue eyes lifted to the jeweled
+lace-work of the myriad many-colored stars that hung sparkling
+over the moon-silvered bamboos and varnish trees
+checked and hushed him of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Come when you come, always you shall have my love and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>
+welcome, Sên Ruben,” he said softly, “the love and welcome
+of your home and kindred. Yah! Here comes Sên Jo Hiêsen
+and his face is heavy.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">
+    CHAPTER XXIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Jo Hiêsen was yet for Ruben’s winning; and
+Ruben did not win Sên Jo Hiêsen so quickly or so simply.</p>
+
+<p>They both saw—as the old man limped to them—that he
+was troubled and agitated.</p>
+
+<p>He took no notice of Sên Ruben, unless an added frown
+of displeasure at not having instant speech alone with C’hian
+Fan, and he returned C’hian’s greeting as quickly and curtly
+as might one who, though older, was but of a collateral branch
+of the family of which C’hian Fan was the head.</p>
+
+<p>“It has come!”</p>
+
+<p>“The new dwarf-tree?” C’hian asked lazily.</p>
+
+<p>“War has come!”</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan took Jo Hiêsen’s news lightly. “There
+always is war in China somewhere. Which of the brigand
+<i>tuchuns</i> are beating their drums now, venerable Old-one? Sit
+and share our smoking. The night is exquisite, and the perfumes
+from the gardens are intoxicating.”</p>
+
+<p>Jo Hiêsen huddled down on to the ground with great dignity,
+but he would not smoke.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the great war—the great war that has been bound
+to come ever since the Son of Heaven was made unable to
+do the Spring-time Worship at the Temple of Heaven. A sea
+of blood rises from Pechilli to beyond the Jade Gate and down
+to Shanghai harbor, from Shangtung Promontory to Yunan.
+Fire kindles in every province, a conflagration that threatens
+to burn up all China.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan laughed—but Sên Ruben was listening
+eagerly and his young blood pounded in its veins, jumping
+angrily through his heart.</p>
+
+<p>“They but dice, Old-one,” C’hian murmured across his
+long pipe-stem. “Sun Yat-sen is a warrior on paper. Trickery
+is his artillery. Feng Yu-hsieng, Wu Pei-fu, Chang
+Tsolin, Tsao Kun, Li Ching-lin and all the rest of them will
+cancel out in battles—mock warfare, much of it—and then
+shake their hands at each other in salutation, each claim the
+victory, share the spoils, and get back to their <i>yamêns</i> to fatten
+and scheme afresh till the next war is ripe. Let war come; it
+will go. And China would lack a pastime, the markets and
+street corners lack for gossip if strolling-player warriors did
+not pitch their tinseled booths here and there and give their
+usual dramatic performance at due and convenient times.
+They have a saying in England, our cousin here has told me,
+a saying of political astuteness and social precaution—‘Do
+not rob the working man of his beer drink.’ Who would rob
+our ‘babies’ of their raree-shows? Not I.”</p>
+
+<p>“You speak the folly of earless and sightless indifference,”
+Jo Hiêsen wailed bitterly. “I tell you, Sên C’hian Fan, this
+is no dice-throwing between two or three yên grabster mandarins.
+<i>This is war!</i> Such war as the West counts war.
+China is in flame, and every country in the West, anxious to
+filch our land and undeveloped resources, is pouring petrol
+on to the flaring burning. Shall the Sons of Han pass from
+history worms discredited, because the girdle-wearers sit
+dreaming in the moonlight, lute-playing in their courtyards
+while the Son of Heaven’s kingdom perishes, and is divided
+among barbarian peoples? I go to the war, Sên C’hian Fan!
+Keep you with your women?”</p>
+
+<p>“I will keep me with my senses—and keep them in me,”
+C’hian answered pleasantly. He had heard Jo Hiêsen rave
+and splutter before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the younger listener was well fired by Jo’s vivid words.</p>
+
+<p>“What hast thou heard, what message has reached our gates?
+May I know, venerable, eminent Sên Jo Hiêsen?” Ruben
+begged.</p>
+
+<p>“Enough to make a tame-tit show fight! Shantung is
+arming, Kiangsu has armed. Wu Pei-fu has flung his challenge
+in the face of Feng Yu-hsieng. Peking is threatened.”</p>
+
+<p>“It often is,” C’hian Fan chuckled. “The shopkeepers of
+Peking have a great deal to put up with. If Peking’s walls
+are broached—more like by coin-bribery than by guns or arrows—the
+Sacred prisoner will not be molested, nor will the
+foreign Consulates. The Boxers gave us taste enough of what
+that consequented. A few shop-streets will be looted, a few
+merchants impoverished. It is not enough to draw me from
+the pleasant moonlight, Jo Hiêsen; nothing to mute the lutes
+in Ho-nan. Since when have Sêns fallen to the low caste of
+soldiers? Thou always wast warlike: a splendid spirit, Jo,
+but a low trade only fit for coolies. By-the-passing, which
+faction join you, my General; Feng’s or Wu’s, or go you to
+soldier in the cohorts of Sun Yat-sen?”</p>
+
+<p>Jo Hiêsen let that last insult pass. Sên C’hian Fan knew
+that none of Sên blood would fight under the banner of Sun
+the regicide.</p>
+
+<p>“Come then, give it,” C’hian continued genially, more to
+humor the ardent old graybeard bursting to tell, than because
+he cared to hear, “what hast thou gathered? How came it?
+Who brought it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lo Mian-go has sent a runner to his kinsman, Lo Fing
+Nee, at Nan Yang, sent a runner from Hwai-king Fu, and
+by Mian-go’s command the <i>tingchai</i> flung a letter-packet to
+me as he passed. This it said, the letter-packet of our pure
+and rich friend Lo Mian-go:—” And Sên Hiêsen plunged
+into such a spluttered jumble of scrappy and contradictory
+“war” news, and of names new to Ruben that Sên Ruben
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
+could make but little out of it. According to Jo Hiêsen they
+all were cut-throats but not anxious to risk the slitting of
+their own throats—out to fill their own pouches rather than
+to do any service of patriotism. And C’hian Fan’s indolent
+comment, when at last Jo Hiêsen paused for breath, rather
+echoed Ruben’s thought.</p>
+
+<p>“Patchwork!” C’hian Fan said scornfully. “No clear outline,
+little substance, twenty heads, flabby following; no
+definite plan, no true cause, no motive fine or great; more
+drums than bannermen! War! Nay, Jo Hiêsen; not war—bonfires,
+scattered bonfires.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Jo Hiêsen was too angry to speak at once, and before
+he could, C’hian Fan went on, more gravely, turning on his
+stool squarely towards Jo Hiêsen. The moonlight showed
+C’hian’s fine face like a lemon-tinted cameo, and something
+of the sharp starlight sparkled in his handsome eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Which of these mushroom generals would you join, which
+of them could your conscience support, which your taste
+belly? Who are they? <i>What</i> are they? We know what several
+of them are. China cries out for her ‘strong man’—needs
+him sorely. I grant that. When he comes I will serve
+him. No moonlight shall hold me back then, nor hold my
+son-ones, nor any music in the courtyard, nor our women.
+And in all our <i>kuei</i> there is not a Sên woman who would
+seek to. Soldiering is a low base trade—and so will I have
+none of it, but when it is indeed a patriotism, selfless and
+sacrificial, then is it work for nobles; and then will I soldier
+until I fall in the battle, wash the spear of a foe with the
+heart’s blood of a Sên. When China’s strong man comes will
+I follow him. Has he come? Will he come? It is written
+on the parchments of the gods—but we cannot read it yet.
+Which is he, can you tell me? Not Wu Pei-fu. Not Chang
+Tso-lin. Not the traitor mountebank that has boasted ‘I dethroned
+the Manchu with my sword.’ Perhaps Feng Yu-hsiang.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>
+Time and Feng will show. It may be he. But he
+must prove it. Let him prove it. Much points him the
+strongest in manhood, character and ability since Yuan Shih
+Kai. But is he fighting to make himself <i>Tuchun</i> of Pechilli,
+and after Emperor of China if he can compass and steer it?
+And better that than what we have! Or fights he to restore
+the rightful Son of Heaven on the Dragon Throne? Prove
+he so, and Sên C’hian Fan will be his humblest squire, be
+his servant.”</p>
+
+<p>C’hian had shaken Sên Jo Hiêsen, damped his fire. But
+Jo Hiêsen was warlike, and rarely in all his long life had
+gray-bearded Sên Jo Hiêsen eaten any word he once had
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>“I go to the war,” he repeated almost sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>“I will go with you, estimable Sên Jo Hiêsen.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why?” Jo Hiêsen and C’hian Fan exclaimed in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>“I have lived too long where soldiering is thought not ill
+of, but highly honored and ranked, to be able to feel that the
+soldier’s is not a splendid life. And I cannot idle at home
+when aged Sên Jo Hiêsen my venerable kinsman goes him
+to the wars. I must serve my country even with my life!”</p>
+
+<p>“As a man should—a Sên man above others,” C’hian Fan
+told him, “serve his country with his life. That is the service
+that counts; is a sweetness in the nostrils of the gods. But
+you propose to serve it with your death. That is no service
+for a noble to render, except at great and sure necessity, Sên
+Ruben. Leave bonfires to peasant mercenaries.”</p>
+
+<p>Death is not often mentioned in China. The fact is—for
+how can talk of life avoid it?—but not the word. The
+word itself is taboo or circumambulated. But Sên C’hian
+Fan was stirred—and he spoke to stir. He did not intend
+that Sên Ruben should perish in unworthy bandit warfare;
+sooner than that he would spoil the law of hospitality and
+would bar Sên Ruben fast in their house and courtyards. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>
+would chain Sên Ruben before he should follow mad Jo
+Hiêsen into death-trap ambush.</p>
+
+<p>For C’hian had little doubt that the decrepit dotard would
+hobble off to the fray, and reach it, if he could. And probably
+Jo Hiêsen could—in a palanquin.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">
+    CHAPTER XXX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But neither Jo Hiêsen nor Sên Ruben went a-warring.
+Several of C’hian Fan’s predictions were fulfilled, before
+either graybeard or stripling had quite decided which of
+the several Chinese armies of the moment to join.</p>
+
+<p>Intermittent and contradictory shreds of war-news trickled
+in. Thousands of Ho-nanese mercenaries marched off to do
+battle in the battalions of Wu Pei-fu fighting against Chang
+Tso-lin at Hangchow and in Kiangsu. Sên Jo Hiêsen
+cackled of it proudly, and Sên C’hian Fan gave his full approval.
+Ho-nanese soldiers are by long odds the best in China—best
+in valor, best in soldierliness, best in discipline; and
+C’hian was glad to have them show the world their prowess
+and reap their war pay, if they could collect it, so long as no
+sash-wearers and above all no Sêns went with them. Then
+the wind of policy blew the war flame out, a president resigned,
+a general lost his corps and his head, two were banished,
+Western journals lost a topic of which they had made
+the most, and every one shook hands with or at each other—according
+to whether they were old-school or modern. C’hian
+Fan had as little faith in the sudden peace as he had had in
+the civil war it quelled; but he saw no necessity of saying so.
+And even Jo Hiêsen was content to smoke once more the
+long-stemmed pipe of peace, and to fall back again into a
+subsidiary place in the councils and doings of the family.</p>
+
+<p>But Sên Jo Hiêsen remembered how Ruben’s face had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>
+glowed, how the young blue eyes had lit as Ruben had vowed
+that he too would go to the wars, he too fight—and, if it
+chanced, die—for China.</p>
+
+<p>Jo Hiêsen sometimes chatted with Ruben now, and pleasantly;
+advised him upon the advantages of concubinage, and
+gave him freely for his very own an old blind frog upon which
+the graybeard doted. It had dined and slept with him for
+years, and spent most of its waking hours in the old man’s
+sleeve or on his shoulder. Ruben accepted it with effusive
+gratitude, and contrived to return it with great delicacy a few
+days later, with apparent reluctance, on the moving plea that
+the frog-one was pining for its beloved master. There were
+other reasons—and they were, at least equally, as true. But
+Sên Ruben did not state them. And all three were pleased
+at the humane reversion—the two Sêns and the frog-one.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben had won Sên Jo Hiêsen. It would have
+gone ill with any who spoke ill of Sên Ruben, voluntary soldier
+and tender friend of frogs.</p>
+
+<p>For all he had scoffed at it, the recent “war” stayed longer
+in C’hian Fan’s thought than it did in Ruben’s or in Jo
+Hiêsen’s. The old-one, flash-in-the-pan-tempered, had not
+always a retentive memory, and a heaven-sent bolt from the
+blue drove all warfare and other ugliness far from the thought
+of young Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>Loyal, stubbornly loyal as the rule of Sên C’hian Fan was
+to all the old ways of China, and cordially as all the clan
+agreed with him in it, Sên Ruben was not shut out of the
+women’s “flowery” quarters, but was made as free of them
+as Sên Ya Tin’s will had made Sên King-lo when he had
+brought his English wife to their homestead. In fact, men
+of the blood often are fairly free of the women’s quarters in
+such Chinese homesteads. The prohibitions of consanguinity
+are so imperious and so adamant and so far-reaching that they
+relax and permit almost as much as they forbid. Like a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>
+Carmelite convent (though not like it in much else) a Chinese
+harem is not a prison but a sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had formed almost instant friendship with Sên No
+Fee, the youngest and only unmarried daughter of Sên Kai
+Lun, a gay and saucy beauty, somewhat overdue for marriage,
+since she was sixteen, but still her father’s close companion
+because she willed it, and very much his tyrant.</p>
+
+<p>No and Ruben went together where they would within the
+wide walls; fished and hawked and chattered. More than
+once the minx told Ruben that, if only he were not her cousin,
+and his poor colorless face less hideous, she would have married
+him, and Ruben had retorted that he required a tame
+wife, not a colt-wild one, a wife of dignity and sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>But he loved his cousin right well; and long tales he told
+her of Europe when she questioned him, which was often.
+Little laughing Sên No Fee had more approval of the new
+Chinese dispensation (of which she knew little but had heard
+much from girls more traveled) than had any other of these
+Ho-nan Sêns.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben found her a glorious playmate; and she distinctly
+had a look of Ivy—a lesser beauty but oddly like.</p>
+
+<p>No was an ignorant little thing, but she could beat him at
+chess without half trying, and her wits were as nimble as
+her education was scanty. All the pretty arts of Chinese
+courtyard ladies she had at her tiny fingers’ tips, but she was
+proficient in none of them—nor keen to ply them. Sên No
+Fee was a tomboy; her heart, Ruben found, as warm as her
+manners often were naughty.</p>
+
+<p>More than once they raced together hand-in-hand up and
+down the Hill-of-the-Cherry-Trees. That they did it hand-in-hand
+was scandalous, which was what sweetened it to Sên
+No Fee; but in spite of that her wee fingers tingled disagreeably
+when Ruben clasped them closely in his, lest her scraps
+of binded feet stumble and throw her as they ran. Holding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>
+hands, which she did because she ought not, in itself was disagreeable
+to the Chinese girl, so deeply had the centuries
+drilled her that her hands were not for any other’s touching.
+Ruben had romped and tussled too often with his sister Ivy
+in their Surrey garden to think much about it. But he too
+knew that in China it was forbidden; and he was young
+enough and masculine enough not to like it the less for
+that!</p>
+
+<p>He wrote and told his mother what a ripping good sport
+his cousin No was, how much he liked her, and that thanks
+to her he soon would be able to hold his own with most of
+the other Sêns when they flew their kites on the flat crest of
+the long persimmon hill, so given over to that manly pastime
+that it was called Fly-the-Kites Hill. And many of No’s
+confidences to him Ruben repeated to his mother in the long
+letters he wrote constantly, and started off to her by a runner
+to the treaty port post-office beyond the borders of Ho-nan
+as often as he could.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">
+    CHAPTER XXXI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>If No Fee was a resource and a pal, she was a good deal of
+a nuisance, too, at times. She not only wanted her own
+way always—Ruben had known many girls and others who
+were not girls who did that—but invariably No Fee took it;
+sometimes she took it much to his inconvenience. Often she
+kept him away from his kinsmen when he wished to be with
+them. He loved Sên No Fee; he had to, for the girl was
+sweet and full of charm, and again and again she reminded
+him of Ivy. But he had not come to China to play cat’s
+cradle, to chase butterflies, or to do tomboy things with a girl.
+He had come there to steep himself in its ways—the ways of
+its manhood, not in the softer ways of a <i>kuei</i>—and to associate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
+with the men of his family, to be a Sên with the Sên
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Of all his Ho-nan kindred he most loved Sên No Fee, but
+to love and to like are two quite different things, and it was
+Sên Toon whom he most liked, with whom he best liked to
+be, and from whom as a Sên of his own generation and much
+of his own age he wanted to learn the intimacies of Chinese
+customs and thought. Toon had spent two years at Yale,
+and, although Ruben had come to Ho-nan soaked in the history
+and spirit of China, there was much he longed to learn
+and to realize that he found easier to grasp through this
+kinsman, who could give it to him in more or less Western
+terms as well as in the more intricate and indirect twists and
+turns of Chinese expression. Sên Toon had liked the West,
+thought it a jolly nice as well as a jolly queer place; and
+that also made a quick bond between them. No Fee called
+and kept Sên Ruben from Sên Toon oftener and longer than
+Ruben found it easy to forgive.</p>
+
+<p>But the unkindest thing that No Fee did to Ruben was to
+make him put on one day for her amusement his English
+clothes; and it took all No’s cajolery and all her persistence
+to do it. Sên Ruben had no intention of returning to England—and
+to his mother—wearing Chinese clothes. He liked
+making himself conspicuous, striking an attitude, as little as
+all nice Englishmen do. But he had even less intention of
+wearing Bond Street materials and cuts in Ho-nan. The Chinese
+garments that he had donned and carried awkwardly and
+with so much embarrassment in the hill-perched monastery
+had grown more comfortable, seemed more his own, than
+English tailorings, naturally and easily as he always had
+worn them, ever had. He knew that he always should miss
+his Chinese clothes: their ease, and, more than their ease,
+their color.</p>
+
+<p>When she made it, Sên Ruben refused her request. No Fee
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>
+pouted and scolded; then she changed her tactics, discarded
+shrill peremptoriness and coaxed as only Sên No Fee could
+coax. “Only once, to give me pleasure, cousin-one who art
+dear to the heart of this little Chinese girl” was hard to resist,
+and so was her hand on his sleeve, and so was the wet
+in her eye. Sên Ruben wavered. Then the whole <i>kuei</i> backed
+her up, added its pleadings to hers. And when the oldest of
+his kinswomen, Sên Wed O—a lady of royal lineage, whose
+vision of the world had been bounded, he knew, by the walls
+of two courtyards, her father’s and her husband’s—begged
+with the graciousness of the old aristocrat who had no doubt
+that she and her white hairs would be obeyed, begged as a
+kindness to her untraveled self, Sên Ruben yielded.</p>
+
+<p>He chose a day when he knew that his kinsmen had gone
+hawking, graybeards, youngsters and all. He made excuse
+not to go with them, and when their gay cavalcade had jingled
+away he made a wry face and changed into his English
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>How ugly they were! How queer his boots felt!</p>
+
+<p>He hated himself in them almost as much as poor little Ivy
+had for years hated her face in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>But he had promised; and he went, oddly uncomfortable,
+moving awkwardly, feeling gauche, looking shy.</p>
+
+<p>But because he had promised his kinswomen he did it graciously.
+He went to them with a smile, and he gave them
+their way of him. It was their treat; it certainly was not
+Sên Ruben’s. Ruben Sên was not here.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>kuei</i> buzzed about him.</p>
+
+<p>They pushed and they pulled; they gave him shrill cries
+and gurgled, tittering; they felt him; they turned him about.
+They looked him over and over with kindly, critical eyes.
+And the pet dogs sniffed at his barbarian clothes and barked
+at him questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sên, of Imperial blood, <i>doyenne</i> here and supreme,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
+bade them all leave him alone, bade them draw away to the
+edges of the courtyard where they belonged. The women
+obeyed her, the wee dogs did not.</p>
+
+<p>She called him nearer to her that she might examine and
+look her fill. And she thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>“You find me hideous, venerable, honorable mother-one,”
+Ruben said when she, having spoken, gave him freedom of
+speech. “This miserable person finds himself most hideous
+in these abominable, detestable, foreign-land clothes. Just
+this once, O queen-one of all the Sêns! Thou wilt not command
+it of thy slave-one again?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Madame Sên nodded. Best Bond Street garments
+had not found favor in her old, narrow, black-velvet eyes.
+And the gracious gesture of her hand was a promise.</p>
+
+<p>But No Fee giggled; and he heard it as a threat.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sên did not dismiss him, but she took up her
+embroidery frame again, and Ruben read it as a sign that he
+might stay by her stool or move about as he would.</p>
+
+<p>He drew back a few paces, and the laughing courtyard
+rabble swooped on him again; at least all the women did;
+the dogs played apart or snoozed by the flower-wall.</p>
+
+<p>They tottered about him on their richly shod golden-lilies.
+They looked at him roguishly, screamed they were shocked at
+his trousers, which some of them were. No demanded his
+coat then and there, that she might try it on. Probably Sên
+No Fee would have had her way too, had Madame Sên not
+glanced up from her needle with a word of protest which
+not even No the hoyden dare disobey here in the <i>kuei</i>. Sên
+Ruben had no doubt that, at some other time and place, No
+Fee would make her demand again.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben began to enjoy himself in their rioting mirth. He
+declined to take oft his boots, that they might see and probably
+examine his stockings; he declined to put on his coat
+the other way about; but he gave up his cuff links and his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>
+tie-pin with pleasure; and presently he fell in tune with their
+frolic mirth, chased No Fee over the flagstones, joined willingly
+enough in a game of blindman’s buff. And Madame
+Sên looked grave, kindly approval across her lacquer embroidery
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>There always is a strain of melancholy, a something, too,
+of bitterness and rebellion in the Eurasian who is neither
+brutish nor a dolt. If the strain of melancholy in Ruben
+Sên had been all but subconscious in Europe, and sternly
+repressed so far as he had realized it, it had been for that
+but the sharper. Until he came to China he had not felt (or
+known that he did) mixed blood a disgrace, for he was incapable
+of laying any shred of disgrace at the door of his
+parents; but he always had grieved that the gods had denied
+him the full of his Chinese birthright: the skin of his people,
+the set of their bones, the black of their eyes, a home in
+Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, his life had been happy: pleasantly placed,
+loved and companioned by the mother he adored and of whom
+he was proud. Too—there was great natural sunshine in
+Ruben Sên, the son of Ruby Gilbert, at whose birth a star had
+danced, and the son of a man whose race is tuned to contentment
+and gladness. He was young. And before long he was
+pranking with his young kinswomen as gaily as they.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly No saw his face darken, saw Ruben stand stock-still,
+nonplused and perturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon had come into the courtyard; stood watching
+them. Madame Sên had smiled at Sên Toon affectionately
+when he made his deep salutations to her, and she had smiled
+softly in her sleeve. She knew why Sên Toon had been
+downcast and sad-eyed for more than a moon. And she knew
+how his discomfort would pass, would die in sweetest music
+in a garden of roses.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had believed that Sên Toon had gone a-hawking
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>
+with all the others. And it cost Ruben more than a pang,
+he felt it a shame, that Toon saw him foreign-land-clad in
+a Sên courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>Toon made his way to Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>“Come into the woods with me,” Toon asked; “I want to
+talk to you.” Toon said it in English.</p>
+
+<p>“I will companion you before that white and rose cloudlet
+has crossed over the day star,” Ruben replied. He said it in
+Chinese. “Wait but till I change into my own garments
+again. I will change quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why change?” Sên Toon persisted in speaking English.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben as persistently spoke in Chinese. “I loathe that
+you have caught me in this masquerade that Sên No Fee
+extorted.”</p>
+
+<p>“The first sensible thing I can recall that our wild and
+unpardonably spoilt one has done. I envy you your Western
+clothes—they are manlier. And I envy you much that they
+stand for.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish,” Ruben snapped more rudely than Chinese gentlemen,
+and above all close kinsmen, often speak to each
+other. “I must change before I come with thee. It would
+shame me till shame curdled my stomach did our kinsmen
+returning from the chase see me dressed as I am.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sên King-lo dressed so?” Sên Toon asked.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>In Europe</i>,” Ruben admitted. “Almost one must there
+now. At least, it seems more convenient, since most of us
+do. Kow Li does not. I honor him that he does not. But
+I know no other Chinese living in London, except Kow Li’s
+own servants, possibly too a few in ‘Chinatown,’ who do not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come, let us go,” Sên Toon urged. “They are hawking
+far from here; they will not return until the Hour of the
+Dog has died in the sky, and more likely the Hour of the Pig.
+None will see what you wear but me and the leaves on the
+trees.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben yielded.</p>
+
+<p>Not again in Ho-nan, not for No Fee, not for the august
+Sên herself would he wear foreign garments. But now he
+would not keep Sên Toon waiting. No one would see them,
+Toon had said; and Ruben, without suspecting the reason,
+still less suspecting the remedy, had seen for weeks that his
+favorite kinsman was sorely out of gear. Toon wanted to
+talk to him, and Toon should do it immediately, purge the
+troubled stuff of his bothered mind through the confessional
+of fraternal speech, if he could.</p>
+
+<p>They made obeisance to Madame Sên, who waved them
+with a tiny withered hand permission to go and gracious
+parting; tore themselves from the clamoring girls; and Toon
+led the way out of the “flowery,” across a flower-spangled
+meadow and into the thick of the walnut grove.</p>
+
+<p>“What troubles you? Bid me what I can do,” Sên Ruben
+began when he saw how hard Sên Toon found it to begin.
+Ruben was un-Chinese in his dislike of delay—and in several
+things else.</p>
+
+<p>“There is nothing you can do for me,” Toon spoke grimly,
+“unless you can change places with me. I’d commit suicide,
+if it were not for the grief to my mother. I’d cut and run
+were it not for the disgrace to the girl.”</p>
+
+<p>Ah! Ruben pricked up his ears, and his face that had been
+all sympathy was half clouded with fear.</p>
+
+<p>“A maiden you have seen by accident and wish for your
+bride?” Sên Ruben could understand that. “Can’t it be arranged?
+Your father and mother both are indulgent. Or
+is the maiden-one already betrothed? It isn’t a peasant-one,
+is it, Sên Toon?” The still worse that he feared Ruben did
+not word.</p>
+
+<p>“I never have seen her in my life, but she is betrothed all
+right. They are going to marry her to me when the Sky
+Lantern is at its full.” Sên Toon began in English, then
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>
+burst into passionate Chinese. His face was twitching and
+his hands twisted his girdle angrily. “I am caught in the
+coil of a poison-dragon, Sên Ruben, the creature has slimed
+me, there is no escape.”</p>
+
+<p>“And there is some one else?” Ruben probed gently.</p>
+
+<p>“Ha?” Toon asked dully; he had not caught Sên Ruben’s
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>“Some other maiden you love and long to wed?” Sên Ruben
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon laughed impatiently. “All the gods, no! Love—what
+chance has a Chinese to love? Betrothed in our cradles,
+it may be, thrust into wedlock with some strange girl-thing
+whom we are sure to hate, and who’s sure to hate us!”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems not to work out so,” Ruben protested. “All the
+wives in our <i>kuei</i> are happy, Sên Toon.”</p>
+
+<p>“They don’t know any better,” Sên Toon grumbled contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>“They know a great deal, I have found,” Ruben defended,
+“and they all are charming. And their husbands love them.
+Clearly that is so. I have not been in this jewel country of
+ours many moons, but I have watched even as a hungered
+child watches the face of his mother; and I have learned, and
+I <i>know</i>, that marriage success, marriage contentment in
+China is to success and contentment of Western marriage as
+Omi is to a hillock of clover.”</p>
+
+<p>“It works here sometimes,” the other owned grudgingly,
+“but I have traveled, I have seen freedom. My soul cries
+for its freedom. I want to choose my bride.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had no answer to that. He had chosen his
+bride, and no power on Earth or on-High should dissuade
+him. He did not speak for a long time. When he did he
+felt that his words were feeble.</p>
+
+<p>“Since you love no other maiden,” he said, “surely all will
+be well. Your father is wise. He will have selected a beautiful
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>
+maid who is as kind and accomplished as she is beautiful.
+Both your brothers dote on their wives.”</p>
+
+<p>“I swear to the gods that I will hate mine. Her face may
+be as beautiful as an egg, her voice the voice of a lute in the
+moonlight, but I will hate her. I spit at the thought of her,
+because she is thrust upon me. Let her be the most charming
+maiden that ever came in her red chair from courtyard
+to courtyard and the kindest, I swear to all the gods that I
+will loathe her!” Sên Toon’s voice broke in his pain; he was
+trembling violently. Sên Ruben feared that Sên Toon would
+keep his terrible oath. Ruben’s heart was sore for his cousin,
+very sore for the bride that would come when the moon rode
+at its full.</p>
+
+<p>“Does your father know, Sên Toon? He loves you greatly.”</p>
+
+<p>“No one knows but you. I could hold it no longer,” Sên
+Toon sobbed and hid a tempest of tears in his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên was revolted and ashamed. Ho-nan had gripped
+him and always would hold him. But Eton and Cambridge
+held their grip of him too; Ho-nan could not shatter all that
+they had bred and ingrained. All his being was shamed to
+see a man cry! And his kinsman, a Sên! Sên Toon was
+weeping wildly. He wept like a man battered and defeated,
+a man at bay and exhausted. He wept like a whip-frightened
+child.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it too late?” Sên Ruben suggested presently, “too late
+to ask your honorable father’s indulgence, to tell him what
+you feel?”</p>
+
+<p>“He would not understand,” Sên Toon said surlily. His
+breast still heaved, but the tempest had passed. Ruben Sên
+thanked all the stars that it had. “The inevitable will be.
+I was pledged to it before I tasted the salt of Western freedom.
+I must go on with it. But, by underworld god himself,
+no son of mine, still less a daughter of my loins, ever
+shall go an unwilling victim to wedlock with a stranger. I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>
+shall go on with it because I must. I can divorce her afterwards
+perhaps. But to escape her, I must marry her first.
+A Chinese betrothal cannot be broken—” Sên Ruben knew
+that that was true. “After betrothal there is no loophole for
+the bride, and only one for the bridegroom. A shopkeeper’s
+son may take it sometimes; I have heard that it has been done
+in Canton, but no girdle-wearer can take it; for us it is not
+a loophole.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben assented. He knew that a dagger was worn
+conspicuously in one of the groom’s high bridal boots, but
+that no gentleman, when he lifted the red veil from a trembling
+girl’s face—and liked it not—could throw that dagger
+in violence, repudiation and dismissal at her feet. In theory,
+so could the bridegrooms of several provinces refuse the new-made
+wife, and Ruben had heard that sometimes ere they sent
+him to the nuptial chamber anxious parents had been known
+to ply a boy bridegroom with wine that he might see his
+bride’s face, through a rosy hue, fairer than it was. He
+doubted if the cruel custom held in Ho-nan even among the
+peasant-ones. It was an offense no Sên could offer to a maid
+who had drunk with him the red-tied marriage cup, worshiped
+with him at the ancestral tablets.</p>
+
+<p>The cousins walked on in silence. Ruben could think of
+nothing to say. Sên Toon had said all his words, purged his
+angry heart as far as he could.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the leafy forest healed him: a cathedral sanctuary
+green and faintly fragrant. For the troubled boyish face
+slowly cleared. Perhaps the bright-winged birds cheered him
+as they flew friendly-low from tree to tree and sang to him
+joyously.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben cried out in dismay when they left the thick-leaved
+grove and he saw how high the day-star had risen.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon read his cousin’s thought. “I will get you to
+your pavilion unseen, Sên Ruben. Our kinsmen shall not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>
+see you, since you shrink it. Just beyond that clump of
+loquats is a miracle. Also is it one of the loveliest sights in
+all Ho-nan. I would show it to you. He who has not seen
+the nourish-old-age of Kow Lôk the witch has not seen
+Ho-nan.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">
+    CHAPTER XXXII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Ruben gave a cry when they had passed the loquats.
+So smothered in wee white roses, in creeping columbines,
+and imperial wistaria that its thatched roof scarcely showed
+at all, a tiny reed hut lay in an acre of peach trees—peach
+trees in bloom! Low criss-crossed bamboos fenced house and
+orchard. Blue and amethyst hills backed it; a tiny silver
+stream danced laughing through the peach trees; ferns of
+many sorts nodded delicately at the gnarled trunks’ wide
+roots. The little grayish house—for the well-kept reeds were
+old—was flanked by a wide well and a sheltered dung-heap.
+A memorial-truth-stone with pink and red pampas grass on
+either side stood at the threshold. The tiny hut looked comfortable
+and cared-for; the orchard looked a wealth of prosperous
+agriculture—was exquisite wealth of beauty. And it
+was prodigality of incense. Never yet did prayer-sticks belch
+such sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>It lay alone, apart, the peach-sweet place. Ruben caught
+a sense of imperative isolation about it. No cat or dog, not
+even a painted god or dragon, guarded its gate; a leg-nimble
+urchin could have vaulted its low fence of low-cut bamboos;
+but Sên Ruben heard the whole place say, “Enter not. There
+is no welcome here.” And for all it smelt so sweet, its voice
+that forbade was acrid and stern; for all that it looked a
+suntrap of prosperity and luster, Sên Ruben felt cold air
+swirl and hiss about him, a chill that snapped at his face like
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>
+bullets, as if forbidding him to come nearer, defying him to
+enter and trespass. At its West, beyond its low green fence,
+a line of tall cypress trees stood grim, grew deep and thick:
+the sentinel trees of the burial place of the Kows, Sên Ruben
+believed them. If they were those, a few <i>li</i> beyond them lay
+the scraggling one-street Village-of-the-Kows-Whose-Women-Spin-Well-and-Bear-Many-Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben knew village and grave-place well, but never
+had approached either through the Walnut Grove or by the
+direction Sên Toon had brought him here to-day. In the old
+moss-grown village he had sought out and greeted for Kow
+Li each living Kow of Li’s generation and remembrance; and
+at the graves of Li’s ancestors he had made for Kow Li obeisance
+and worship long and profound. But he never had
+heard of Kow Lôk or of her paradise of peaches. Why? He
+had told them he was anxious to see all the Kows, that he
+might take word of them to Kow Li. And he had charged
+Kow Yong Shu to guide him to every Kow home near
+enough for their journeying. Why had they kept him from
+old Kow Lôk?</p>
+
+<p>He caught his breath and his pulse quickened at the beauty
+of the blossomed, hill-cupped place.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben spoke at last. “You called her witch? Do you believe
+her that?” Sên Ruben loved all the old tales that the
+peasants told, but all superstition, even Chinese superstition,
+was abhorrent to him.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon chuckled. “Of course not. We Chinese pretend
+to believe a great deal that we do not believe at all. Confucius
+was the great agnostic, far more deeply agnostic than
+the Ingersoll I heard so much of when I was at Yale. Most
+of our sash-wearers are agnostics, at least the men-ones.
+Women will believe everything, everywhere, I think. But we
+who are men cling to the old superstitions for love of them,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>
+love of their color and story, and for the use we make of
+them with the ‘babies.’ For example of it, <i>Li Ch’un</i>. You
+came to us at Greeting the Spring, you remember. The
+peasant ones could not be taught, or grasp, the scientific
+processes upon which we base its predictions. Tell them as
+we do that the Spring Ox is supernaturally painted, in Peking,
+and they believe it, heed his message and profit by it—as
+do their crops. It <i>is</i>, often as not, kneaded together of
+water and flour and covered with straw. Sometimes it is put
+in a well-barred room of the Astronomical Board, with paints
+and a brush near it, and when it is taken out again the next
+day indubitably Ox has been painted—and painted by spirit
+fingers or by a blind man, the babies believe. At the end of
+<i>Li Ch’un</i>, if a magistrate-one lays on it his hand or his wand
+of office in a temple courtyard, they fall upon it and batter
+it to bits and each of the silly-ones pads off with as much Ox
+as he can to mix with his manure that his millet and corn
+cannot fail to thrive. Explain to them the processes of
+reasonable weather forecasting, and you pour a cupful of
+water on to a sea-sucking desert. No Sên believes that Kow
+Lôk is a witch—no Sên man—or that there <i>are</i> witch-ones.
+But she is clairvoyant; she does and tells strange things.
+That is past denial. She is blind—but she sees; she is deaf—but
+she hears. You yourself shall know that she does, if
+she does not drive us from her presence. For I am going to
+take you in to her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we get in?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is nothing to keep us out; neither bolt, bar nor
+guard. Not a peasant in all the province would enter even
+the edge of her <i>yang-lao-ti</i> unless she gave them welcome.
+<i>They</i> believe her a witch-one of tremendous and infernal
+power. They believe that demons come at her bidding, always
+at night, do her errands, bring her food and prepare it,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>
+tend her orchard, gather her peach crop when it is ripe, cart
+it and sell it—such as we do not come and entreat for, and
+pay her much price for.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who does? Works in this wonderful orchard, brings her
+food and prepares it?”</p>
+
+<p>“She does.”</p>
+
+<p>“Impossible—one feeble, bed-ridden old woman!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Sên Toon asserted, but his eyes were dancing.
+“Kow Lôk is paralyzed, has not risen from her mat for years—the
+babies will vow it. Not one of them will pass by her
+bamboo fencing after the Hour of the Hen. But this person
+who speaks to you has seen her do it. One must be stealthy
+to watch her unseen and unsuspected. Sên Toon has accomplished
+it. No doubt she sleeps much by the daytime. But
+she rouses at the lightest footfall, and she plies a brisk trade
+from her sleep mat. She will sell you a love philter; I am
+not sure that she will not sell you a poison, if you will pay
+enough for it. I have wished to see Kow Lôk and have
+feared her welcome. When Kow Lôk chooses to be dumb,
+no force, cajolery, or gold will make her speak. And always
+she curses the Sêns. You in your English clothes she will
+not know for a Sên or think Chinese. She will grab any
+gold you will give her and will speak to you, I think; she
+may let fall to you a word of value to me—hurl one at me
+even, if she is in her holiday mood, as she is sometimes and
+is apt to soften at the touch of gold.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why does she hate the Sêns? I thought all the Kows
+were our bondsmen in love even as in our old feudal holding
+of them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sên Ya Tin took her lover from her; bought her, as Lôk
+believed, in betrothal to one Kow and married her to another.
+Our sainted old-one did it in her wisdom, but for it Lôk has
+cursed all of our blood ever since the bridegroom substitution
+was forced upon her. I will tell you the story as we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>
+take our homeward way. Come, we will go to her now.
+Have a care that you speak before her only in French or
+English. I will interpret; so shall we baffle her of her hatred
+of you as a Sên-one, and, too, you will hear twice all she
+utters, and so doing hold it in your memory the longer and
+surer. Remember, Sên Ruben, you are going to have audience
+of one of China’s greatest clairvoyants. I hold nothing
+of witchcraft—it is silliness—but there are Chinese sibyls
+who can unveil both past and future. All the gods grant
+that Kow Lôk will see and tell for us to-day!”</p>
+
+<p>The woman looked a hundred, huddled on her mat. But
+she turned her head sharply as they stepped over the hut’s
+raised door-sill—raised to keep floor draughts out, as in
+better Chinese houses than this one sills usually are. Chinese
+floors are chill places, usually carpetless.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes looked sightless, overgrown with the darkness of
+age or disease. Her nostrils quivered angrily. Did she see,
+Ruben wondered, by the sense of smell?</p>
+
+<p>Her face snarled, and she sprang to her height and stood
+facing them both defiantly, enraged and forbidding.</p>
+
+<p>“So?” she exclaimed before Sên Ruben could speak, before
+Sên Toon would, “the white Sên has come home, home to the
+Queendom of Sên Ya Tin!” She spat out their old-one’s
+name as it were venom.</p>
+
+<p>Was it clairvoyance? Had gossip reached her? Or did
+she <i>see</i> and guess? Ruben thought the last; Toon believed
+the first. But they both felt an icy gust enwrap and sting
+them, though the hot afternoon sun poured in through the
+hut’s one fan-shaped window.</p>
+
+<p>“White son of the grandson of ruthless Sên Ya Tin, what
+have you here? What seek you of Kow Lôk?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mother, I bring you gold.”</p>
+
+<p>Before Sên Toon could translate, she had held out her
+hand. “This person will count it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben was well provided. He laid generous largess in
+Lôk’s skinny palm, and saw as he did that her hand and her
+arm were sinewy as a plowman’s. And he had seen the vigor
+with which she had sprung to her feet, and had marveled.
+She was attenuated, clear-eyed, her scant, draggled hair was
+white as new snow; but this was no weakling, paralysis never
+had touched her. Ruben saw her strong as sound whipcord,
+stronger than many men at their prime.</p>
+
+<p>The woman did not finger the gold; she held it contemptuously
+in her coupled hands, shaking them slowly once and
+again. Then, “You pay well,” she said, and named to a
+<i>yuan</i> what Ruben knew he had given her.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben, not knowing what next to say, fearing to infuriate,
+at a loss how to placate, waited her further speech, and
+as he waited looked eagerly about this tiny room in which a
+Kow woman lived alone.</p>
+
+<p>The floor was of hard beaten earth. The fireless <i>k’ang</i>, a
+brazier, a scant array of cooking utensils, a cup, a plate, a
+wooden dipper by the water bucket, a gong (the babies believed,
+so Toon told him afterwards, that with it the witch
+summoned the demons that served her) a cheap kitchen-god,
+and upon a shelf a valueless vase were all that furnished the
+meager room.</p>
+
+<p>In the vase were a few cotton flowers, faded and old, and
+a feather a wild gander had dropped. Ruben’s eyes widened
+and questioned, and he looked hard and long. He would
+have questioned her, but he did not dare. The room grew
+colder and colder; Sên Toon was shivering; and the low
+afternoon sun beat in hotter and hotter through the open
+window.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên had seen the mate of that cheap tawdry vase
+before, just such coarse, crude, cloth flowers and the feather
+of a mandarin goose in it—in London.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Wah! Wah!</i>” the woman shrieked, “it smells of blood,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>
+Sên blood, and it smells of the blood of a girl’s heart that
+Sên Ya Tin crushed under her shoe. I’ll not of it! It soils
+me! Crawl to it,” she cried, “pick it up, pouch it,” she
+hissed as she hurled the gold down, “or leave it there and it
+shall feed my cess-pool when my servants come, the imps of
+hell who come in the dark to serve me.”</p>
+
+<p>They left the gold where it had fallen. Sên Toon smothered
+a smile, though he was trembling still. Toon had no
+doubt that the crone would gather it up carefully and hide
+it safely when they had gone. Sên Ruben believed that the
+gold he had given would sink low in the cess-pool of Kow
+Lôk.</p>
+
+<p>Neither hoped to win aught from Lôk to-day. They motioned
+each other that they would go.</p>
+
+<p>Something strange and ill was happening here. Both had
+heard (Ruben a little, Toon much) of such uncanny demonstrations,
+but neither had believed. A dog growled, a cat
+meowed wildly; neither cat nor dog was here. The room
+grew dark, but they both could see. Tiny points of light
+darted hither and thither, darted and snapped. Vermin
+crawled towards them; the scattered coins looked slimy
+snakes.</p>
+
+<p>They turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Lôk laughed, and her laugh was ugly.</p>
+
+<p>“Stay!” she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>They knew that her word chained them.</p>
+
+<p>“You have paid, and you shall have. Not even for my
+cess-pool will I from a Sên have aught for which I do not
+give value, and in full measure. One has paid, both shall
+hear. Thine,” she spoke to Sên Toon, “is the liver of a fool.
+You spurn joy. It will spurn you in its youth and thine.
+It will flee from thee down to the Yellow Springs. When it
+leaves thee thy coward heart will break and never be whole
+again. Thou canst not escape thy fate, a golden fate while
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>
+the day-star circles China from now to Pepper Month and
+to Pepper Month thrice, then will it be accursed. I curse
+thee, Sên Toon son of Sên Wing-lu.”</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Sên Ruben with a cackling laugh, a withered
+grin. “Thou hast dared to crave a Chinese maiden,
+thou who art half-caste and skinless. Thou hast sought and
+not found. Thou shalt be found. But thou shalt lose. Go
+from me now, Sên and half-Sên. Come not again. Because
+of the cup you must drink, a cup I have drained, because of
+a love that has wrapped you, because of the love you return,
+love not given by woman, love not given to woman, you,
+white Sên, I will not curse. You go to woe. Go in peace.
+But come not again.”</p>
+
+<p>The darkness passed. The gold on the floor was yellow
+again. Kow Lôk huddled down on her mat and crouched
+there with a crackled gurgle that might have been pain or
+mirth or both, or only taunting rage. Sên Toon went at
+once, but Ruben lingered a moment looking once more intently
+at the small poor vase.</p>
+
+<p>He would come here again, he resolved, as he followed
+Toon down the burnished crooked path and out of the unguarded
+gate.</p>
+
+<p>The Sêns did not speak or look back until they reached
+the loquat trees. There Ruben paused, and they both turned
+and gazed musingly at the nourish-old-age of strange Kow
+Lôk.</p>
+
+<p>In his secret heart Sên Toon felt that they had seen a
+miracle. Even now he did not believe that the woman was
+a witch, but she had convinced him that she had barter
+with the spirits of the underworld. He never had doubted—few
+Chinese do—that there were spirits that would come
+back to earth and that wrought there. If most educated
+Chinese are agnostic, the majority of all Chinese are spiritualistic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben believed that they had seen trickery, sleight
+of hand and human frenzy. But the woman appealed to
+him; he would see her again, and go to her alone.</p>
+
+<p>They did not speak of her again until they had made their
+way half through the forest of walnut trees.</p>
+
+<p>“You promised me her story.”</p>
+
+<p>“Kow Lôk was born in Shen-si; her father was a boatman,
+one of the poorest. He broke some law, got deep in some
+questionable embroilment; I never knew just what. The man
+was tight-lipped, and his wife and children were too ignorant
+to tell, or dared not. Probably the wife herself did not
+know the truth; certainly the children were too young to
+know. They fled to Ho-nan, found their way and made it
+somehow. For years they were beggars by our waysides, but
+they were frugal. Little by little they got work: errands to
+run, odd fragments of toil to do. They attached themselves
+to no one, none to them; but at last they established themselves
+near a <i>tsa hsing</i> village; little by little by the slow
+growth of industrial companionships they grew in friendly
+touch with the villagers though never of them. The girl-child,
+growing to womanhood, grew inordinately beautiful.
+‘Peach-blossom’ they called her. Our old men have told me
+that her loveliness might have gained her purchase into many
+a mandarin’s harem. But the old waterman her father
+lacked the wit to negotiate with a <i>mei jên</i> to move in it. He
+was old and broken—homesick perhaps—and his wife died.
+She—the girl—was working at the edge of a paddy bed one
+day when Kow Li saw her—”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben did not start, was scarcely surprised; almost
+he had sensed it. And the vase had whispered it. Yes; he
+would see Kow Lôk again.</p>
+
+<p>“—he was a comely stripling, I have heard, already marked
+in Sên Ya Tin’s mind, for the service of her favorite grandson,
+your honorable father, destined King-lo’s body servant,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>
+if he proved worthy. In truth Kow Li the peasant boy had
+been Lord Sên King-lo’s servant since first they two had
+toddled about under our queen-one’s wise watchful eye. Li
+greeted her, Lôk answered. It grew. Often they met; at
+day by open accident, at night by stealth and unobserved. It
+flared—the love between them. Kow Li’s father had consented.
+The girl’s father made no objection. Nothing
+stood between the marriage but the necessary formalities of
+betrothal and the consent of our old queen-one. No one knew
+how often they met, and no one cared. The peasant girls,
+who must toil while they still smell of their mothers’ milk
+until they are coffined, cannot have the seclusion of the
+courtyard maidens. Scarcely a peasant man who saw Lôk
+but would have taken her to wife, to be his number-two, if
+already he had a number-one; scarcely a sash-wearer but
+would have been willing to buy her for his slave girl. But
+Lôk scowled at them all, and her father was too lazy and
+decrepit to force her. She had but one love in her being,
+and she had given it to Kow Li. Kow Li gave her love and
+longing, but he loved also one other, Sên King-lo his master;
+loved his young lord intensely. Many moons went. The girl
+had no dowry; Kow Li was well-waged, but, as is our custom,
+Li’s father pouched Li’s pay-cash and was ill-stomached
+to return it for the big bridal expenses without which all the
+Kow kindred would have lost face forever. At last Kow
+Li, aching with waiting, being in attendance on our old
+queen-one, threw himself at her footstool and with his face
+on her carpet, prayed that he might speak; poured out his
+story; begged for advice.</p>
+
+<p>“Sên Ya Tin was furious—but she strangled the outgoing
+of her rage. She had intended that Li should not take in
+marriage for years yet: she wished from him undivided
+service—a doting bridegroom could not give it. But she was
+just and she had wisdom, two qualities so rarely woman’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>
+that perhaps it was that that welded her power, made her
+sovereign here. In her wisdom she knew that unwilling
+service is poor service. Sên Ya Tin wished none such for
+Sên King-lo. And her heart—oddly kind at times—told
+her that Kow Li had earned no punishment for listening to
+the clamor his hot heart made between his ribs. She told
+him what she wished and had planned for him. Next moon
+Lord Sên King-lo journeyed far, would be long away, in the
+Whites’ strange and distant country. Would he, Kow Li, go
+with him his servant, never to leave or fail him? Or would
+he stay behind in their homeland—and wed with Peach
+Blossom? Freely she gave him his choice, commanded him
+to take it freely. If he chose to go with his lord-one, his
+exile would be long and painful, and his service must be lifelong,
+and for many years wifeless. If he stayed she herself
+would dower the girl-one suitably and their marriage should
+lack nothing, neither bride-cakes nor fire-crackers. Kow Li
+chose instantly. As he came from our queen-one’s presence
+he was weeping. Ere the next moon was ripe he went to
+England with his lord—your father; went without seeing
+Peach Blossom. He made the lesser sacrifice, I doubt not;
+he never faltered in it. But he lacked the courage to see
+Lôk before he went.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did he never see her again?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am not sure, Sên Ruben. When your father and your
+honorable mother, whom Sên Ya Tin loved, journeyed to
+Ho-nan, Kow Li came not with them. He was left in your
+baby service in England. Before his marriage once Sên
+King-lo came here, and his servant Kow Li with him. If
+Kow Li saw Kow Lôk then (she <i>was</i> Kow Lôk then) no
+person saw or learned it. Whatever it was to Peach Blossom,
+to Kow Li it was final. Never in his letters to his kinsmen
+has he asked of her, Kow Sin has told me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the girl, when he had gone?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They rushed her marriage through. By trickery or by
+force, I know not which, they wedded her to another Kow—a
+widowman who needed a care-one for his children. Ya
+Tin believed that sudden wifehood, the glitter of bridal, the
+dignity of being a headman’s number-one would out-wipe the
+girl’s young infatuation soonest. And so, the women in our
+courtyards tell me, it proves times eleven out of times twelve.
+This time it did not. Kow Lôk loathed her husband and
+shrieked it daytime and night-time. She bore him no child.
+Not all women give birth. Or perhaps in that, as in most
+else, her will proved stronger than his. To his children she
+never was unkind, and at his death, many years ago—her
+married life was brief—they would have kept her with them
+and tended her honorably; but Kow Lôk scorned it. It was
+her suggestion that they divide their father’s land and goods
+immediately, as with her consent they could, instead of keeping
+all intact and sharing dwelling-house, labor and earnings,
+good luck and ill, until she, their legal mother, died.
+It suited them right well to divide their patrimony at once,
+for they had clashing inclinations; already two were wedded
+and between their wives there was no sweetness. Sooner than
+it often takes to accomplish such arrangements in China, it
+all was settled and Kow Lôk was in possession of her <i>yang-lao-ti</i>;
+she chose it herself. She would have no other.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben flushed with shame. He had worked so hard to
+learn, had so loved it, and Kow Li had so labored to teach
+him. But the ways of China garnered but scantily would
+fill endless tomes. He did not know what <i>yang-lao-ti</i> was.
+And he was ashamed to own that he did not.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Sên Toon saw the question that had flickered in
+his cousin’s eye. “Nourish-old-age seems to me an admirable
+custom. It makes parents too old to work, too old to guide
+the industry of their children and grandchildren, secure from
+want and bankruptcy. It enables adult men to work and to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>
+think, decide for themselves before their vigor and interest
+have lost their prime and edge; they are no longer pensioners
+upon their parents’ bounty, and past-work parents are no
+longer pensioners upon their child-ones’ industry. It gives
+age ease and security, and it gives child-ones in their prime
+incentive and independence, as much independence as a Chinese
+can have while either of his parents lives. It is not
+for the girdle-wearers or for the rich, of course, but it is the
+occasional practice of those who must plant and reap their
+rice before they eat it; and they often find it a boon—both
+the younger and the aged—and to the younger it always is
+an incentive.”</p>
+
+<p>“She chose a lovely <i>yang-lao-ti</i>, a fruitful and prosperous
+‘nourish-old-age,’” Sên Ruben said.</p>
+
+<p>“On the contrary. When Kow Lôk said that she would
+have that portion of the Kow-land or none, it was a barren
+nothing. There was neither tree nor hut on it. In their
+love-trysts Kow Li and she had been in the habit of meeting
+there, and, to give some color of industry to their companionship
+in so secluded a spot, they had been in the habit of
+sticking peach-stones in the ground, little thinking that
+planted so roughly the stones ever would shoot, nor caring if
+they did or not. Kow Lôk chose her nourish-old-age for remembrance,
+I think; No Fee—the only Sên the old crone
+does not hate and revile—asserts it. With her own hands,
+almost unaided, the widow-one built her tiny hut and thatched
+it. She was tremendously strong in those days. She planted
+her bamboo fence. Scarcely had she made her home there,
+where we saw her to-day, before tiny peach-slips pricked
+through the ground—through some miracle of gardening and
+luck, we have believed—through the intervention of the spirits
+that serve her, the babies believe. Who shall say? Not I,
+after what we two have seen to-day, Sên Ruben. However,
+it has come; her orchard has thriven beyond the memory of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>
+known husbandry. And in all China no other peach fruit is
+so sweet and spiced as hers. Yet hers the birds of the air
+never peck.”</p>
+
+<p>Again they took their way in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon was thinking bitterly of a bride that was coming
+to him from Hu Peh—starting even now.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was thinking deeply of Kow Li and of Kow
+Li’s lifelong fealty, passing the fealty of woman, of Kow
+Li’s fealty to Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII">
+    CHAPTER XXXIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Toon stood at the house door, waiting to lift his
+bride from her flowery-chair and carry her across the
+flaming threshold. Her cavalcade drew near. They were
+carrying her through the great outer gate-of-ceremony. Already
+the bride-test fire was lit at the house door, a low
+harmless “fire” of perfumed tinsels.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon was splendid in a bridegroom’s gorgeous trappings.</p>
+
+<p>The boy’s face was ashen—and looked the more ghastly
+for the gay raiment he wore.</p>
+
+<p>Close behind him stood gathered the Sêns—even the women—ready
+to acclaim the bride, to whom no one yet must speak,
+and to greet her kinsmen who had accompanied her so far
+to give her to stranger hands—yield her forever to a strange
+undiscovered home, seal her in a new life that might prove
+garden, prison or tomb, to tell her good-by, and see her no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon was not embarrassed; social embarrassment is
+not a Chinese trait; and his misery and distaste were far
+past mere embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>His kindred gathered about him there at the Ting Tzŭ
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>
+Lang paid him little heed; they were too engrossed in watching
+for the girl hidden in the slow approaching bride-chair.
+In China—and where is she not?—the bride on her wedding
+day is of far more importance than the bridegroom. It is
+<i>her</i> day; and she predominates it, if all the rest of her life
+she has nothing to do but be meekly unimportant and obey.
+Besides, the Sêns had seen Sên Toon most of the days of his
+life; they had no curiosity about Sên Toon; they had a great
+deal concerning his bride; especially the Sên women had.
+He might neglect her, avoid her most of the time, if he
+chose. But all the <i>kuei</i> would be open to her, be hers. She
+might spend most of her time with them in their general
+courtyard. Would she add to its pleasantness or detract?
+An ill-natured concubine could contrive much discomfort for
+an entire household, a sour-souled wife could almost disrupt
+it and make their common courtyard purgatory come to
+earth instead of a sun-drenched garden of mirth, siesta and
+song. Truly this coming girl was almost of more importance
+to them than to Sên Toon, and they knew it. She
+would have no mother-in-law to fear, for Sên Toon’s mother
+never had rebuked or crossed any one in her life and never
+would; she often went into the meadow damp rather than
+disturb a snail on the path or a lizard sleeping in the sun;
+and an <i>amah</i> could have ruled her—certainly her daughter-in-law
+would, if his wife pleased Sên Toon. True Sên
+Wed O was regnant in the <i>kuei</i>; but Sên Wed O was fat
+and indolent with years and sweetmeats; was always more
+apt to raise her eyebrows with an inscrutable glance than to
+raise her stick; and it was useless to predict which side
+Madame Sên would champion and triumph in any quarrel
+or disagreement. She was not fond of complaints; she had
+no stomach for advice. Always her judgments were her own.
+And this new-come-one had imperial blood and was greatly
+endowed, and her kindred were powerful. Small wonder that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>
+the Sên ladies craned their necks as far over the shoulders
+of their men as they could when the bride-bearers set the
+bride-chair down.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben did not dwell in this or in any other <i>kuei</i>. He
+had little interest in the girl who had come to be made a
+Sên, no interest that was not vicarious and indirect. His
+eyes and his thought were for Sên Toon. Would Sên Toon
+go through with it? <i>Could</i> he? It was jolly hard lines on
+his cousin Toon, Ruben Sên thought. His sympathy was
+with Sên Toon.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên had come to China to learn and to admire.
+And Sên Ruben had done both. But once or twice the English
+blood in his blue Chinese veins had revolted at some custom
+intensely Chinese. Perhaps Ivy Ruby Gilbert’s son was
+a little less Chinese than he believed himself, a little less
+Chinese than he earnestly wished to be. But had he never
+seen the face of a Chinese girl on a canvas at Burlington
+House, probably he would have condemned Sên Toon’s reluctance
+and rancor to-day; for his soul was Chinese and he had
+seen in this home of his kinsmen the preponderant happiness
+of Chinese marriage. But he had seen a girl in a picture,
+and—what if he were in Sên Toon’s place to-day? His gorge
+rose at the thought, and an Englishman’s ire rose—and
+vowed.</p>
+
+<p>The initial moment of Sên Toon’s ordeal had struck. The
+bride’s chair rested on the ground at the housedoor, the
+bearers turned and left it, with their sturdy backs toward it
+and went through the great gate, rubbing their arms as
+they walked. What would Sên Toon do?</p>
+
+<p>He behaved like a man and a Sên. Instantly he went to
+the chair and thrust the clustering bridesmaids aside. He
+was a grave, dignified figure, in spite of his fantastic bridal
+brocades and foppery, his bead-dangled, bejeweled, charm-hung
+love-pouch belching perfume and jangling coins as he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>
+moved, wearing right lordly the proud, peacocked mandarin’s
+hat which even a peasant may ape at his bridal.</p>
+
+<p>Except a Burmese pagoda, newly built, untarnished and
+richly endowed, there is little in Asia more glittering, more
+intricately and lavishly ornamented than a Chinese Bride-chair
+of the first class. This chair was sumptuous—if Sên
+Toon had sent it reluctantly, he had sent it of great price.
+The bamboo carrying poles were lacquered with gold. The
+carrying poles were the least of it. The box (for a bride’s
+chair is just that, a more or less richly bedizened box) was
+lacquered with gold-leaf and silver; it was carved and interlaced.
+Its two roofs rose to an apex of a great ball of topaz;
+the precious ball wore a jeweled crown. The up-sloping roofs
+were encrusted with marvelously wrought dragons and with
+kingfisher feathers. Unlike other Chinese roofs these did
+not tilt up at their edges. At each corner of both roofs an
+exquisite “lion” carved and molded of pure gold stood upright
+and watchful, with out-thrust tongues of coral. The
+eyes were jewels; the claws were ivory and silver. From
+the edge of the lower roof hung a deep fringe of alternate
+garnets, moonstones, turquoise, beryls, jasper and topaz. The
+box was a riot of arabesques and of crimson silk-lined open-work.
+At the back a shutter was opened slightly at the lower
+end, or the girl must have suffocated. In front a taut curtain
+of embroidered cloth of silver was closely fastened.
+There was a great deal of red about the chair. It was indescribable.
+The perfumes it smelt of must have cost a fortune.
+In her progress to the marriage-rite the Sêns had done
+their new woman and chattel royally well.</p>
+
+<p>The bridesmaids, a dozen or more tiny maidens, too young
+to be profaned or lose face from the eyes of men or from
+gazing at men, as soon as their low litters had been lowered
+to the ground scrambled out before their <i>amahs</i> could help
+them, and scampered off on their wee crippled feet to prevent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>
+the bridegroom from taking his bride. The maid of
+honor must have been ten years of age, the youngest looked
+two. They were dressed all alike in long, silver-edged blue
+satin tunics and crêpe orange trousers. Their wide sashes
+were bridal crimson. They wore no veils over their delicately
+painted baby faces, but they wore high, heavy-looking “maid
+crowns” of gold, pink and amber artificial roses. Their
+specks of feet, shod in jeweled brocades, sparkled and glittered.
+One hopes, more firmly than one believes, that soon
+the binding of feet may be reformed out of China; but how
+old eyes will miss them: the little golden lilies that for centuries
+have scampered over the gardens of China, over the
+hearts of Chinese men!</p>
+
+<p>The bride’s father descended from his betasseled palfrey’s
+high saddle, her brothers from theirs, they with comparative
+agility, he with difficulty and assisted by his servants. Her
+kinsmen would follow her into the great <i>ch’ih</i>, watch all the
+ceremonies, bid her good-by in a few days; but neither in
+<i>ch’ih</i>, <i>hsi hua t’ing</i> nor temple, before the ancestral tablets
+of the Sêns nor at the marriage feast would one of them
+glance at the Sên ladies. But many a peep would the Sên
+women take at them, and the Sên men, seeing their women’s
+misbehavior, would smile. It did not happen often; there
+was seldom opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Fire-crackers still crackled and snapped. Brass instruments
+still bellowed and screeched; the sweet song of the
+bamboo flutes was drowned in uglier sounds; but the music
+of the silver flutes pierced through it all.</p>
+
+<p>Behind chairs, litters and palfreys hundreds of bearers
+waited to lay down such of the bride’s gifts and furnishings
+as had not been sent several days before her. These bearers,
+all lifelong servants of her father’s clan, the clan of Sia,
+were clad like lords, though in fabrics flimsier and cheaper
+than real lord-ones wear; but they looked the peasants they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>
+were. Nowhere on earth can race be disguised or aped, and
+least of all in China. A list of what they carried would fill
+a thick catalogue. Two of the bride-belongings were of
+super-importance, though compared with much they were of
+minor cost. The wild geese in their great strong, wire-covered
+cage Sên Toon had sent to her in betrothal and in presage
+and promise of lifelong married felicity. The wild geese of
+China never remate, and once mated never quarrel or forsake.
+On a great crimson tray four satin-clad coolies carried,
+in candlesticks of gold and tortoise shell, a pair of gigantic
+betasseled red-candles, virgin and unlit. They would
+stand by her bed or in the family temple as she chose, but
+not even the head of the house of Sên might order them lit
+until the birth hour of Sên Sia Fûtsin’s first son; and then
+not even the head of the house of Sên could forbid her midwife
+to light them. They, too, Sên Toon had given in betrothal,
+talismans of motherhood.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the red-clad candle-bearers came two others, carrying
+another immense red tray on which potted in carved
+silver stood a dwarf orange tree rich with its own golden fruit
+and fantastically festooned with gold coins, an emblem of
+continued wealth. Red-clad musicians followed the “flowery”
+chair and were interspersed and noisy in all the long procession’s
+length. Behind the bride, before her, and again and
+again were bride-banner bearers. The bride-banners were indescribable;
+some were shaped like great wide-winged beetles
+riding above embroidered and flower-edged squares of silk;
+some were shaped even more fantastically, resembling great-eyed
+crustaceans with ridged outspread wings that were
+jauntily tipped by embossed plaques of gold-crustaceans that
+rode on stiffer, more irregularly shaped under-devices of silk.
+The men who held them were imperially and theatrically
+garbed. The banners’ tall twisted poles were of lacquer,
+gold or red. On the two most important, the nuptial banners,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>
+were beautifully inscribed the names of the fathers of
+the nuptial pair who still were those fathers’ chattels.</p>
+
+<p>As Sên Toon went towards his bride Sên Ruben saw the
+flash of the splendid jewels in the hilt of the dagger that
+Toon wore sheathed in his high red-leather boot.</p>
+
+<p>The bridesmaids dashed on the bridegroom, beat at him
+with tiny fat rose-leaf yellow baby hands. They were so
+young that, in defense of their mistress, his bride, they might
+touch him, beat against his well-clad shoulder, if they could
+reach it. One of them almost did; two clawed at his sleeve;
+two pulled at his knees; the others beat and tore at his boots;
+one dimpled, painted mite tripped up over his foot, found it
+a good resting place, and lay there face up gurgling and
+laughing at him affectionately as she scolded and cursed him,
+calling him a thief, a beast and a coolie.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon beat them off tenderly, tossing a handful of
+sweetmeats a few feet away, to divert and entice them. But
+they had been well chosen and well drilled; they clung to
+him but the closer—beat at him and tore at his garments the
+harder, thrashing him hard with their rosebud hands. Again
+and again he drove them away; again and again they came
+back, clung closer, assaulted him harder and buzzed about
+him like angry, playful, jubilant bees.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon routed the pretty infant Amazons at last, or perhaps
+the chief <i>amah</i> had whispered them to desist. They
+stood a little apart, breathless but giggling softly, and the
+tiniest tot of them all sat where she had fallen, sucking her
+thumb and devouring Lord Sên Toon with wistful, worshiping
+eyes. The youngest bridesmaid had fallen deeply in love
+with the bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon ripped the tinseled crimson curtain away, ripped
+it aslit and off, bent over the red-veiled motionless figure in
+the bride-come-box, lifted her up, sprang with her in his arms
+over the perfumed fire that smoked and flamed on the doorstep,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>
+stamped at it contemptuously with a red bridal boot,
+and carried the bride in his arms through the <i>ting tzŭ lang</i>
+and lesser <i>langs</i>, through the <i>t’ings ch’ih</i>, roofed and decorated
+for the bridal ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben pressed close beside him, and Sên Ruben’s
+heart was heavy. Little could he see of the crimson bundle
+in his cousin’s arms, but he thought that the girl swathed
+and bundled in bridal crimson was dumpy and heavy. One
+of her bejeweled hands slipped out from the folds of her
+veil; not at all a pretty hand. And next to her binded feet
+a lovely hand is the most indispensable attribute of a Chinese
+lady’s beauty. The matchmaker had swindled Sên Toon,
+and the heart of Sên Ruben was wroth.</p>
+
+<p>Through the covered passageways and reception halls, her
+kinsmen and his kindred close behind them, Sên Toon carried
+her, but he and his bride went hand in hand into the
+<i>ch’ih</i>—the great marble-paved, roofless courtyard, over-roofed
+and richly carpeted to-day, and greatly decked and garnished
+for the nuptial rite of Sên Toon and the girl who walked
+beside him, still blinded by her veil—walked guided by his
+hand. He led her to the daïs, helped her up its few steps,
+and seated her beside him on their throne.</p>
+
+<p>On the marriage daïs the astrologer, who had chosen the
+propitious bridal day, tied them together with red silk cords,
+ankle to ankle, waist to waist more loosely. Together they
+drained a pair of jasper wine cups also knotted together by
+cords of red. It was then that Sên Ruben saw for an instant
+the bride’s face; she moved her veil a little to find the rim
+of the cup her bridegroom held to her lips, and as she did so
+the jeweled fringe of her crown, another dense veil in itself,
+slipped aside, just for an instant, and Ruben saw! No one
+else did; Sên Toon’s eyes were on the cup, careful not to spill
+the nuptial wine; no one else stood where he could see. Not
+deformed, and the face of a lady-one, yet Ruben Sên saw it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>
+disconcertingly plain. Not a face to win a husband’s love,
+he thought. And he read her chin too firm, her lips too thin
+and threateningly willful—an ugly, selfish face. It repelled
+Sên Ruben, and his heart was sore for Sên Toon. Almost,
+had it not been impossible so to affront a girl, Ruben could
+have snatched the nuptial wine cups from Sên Toon’s hand
+and dashed them down. He had thought, as he followed
+them through the <i>t’ings</i> and <i>langs</i>, that the girl’s gait was
+ungainly; but looking down at her red-shod feet, as she sat
+on the daïs, he started at their loveliness; he had not seen
+tinier feet in China. There were not golden lilies to match
+them in all the courtyards of the Sêns. Sên Toon had that
+to his happiness!</p>
+
+<p>When they left the daïs at long last, bride and groom bowed
+to each other again and again and bowed low and often to
+their kindred—three of hers, dozens of his—and their relatives
+bowed as often, not so low, to them. Sên Toon led her
+to the ancestral tablets, and there they bent repeatedly and
+worshiped. That done she was a Sên, no longer a Sia; but
+she was not yet his wife. Out of the <i>ch’ih</i>, through the inner
+garden and courtyard into her own room in the <i>kuei</i>, Sên
+Toon led the girl, closed the panel closely, lifted the red veil
+from her face, quietly laid his dagger on the veil where it
+had fallen, a gauzy cloud of silken crimson, and they were
+man and wife—though their eyes had not met; neither had
+looked at the other yet. The priests were praying in the
+great ancestral temple, a gorgeously appareled motley crew
+of priests, both Buddhist and Taoist. For the Sêns for centuries
+had kept every road to Heaven open and well tended.
+If they took all the religions of China somewhat lightly, they
+trod them all with decorum, if mostly they walked them on
+hireling priestly feet.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour the now wedded ones were left alone, then
+her bridesmaids burst in upon them. And Sên Toon left
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>
+the nuptial chamber. Until the dark came, until the day
+broke red in the sky, her clamorous maids sported about the
+new wife-one, joked about her, taunted her, did their utmost
+to make her speak. She took no notice of them, spoke not,
+scarcely moved. And rushing from the chamber when the
+gongs of the house struck the Hour-of-the-Dragon, the troop
+of laughing girls ran through the house, screaming out
+exultantly that she had neither laughed nor cried, asked for
+food nor spoken. She would prove a model wife; for she was
+not talkative, and she was not gluttonous and ne’er would
+she ask for tea or rice. Not even mushrooms or melons
+would tempt her until she had served her lord or heard that
+he had eaten in the outer quarters.</p>
+
+<p>All night long Sên Toon paced up and down alone in the
+orchard. No one sought him. Sên Ruben wished to but
+dared not. Ruben pitied the heavy droop of Sên Toon’s
+shoulders, the miserable drag of Sên Toon’s feet. The heart
+of the white Sên rebelled against the proscribed and arbitrary
+customs of Chinese marriage. Ruben Sên had found
+one sore thing in China, and Sên Ruben felt it such.</p>
+
+<p>Only those two cousins kept watch and wakefulness until
+the giggling bridesmaids came trooping through the house
+with the daylight. One by one the others sought their couches
+or sleep-mats. Sên Ruben saw Madame Sên yawn long before
+her departure from the feast-hall licensed the others to follow
+her; for when a great Chinese lady whose hairs are
+white, and she rich in years, mingles at such sacred functions
+with the men-ones she ranks above them all. But when
+Ruben saw her watching Sên Toon’s unhappy pacing, as she
+turned away to the <i>kuei</i>, Sên Ruben heard her chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>When the sun was halfway up the bamboos, Sên Toon
+turned slowly towards the house and went to his wife. And
+for several days Sên Ruben did not catch sight or hear word
+of Sên Toon.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV">
+    CHAPTER XXXIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Ruben heard some one running after him up the
+Peach-tree Hill, turned and saw that it was Sên Toon,
+but scarcely recognized him. Toon took the tiny trickling
+brook with a merry leap, and Toon’s face was glowing; Sên
+Toon’s eyes were triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>“Strike me, Sên Ruben, strike me for a dolt and monster!”
+Toon cried half in shame, but all in gladness, panting a little
+from the pace he’d come. “Forget my silly railings. Never
+remember them, I entreat thee, O Sên Ruben. She is carved
+out of opal; she is made of roses; all the odors of the peaches
+of the garden of immortality perfume her. Oh, I have done
+penance at her feet. Her <i>feet</i>, Sên Ruben! They are loveliest
+in China. All of her is loveliest in all the world. And
+she is kind and sweet as she is beautiful. I am drunk with
+happiness. My wife is the twin of my soul, the gold glory
+of my existence. If I go on-High to-morrow I have lived
+an eternity in Paradise since last we spoke together, thou
+and I. But pray all the gods, pray them hard, I entreat
+thee, that I live to nurse my son-ones and their son-ones in
+my arms; the love-buds of my celestial marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben promised to do it, deeply glad that marriage
+had blinded Sên Toon. Only blindness could account for this.
+He remembered the bride-one’s face quite clearly. Then suddenly
+he remembered the old Sên woman’s contented chuckle
+as she had looked down on Sên Toon from the lantern-hung
+casement. Did Madame Sên know of some necromancy of
+which he never had heard? This was witchcraft or sheer
+madness. Better so, if it could last! But it could not. It
+must pass, and then life would sour again for poor Sên Toon,
+more bittered than before. Probably Sên Toon would travel
+then, far and long, if Sên Wing-lu, his father, and Sên
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>
+Wed O the regnant Madame Sên would let him. Poor girl!
+Ruben was sorry for her, widowed by her husband’s absence
+and repudiation. Of course Toon could divorce her—there
+were ways—but Ruben had not heard that ever a Sên had
+done it. Certainly it was not a Sên way.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Toon babbled on. There was no need for Ruben to
+speak; Sên Ruben was glad that there was not. Nor did
+Sên Toon stay long.</p>
+
+<p>“You must see her. She will greet you kindly for my
+sake, and you will envy me her beauty. You shall see her
+soon—at our picnic among the graves—it draws near, and
+this year our women are coming with us to make merry
+among the tombs when we have finished our pious worshiping.
+You shall see my treasure, Sên Ruben, and our happiness.
+Until then”—and Sên Toon was running down the
+Peach-tree Hill, over the brook, across the scented meadows
+like a drunken lapwing. Sên Ruben shrugged, wondering,
+and, with odd perplexity darkening his fair face, watched
+Toon out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>At the picnic among the graves some days later young Mrs.
+Sên Toon made her real family <i>début</i> among the Sêns. Only
+her own maids and her infatuated husband had really seen
+her until now. The wives of the family had visited her formally
+as she sat all but speechless on her painted ivory bed,
+in her own room with peacocks’ feathers strewn thickly on
+its lacquered floor; and she had served them herself with tiny
+cups of boiling tea and thickly sugared sweetmeats; but the
+girls and children had not seen her at all, and no Sên man
+except Sên Toon had. But she came to the picnic, carried
+there in a litter almost as gay as her bride’s chair. And
+when the prostrations at the graves were done, and done,
+too, the ceremony of introducing her to all these graves of
+Sên, she made merry with them all, as merry as No Fee herself,
+and No Fee was in wild frolic mood to-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span></p>
+
+<p>The men were presented to her, and she to them, one by
+one, as was now their right, for she now was of their blood,
+a Sên woman, living in the Sên ladies’ <i>kuei</i>. Sên Toon was
+vastly proud and showed it, pulling at an imaginary beard
+with all the pomp of a thrice-wived graybeard. The bride’s
+girlish face was flushed with shy happiness as well as crusted
+with paint. Certainly she was pigeon-plump, but not so
+plump as Sên Ruben had thought; she had a dimple or two.
+Ruben suspected that she had charm, and he saw the softness
+of her eyes that followed Sên Toon whenever he moved away
+from her a pace—her eyes did not follow Sên Toon often.
+Sên Ruben wondered how he had thought her so plain. She
+lacked Ivy’s loveliness; she lacked No Fee’s; a hundredfold
+she lacked the loveliness of the pictured face that had fired
+his soul and twisted his blood; but the girl was not exactly
+plain. When the picnic boxes were unpacked and the flasks
+unstoppered she served her young lord meekly; but Ruben saw
+her eyes sparkle down into Sên Toon’s and saw Toon put a
+titbit or two between her lips. He saw Toon’s fingers linger
+at their task, saw them tremble, too, as his bride knelt beside
+her lord pouring amber wine into his amber cup. Sên Ruben
+doubted that Sên Toon ever would wander far from his
+little wife-one’s courtyard. Perhaps Chinese-way Chinese
+marriage was best, after all—for the Sên Toons of China
+who never had looked upon utmost girlish loveliness on an
+English canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên Toon accepted them all, and they all accepted
+her. She flew her kite as well as No Fee flew hers, and her
+little fluted laugh was silver as she chased the babe-ones between
+the graves, or played “butterflies” with them, and
+played blindman’s buff through the pink and cream pampas
+grasses. Sên Ruben did not envy Sên Toon, not even the
+feet of his bride, but he thought her a nice little thing. Sên
+Ruben concluded that Sên Toon’s wife would do.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span></p>
+
+<p>The moon came up in molten splendor before the Sêns
+lighted their scores of needless lanterns and, having made
+obeisance once more at their ancestors’ graves, went singing
+home.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As they neared their gates, an unattended horseman passed
+them. The ladies veiled their faces quickly—all but No Fee.
+No Fee stood stock-still and watched the sash-wearer squarely
+as he rode slowly past. Sên Kai Lun’s face was thunderous;
+but thunder never had frightened No Fee, least of all on the
+face of her father. She caught his sleeve and tugged it hard.
+“Who is yon lord?” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s that to thee, plaguesome wanton-one? Cover thy
+face!”</p>
+
+<p>No whipped a film of gauze-scarf across a segment of her
+face, and laughed roguish eyes at Sên Kai Lun across it.</p>
+
+<p>“Gods!” muttered Sên Kai Lun. Perhaps he knew what
+was coming, felt it. And instantly Sên Ruben suspected.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Who is he?</i> You know him, my honorable father.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your <i>dishonorable</i> tool-one!” Sên Kai Lun almost sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>“Hey, he was beautiful,” No Fee sighed. “I would wed
+with him. Send him your <i>mei jên</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never!” Sên Kai Lun ripped out with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>“I choose it,” No Fee told him softly. “Who is he?
+I will not be denied to know his beautiful, honorable
+name.”</p>
+
+<p>“His name is the name of a toad, his family are thieves,
+his father is a hyena.”</p>
+
+<p>No Fee laughed very softly. “I told you you knew him;
+the beautiful, beautiful lord-one.”</p>
+
+<p>“This person knows him not,” Sên Kai Lun said sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>“Tush,” said No Fee, “you know who he is.”</p>
+
+<p>“Be done, girl. I know him not. But his fox face is the
+face of the viper Lun Koo Yêh as I knew it long ago. I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>
+shall charge the lictors to chase the toad son of a toad and
+slay him for his great insolence that he rides him in Sênland.”</p>
+
+<p>“The only son of your bitterest foe, Lun Koo Yêh; that is
+awkward,” No Fee admitted. “<i>Yah! Yah!</i> you must send a
+peace-cup to Lun Koo Yêh—nay, you must take it to him
+and drink it with Lun Koo Yêh, the father-one of the beautiful
+lord.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Kai Lun groaned, and Ruben saw that he shook with
+rage. Almost he feared that the angered man would strike
+No Fee. She had no such fear, for she knew that Sên Kai
+Lun could not. But she pitied Sên Kai Lun. She knew
+how the task she had set him would gall him, and why. She
+knew the depths of the long quarrel between Sên Kai Lun
+and Lun Koo Yêh. She knew how his gorge would rise at
+the cup she bade him drink. She had no thought but that
+he must drink it to the dregs. But in all her relentless willfulness
+she found a heart-corner in which to sorrow for the
+father who never had thwarted her, and certainly must not
+be allowed to do so now. She snuggled close to her father,
+and they went in silence, No Fee’s arm thrust in his—an
+unpardonable liberty for the girl to take. But Sên Kai Lun
+did not thrust her off. Ruben walked beside them sorely in
+doubt what the end would be; Sên No Fee had none.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben walked alone far into the night, when all the others
+had gone to their lacquered pillows. Ruben paced and pondered.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee had shocked him, and he had seen that she had
+horrified Sên Toon’s young wife. Mrs. Sên Toon had heard
+nothing that No Fee had said to her father; only Sên Ruben
+had heard. But the bride-one had seen No gazing at the
+stranger and had seen that he had returned it warmly, and
+Sên Sia Tûtsin had cowered back in her litter, shamed in all
+her being for her husband’s young kinswoman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span></p>
+
+<p>Would Sên Kai Lun imprison No Fee in a nunnery? Ruben
+wondered. Or would he yield and reap the un-Chinese harvest
+his own weakness had sown? Was it alone the fault of
+Sên Kai Lun? Or had the brash ways of Young China infected
+even far-off old-conventioned Ho-nan? Was it possible
+that rash, hoydenish No Fee could prevail even in this?
+Sên Ruben’s gorge rose against it almost even as had Sên
+Tûtsin’s. He too had seen the stranger give No Fee look for
+look. Gods! Not so would he, nor his lady permit him to,
+look into the eyes of his lady of the picture, did ever Kwan
+Yin-ko, Hearer-of-Cries, grant that he found her.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, to find her!</p>
+
+<p>Too—he pondered and brooded over the words of a witch-woman’s
+prophecy. Strange! Very strange!</p>
+
+<p>At last Sên Ruben went slowly to his sleep-mat. But
+sleep did not find him soon. Perhaps he had lain soft too
+long to find within a few moons rest easy on a wooden pillow.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXV">
+    CHAPTER XXXV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Knowing that the Pepper Month was coming faster
+than he realized among the queen-time of the roses,
+Sên Ruben went to the witch woman a day or two before the
+fish-fight. He would not turn toward England without seeing
+her again.</p>
+
+<p>Alone Kow Lôk was spraying her peach trees when he came
+upon her. And it was daylight. There was no sightlessness
+in the eyes the woman turned to him, and they looked at
+him kindlier. She let him walk beside her, let him chat to
+her, as she sprayed the peach trees. There seemed little pretense,
+nothing witch-like about her to-day; just a sturdy old
+peasant woman working in her orchard.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben spoke to her of China, and she answered not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>
+unpleasantly. He spoke to her of England. She made no
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>“You have a little vase with a flower-bunch and a wild-gander
+quill in it in yonder room, old-one,” Sên said towards
+their parting.</p>
+
+<p>“This woman-person saw you eye it the day your fool-one
+kinsman brought you to spy upon her,” Kow Lôk answered
+pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>“I would buy it, old-one.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will not sell it, White Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will pay you big price for it.”</p>
+
+<p>“It has no price.” But she added, “Why do you covet it?”</p>
+
+<p>“To take it across the ocean, old-one. I have seen its
+match there, with selfsame flower-bunch in it, and selfsame
+feather, but of wild goose—in a house of treasures, greatliest
+treasured.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why should not Kow Lôk have her treasure, too? She
+has no other?”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had no answer. Kow Lôk went on spraying,
+moving slowly from tree to tree, Ruben moving with her. A
+long time they went in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then, “May I take a message?” Ruben asked her.</p>
+
+<p>“No message.” The woman spoke firmly, but Ruben
+thought that her hand on the spray-brush had trembled. “I
+have no message to send. But go in peace, Sên Ruben. You
+have come to do me a kindness. I understand what was in
+your heart. I will not be ungrateful. Kow Lôk the witch is
+not a ‘dwarf’ but a woman of the sons of Han. I shall not
+be here when next you come to Ho-nan. Many years must
+pass ere you come. Leave me now, and go in peace between
+us. I wish you no ill and shall not. I bear you not hate for
+the hate I bear your Great One.”</p>
+
+<p>Because he saw she wished it, Sên Ruben turned and
+left her; but first, because she was old, and for the little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>
+vase she treasured, Lord Sên Ruben bent low before the
+peasant woman whom Kow Li had loved in their youth and
+deserted. And Sên Ruben went in peace, because he knew
+that she had caught his message and knew that across the
+world Kow Li cherished a valueless old love token that for
+no gold would Kow Li sell.</p>
+
+<p>It was to tell the old peasant woman this that he had come
+again to her peach-girdled nourish-old-age.</p>
+
+<p>She called after him, “Had my peaches ripened you should
+eat your belly full, Lord Sên Ruben, and take with you all
+that you could carry. <i>Yie! Yie!</i> that you never will taste
+them: the only peaches in Ho-nan that are not tasteless!
+There will be no peaches here in this person’s orchard when
+you come again; for when I go to my grave-place, they will
+rot at their roots, and nothing shall save the peach trees that
+I saw planted—stones that grew not till I watered them with
+my sorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>Once more she called to him, over her shoulder when he
+had gone farther from her, “No message, lord-one!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben answered her, “No message, mother!”</p>
+
+<p>At the gate he turned for the last time and looked at Kow
+Lôk. She was spraying her peach-trees steadily. She did
+not turn to look at him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI">
+    CHAPTER XXXVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One thing that No Fee told him in a burst of happiness
+rather vexed Sên Ruben, and he grumbled of it to his
+mother in his next letter.</p>
+
+<p>No had had a deal to tell him of her great girl friend C’hi
+Yamei and it had not attracted Sên Ruben. C’hi Yamei was
+“emancipated.” Ruben was not sure that so-called emancipation
+along Western lines had improved any Chinese man,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>
+and he was sure that it had damaged and cheapened Chinese
+women. C’hi Yamei had lived in Europe, her father often
+made long stays there. When they were in Europe C’hi
+Yamei went everywhere and did everything just as English
+girls did—did the dance with men, went to the drama house
+with them. No Fee thought that admirable and enviable.
+Sên Ruben did not. And when No Fee cried out in ecstasy
+that Yamei was coming with her father to visit them, Sên
+Ruben was exceedingly sorry to hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Half their “flowery” rules would be relaxed, No asserted,
+while the C’his were with them; relaxed in hospitality’s
+courteous veiling of Sên C’hian Fan’s disapproval and detestation
+of his old friend C’hi Ng Yelü’s dishonorable mistreatment
+and criminal disregard of old Chinese sanctities.
+Oh! there would be high jinks while the C’his stayed. No
+Fee was wildly delighted, half off her sleek little head at the
+riotous prospect. Ruben foresaw the homestead’s charm of
+quiet broken and spoiled; and even for little No’s sake he
+could not be glad that these C’his were coming.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it could not have happened, No prattled on, in
+the households of many sash-wearers. Many chief-men would
+not have had it, and few, if any, of their caste women would
+have brooked it. Sên Ya Tin! Sên Ya Tin their Old-one
+would have raised the place first! But all his women were
+tight and flat under C’hian Fan’s thumb, and would do and
+smile as he bade them. Fortunately there wasn’t a strong
+woman in Sênland now—unless she, No Fee herself, was one.
+Certainly she would be a strong woman after her marriage;
+no being-under-thumb for her. She’d rule her man, as Sên
+Ya Tin had ruled hers—and thousands of other such wise
+and skillful women. And no mother-in-law for her. Long
+ago she had instructed her father that her bridegroom was
+to be an orphan. A grandmother mother-in-law was many
+times worse than a mother mother-in-law, except of course
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>
+that a grandmother-one would not live so long to pester one.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben laughed and told her that she was sinful, a sacrilegious
+rebel—which she was. He did not add aloud that
+she was also very lovable.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben might have missed the life and home of Ruben
+Sên, longed for them, if it had not been for his cousin and
+playmate No Fee. And she was his refuge as well as playmate.</p>
+
+<p>There were things the Sêns did as a matter of course, some
+that they took keen delight in doing, that rasped Ruben; a
+few that revolted him.</p>
+
+<p>That is no small part of the Eurasian’s tragedy—the inevitable
+revolt of self against self.</p>
+
+<p>The sports of the younger of the Sên men delighted Ruben
+and disgusted him. He joined in the polo they still played
+and excelled in as their ancestors had when it was the favorite
+game of the T’ang Emperors, and the palace ladies played it
+too, riding on their swift docile donkeys whose saddles were
+inlaid and bridles jeweled; played polo often at night, when
+the night-lantern hung full in the sky, or by the illumination
+of thousands of gigantic candles. But he watched their cock
+fights and the to-the-death struggles of their crickets with
+lack-luster eyes and when he had watched one contest of their
+fighting fish he had contrived not to see its finish, although
+he kept his place in the excited ring of onlookers. And after
+that, whether it gave offense or no, whether they laughed at
+him and scorned him for it or not, he contrived to have something
+else to do, somewhere to roam far afield with No Fee
+whenever a fish fight was on.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Jo Hiêsen was greatly concerned, convinced that Sên
+Ruben’s liver was badly disordered, a sad and dangerous ill
+to have befallen one so young, and plied Ruben urgently with
+a parti-colored succession of pills; not nonsensical Western
+pills, but good Chinese pills the size of small plums and each
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>
+deeply marked with characters of good omen and restoration.
+Ruben accepted them meekly, and would have swallowed them
+too—or attempted to swallow them—rather than have watched
+again two infuriated little fighting fish gash and disembowel
+each other for the amusement of men. But he was able to
+hoard them in his sleeve instead, and up on the Cherry-Tree
+Hill he and No Fee played jackstones with them until each
+and all had rolled away and been lost down in the maiden-hair
+ferns and clumps of rose-colored pampas grass.</p>
+
+<p>But the day of the great fight between the champion fish
+of Sên Yolu-sun and that of Sên Pling, No refused flatly to
+scamper off with Sên Ruben and announced to his horror
+that she intended to watch the fun herself this time.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” she owned, “women-ones and girls don’t as a rule.
+But I am going to make my honorable father permit me that
+I do; and if C’hian Fan forbid it, I know where I can hide
+and see it all. There’ll be room for two in the hollow trunk
+of the soap tree, and C’hi Yamei shall hide with me and
+watch too, for the lord C’hi and my dear one Yamei reach
+us to-morrow in the hour before the dawn hour. Then the
+fight begins—unless the rain comes. The fish-ones will not
+fight if the rain-god spits down—but whoever heard of a rain-time
+in the Magnolia Month! Yamei will love it. She loves
+all such brave sights, my lion-hearted beautiful Yamei—and,
+oh, my heart leapt when Lord C’hi’s runner panted in just
+before the rice-time and told the message that they were
+nearly here! I adore Yamei; I adore that she comes. It will
+be my happiness all the time she is here, and when she goes
+from me again I shall sicken with my grieving. Yamei!
+My Yamei! Tell me, Sên Ruben, thou thing of silence and
+frowns, dost think that C’hi Yamei will come clad in her
+garments of Europe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Probably,” Sên Ruben said glumly. The more he heard
+of this strident, emancipated Miss C’hi, the more he disapproved
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>
+her. Little No Fee was merely a rogue and a romp—a
+wild-flower infinitely dainty and sweet, but his heart was
+enraged that this Chinese “new” woman was to be permitted
+to contaminate No. He’d be at the homestead but little while
+the C’his were here.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope she wears her dress of Europe!” No Fee chattered
+on. “Never have I seen one of our women in the dress of
+Europe! A maiden in petticoats! Ya-ya what fun!”</p>
+
+<p>No Fee hid her face in her hands—in mock modesty—and
+giggled immoderately, winking wickedly at Sên Ruben between
+her wee slender fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben pleaded a letter to write, and went off to his
+own pavilion.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII">
+    CHAPTER XXXVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Early as the Chinese rise always, the Sêns were up
+well in advance of that the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Guests of importance were coming.</p>
+
+<p>And one of the two finest of all Sên Pling’s and Sên Yolu-sun’s
+Burmese fighting fish was going to kill the other.</p>
+
+<p>Two events of such moment electrified the never slothful
+household. Long before the Hour of the Hare there was more
+bustle and industry in the big house-core of Sênland than
+had been since Wash-the-Cats.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee pelted from <i>k’o-tang</i> to courtyard, from courtyard
+to terrace, clambered up into one of the great wall’s thirty
+watch-towers hours before breakfast rice-time, and pelted
+back again giggling, half crying, her little gold earrings (that
+every Chinese woman wears) almost dancing out of her ears.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Yolu-sun and Sên Pling hung over their two favorite
+fighting fish anxiously. All the other Sên men—masters and
+servants—were gathered in groups betting gravely but eagerly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>
+on the fray’s result. Many of the women and children had
+“something on” too; and Sên Ruben—privileged to go where
+he would, do what he would here—filled a wallet with pressed
+duck and cakes of spiced meal and salted nuts that La-yuên
+provided him with, tucked a book in his sleeve, and sauntered
+off unobtrusively to spend most of the day in the camphor
+grove and to explore a gulch far afield where the wild grapes—ripe
+now—grew sweetest and the fireweed grew reddest and
+highest.</p>
+
+<p>He would not see one small demented fish slaughter another,
+and probably die of its own wounds in agony soon after it
+had; and he would not meet the C’his until it was no longer
+avoidable—particularly Miss C’hi. Meet her, he knew that
+he must, for No Fee had made it abundantly clear that C’hi
+Yamei would not confine herself to the “flowery” precincts;
+but he chose to postpone, and proposed to curtail as far as
+he might, his acquaintance with the emancipated and greatly
+independent lion-hearted lady. Hers was a type he disliked
+in English women; in Chinese women he felt it nothing short
+of an abomination, a desecration of all that had made Chinese
+womanhood loveliest and China strongest and most admirable
+and desirable—the country of countries, the race of all peoples.</p>
+
+<p>Out through the first hinted dawning Sên Ruben took his
+quiet way, soaking his padded embroidered shoes in the heavy
+dew-drench of the long fragrant grasses. There was mist and
+moisture everywhere. Festoons and threads of mist hung
+from the tree branches, the convolvulus kept her lovely flower-cups
+still twisted close in their night-time spirals; the violets
+still slept on their green leaf beds. Ten thousand roses slept
+on bush, wall and trellis, the clover gave out its fragrance a
+little coldly, the ferns looked chill. Fantastic human-shaped
+twisted trees—prayer trees, oak trees and gigantic hoary
+laurels—looked like deformed and desolate ghosts; the tiger
+lilies showed somber in the gloom-gloam of before dawn; the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>
+turquoise bird still hid under the warm shelter of the castor-bean’s
+broad thick leaves. It was no longer night—it was not
+yet day. The stillness was exquisite—almost a music in its
+peace and unbroken harmony.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben trod softly as he went, reverencing the chastity
+of the young unspoiled day’s virginity.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought the star-riven night, when the great sky-lantern
+hung down a ball of living gold and a nightingale
+broke its heart in song, the loveliest hours in China’s daily
+cycle of time. Incomparably this was lovelier; Earth bathed
+in purity—Heaven just apeep through its gray purdah of
+Earth’s sleep-time; peace and silence everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>“Hush!” Heaven commanded. And the world obeyed in
+utter silence, silence that heard and worshiped but scarcely
+breathed while China slept pillowed on Nature, a child sleeping
+on the bosom of its mother.</p>
+
+<p>A tender shaft of glory slit through the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Sunrise saluted Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben went his noiseless way where often his
+father had in his carefree boyhood. Sên Ruben loved it as
+young Sên King-lo had.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben blessed and thanked his mother that he
+was Chinese—that he went here among the sunrise-dappled
+woodlands, across the fragrant brook-ribboned meadows by
+birthright.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben kept his tryst with Nature and his kinsmen at
+the homestead gathered to the fish fight, jesting and betting;
+and the women, busied in the great house in elaborate preparations
+for the honored guest that had approached the great
+gate before dawn, waited while they toiled—waited to hear
+whether Sên Yolu-sun’s fish had killed Sên Pling’s or Sên
+Pling’s had killed Sên Yolu-sun’s.</p>
+
+<p>Early as it was the lord C’hi and his daughter had come.
+And when they had taken the sweet hot wine and salted rice
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>
+of honorable welcome, Chi Ng Yelü strolled with Sên C’hian
+Fan towards the amber pool at the edge of the woodland, and
+old Sên Jo tottered along beside them, anxious to do so
+noble a guest all honor, and bloodthirstily keen to see the fish
+fight.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pretty fight; granted! It was a pretty fight the
+little fish put up—if human eyes that marked it had no
+compassion.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely arena; the amber-edged alabaster pool of
+limpid, dimpled water, ringed by hundreds of anxious, excited
+Chinese faces, hundreds of men and boys, blue-clad and
+brocade-clad figures, leaning over the veined-marble edges that
+circled the pool—gesticulating, betting. They were betting
+on the “first blood,” betting on how long both the combatants
+would be game, betting on how long the victor would survive
+the vanquished, betting, of course, on which would win—betting
+on everything that would be, might be, or could be
+construed to be detail or adjunct of the fight. To a unit their
+excitement was tense and seething, to a unit they were courteous
+and good-natured. It was fine fun—the playtime of
+the Sêns—and, if they took it brutally, they also took it finely
+and lightly.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the jubilant human throng stood a loose wall of
+ancient trees—oak, soap, laurel, camphor, giant willow trees,
+delicate bamboos.</p>
+
+<p>The day-star was near to its rising.</p>
+
+<p>“Yah! Yah!” they whispered hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>The fish were coming, each carried carefully in his tub of
+cedar.</p>
+
+<p>Plunk! Yolu-sun’s “Shark” was in the pool.</p>
+
+<p>Plunk! Plunk! Pling’s “Javelin” too was in the arena.</p>
+
+<p>How soon would they sense each other! How many heartbeats
+before they dashed to combat?—two little gray fish, no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>
+longer than a man’s hand, inert, uninteresting and uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>There was awesome silence.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee peeping from her hollow tree-trunk held her breath
+lest the others hear it; a little frightened by the utter silence.</p>
+
+<p>Sss-s-ez! Javelin was swelling!</p>
+
+<p>He had seen his foe, or smelt him.</p>
+
+<p>Shark moved a tiny fin.</p>
+
+<p>Then they darted.</p>
+
+<p>Gray? Inert? Not now.</p>
+
+<p>They were intensely colored—red, orange, hot violets and
+pulsing greens. They were iridescent—swelling larger and
+larger. Tiny threads of flame spurted from their crimsoning
+distorted bellies.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting fish locked, each gripping with his own the
+other’s jaws.</p>
+
+<p>Locked so, and teeth pierced—disputing every iota of the
+way—they dragged each other back and forth half across the
+pretty placid pool.</p>
+
+<p>They were fighting fiercely. There would be no quarter.</p>
+
+<p>Blood trickles trailed them. These little Burmese fighting
+fish were not “white blooded.”</p>
+
+<p>No Fee’s hands were icy, flaming red patched her face, her
+little mouth was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Old Jo Hiêsen fumbled in his pouch, found an opium pellet
+and mouthed it; else his excitement must have mastered
+his manners, caused him to cry out—like a coolie. Several of
+them—the blue-clad “babies”—were gasping noisily.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth, up and down, and their blood-trails with
+them, the struggling fish pulled and pushed.</p>
+
+<p>They leapt far above the water. One of Shark’s fins hung
+by a thread. Javelin’s bursted belly belched blood and entrails.
+But their jaws held.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span></p>
+
+<p>Under the other, then above him, in turn; turn and turn
+about they waged their blistering battle mercilessly, unfalteringly.</p>
+
+<p>They fought as if each knew that this first fight would be
+his last, and had set his fish soul to die the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly they threw each other off.</p>
+
+<p>Shark turned and darted away—his torn fin dragging red
+and helpless beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Javelin darted after, panting and exultant.</p>
+
+<p>But the Shark was only feinting. He underturned as the
+other reached him, and like a sharp knife a pointed, shark-like
+nose had ripped the Javelin open—open wide from mouth
+to tail.</p>
+
+<p>The fight was over.</p>
+
+<p>Javelin floated dead and dismembered on the scale-strewn
+pool of battle.</p>
+
+<p>A little frightened Chinese girl was sickening in the hollow
+soap-tree.</p>
+
+<p>The servitors were babbling wildly. The Sêns were smiling.
+It had been a good fight, and Sên Pling was congratulating
+Sên Yolu warmly as they turned away laughing together.</p>
+
+<p>A coolie leaned over the marble side, netted up the dead
+fish, and tossed it contemptuously into the fail-bucket—a
+dilapidated old bamboo bucket—and padded off towards the
+fertilizer sheds.</p>
+
+<p>With ceremony and adjurations of respect and praise another
+servant, higher-ranked, finer-clad, netted up the dying
+victor gently and slid it into the lacquered honorable bucket-of-victory.
+Scores followed the Shark’s triumphant funeral
+progress. They carried him to the sound of brazen music and
+the screech and hiss of many crackers. And they would give
+the very honorable Shark a victor’s grave in a violet-bed.
+He had earned it, and his honorable remains would be of
+stimulative service to the fragrant violets.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sên No Fee did not look towards the disfigured water as
+she slid out of the old soap-tree—she perforce the last to go—and
+slipped back to the <i>kuei</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The day-star leapt above the crinkling horizon, and the
+delicate bamboos swayed joyously in the yellow sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>One bet and another—all told—two hundred thousand <i>yuan</i>
+had changed pouches since two small fish had met in battle.
+But that was not much matter; great fun but no catastrophe,
+for in the essential sense it was one common purse in Sênland.
+Some of them were poor, some were rich, but there was not
+a Sên in Ho-nan whose need would not be the give-hour of
+all the others—succor given gladly, given and taken as a
+matter of course; as much a birthright to receive as to give,
+and no less honorable. Nepotism is a sinew of China.</p>
+
+<p>All of which Sên Ruben missed—perhaps weakly, since he
+had come across the world to see China as she was.</p>
+
+<p>But his day of solitude had laved him, and the tender peace
+of the early day still lay soft on his face as towards the sunset
+hour he rose up from where he had been kneeling before the
+tomb of Sên Ya Tin, and made his slow quiet way to the
+great dwelling house.</p>
+
+<p>The old Sên graveyard, for all its dignity and monumental
+pomp, was a spot of almost riotous beauty. Ruben often
+went there to pray and to rejoice. And he never was there
+without thinking of the old Surrey churchyard where his
+father’s coffin lay, and wishing that he might win his mother’s
+willingness that at her death he might bring her coffin and
+Sên King-lo’s to Ho-nan and give them Chinese burial here
+near Ya Tin’s tomb in the graveyard of the Sêns. That
+later when he too went on-High, not divided from them—the
+mother he adored, the father he could not remember—his
+sons would put his coffin beside the graves of his father and
+mother and of Sên Ya Tin the Old-one.</p>
+
+<p>Unless perhaps that he might find and win the maiden he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>
+dreamed of always, there was no other thing which Sên Ruben
+so desired.</p>
+
+<p>Might it ever be? He wondered.</p>
+
+<p>For he knew that he would not urge it. It was not his
+mother’s consent he longed for, but her willingness.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was humming an old English love-tune as he
+came out of the Sên tomb-garden, and turned through the
+matted bamboos towards the sunset where the great house
+sprawled like a resting dragon skinned in jewels.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! Some one was coming towards him. His day of solitude
+was ended—a little sooner than he had wished, a little
+sooner than he had intended.</p>
+
+<p>“Who the devil!” Ruben muttered it in English. He had
+not learned to think in Chinese in moments of young annoyance
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>It was not No Fee, come to find him, and make her peace
+with him for her long day’s desertion. This woman was taller
+than No Fee, and for all its easy suppleness her gait was
+graver. It was a Chinese woman—palpably and naturally;
+for what Western woman save Sên Ruby ever had been admitted
+into Sênland? But not one of his kinswomen, he
+thought—though of that he could not be sure until they were
+nearer—and the sunset blazing through the lace-like bamboos
+blinded his eyes a little.</p>
+
+<p>He could not escape her unless he turned abruptly and
+noticeably and went back as he had come; the stout-stemmed
+bamboos grew too close on either side of the narrow path,
+little wider or more clearly marked than a goat’s track.</p>
+
+<p>No matter. His free time was over now, and he was not
+afraid of a strange woman, if she was not of him.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem to be.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever she was she came on confidently, almost as if she
+chose to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben wondered how they were going to pass each
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>
+other—it would be a tight squeeze! And tight squeezes of
+that sort were not countenanced in China.</p>
+
+<p>The girl came on, neither quicker nor more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben almost halted, preparing to crush himself as flat as
+he could against the wall of notched bamboo trunks that
+looked so delicate but that he knew were, at their low-down
+girth, so unyielding.</p>
+
+<p>If he had been quite sure that this was not one of his many
+kinswomen, with all of whom he was on terms of easy speech,
+he would have glued his eyes elsewhere as she came upon him.
+But he was not sure, and did not risk seeming unwilling to
+speak to a kinswoman who would expect it, odd as it was for
+any one of them—except wild, spoilt No Fee—to be so far
+from the house-place, and unveiled and unattended.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben Sên looked full into the face of his lady of the
+picture.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII">
+    CHAPTER XXXVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Ruben’s heart broke into song; sang an old Chinese
+love-tune, and his face flooded with a look—an old,
+old story—that girl-eyes far less world-wise and experienced
+than the black eyes of C’hi Yamei must have understood.</p>
+
+<p>Almost as it came, Sên Ruben controlled it—drove it away
+with sheer force of his will and reverence. He pressed back
+as far as he could against the bamboos, and dropped his eyes,
+dropped them to make his hot beating heart throb and quiver
+anew at the sight of the girl’s tiny, binded, gay-shod golden-lilies.</p>
+
+<p>Then, remembering that a servant should turn his back
+upon a noble-one who passed him in the roadway, Sên Ruben
+made to turn his face against the wall of bamboos.</p>
+
+<p>But C’hi Yamei spoke.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You are Mr. Ruben Sên,” she said in English. “You
+must be. I am Miss C’hi, No’s friend Yamei C’hi,” and she
+held out her hand to Ruben frankly.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben took it—he had to, and as he held the lovely apricot-colored
+thing in his coarser white hand he knew that he was
+this girl’s for all his life.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if she felt what thrilled and shocked through
+all his blood as their hands held.</p>
+
+<p>All his life Sên Ruben would regret sharply that she first
+had spoken to him in English.</p>
+
+<p>Why had she? he wondered. Some day he would ask
+her!</p>
+
+<p>Had she, this calm-eyed, low-voiced maiden—peerless here
+even more than he had seen her in her picture—watched the
+gruesome vulgar fish fight?</p>
+
+<p>No Fee had bragged and vouched that she would—and
+would like it!</p>
+
+<p>Ruben winced to think of it.</p>
+
+<p>But he knew that, no matter what she had done, he was
+sealed to her forever, heart, soul and kindled body.</p>
+
+<p>“It has been a great day at the side of the amber fish-pool.”
+Did her lip curl a little, or did his intrigued eyes
+imagine it? “You scorned to watch it, No said. Oh, she is
+very angry with us, Mr. Sên, with you and me; and I am
+vexed with No Fee—the minx!”</p>
+
+<p>“Angry with you!” Ruben spoke in Chinese—his first
+words to her—and he did not say “Miss C’hi”—he would not.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps his ease of the language surprised C’hi Yamei, for
+she flushed a little and laughed lightly. But she spoke in
+Chinese too now.</p>
+
+<p>“Sên No Fee is very angry with us both—and for the same
+one fault, Sên Ruben,”—Ah! the music to him as she said
+it—“our fault of desertion of her and of the honorable fish
+fight. I have had to make my day alone as best I could. I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>
+had no liking to stay longer than etiquette compelled me in
+the ladies’ courtyard. They were babbling of the horrid fish
+fight sickeningly. So—I slipped from them when I could,”—Sên
+Ruben’s heart leapt—“and it has been lovely out here
+in the wood alone, but I think that I have lost my way—I
+never have been here before. I am lucky to have found you
+to guide me back to the house.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben did not say that the luck was his—the greatest
+luck he had ever had; but perhaps he looked it.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei almost smiled as her eyes fell.</p>
+
+<p>“Did then my cousin No Fee watch, as she threatened me
+she would, the fish fighting?”</p>
+
+<p>“I make no doubt she did. After we had come through the
+gate of ceremony, made our obeisances for honorable welcome,
+and had broken our fasting, and the ladies of the honorable
+harem thought that I lay resting in my chamber, wearied
+from the jolting of my litter as we came our long way, No,
+the imp-one, coaxed me out of the courtyard and through the
+wistaria pathway, through the gardens to behind the amber
+pool where already your servants made ready for the cruel
+sporting; and she showed me a cave-like hole in the rotting
+bole of a great soap-tree, a hole in which we both could have
+sat, and have peeped through the bamboos growing there, and
+have seen over the heads of the men—too engrossed in what
+was doing down in the battle-water to pry with eyes or thought
+into our screen of leaves—have seen the self-slaughter of the
+poor little fighting fish down in the pool. She scolded that I
+would not stay; I scolded that she would not come with me.
+So I left her there—because I had to. Oh, Lord Sên Ruben,
+how could No Fee look on at it! It has sickened me but to
+think of it—to know that it was doing. Little laughing No
+is gentle as the zephyrs of the Lotus Month. Why, why this
+naughty freak to-day? For years we have been in friendship—”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben saw the dark eyes fill with tears, saw the red lips
+quiver as C’hi Yamei broke her speaking abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>“It is over long ago, illustrious maiden,” he told her gently.
+“The suffering of the little fighting fish was brief—always it
+is so; they fight so fiercely; and in the fury of their fighting
+it is probable that they do not <i>feel</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope so,” the girl said a trifle unsteadily. “I would go
+back to the house, and make my peace with Sên No Fee.
+Will you lead me the way, lord?”</p>
+
+<p>Narrow as the path was, somehow they contrived to go
+side by side for most of it; and as they walked they talked.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben was a little scandalized that C’hi Yamei, a
+high-born Chinese maiden, dealt him such frank friendliness,
+but it was no flaw in her—she was flawless. The fault was
+her father’s who had given her the ways of Europe—thrust
+them on her, no doubt, in the nomad years they had spent
+together in the capitals of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>He liked English ways for English girls, but he felt that
+they profaned Chinese girlhoods.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered that but for C’hi Ng Yelü’s strange
+emancipation of his daughter, he should not have seen her
+pictured loveliness at the Academy, could not have walked
+beside her chatting through the Ho-nan woodland as he did
+with Blanche and Ivy, had with twenty other English girls,
+through the woods of Dorset and Surrey; and towards C’hi
+Ng Yelü and his laxness Sên Ruben’s heart unhardened.
+And, too, he owed this hour-of-hours to naughty, willful Sên
+No Fee; so towards No Fee also his heart unhardened.</p>
+
+<p>They chatted as they went; and C’hi Yamei did not speak
+to him again in English.</p>
+
+<p>Girlish, lovely, wrapped in soft dignity, she was all that a
+perfect lily of Chinese girlhood ever had been or could be.
+What a disloyal brazen traitor, crassly gullible, he had been
+to have believed for a moment that this peerless-of-all-maidens
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>
+would have watched, and liked, the abominable fish-fight!
+He would do penance for that!—penance at her feet,
+if he could gain to kneel there.</p>
+
+<p>They went slowly through the sunset, through the bamboo
+coppice and through the meadows of little, smiling wild
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben rejoiced that C’hi Yamei was not clad in
+Western garments.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX">
+    CHAPTER XXXIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Ruben’s first move was to pay court to C’hi Ng
+Yelü, the father of C’hi Yamei, and to win his favor if
+he could. It is not much use to love a Chinese girl unless
+you can gain her father’s approval. Though he had speech
+with her freely, and companionship, Sên Ruben realized
+almost at once that her slight Westernism was but a garment
+and no part of the lady Yamei; that at core she was as Chinese
+as he; more deeply Chinese than Sên No Fee. She had
+called him “Mr. Sên,” offered him her hand, spoken to him
+in English, in exquisite courtesy to a somewhat solitary and
+presumably homesick stranger in a strange land—an Englishman
+alone in China, alone in a place and among a people so
+sharply different from his own that it was incredible that he
+was not both miserable and awkward. It was her way of
+offering him China’s best and kindest hospitality that had
+caused her to meet him on English social terms.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that no suitor would appeal to her who approached
+her except through her father and with C’hi Ng Yelü’s approval.
+Only after marriage could any lover woo C’hi Yamei.</p>
+
+<p>But though courtly, genial C’hi Ng Yelü—on the social
+surface as cosmopolitan as the daughter—met Sên Ruben’s
+respectful advances cordially, Ruben’s design of ingratiation
+was frustrated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span></p>
+
+<p>The “bonfires,” as C’hian had called them, of civil broil
+flared up anew, burst into mightier flames and spread. It
+looked as if the great war had come. And all the household
+spoke of little else, even Sên C’hian Fan who indeed, Ruben
+knew, had thought less lightly of the “bonfires” than he had
+chosen to own to bellicose but decrepit Jo Hiêsen.</p>
+
+<p>In truth both Sên C’hian Fan’s apparent apathy, and his
+quite sincere desire to keep out of it all, were more a distrust
+of all the warring factions, dislike and contempt of their
+leaders, than an altogether slight estimate of the seriousness
+of China’s recurrent and present upheaval. Why fight for
+any side when all were corrupt?</p>
+
+<p>But, still as undecided as he had been which of all the unworthy
+leaders (with the just possible exception of Feng Yu-hsiang)
+was the least bad, the least traitor to the ultimate
+general welfare of China and her security among the nations,
+Sên C’hian Fan was sorely troubled now. Each day some
+runner, or some camp straggler, brought news to the Sên
+gates that added to C’hian’s anxiety without in any way
+lessening his perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü, with a wider outlook, because of his long
+years of travel and of Western sojourn, shared both Sên’s
+perturbation and his indecision. C’hi Ng Yelü, not yet an
+old man, was as ready to fight as the next, and as indifferent
+to death as almost every Chinese man is, but he had no
+stomach to enroll himself under any leadership he despised—and
+he saw no other.</p>
+
+<p>Long and low were the counsels that Sên C’hian and C’hi
+Ng Yelü took together, all the other adult Sên men gathered
+with them, listening to them eagerly, contributing now and
+then something to the consultation of the two headmen—all
+the adult Sên men but Jo Hiêsen and Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>They two were excluded—Jo Hiêsen not suspecting that
+he was, Ruben rather more than suspecting it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span></p>
+
+<p>By C’hian Fan’s order, all the war news—most of it more
+rumor than true news—was minimized to Sên Jo Hiêsen, and
+when Jo Hiêsen came upon them as they consulted and argued
+earnestly together they swung their talk to lighter, sunnier
+themes; not difficult to do in a Ho-nan August where every
+patch of the great estate was a picture, every vista, every
+flower, every concerted bird-trilling a book of love songs, a
+thesis for philosophy. C’hian Fan had no mind that the dear
+old graybeard should throw his life away upon the field of
+unworthy battle. Sên C’hian loved the fierce, half-palsied
+dotard, and moreover it would be a great family calamity were
+the old man’s body lost and not found—and the burial and
+bewailing, which alone could secure him immunity from Hell
+and entrance into Heaven, be so made impossible. Then the
+sons and grandsons of Sên Jo Hiêsen would be deprived of
+the direct ancestor to worship that is every Chinese’s most
+sacred right—even more important, if that is conceivably
+possible, than male progeny to bewail and worship them in
+their turn.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan’s reluctance that Sên Ruben should become
+actually embroiled in the present fighting—fortunately none
+too near Sênland—was less uninvolved, perhaps less clear in
+his own mind.</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan had thought ill and bitterly of Sên King-lo’s
+marriage. And when she had been among them here
+C’hian Fan had formed none too high an opinion of Sên
+Ruby. He had read her dislike of China, her disgust at Sên
+ways, her pity of Sên women, close as Mrs. Sên had thought
+that she veiled it from her husband’s kindred, and Sên C’hian
+Fan had disliked her for it. He had deemed Sên Ya Tin
+over indulgent of the white woman whom Sên King-lo had
+thrust among them; the only criticism of mighty Sên Ya
+Tin that C’hian Fan ever had allowed him. And never had
+he voiced it, not even to his favorite wife; though the favorite
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>
+wives in China hear all their lords’ secrets—as do favorite
+wives in the Occident. Yet—C’hian Fan thought of widowed
+Sên Ruby waiting for her son to return to her, and since the
+woman, despite her old dislike of Ho-nan, had let Ruben
+come to them, the Sên felt in honor bound to her that no
+damage should come to her son so entrusted to them. Sên
+Ruby herself had written to him, asking him to receive and
+welcome Sên Ruben. Of course, the Western woman loved
+her son-one passionately. It could not occur to Sên C’hian
+Fan that there was a mother anywhere that did not dote upon
+her son and hold him always in her tenderness; it does not
+happen in China.</p>
+
+<p>The Pepper Month (Poppy Month is its other name) came
+nearer and nearer—already Ruben planned to go, C’hian
+feared. C’hian was loath to let him go, but if he went, let
+him go as he had come to them, whole of skin and with all
+his honorable legs and arms and eyes and ears still with him.
+Moreover, since the foolish foreign fashion of C’hi Ng Yelü,
+and Ruben allowed it, it greatly convenienced C’hian Fan
+that Sên Ruben should see that C’hi Yamei their girl guest-one
+was not dull or uncompanioned, and took not peril in the
+wilder woodlands, near the deep and sudden gorges. Roam
+them she would, and headstrong No Fee with her. It was
+evident that C’hi Yamei preferred the outer gardens and the
+wilder reaches beyond them to the harem courtyards. C’hian
+Fan sighed heavily to see girlhood so degenerated, but the risk
+was C’hi’s, not his, and it was not for him to chide or remonstrate
+with a guest who was also his equal, concerning any
+detail of the other’s harem discipline. No daughter of Sên
+C’hian Fan’s could take license of liberty as C’hi’s girl-one
+did, but C’hi allowed it cheerfully, and his host’s part was
+blind-eyed silence. Nor was C’hian sorry to have No Fee’s
+greedy ears no nearer their place of frequent serious conference
+than the gold-fish lake, the cypress hill, the distant fields
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>
+of fireweed. Where C’hi Yamei went No Fee would follow.
+It was a safety, though a terrible infringement, that Sên
+Ruben obligingly went with them. On the whole it convenienced
+Sên C’hian Fan as much as it displeased him.</p>
+
+<p>It did not inconvenience Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>And among the globe flowers and the pungent velvet roses,
+the peonies and the willows, a tiny seed sown on Piccadilly
+throve and grew like the magic fruit trees of on-High and
+made a Ho-nan homestead a mystic orchard of the golden
+peaches of immortality, where the first parent turquoise-birds
+of all that jewel-feathered tribe mated in the sacred peach-trees.</p>
+
+<p>Truly Sên Ruben found it Heaven; too deep in love now to
+condemn C’hi Ng Yelü for that lord-one’s most un-Chinese
+laxity.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei walked among the fragrant-blossomed, fruiting
+peach-trees sedately; gracious, maidenly and shyly responsive.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee ran and danced apart, giggling like a laughing
+brooklet for the most part; and Sên Ruben and C’hi Yamei,
+waiting for her patiently, wiled the waiting with talk. They
+talked quietly together and forbore to chide her for how long
+she had kept them when she danced romping back to them.</p>
+
+<p>They talked of flowers and sunrise, of running water and
+waving reeds—of the rock-crusted mountains, of anemones
+and red poppies, of the wine-cup of Li Po, of the silks of Hsü
+Hsi, of the story of the noble Lady of Si-ling, of the lamps-of-mercy
+that twinkled safety on the mountain passes—talked
+together of the things that mean most, are dearest and nearest,
+to the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Yamei, speaking softly, told Sên Ruben of her mother who
+had gone on-High years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben told C’hi Yamei of his mother who was a white rose.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben told her of his sister Sên Ivy, than whom but one
+maid was lovelier.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Why when first you said words to me spoke you them in
+English?” he asked her suddenly one day while they waited
+for No Fee.</p>
+
+<p>He knew now why she had, but he asked to hear how she
+would tell it—if she told it.</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell it, but her answer was not untruthful.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know that you spoke Chinese, Sên Ruben. No
+one had told me so. No one had told me of you at all, except
+Sên No Fee—do you think she ever is coming?—and she prattled
+of you so that the deafness of my ears shut out the sense
+of most she said—if it <i>had</i> sense.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is improbable,” Sên Ruben remarked gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“It is improbable,” C’hi Yamei agreed as gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“But I wore the garments of our people. Would a man
+do that who did not speak our tongue? Or one who did not
+prefer to use it?”</p>
+
+<p>“But that follows not, Sên Ruben. In courtesy to your
+kinsmen to whom you made your visit it might have been that
+you did that—and a little for your own convenience; not to
+be the raree-show in a place where never has been seen the
+dress of Europe, as Chinese gentlemen now wear English
+tailoreds in Westminster and on the Strand. It is easier to
+put on a Chinese brocade and girdle than it is to speak and
+to understand Chinese!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the tongue I love; the tongue of my father’s fathers!”</p>
+
+<p>“That I know now, Sên Ruben; but I did not know it then.—Yah!
+Listen, you; the pigeons are coming home. Why do
+they? I wonder why it is that they do. It is not the fall of
+the dew yet, scarcely the mid-time of the Hour of the Monkey,
+and rarely do they come till the Hour of the Hen is passing.
+But it is they. I hear the music of the silver whistles under
+their tails as they fly!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p>
+
+<p>Yamei was right; in a moment Sên Ruben too heard the
+soft fluting of the tiny musical instruments that the harem
+pet-flock wore; another moment and the pretty iridescent
+“feather-ones” came whirring over the willow trees and
+bloom-clotted mock-oranges.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben called them with a fluted “coo” not unlike theirs
+at mating-time, glad to call them and a little proud that
+C’hi Yamei should know that he had that Chinese knack.
+One little bird settled itself confidently on his outheld hand,
+and then another drifted down on to Yamei’s shoulder, considered
+the girl gravely with its little beads of red-rimmed
+eyes, saw her cheek so peach-like that it pecked softly at the
+lovely warm-tinted human fruit, pecked so tenderly with its
+tender beak that the girl’s exquisite face felt it a caress—which
+in part it was.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei cuddled it to her face, and it stayed so a moment
+before it flew away; the bird on Sên Ruben’s palm rose
+to it in the air and they followed the homing flock across the
+field of wild white roses, flying towards their cotes on the
+Heaven’s-wall of the harem courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>“Would you like to be a bird, Sên Ruben?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, C’hi Yamei,” Ruben answered, “I like best that I
+am a man, and where I am.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he meant in China, perhaps he meant in Ho-nan,
+in Sênland, perhaps he meant here with the meadow-flowers
+and trees abloom—with her.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps C’hi Yamei knew which of these it was that Sên
+Ruben meant.</p>
+
+<p>No more than such was most of their talk.</p>
+
+<p>But it grew; and Ruben knew that what had been a boyish
+dream—the dream of a boy, homesick for a home he never
+had seen, caught, enmeshed by the loveliness of an unknown
+face exquisitely painted on a canvas—had grown the paramount
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>
+thing in the soul of a man, the one great need of a
+man’s life.</p>
+
+<p>Did she answer him at all?</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had no idea.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XL">
+    CHAPTER XL
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>And Sênland was emptied when C’hi Yamei’s litter was
+carried through the homestead’s great gate. The litter’s
+silken curtains were close drawn but they stirred a little in
+the crisp September air as the white mules that carried it
+plodded out towards the hill path that led to the rushing river
+Wei. This they must ford or ferry before they reached the
+directer route that led at last to the nunnery of An Mu-ti
+where C’hi and C’hi Yamei were to tarry a time before they
+journeyed on to their ancestral home in Shan-si.</p>
+
+<p>Less than a moon later Sên Ruben took his leave of the
+Sêns, almost as eager to be in England again as he had been
+to reach China; for C’hi Ng Yelü and C’hi Yamei were going
+to London in March. He would see them there; and Sên
+Ruben could not approach C’hi Ng Yelü uncredentialed by
+his mother’s consent and approval.</p>
+
+<p>She would give it, he knew; and he was not without hope
+that broad-minded, easy-going C’hi Ng Yelü, nomad citizen
+of the world, would forgive a colorless face and half-blood in
+a suitor in so many other ways desirable.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wrench to leave China while C’hi Yamei still was
+there. But he had neither excuse nor hope to see her again
+in China, unless, after acceptance by her father, the red day
+of flowers came when he might lift her from her bride chair,
+carry her over his threshold, and after they had worshiped
+his ancestors’ tablet, alone at last he might lift the crimson
+bride-veil from her face. In England he could see her freely—as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>
+freely as though she were an English girl; and he
+was going to England to prepare their way of happiness,
+their path to bridal; prepare his mother’s welcome of C’hi
+Yamei.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Yamei!</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hi Yamei!</p>
+
+<p>Two days only remained of his stay in Sênland.</p>
+
+<p>It was quiet now in China. Even <i>talk</i> of war was done.</p>
+
+<p>He had made his last obeisance at the grave of Sên King-lo,
+the grave in which Sên Ya Tin had placed an empty coffin
+when she had given her grandson’s spirit the elaborate ceremonious
+funeral and burial to which a great lord-one of the
+Sêns was entitled—or would have been entitled had he not
+erred and strayed in barbaric sojourn and cross-racial marriage.
+He had made his last obeisance at the grave of Sên
+Ya Tin. Again he had kept vigil in the lovely painted
+temple that Sên Ya Tin had builded in love and honor of
+Sên King-lo—the temple painted by the yellow roses that
+clustered in its courtyard and overran its walls of ivory and
+marbles here and there; by the purple wistaria that clambered
+across its portal <i>pai-fang</i> and flung its sumptuous tassels and
+its leaves of jade across a jutting edge of its burnished roof;
+painted by the many-colored dogs and lions and weird-shaped
+symbolic birds that kept watch and ward on its twisted roofs’
+long ledges; painted by the yellow sun of China that poured
+its gold across its bronze, its marbles and its ivories; painted
+by its brilliant lacquer floor, its cloisonnés, its hanging lotus-shaped
+lamps, its inlayings of coral and gold and its votive
+furnishings of flower-holders, incense burners, and jeweled
+wine-cups on the long prayer-table of malachite.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had said good-by to the graves, the <i>pai-fang</i> and
+the temple; good-by—“The gods of China be with you”—good-by
+until he came again.</p>
+
+<p>Now he was saying good-by to the lovely laughing orchards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>
+still jeweled by the reckless profusion of China, although
+harvest-come was almost done; saying good-by to a dozen
+rushing rivulets, a dozen tiny bubbling brooks, the placid
+dozing woodland pools, the waterfall his boy father had swum,
+the river Sên King-lo had fished; good-by to withering clover
+and fading violets, to the acres of wild-rose vines of tiny
+hips and haws, to forest trees and garden-paths; saying
+good-by to the great day-star above—which would be but the
+everyday “sun” in England—to the fragrant grass that perfumed
+his padded embroidered shoes; good-by to the birds
+that whirred above him, hills, valleys and gorges; saying
+good-by—till he came again—to all this gracious homeland
+of his that had so welcomed and warmed him, and that he
+had wandered in almost hand-in-hand with C’hi Yamei, no
+longer a painted lady, but the maid of breathing flesh he
+longed to touch.</p>
+
+<p>He sat a long time leaning against the bamboos that walled
+the path where first he had seen her. He lay with his face on
+the searing ferns her foot had pressed in their summertime of
+green. He dreamed—and his dream was ecstasy; he prayed—and
+his prayer was hope and betrothal.</p>
+
+<p>The water-clocks were dripping the Hour of the Dog when
+he came to the house and passed through the long <i>t’ing-tzu-lang</i>
+and across the <i>ch’ih</i> to the <i>kuei</i> to say good-by to the
+ladies of his kinsmen’s harem, the gentle Chinese Sên ladies
+who had been so Chinese-kind to him, and good-by to their
+pretty host of dimpled babies.</p>
+
+<p>A sound of sobbing checked him at the edge of the harem
+courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee lay face down beside the flower-wall, and the women
+gathered about her were weeping too.</p>
+
+<p>Often he had seen Sên No Fee in a temper, assumed for
+ulterior purpose usually, though jolly little Sên No Fee now
+and then flew, for anything or for nothing, into rage as real
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>
+as it was vixenish and memorable. But this was grief—the
+grief of a child whose heart was breaking.</p>
+
+<p>“Hush, pretty maid-one,” a serving-woman pleaded, whose
+own sobs disfigured her words. “The lady Yamei went on-High
+from a holy place—”</p>
+
+<p>The broken voice went on, but Sên Ruben heard no more
+it said.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben stiffened, and leaned against the courtyard wall;
+his ears were shut. Sên Ruben’s spirit had swooned; his
+heart was cloistered in pain.</p>
+
+<p>But it passed, for his flesh was strong with the health of
+youth, and his ears did again their office, and part they heard
+got through to the wounded mind of Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>“The dear-one of all friendships,” No Fee wailed, “warmth
+of my heart, twin of my soul! Try not to comfort me, So
+Sing! There is no comfort for my thought of her passing—my
+pearl-one, flower of all the gardens. Think of it! Picture
+it! Caught and torn in relentless bandit hands, murdered
+for the jewels she wore, the gold in her girdle’s wallet.
+They tore her ears aslit, tearing the circlets of gold away.
+They snapped her tender fingers as they wrenched from her
+the rings! I see them do it! See! See the blood of Yamei
+pouring down her face! See her hands bleed! Hear her
+fingers crack!”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben heard no more.</p>
+
+<p>When he heard again it was this: “May all the foul gods
+wrack the soul of C’hi Ng Yelü, scorch his flesh to its bones,
+burn his eyes to their sockets till his skull cracks! Foul,
+inconsiderate, unworthy, that he prevented not that she went
+alone beyond the nunnery gate, went unattended into the
+bandit-infested forest.”</p>
+
+<p>Heavily, unsteadily, a stricken man turned and went. He
+could hear no more!</p>
+
+<p>Sên C’hian Fan, coming from the wax sheds, saw Sên
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>
+Ruben dragging himself drunkenly across the temple courtyard,
+watched Ruben’s staggering gait as he went up the
+temple steps and passed into the temple.</p>
+
+<p>All the night hours Sên Ruben lay in the temple Sên Ya
+Tin had builded.</p>
+
+<p>Night was chill in Ho-nan now. Sên Ruben felt not cold,
+nor felt the hardness of the temple floor.</p>
+
+<p>They of the household questioned, “Where is Sên Ruben
+that he comes not to evening rice? Why keeps he him from
+his kindred to-night, when to-morrow he goes from our gates,
+perchance forever?” But C’hian the headman bade them,
+“Let be! He keeps again a vigil in the temple of his father,
+worshiping alone at the tablet of Sên King-lo.”</p>
+
+<p>And they ate their rice in silence, approving the filial devotion
+of Sên Ruben. They ate but scantily and drank no
+wine, for all the household of Sên C’hian Fan was stricken by
+what had befallen in the forest beyond the nunnery to which
+C’hi Ng Yelü had taken from here but now C’hi Yamei.</p>
+
+<p>All night long the women wailed. But the men were mute.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLI">
+    CHAPTER XLI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had not come here to worship or to keep
+filial vigil; he had come to be alone, had come to escape
+from the house in which he had heard the shattering news;
+come for sanctuary. The wounded man had made for his
+father’s temple instinctively, scarce knowing where he went—only
+knowing <i>why</i>, as some wild prey of the chase makes for
+forest cover to writhe and die in peace.</p>
+
+<p>He did not ko’tow to Sên King-lo’s tablet, did not kneel
+at the altar’s votive table. Sên Ruben huddled down on the
+lacquer floor, rested his head in his hands, his elbows dug on
+his knees.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p>
+
+<p>The end of his world had come.</p>
+
+<p>He had died a space ago at the house-panel of the <i>kuei</i>
+courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>Life was a husk and a death.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben knew that he was dead; and he wished it even
+more than he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>The dream he had dreamed mocked him.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of C’hi Yamei stifled him—exquisite, dainty,
+a stately maiden of soft grave eyes and rose-tinted dimpled
+flesh, as he had seen her, it seemed but yesterday; Yamei,
+incomparable, desirable, as he had walked with her in the
+great outer gardens, and wandered with her beside the bubbling
+woodland brooks.</p>
+
+<p>He did not think of his father he never had seen, but Sên
+Ruben suddenly knew that he wanted his mother.</p>
+
+<p>He gave no thought to China, had none of England.
+Countries, nations, continents, hemispheres, are nothing in
+the heart of a man grieving his one mate as Sên Ruben
+grieved, huddled down on the tablet prayer-room’s floor alone
+through the night.</p>
+
+<p>The desolated heart of the man cried out for the mother
+whose love had been the most of his life and world until he
+had seen a pictured Chinese maiden on the wall at Burlington
+House.</p>
+
+<p>A covey of night birds cawed in the lemon trees; Ruben
+did not heed it. A bat flapped over his head; Ruben did not
+hear it. A great trunk of twisted wistaria swung and creaked
+against the roof; Sên Ruben heard but did not hear it.</p>
+
+<p>But he thought of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>His thought of C’hi Yamei, whose bridal veil he never
+should lift, was long and intimate, and it knifed him. He
+felt her in his arms, he saw his babe on her breast—thinking
+bridal thoughts of her that he would not have dared or presumed
+to think while she lived. Longing and need wrung
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>
+him, his very manhood crushing him face-down on the night-chill
+lacquer floor.</p>
+
+<p>Yet—in his desolation, desire thwarted and mocked on its
+own virgin threshold, the tortured man was not quite without
+comfort; for the thought of his mother nursed him and
+rocked his sorrow in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>He would go to his mother and give the rest of his years—his
+emptied, widowed years—to cherishing service of her.</p>
+
+<p>His pain would stay, his longing never would be still or
+lessen, but a great and beautiful living sweetness was left
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His world was not empty while his mother lived.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn he rose to go. And the thought of his mother
+brought him thought of Sên King-lo the father of whom he
+had no memory, but for whom he always had had much and
+peculiar love—reverence, fealty, tenderness, and great pride.</p>
+
+<p>Had his mother suffered as he suffered now?</p>
+
+<p>Less, it must be, because she was a woman; a thousand
+times less because she had had her love-life, had tasted and
+worn marriage in its fullness. She had her living memories;
+he had but a shattered dream. She had had her wifehood,
+held and lived it still! She had had her motherhood. For
+her life had been fulfilled. Life and love had given her what
+neither death nor sorrow ever could take away. For time
+and time’s eternity her treasure was hers.</p>
+
+<p>He had forever empty hands—nothing but a craving that
+tore and tortured, the dream of a shattered dream, a chilledness
+that never would go. He had asked for wine and the
+angered gods had given him vinegar.</p>
+
+<p>Yamei! Never to see her again, never, never to pour his
+love a perfume over her feet, never to hear her voice rise and
+fall like a song of golden bells, never even to know that somewhere
+she walked among the flowers!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span></p>
+
+<p>Daybreak slivered the inner temple with pearl and pale
+silver-gold.</p>
+
+<p>And because he thought of his mother who had loved, and
+loved in marriage that had borne her babes as the rose-vine
+bears its fragrant satin buds, Sên Ruben made his obeisance
+at the tablet altar, and lit a score of prayers for the Heaven-peace
+of Sên King-lo ... and went out into the tender,
+new-come sunlight, and turned towards the house.</p>
+
+<p>His kindred took their parting of him at the great gate—the
+men of his house, and Sên No Fee.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy that had fallen at the mountain nunnery was
+not mentioned, nor had it been, in Sên Ruben’s hearing. To
+speed a parting guest with talk of ill-tidings would have imperiled
+the safety of his journey, made improbable his return,
+and stained black their hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>They had no thought that it would mean more to Sên
+Ruben than to any not stonehearted, to hear of such cruel
+disaster fallen near those who had been here but now. Why
+should they speak of it to their departing kinsman? He had
+heard no word of it—so they all thought. Why should he?
+It was nothing to Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>And he asked no question. He would keep the name of
+Yamei forever in his heart, but it would vex him sorely to
+hear it spoken by lips that loved it less than his did.</p>
+
+<p>No Fee lifted her eyes to his pathetically; it might have
+been in protest at his going. But she did not bid him “Come
+back to Ho-nan.” Perhaps she meant it, wished it, but of
+them all gathered here to honor his faring-forth she alone
+did not speak it.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was scarred with tears, and she touched his hand
+in silence—while their kinsmen looked away lest they see
+that she did—and Sên No Fee’s hand was as cold as the heart
+of Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLII">
+    CHAPTER XLII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Ruben was laughing gaily when they turned their horses
+out of Stream-side Lane into the wide gate of Ashacres.
+It had been a splendid scamper home since the sudden flakes
+had warned them of the heavy snowfall coming.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên giggled softly as he swung her from her saddle,
+giggled and dashed across the wide doorstep, light-footed as
+a girl, and raced Ruben to the blazing logs in the hall’s great
+inglenook.</p>
+
+<p>“Rue, we’ll have snow-balls if this lasts; and won’t I pelt
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Think you’ll hit me? There—I’ve brushed you,”—he
+had, with gauntlets and handkerchief—“down you go!” He
+thrust his mother gently into the great chair’s many cushions.
+“Tea, dearest, before you change?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên nodded. “Lots of tea, Ruben; I am famished.
+I wonder where the others are?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t,” Ruben told her as he pressed the bell, “for I
+jolly well don’t care. Just you and me’s a party any old time,
+Motherkins. I don’t want any one else, and you mustn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“Just like lovers for all the world,” the footman reported
+to the housemaid of his momentary preference, when he returned
+to the servants’ hall without the tea tray.</p>
+
+<p>They were lovers—Ruben Sên and his mother.</p>
+
+<p>He had kept the oath his broken heart had registered while
+he kept his vigil of grief in the Ho-nan temple. His life
+was dedicated to his mother’s service, and he served her
+gaily.</p>
+
+<p>Never should his mother have the hurt of knowing that he
+had been wounded in Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow, coming from the library in search of tea
+and companionship, saw and heard them, before they knew
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>
+that he was there—Ruben lazy on the hearth-rug with his
+head on his mother’s knee, Ruby’s jeweled hand threading her
+boy’s hair—and wondered if his task of holding Ruben unwedded,
+as King-lo had asked him to do if he could, might
+not prove easier than he had feared.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Snow that Mrs. Sên might prove an unconscious
+conspirator to aid him in carrying out the wish the
+dying man had entrusted to him.</p>
+
+<p>When the first summertime of sex came to Ruben Sên, no
+love of mother would tether his heart back from the greater
+love; Snow knew that never happened—not in the West. But
+Ruben was, he now believed, so intensely Chinese that his
+mother always would be the dominant note in all his life.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben looking up and seeing Snow, jumped up quickly
+though not at all ashamed of having been found curled at his
+mother’s feet, with his head on her lap. He pushed the big
+chair a little nearer the crackling logs before he rang. Their
+tea must be cooling by now even under its cosy, and Sir
+Charles liked his tea almost Chinese hot. When Snow had
+seated himself, Ruben sat down again on the hearth-rug, bolt
+upright this time, facing Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“Glad to be home, boy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Splendid to be with you all, sir. To-morrow, if the mater
+will spare me, I’ll take a run up to town and see Kow Li—I
+have a good deal of family news for him—but I’ll be back
+by dinner time. I can’t spare my mother yet—even if she
+can me.”</p>
+
+<p>“He will be uncommonly glad to see you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bring him back with you, Ruben,” Mrs. Sên said.</p>
+
+<p>“Thanks, Mater, I’d like to—if he’d come. But would he
+quite fit in—dear old Kow in an English Christmas home-gathering?—and,
+you know, dear, Ivy wouldn’t like it.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên sighed softly.</p>
+
+<p>“But she ought to,” Ruben added briskly. “But, I say,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>
+Ivy looks to me now as if she’d like anything!” Their mother
+smiled and nodded brightly. “She must think a precious lot
+of Gaylor, and he of her, for her to look the way she does.
+Why, Ivy’s face is just one sparkle!”</p>
+
+<p>“She is very happy!” the mother told him.</p>
+
+<p>Snow stirred his tea very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben,” Lady Snow said, as she pushed through the
+sitting-room’s portière, “your face is the color of a red, red
+rose. Guilt?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not that altogether, Cousin Emma; blushing from the
+buffets of December’s gale, I wouldn’t wonder. It tingled us,
+didn’t it, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was glorious,” Ruby said, “but the wind did cut a bit
+as we hurried home.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sit where you were, Charlie. The fire’s too hot for me
+there; I like this better.” Emma made herself very comfortable
+among the cushions of the wide window seat. “No, Rue,
+I’ve had my tea upstairs. But your Cousin Charles is signaling
+you for more.”</p>
+
+<p>“Delicious tea this—for England,” Snow said as Ruben
+took the cup. “Must seem pretty small beer to you though,
+after what you have been drinking this last year.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên only smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Snow suspected that he did not care to talk about China,
+and wondered why. He had given Ruben several leads since
+the boy’s return a week ago and Ruben had not followed up
+one of them. He was gay as a grig and looked and seemed
+perfectly happy. But there was something—Snow did not
+know what, but something—he had caught, then instantly
+lost, once or twice. It was something in Ruben’s eyes—or
+was it in his voice?—not a shadow but shadowy—a reservation.
+How had it fared with King-lo’s son in China?</p>
+
+<p>“Where are Ivy and—her husband?” Ruben asked Lady
+Snow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Goodness knows. They’ll turn up at dinner. They don’t
+wear their welcome out, do they!”</p>
+
+<p>“Is he good enough for Ivy?” Ruben persisted.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite—while he makes her happy. Any man is good
+enough for any woman—and more than good enough—if he
+makes her happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will it last?” Sên’s voice was openly anxious.</p>
+
+<p>“That, Ruben,” Emma Snow said slowly, “no one on earth
+can tell you. I doubt if the wisest of all the angels up top
+ever knows that. But it does last sometimes. Tell me, Rue,
+did you see any girls in China half as pretty as Ivy?”</p>
+
+<p>She would not have made the oblique reference to Ivy’s
+Chinese appearance if either Ivy or Gaylor had been here.</p>
+
+<p>Snow smoking lazily—they all were smoking now—seemed
+to be gazing idly at the tapestry on the wall, looking at it
+without troubling to see it; but he was watching Ruben Sên
+narrowly, listening intently to hear what Ruben would say,
+and <i>how</i> he’d say it, in answer to Emma’s question, “Did
+you see any girls in China half as pretty as Ivy?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s answer came promptly and Sir Charles Snow did
+not catch anything beneath it—and yet—</p>
+
+<p>“I saw one that looked a lot <i>like</i> Ivy, Cousin Emma; one
+of my Chinese cousins, Sên No Fee—pretty as they make
+’em in China or out, and a perfect little devil; sweet as sweet,
+but the greatest imp I have ever seen. There were any
+number of pretty girls in our <i>kuei</i>. The Sêns are not a
+bad-looking lot. Most of the Sên women are lovely and
+several of my cousins liked a bit of fun, and took it; but No
+Fee was the Chinese limit.”</p>
+
+<p>“She looks like Ivy, you say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Mother, very.”</p>
+
+<p>“And did you like China, now that you have really been
+there—seen it?” Lady Snow demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Like China, Cousin Emma?” The question had startled
+Sên; it seemed to him both inexplicable and fatuous.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you like it as much as you thought you would?” his
+mother asked gently.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, quite,” Ruben spoke promptly.</p>
+
+<p>“More, even?” There was just a touch perhaps of anxiety
+in Mrs. Sên’s voice. Both the men caught it.</p>
+
+<p>“No, Mother; just as I believed that I should like it.”</p>
+
+<p>Snow smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder you ever came back,” Lady Snow remarked
+lightly, “and came back so soon too!”</p>
+
+<p>“Nearly a year,” Ruben reminded her. “And there is one
+thing that I love more,” he added gravely, “than I do China—one
+place I’d rather be.”</p>
+
+<p>They all knew that he meant his mother, and with her.
+Ruby Sên’s eyes misted in the firelight, and her face flushed
+a little with tender pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben began then—resolutely, Sir Charles thought—to
+talk of other things: friends and happenings in England.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLIII">
+    CHAPTER XLIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Snow wondered if Ruben would be more inclined to talk
+about China when they were alone than he had seemed
+inclined or even willing that afternoon in the hall. Always
+until now Ruben had seized every opportunity to induce Sir
+Charles—who had lived in China years ago and who, Ruben
+knew, was intensely interested still in everything that concerned
+her—to speak about China; especially about Ho-nan.
+Would he do so now—when they were alone?</p>
+
+<p>Ruben did not—even avoided the subject, Snow thought.</p>
+
+<p>Why?</p>
+
+<p>Was it because the wonderful place and people had so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>
+gripped Ruben that he had determined for his mother’s sake
+to forget China as far as he could? It might be that, Snow
+knew. Well—he wished Ruben joy of that task. The man
+smiled grimly. Forget China!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was a very British young Englishman that made half the
+life and mirth of that family Christmas house-party; putting
+up holly and mistletoe, romping with Ivy—whenever he could
+detach her long enough from Gaylor, joking with Emma
+Snow, dancing with Blanche, rollicking with her kiddies,
+deep in tobacco and politics with Snow and Tom in the
+smoking-room, hanging about his mother as if “increase of
+appetite” grew “by what it fed on”; making love to her merrily
+from breakfast to bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>But Snow knew, quite by accident, something that spoke
+to him of a strong undercurrent.</p>
+
+<p>The night before Ruben went to London, Sir Charles had
+risen at midnight to put another log on the fire very quietly.
+Emma was a salamander—she liked the fire “kept in” in her
+bedroom in warmer months than December. The husband
+himself did not dislike a temperature rather more of the
+East than of England. But you wanted plenty of fresh air
+in a sleeping-room with a fire going half the night. He’d
+open the window a bit wider. He drew back a heavy curtain
+to do so and saw Ruben unlock the small door in a garden
+wall. The door led directly into the old churchyard.
+Mrs. Sên had been allowed to have it made for her own convenience.
+She never failed the rector of church-fund, Sunday
+school treat, new bell, new carpet or special offering.
+Why should he fail her of the only request she ever had made
+of him? The good man had seen no reason whatever, nor
+had any one else; so, the wall had been cut, and the door
+put in it.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben was going to his father’s grave.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span></p>
+
+<p>How long would he stay there? But Sir Charles would
+not gratify his own curiosity as to that. He opened the window
+another inch and looked for a moment at the moon-lit
+picture of the old gray church, and its yard of graves. There
+was snow upon the ground. Berries, that looked like bundles
+of tiny silver balls in the brilliant moonlight, were thick on
+the frosted hollies; there was snow upon the graves. It was
+quiet in the churchyard. Snow drew the long curtain over
+the window scrupulously.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Charles Snow lay awake a long time thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Twice after that he knew or suspected that Ruben had
+gone at night, to Sên King-lo’s grave.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally he did not watch Ruben, or pry into it in any
+way. It was pressed upon him.</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever were you doing, creeping into the house like a
+mouse at half-past two this morning, Rue?” Ivy Gaylor demanded
+one day at breakfast. “And how did you get in?
+Don’t the servants lock up properly, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>The old butler bridled angrily and almost openly.</p>
+
+<p>“Got in the same way I went,” Ruben said lazily. “Let
+myself out, Ive—and let myself in again. Oh—yes, the place
+was barricaded like a Moscow prison all right. I had to undo
+about six bolts and chains. Came in quietly out of consideration
+for your beauty sleep, Mrs. Gaylor. What were
+<i>you</i> doing, prowling about at two-thirty?”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy flushed prettily. “Tom and I got talking in front of
+the fire—talking over <i>your</i> sins, and it took some time. I
+just went to the window—I like to look at the trees, all covered
+with snow in the moonlight—and I saw you. Where
+had you been?”</p>
+
+<p>“Out!” Ruben said with a laugh, and flecked her with a
+pellet of bread.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy flecked him with another; it had been a favorite nursery
+pastime of theirs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then they both laughed and Lady Snow came in; and the
+next remark made was about Christmas trees.</p>
+
+<p>The other occasion was as trivial, and as unprompted by
+Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>He had no doubt that Ruben had been to Sên King-lo’s
+grave each time.</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem to Snow at all an English expressing of
+filial loyalty. And he knew that the graveyards of China
+teemed with such acts—that scarcely a graveside in China
+could not have told of much such an incident.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLIV">
+    CHAPTER XLIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Tom Gaylor’s wife was almost—but not quite—as
+much sought after in London as Ivy Sên had been.
+An unmarried heiress presents innumerable possibilities—a
+fascinating theme. “Which of them will she marry?” Ivy’s
+peculiar appearance had made speculation delightedly
+piquant. Her marriage ended that. But the radiant young
+wife was even a more valuable social asset than Miss Sên had
+been. Mrs. Gaylor’s house was delightful in every way, her
+entertaining yielded pride of place to none.</p>
+
+<p>Society set much store by Ivy Gaylor; she was so unusual,
+and at the same time so everything that was exactly right.
+The Gaylors had everything, did everything, and whatever
+Mrs. Tom Gaylor did, she did to perfection.</p>
+
+<p>And Ivy Gaylor was moderately happy.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was contented—in every way but one. He was a
+kind and constant comrade, if no longer, after two years of
+marriage, quite the pronounced lover that the wife, more
+ardent of nature than he, secretly craved.</p>
+
+<p>The old weak-spot of marriage had found them out, as it
+usually does: “woman’s whole existence,” and man’s sagging
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>
+into tranquil half-time good-fellowship, taking his wife and
+his home a little for granted if the marriage keeps rather
+more than the average of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>But marriage had developed Ivy richly. She took what
+Tom gave, made the most of it, and was grateful. She knew
+that Tom loved her, that he never had dreamed of regretting
+their marriage. He spent very much more time with her
+than most husbands did, in their set. He had not tired of
+her, even if he had rather outgrown the ebullient endearments
+of betrothal and honeymoon days. Ivy Gaylor knew that
+she had a rich portion of what every woman (own it or deny
+it) longs for from girlhood to death intensely as no woman
+ever longs for anything else: the ardent devotion and longing
+of one man—<i>and its constant expression</i>. Few women can
+satisfy themselves with tranquil affection; foolish sex, no
+doubt, that claims to wear the flowers of Spring and feast on
+the fruits of frost-ripened Autumn at the same time! Is it
+perhaps because woman asks so much—over-asks and clamors—that
+she often receives so little, holds it so insecurely?</p>
+
+<p>Ivy Gaylor knew that her man was not tired of her, but
+he no longer wooed her, and she was the type of woman that
+craves constant courtship—an enormously preponderant part
+of the sex, in the West. Society interested and pleased her,
+but it did not engross her at all, and amused more than
+it satisfied. She cared for but three things really intensely:
+the English countryside, men—greatly narrowed to one man—and
+little children. Ivy adored babies. She always had.
+In the most tempestuous days of her naughty childhood and
+discontented, rebellious girlhood, the companionship of tiny
+children or a baby to cuddle never had failed to gladden and
+soothe her, and to turn all her churning bitterness into sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>It was her determination that hers should be a childless
+marriage. It hurt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span></p>
+
+<p>Tom Gaylor, staunch, easy-going, a trifle thick-skinned,
+always courteous, inclined to be casual, complacent, amiable,
+far more negative than positive, impressionable but not inflammable,
+had not fallen in love with even half the violence
+that Ivy had. She knew it—a girl always knows—and it had
+jarred her happiest hours. He took marriage, after its first
+stimulating novelty, at a comfortable jog-trot. It hurt; but
+she had the wit and the character not to show that it did;
+she had pride, that best and stoutest buckler of a disappointed
+woman; she had the sense to realize that her husband
+gave her all that he had to give; and she had the justice
+not to blame him for what was not his fault, for what
+he could not help. But Ivy Gaylor was no more thick-skinned
+or easily satisfied than Ivy Sên had been, and it
+rankled.</p>
+
+<p>Still, after two years of marriage Ivy was moderately happy
+and in every way but one Gaylor was content. “Quite resigned
+to matrimony,” Lady Snow said of him impatiently
+once. Sir Charles had smiled and retorted, “Sensible fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>But Gaylor wished for a son. He was every bit as fond of
+children as Ivy was, and the one passionate desire of his
+otherwise tranquil being was for a boy of his own, a girl
+or two, and another boy or two to follow—of course.</p>
+
+<p>His wife knew, and it cankered.</p>
+
+<p>It made her own not-to-be-satisfied longing a double cross,
+a longing that whipped her mercilessly.</p>
+
+<p>But her grim determination only hardened as time went.
+Her English name was a great palliative to Ivy Gaylor. She
+knew that her own position in the England she so acutely
+loved was established and secure. But she still disliked to
+see her own face and the tint of her lovely hands, and she
+swore that no child should lie in her arms—to look up at her
+perhaps with her own Chinese eyes set in a baby Chinese face—a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>
+son to be branded as long as he lived with an un-English
+face, or a girl to suffer as she herself had done.</p>
+
+<p>Love has to be paid for; disobedience has to be paid for—everything
+has. The heaviest price that any human debtor
+has to pay is the price of disobedient love.</p>
+
+<p>For the love of Sên King-lo and Ivy Gilbert, beautiful, unselfish,
+enduring—always fine and pure in itself—had disobeyed
+a Law. Ivy their daughter had paid a terrible price
+and was paying it yet—one of the inexorable debts that time
+and Heaven may forgive, but that can never be paid, and
+that life never forgives nor forgets. Sên King-lo had drunk
+and drained his hyssop; Ruby Sên had tasted it; for Ivy their
+daughter it brimmed in a cup always at her lip.</p>
+
+<p>It stung and was bitter, just a drop or two, on Tom Gaylor’s
+mouth now and then, though he never had suspected it, probably
+never would, and by no mental or spiritual effort could
+have understood, had you told him all about it, what in the
+world all the ridiculous pother was about.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor considered his wife the prettiest thing in London,
+a judgment in which he was far more acute than he often was.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor was proud of his “Chinese” wife. But he wanted
+children inordinately, if the most natural of all human wishes
+ever can be called “inordinate”—the desire and instinct that
+of all human desires is fullest or emptiest, best or worst, in
+fulfillment. The gamble of marriage is small, and its retributions
+are puny compared to the gamble and retributions of
+parenthood.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLV">
+    CHAPTER XLV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>“Two new friends of mine are dining here to-night,”
+Mrs. Sên told Ruben one April afternoon. “I think
+you will like them. They are particularly charming.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span></p>
+
+<p>“One of your grand crushes, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who ever heard of a crush at dinner—except in a cheap
+restaurant! Don’t be silly, Rue,” Ivy broke in mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>“I apologize, Mrs. Gaylor.”</p>
+
+<p>“A very small dinner,” his mother said, and changed the
+subject without saying who her guests at dinner that night
+were to be.</p>
+
+<p>“You and Tom coming?” Sên asked his sister, as he rose
+to straighten about her the fur she took up as she went
+towards the door almost abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>“Not me! Too select!” Ivy’s voice was tart. “And we
+are not invited,” she added more pleasantly as Ruben opened
+the door. “Good-by, Mother. I’ll tell Lucien about the
+underskirt.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I’ll be back as soon as I have conducted Mrs. Gaylor
+to her car,” Sên said over Ivy’s shoulder as he followed her
+into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên drew her chair a little nearer the flaming logs.
+Ivy’s tone had chilled her, and the English April was cold
+this year. The woman sat very still—a trifle huddled—and
+her dark eyes were shadowed until Ruben came in again.</p>
+
+<p>“Worried, Mother?” Sên came and laid his hand on her
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>“No, dear—no,” she answered quickly, almost too quickly.</p>
+
+<p>“You looked it,” the son told her gently. “Pass it over to
+me, can’t you? That’s what I’m here for, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are here for everything good and helpful and a joy
+to your mother, my Ruben. There is nothing to pass over—truly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I’ll pass over mine.” He drew a chair close to the
+fire too, and seated himself facing his mother. “What’s up
+with Ivy? Something hipped her just now; what was it?
+She was snappy with me in the hall and scarcely told me
+good-by when I had tucked the rug about her. I loved our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>
+old Ivy no end, but I like the new Ivy best. The old Ivy
+peeped over the new Ivy’s shoulder just now—the first hint
+of one of the old hard moods I’ve seen since I came back. It
+worried me and I think it worried you. Isn’t Ivy happy?
+She and Gaylor hit it off still, don’t they?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course they do. Wonderfully happy!” And again
+Ruben, who knew her so well, thought that the mother answered
+almost too quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Not to force her confidence, but because he was determined
+to share whatever it was that was vexing her—he was sure
+that there was something—he went on questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Mater, Ivy wasn’t put out at not being asked to eat
+here to-night, was she?”</p>
+
+<p>“What nonsense—of course not. They are dining at the
+Giffords’—she and Tom—and going on to two or three places
+after that. Ivy doesn’t want to dine here every time I have
+a few people, any more than she wants me every time she
+has guests. They have their own set—Ivy and Tom. I have
+thought once or twice lately that Ivy wasn’t feeling quite up
+to the mark. I dare say she has overtired herself. She goes
+and does so much, and does everything at such a pace.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it was something about dinner here to-night,”
+Ruben insisted.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then—it was,” the mother owned reluctantly, but
+with something of the relief of confession in face and voice.
+“She wouldn’t have dined here to-night if I had asked her—which
+I was careful not to. Ivy heard me tell Jenkins the
+order for the table cards, and she does not approve of whom I
+have asked to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, I say!” Sên blurted out hotly. “That’s a bit <i>too</i>
+stiff, Mater. I wish I’d known, and I’d have snapped young
+Mrs. Gaylor a good bit sharper than she snapped me out in
+the hall; and her chauffeur could have done her tucking in
+for all of me! Not approve—well, I’m blowed!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span></p>
+
+<p>Whether Ruben was blowed or not, he was angry. All his
+life he had brooded over his sister and loved her devotedly,
+but that she should dare to criticize their mother’s social
+judgment infuriated Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>A more English son, every bit as devoted to his mother
+as Ruben was, would have been disgusted and amused; Sên
+saw red.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“She can’t help it, dear. And we mustn’t mind when it
+breaks out. It is awfully silly of Ivy—but there it is. It’s
+her cross still, I’m afraid, our poor little, foolish Ivy.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên caught the situation instantly. “You have asked a
+Chinese to dine here to-night—for me! That was dear of
+you, Mater. A ’varsity friend of mine?”</p>
+
+<p>“No one you know. Two Chinese—perfect dears both of
+them. I met them only last week at Rachel Sidley’s. And I
+called the next day—and I asked them to dine to-night, and
+wouldn’t take no for an answer. I haven’t had as many of
+our country people here”—her son’s eyes smiled worship and
+gratitude into her eyes—“as I ought to have done, Rue; not
+as many as I wanted to—because of Ivy, you know. But she’s
+got her own home now and I do not mean to debar myself
+from the pleasure of having friends of my husband’s countrymen
+and women any longer, or to debar you from having
+your Chinese friends about you in your own house. I haven’t
+always been quite fair to you about it, dear, in the past; it
+was difficult, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very,” Ruben said softly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well—it’s different now; Ivy is married; she must gang
+her ain gait, socially, and we’ll aye gang ours. Now, I want
+to tell you all about these new friends of mine, Rue. I need
+not ask you to be nice to any one I have here, but I want you
+to be particularly nice to these two Chinese friends of mine
+to-night. You won’t find it hard. You see, they are such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>
+strangers here; they only left Ho-nan a few weeks ago. Welcome
+them, Ruben.”</p>
+
+<p>“Welcome them—just from Ho-nan!” An inscrutable
+something pulsed in his eyes. “You bet I will!”</p>
+
+<p>“Order! Order!” Sir Charles exclaimed as the Snows
+came in unannounced. “No loose language in the presence
+of ladies, young cub.”</p>
+
+<p>In the small talk of Lady Snow’s stay no more mention
+was made of Mrs. Sên’s Chinese dinner guests, and when Sir
+Charles, despairing of the business talk concerning tenants,
+repairs and investments that he had come intending to have
+with Ruby and Ruben, reminded his wife of a dinner engagement
+of their own, and they went even more unceremoniously
+than they had come, Mrs. Sên had no more than time to
+dress leisurely if she were to run no risk of not being in
+her own drawing-room safely before the arrival of some first
+and over-prompt guest.</p>
+
+<p>Who were they, Ruben wondered as he knotted his tie, the
+two Chinese who were to dine? From Ho-nan. His face
+tightened. Ah, well, they should have warm welcome from
+him; a Chinese welcome. Ho-nan was a wide place, and not
+too well interknit, but perhaps they knew his kindred. However,
+it was not probable, for they would have said so to his
+mother, and she to him.</p>
+
+<p>Ho-nan—it hurt to think of Ho-nan! But he always did.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben’s wound had not healed.</p>
+
+<p>Still, in woe as in weal, a man is a man, and a Chinese man
+must have his laugh. Ruben chuckled as he slipped into his
+dinner jacket, and grinned to himself as he gave his well-brushed
+hair a last survey in the glass. To think of what
+those two Ho-nanese men must have felt when Mrs. Sên
+King-lo had called upon them! He’d never known his
+mother to do that before—call on men. Almost complete
+strangers too. It was perfectly right, of course, or his mother
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>
+could not have done it—<i>she</i> never blundered—and it was
+jolly kind of her into the bargain, bless her! But if, as he
+thought from what she had said, these were <i>Chinese</i> Chinese,
+here in Europe for the first time, and probably quite unacquainted
+with Western ways, it must have given them quite
+a jolt when an English lady had paid them a visit. Perhaps
+they did know something of the West though. Certainly they
+must speak English, or at least French, for the Mater to
+have found them particularly interesting and charming. She
+could not speak a dozen words of Chinese, and Ruben doubted
+if she understood a score.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn’t worth puzzling over; he’d know before long.</p>
+
+<p>“Come in!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li came in. Sên gazed at him in staggered amazement.
+Kow Li wore the livery of a Chinese house-servant;
+the severely plain blue gown, the humble black-cloth shoes,
+the servant-crest of the Sêns “chopped” in white on his shoulder.
+His long queue was beautifully braided and, eked out
+with silk threads, hung down to the hem of his robe.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li was beaming; Kow Li’s old crinkled yellow face
+was radiant.</p>
+
+<p>“What the devil’s the joke, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not so, my eminent lord-one. Your worm that crawls
+in your perfumed presence has been permitted by the most
+noble lady, Sên Ruby, a very great and desirable honor to-night.
+I am waiting at table, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p>“The hell you are!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li bowed, his hands meekly hidden in his sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, do you mean it, Kow?”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li bowed lower than before.</p>
+
+<p>“Well—you are not! You! It won’t do, Kow! I will not
+have it. I don’t know what you are up to, you old monkey-one;
+but I will not have it; that is fixed.”</p>
+
+<p>“My lord,” Kow’s voice trembled a little in his eagerness,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>
+but Ruben saw that the old man’s eyes were firm; it was Chinese
+will against Chinese will! What did this unprecedented
+freak mean, anyway?</p>
+
+<p>“My lord, whom always his servant has loved and has
+served, I was your celestial lord father’s servant. Many a
+time his foot has pushed me—”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe it!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li smiled, as if affectionately at cherished, happy
+memories. “Never unduly, my lord-one. Ever was that
+noble-one a just and often an indulgent master. But I was
+his servant, and he ruled me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well then, I am going to rule you to-night! What does
+it mean, Kow? What are you up to?”</p>
+
+<p>“O lord-one, a very great Chinese gentleman eats your rice
+to-night—”</p>
+
+<p>“He won’t think much of it, if there is <i>rice</i>—English-cooked
+rice!—on our menu to-night. I’ll give him a tip to
+cut out the rice course.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li grinned too. But he continued sedately—Kow Li
+was very much in earnest. “Thy servant Kow Li, Kow Li the
+servant of Sên King-lo, has often the gnaw of lonesomeness,
+up in his elegant rooms in the Bloomsbury. He makes not
+free with his servants—least of all with those estimable business
+subordinates, Mug and Wat. A Chinese master and
+servant may be friends, sometimes even comrades, in China,
+but it seems not to work to any advantage in this the West.
+The merchant who permits the familiarity with his clerks,
+his business employees, loses his grip of his warehouse and
+his coin-pouch; rides indeed a tiger. I have been too busy
+and too engrossed amassing wealth for the son of my master—the
+son who when a babe-one gave many a smile of affection
+to Kow Li, his father’s servant—too occupied so, O Sên
+Ruben, to seek friends of my race on the outer side of my
+house in the Bloomsbury. And so has it come that this old
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>
+Chinese, living alone so far from the garden of Ho-nan, aches
+sometimes for companionship. I would stand behind the
+eat-chair of the noble who comes here to-night, I would be
+again, for the short space of time that a brief and inadequate
+English-wealth meal occupies, what I was in my younger
+years, what I am without its pleasant privileges—the Chinese
+servant of a Chinese gentleman. And, I charge you, O Sên
+Ruben, it is not a thing respectable that no Chinese servant
+waits in proper attendance upon the Chinese guest in the
+house of Sên King-lo. They are louts—the serving-men English!
+Your butler has effrontery of hollow pomposity; he
+knows not how to wait with meekness; never he effaces himself,
+the butler-one of an establishment of English wealth.
+The footmen! They are not servants, the servant-ones of the
+West. The make-go of the tram-car they can do, they can
+pack the travel-box, and make the beer-drink, but they cannot
+fill up the wine cup with decorum, or pass the salt-bowl appropriately
+with accuracy and civility. Grant that I take
+my old place to-night in the rice hall of the Sên. Deny me
+not, my lord!”</p>
+
+<p>“Does my mother know?”</p>
+
+<p>“She, at my prayer, permitted me the happiness, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove, I must go”—the clock on the mantel was chiming—“or
+she will permit me the taste of her stick. You are
+a rum old bird, Kow!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li tidied Sên Ruben’s tousled dressing table lingeringly,
+set a flower at a better slant in a vase, altered the place
+of a chair, scrutinized the bed, put out the electric lights—one
+should not waste of the honorable gods-permitted abundance—and
+closing Sên Ruben’s door behind him went
+gravely down to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>He disapproved its appointments—but he had seen many
+Western rice-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mrs. Sên’s irreproachable butler, and all his bevy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>
+of spruce, important and immaculate footmen, Kow Li
+ignored them. And they left him alone. Mrs. Sên had given
+her orders.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLVI">
+    CHAPTER XLVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>An early guest or two were there already when Ruben
+reached the drawing-room. He had delayed himself
+longer than he had realized with Kow, and he had gone to
+the conservatory for a flower. Other guests were announced
+as he shook hands with the Raeburns. Sên had no opportunity
+to ask his mother even the names of the Chinese men
+who were coming. Not that it mattered. Chinese surnames
+presented no difficulties to him; he knew all the hundred of
+them by heart, knew which was the home province of each,
+which were the most distinguished in China’s history, and
+for what.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever they were they would be welcome to him—but it
+would stir a sore memory! Never mind; that would happen
+often, and be but a small price to pay for the treasure that
+his memory held forever.</p>
+
+<p>The girl he was chatting with laughed a trifle shrilly as
+Jenkins made an announcement. Sên did not catch it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên called him to her; and Ruben turned to her and
+was face to face with C’hi Yamei.</p>
+
+<p>A cry, that neither four years at English public school nor
+centuries of Chinese self-control so much as muffled, startled
+Ruby Sên—and amused their English guests. C’hi Ng Yelü,
+standing just behind his daughter, may have wondered what
+Sên meant, but two women knew instantly.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên’s heart sank. She had heard the self-same note
+in Sên King-lo’s voice years ago—when he had wooed her
+beside the blue Potomac.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span></p>
+
+<p>She admired her husband’s people enormously. Her own
+mixed marriage had been unbrokenly happy. But—she was
+not ready to give Ruben up yet. And she always had counted
+on Ruben marrying an English girl. How Ivy would hate
+this! Nor, frankly, did she wish a Chinese daughter-in-law
+and grandchildren preponderantly Chinese by blood.</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to Ruby Sên that, by any possibility, Ruben
+might fail to win any girl he chose. And she believed that he
+would woo but one. Miss C’hi seemed much less charming
+to Ruben Sên’s mother than she had at Lady Sidley’s.</p>
+
+<p>Sên made no gesture even to greet Mr. and Miss C’hi. He
+was ghastly white and he had clutched at a chair-back, as
+a frightened girl might have done. Speak any word he could
+not.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei held out her hand, laughing lightly. “You are
+surprised to see us, Mr. Sên? But we told you we were coming
+to London in April or March, didn’t we, Father? Hadn’t
+Mrs. Sên told you that she had asked us for to-night?”</p>
+
+<p>Sên let her take his hand; it amounted to that.</p>
+
+<p>As her hand slipped itself into his, color swept back into
+his face. Her flesh was real and very sweet. This was no
+girl-ghost come to him from bandit-infested An Mu-ti. Whatever
+the hideous mistake had been—the mistake that had
+broken him, scorched all his manhood’s future into ashes—this
+<i>was</i> Yamei. She was clad in English clothes, as he had
+not seen her in Ho-nan. And she spoke to him again in her
+easy fluent English that had jarred him in the bamboo path
+and that she had not again used in his hearing in Ho-nan.
+But this was the girl he had worshiped in China, changed
+in nothing but a low-cut evening-gown, hair that had neither
+stick-pins nor ointment, and a quiet prattle of English small
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>Sên murmured something in reply, speaking too low for
+even Mrs. Sên and C’hi to catch it. Perhaps C’hi Yamei
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>
+knew what he said—women are clairaudient at such times—but
+certainly Ruben himself did not. But he pulled himself
+together somewhat, though awkwardly, as a criminal reprieved
+from the death-sentence might on the very scaffold,
+and made shift to speak to C’hi who was waiting to greet
+their young host.</p>
+
+<p>The touch of Yamei’s hand had told no message, but it
+had told great news—she lived, and it had given him strength
+and social reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late for Mrs. Sên to remake her dinner seating
+arrangements; she regretted that it was.</p>
+
+<p>“Why did it startle you so to see us again, Mr. Sên?”
+Yamei asked, as they went towards the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>She felt his arm shiver a little under her glove, and she
+knew that he did not look at her as he answered—for she was
+looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>“I had heard that you were not living,”—his voice was
+thick—“that—that you had been killed at An Mu-ti—in the
+woods near the nunnery.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! You heard it too, then! No Fee said that you had
+not. We were at your kinsmen’s again, for a brief stay, as
+we went down to Hong Kong—and—No Fee just happened
+to mention that you had heard nothing of the rumor.”</p>
+
+<p>The man’s heart leapt at the shyness that came into her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God that it was only a rumor!”</p>
+
+<p>“But it did happen,” Miss C’hi told him sadly, “but not to
+me. It was another C’hi Yamei—a collateral kinswoman,
+Pin C’hi Yamei, not a near cousin. If we were in China we
+should be keeping our year of mourning for her, of course;
+but my father decided against our doing it over here. White
+mourning would not have looked mourning here; and it would
+have been a great inconvenience to my father—and rather
+absurd, too, in the English clothes he prefers to wear over
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>
+here. And black would not have been mourning to us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not!” Sên said quickly. It pleased him to hear
+C’hi Yamei say it. And it pleased him to think the frock she
+wore—that any English girl might have worn on such an
+occasion—was her concession to C’hi Ng Yelü’s regrettable
+Europeanism, and not her own willing acceptance of “low
+neck and short sleeves.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her now and he saw that her lips trembled
+a little; perhaps because she had been fond of the other Yamei
+who <i>had</i> died at bandit hands, or perhaps in recalled horror
+at the hideous cruelty of that other Yamei’s death. And he
+spoke of something else as he seated her at the long, glittering
+table. His quivering excitement calmed to a manageable
+thing in his determined endeavor to banish a troubled memory
+from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>“The first time we have eaten together, isn’t it?—except
+picnic snacks in the woods at home,” he said lightly. But he
+added, as significantly as he dared, “I am glad that it is
+<i>here</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi nodded brightly. “You call it ‘home’—Ho-nan?”</p>
+
+<p>“Always! It is my home,” he told her in Chinese, “and I
+am Ho-nan’s loyal child, in exile. Do not you call China
+‘home’ always, C’hi Yamei?”</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese girl’s face flushed beautifully, and Ruben saw
+her black eyes’ sudden softness. “Yes, Sên Ruben; no matter
+where we go, no matter how long we stay in exile, always
+China is my home—my only home. But,” she added in English—English
+that, except for the music of her voice, was
+perfect English—“I like my exile in this jolly, friendly England—your
+mother’s country, Mr. Sên. I find England delightful
+and English men—and women—kind and charming.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Sên admitted, “it was my mother’s country—until
+her marriage.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span></p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei smiled at Sên’s reminder and at its assertion.
+She liked him that he would not compromise.</p>
+
+<p>“You like English men better than you do English women,
+then, Miss C’hi?”</p>
+
+<p>“How have you jumped to that conclusion, Mr. Sên?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—you told me.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi denied it with a crinkled lip, and a questioning
+lift of her delicate very black eyebrows, eloquent and unambiguous.</p>
+
+<p>“But—yes; you did,” Sên insisted with a laugh. “You
+said, ‘I find English men—and women—kind and charming.’
+You hesitated before you added ‘and women’ and your hesitation
+qualified it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you a barrister, Mr. Sên? Such a gift is badly
+wasted, if you are not. You would be deadly in cross-examination.
+Perhaps I have liked English men even better than I
+have English women, but I have not suspected that I did. I
+have met so many more men than women over here,” Yamei
+laughed softly. “And I seem to have come more quickly in
+touch with them, and more sincerely. I think it is because
+all nice women in the West have to keep themselves a little
+‘stand off,’ out in the general world as they are; hold themselves
+a little aloof, making so for themselves a high wall of
+dignity that at home we need not think of, because our barred
+courtyard walls make it for us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Which do you think the best way,” Sên asked gravely, “the
+women’s way of living here, or at home?”</p>
+
+<p>“At home,” C’hi Yamei answered promptly. “I enjoy my
+freedom here in England and, because my father wills it, I do
+not question it. But I take it and enjoy it as an episode—just
+a lark—as a Chinese lady likes and is amused by her
+wide license at the Lanterns’ Feast once a year. But I do
+not find it really ‘freedom,’ the living outside of the courtyard
+as one does here. I do not find it really a freedom because
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>
+one must so be on one’s guard always. I find that I
+cannot quite approve it, Mr. Sên, and it is not always that I
+am able to enjoy it. I feel here that always I am on sentry
+duty outside the camp of my own personality.”</p>
+
+<p>“With me? Talking here with me, in my mother’s house?”
+Sên broke in.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” the girl asserted with a tiny teasing laugh.
+“I believe,” she added gravely, “that there is more true freedom
+in a Chinese <i>kuei</i> than in any English drawing-room or
+at any Western function. Yes,” she went back, speaking
+slowly, “perhaps I do like my English men friends a little
+better than I do the English girls and older women I know.
+Probably that is a sort of vanity; for I know that the men
+I meet here like me better than the women do.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên laughed softly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi did not pretend not to understand him perfectly,
+for she said at once, and quite seriously: “Yes; that,
+of course, is inevitable. There can be no chance, because no
+cause, for jealousy in the Chinese flowery quarters; while
+there must be jealousy, a strongly armed neutrality, at best,
+among women who do not ‘stay at home’ and are not
+‘shut in.’”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben had not thought of that ever. He considered
+it gravely for a moment. It staggered him rather. Yet, as
+he threw his mind back to the courtyards of his kinswomen
+at home, he saw C’hi Yamei’s point, and his intimate memories
+of Sênland gave her startling argument strong support.</p>
+
+<p>More freedom—for women—in a Chinese harem than in
+London society! Distinctly that was a new thought. But
+Sên suspected that the more he thought it over—presently
+at his leisure—the more convincing he would find it.</p>
+
+<p>And so it proved.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLVII">
+    CHAPTER XLVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Miss C’hi changed their talk to lighter things then,
+feeling, as Ruben Sên suspected she did, that further
+comparison between them of woman’s welfare and comfort in
+East and in West was something of a discourtesy to her English
+hostess—especially comparison concluded in China’s
+favor.</p>
+
+<p>To C’hi Yamei Mrs. Sên was altogether English. No one
+else ever had thought of Ruby Sên as anything but English—except
+as Sên King-lo’s love and Sên Ruben’s had strained to
+call and to think her, arbitrarily, Chinese. Sên King-lo had
+realized, more fully after their marriage than before it, that
+all her easy acceptance of much that was Chinese—an acceptance
+that had been proud and sincere in Washington and
+London, and even in Hong Kong, but that had been altogether
+breached by the really Chinese conditions of their stay
+in Ho-nan—had been partly the deep congeniality of her personality
+and his, partly her warm and sunny affection for
+him, partly accidental and superficial. Ruben their son never
+had quite realized it; he believed his mother far more attune
+with China than she really was; he attributed her unwillingness
+to live in China to her reluctance to leave Ivy; and now
+that Ivy was so happily married he dreamed again of a day
+to come when his mother would be the <i>doyen</i> and regnant-one
+in the <i>kuei</i> of his Ho-nan home.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên thought of his mother as Chinese, partly because
+his mind could not divorce his ideal woman from his
+ideal country, partly because to his intensely Chinese mind a
+wife <i>was</i> of her husband’s family, and the descendant of her
+son’s ancestors—the descendant of his paternal ancestors.
+Such is the compulsion and force of absorption of Chinese
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>
+character, that every race that ever has conquered the Chinese
+has been conquered more vitally and permanently by the
+Chinese—has <i>become</i> Chinese. The unanimous history of
+the long centuries proves it—of all China’s past; perhaps
+predicts it of all China’s future, the greatest alchemy in human
+history. To Ruben Sên’s mind in just that way was
+every woman reborn, recreated, reblooded by marriage. He
+could not think it otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>“Your Chinese butler, standing there behind my father,
+looks as if he never had left China for a day—not for an
+hour,” Miss C’hi said presently, when she and her host each
+had been duly courteous to their other table neighbors. “And
+I seem to know his face—to know it at home. Have I seen
+him in China, I wonder?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not unless you are older than you look. Kow Li has not
+been in China for nearly half a century. But he was born in
+Ho-nan, at our place there. You must have seen brothers
+and nephews of his among my kinsmen’s servants.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had known as he drew back Miss C’hi’s chair that
+Kow Li instantly had recognized her—known that she was
+the lady of the picture whose original they had so tried, and
+so in vain, to trace. Trained to immobility by sixty years
+of service, yet Kow Li’s face had betrayed him to Ruben’s
+eyes at the threshold of the meal. Kow had not started, Kow
+had given no sign, made no gesture; but Ruben had seen joy
+leap in the old man’s being. And Sên knew that Kow Li
+was parching and tingling to be alone with him and talk it
+over.</p>
+
+<p>Stickler as old Kow was, staunch conservative concerning
+all things Chinese, Ruben wondered how Kow thought of
+C’hi Yamei’s English dinner gown. Once, at something he’d
+said to her, her dimpled shoulder had shrugged lightly with
+a very Chinese motion. Ruben Sên had shivered at the warm
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>
+loveliness of that naked girlish shoulder, at the unveiled
+beauty of her arm; Sên Ruben had disapproved—and longed.
+How did it impress Kow Li?</p>
+
+<p>“So!” Miss C’hi said. “I should like to speak to him—your
+Chinese servant—some time, if Mrs. Sên would allow
+me. I must tell my father that it was a Ho-nanese that filled
+his glass. Father will like to hear.”</p>
+
+<p>At that, Sên told her Kow Li’s story and ended by telling
+her how the old Chinese who had followed Sên King-lo into
+Western exile—he a young man, Sên King-lo not much more
+than a boy—had been Sên King-lo’s body servant for many
+faithful years and now, one of London’s rich men, stubbornly
+held himself still the low servant-one of Sên King-lo’s son.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei’s black eyes misted at the story. It was so
+Chinese a story. And as Ruben finished, leaning a trifle forward
+in her chair, she looked Kow Li full in the face, gave
+him a gracious little nod and smiled at him in cordial and
+open race friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s immobility broke up; Kow Li showed emotion
+now! The mask-like face crinkled with joy and gratitude;
+and the old black eyes held proudly the young black eyes a
+long instant’s length before Kow Li tucked his hands within
+his flowing sleeves, drew back a space and ko’towed profoundly—colliding
+as he did so with an outraged footman
+and a salver-borne brace of sauce-boats.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei had gained a serf.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII">
+    CHAPTER XLVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Nature had her way; Nature outwilled and outwitted
+Ivy Gaylor.</p>
+
+<p>For some time Ivy locked her new secret fast—her rage,
+her fear and her intense joy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span></p>
+
+<p>When it grew too big for her she took it to Emma Snow.
+And again Lady Snow did her best by the distracted, frightened
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the common fear—fear of physical pain, so
+often the cross of Western approaching motherhood—that
+racked Ivy Gaylor. She was too Chinese for that; in spite
+of herself, her splendid Chinese blood that she so hated and
+rejected told sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall kill it, if it looks like me!”</p>
+
+<p>“You will love it dearly, no matter what it looks like,
+Ivy,” Emma Snow told her crooningly.</p>
+
+<p>“They do it sometimes—quadroons—don’t they?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think so—sometimes,” Lady Snow admitted.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor little thing! Poor little unwanted baby! How unfair!
+Can God be so fiendishly unfair, Cousin Emma? It is
+only one-fourth Chinese, and three-fourths English, my poor
+little baby!”</p>
+
+<p>A lesser woman might have chided, “Hush, Ivy!” but not
+Emma Snow.</p>
+
+<p>She put an arm about the other’s heaving shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“God seems a long way off, dear, sometimes. But He never
+is. God shows us all the mercy He dares always, I am sure.
+I don’t know much about Him, Ivy. I doubt how many
+down here in the fog of life do; only the saints, I think, if
+even they. But there are facts concerning Him that He
+teaches us all, shows us clearly, if only we will let Him, if
+we will learn and will see—all of us who live as long as I have.
+He has taught me that, Ivy, about Himself. God helps us,
+all that we will let Him, and more, I think. Sometimes He
+<i>has</i> to punish us to do it, but always, I am convinced and
+sure, He gives us all the mercy that He can. Take what He
+sends—in October. Take it as a beautiful gift. Even, if it
+should be the cross you fear, accept it gratefully. When we
+do that the heaviest cross grows light. It is carried for us,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>
+dear. And you will not hate your little baby. You will not
+be able to do that. Don’t try to, for you can’t. But you
+may injure yourself—and it—in trying to. Of course you
+want your baby, Ivy; every woman does—you more than
+many girls I have known. And I’m sure that it will not be
+an unwanted child to its father. Think of Tom, Ivy. Don’t
+spoil his pleasure in your firstborn.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor Tom!” Ivy sobbed. “He wants a child terribly.
+But he has been sweet about it—oh! so sweet. He has never
+spoken of it, except at first I am sure he has suspected that
+I did not mean to give him a child and that it has hurt him.
+But he has not begged or teased, or anything like that—not
+once. He has been so splendid. Why did I marry? I ought
+not. I wish I had never married.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes indeed, Tom has been splendid—from what you tell
+me. It is up to you to pay him. A defaulting debtor is a
+poor, cheap thing always, but in the debts of marriage only
+skunks default. You won’t! Why did you marry? That’s
+easy. You married because you had to. I suspect that’s why
+the majority of us do.”</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the woman soothed the girl—measurably.
+But she could not reassure her, perhaps partly because Lady
+Snow herself secretly shared Ivy’s apprehension and revulsion.
+Ivy Gaylor could not be comforted—yet. Lady Snow
+wondered sadly if the child, when it came, would have the
+power to comfort its mother—if it came as Ivy so feared it
+might, looking of the race whose Eastern blood was but a
+fourth of its life stream. Would Gaylor’s love hold—if that
+happened? Would his love of his wife hold; would the child
+find its birthright place in his Englishman’s heart? Emma
+Snow was greatly troubled.</p>
+
+<p>“Does your mother know?” Emma asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>“No!” Ivy told her roughly. “And she shall not as long as
+I can help it. I have been so happy since Tom came that I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>
+thought I had come to love my mother; almost had forgiven
+her. Now I blame her more than I ever did before. I hate
+her!”</p>
+
+<p>Emma Snow was crying softly. She could not help it. Nor
+could she speak a rebuke she did not feel. “Honor thy father
+and thy mother.” Yes; but—Another commandment
+burned in her heart—“Ye fathers, provoke not your children
+to anger.” Emma Snow believed it greater, more binding,
+more sacred than that other commandment given at Sinai.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time neither spoke.</p>
+
+<p>When she—Lady Snow—did break their silence it was of
+Gaylor that she spoke, for his tranquillity that she pleaded,
+Ivy’s duty to him that she urged. The child would win its
+own welcome, or never be welcomed, the woman knew. She
+could not help there. But the man whom Ivy loved, the
+husband of whom Ivy was not ashamed—she was on sure
+ground there!</p>
+
+<p>And she did help Ivy.</p>
+
+<p>She could not cure or reassure; but she did brace the girl,
+even assuage her a little. Ivy went home less tortured than
+when she had come to her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Five months of tortured anxiety came and went, all the
+harder to bear because she would not share her anxiety with
+her husband. She set her teeth hard to spare him, as long
+as he could be spared, what he might have to endure soon
+enough. The months were made all the harder, too, by Gaylor’s
+radiant bubbling masculine delight, his deep burning
+gratitude—when he knew—when he had to know.</p>
+
+<p>He had been fond of her from the first—very, very fond of
+her, persistently good to her. Now he gave her worship, the
+clumsy, somewhat embarrassed worship that wells at such
+times in his type of Englishman—grateful, triumphant and
+alarmed. Would he hate her—in October?</p>
+
+<p>There were days when again Nature had its way—days
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>
+when inherent mother-love, joy, pride, anticipation, swept
+all else aside—and Ivy was glad; glad—just glad! For despite
+all her twists of temperament, all her soul rebellion,
+Ivy Gaylor was womanly, sweet even when most “jangled out
+of tune”; and, too, her Chinese blood told. It always tells.</p>
+
+<p>But those days were few. The grieving bitterness that followed,
+and that swamped her, was living, burning agony;
+dread of hate, dread of shame.</p>
+
+<p>Sên King-lo and Ivy Gilbert had feasted on sour, forbidden
+grapes a quarter of a century ago. To-day their daughter’s
+teeth were set on edge—on edge they gnawed and tore her
+very soul at that apex-time of womanhood when unsullied
+ecstasy, peace, entire contentment are woman’s right.</p>
+
+<p>The pity of it that that right ever can be alienable!</p>
+
+<p>But Ruby Sên was suffering too.</p>
+
+<p>In the long run, always the debtor pays—pays most when
+another seems to make the payment and does make the more
+palpable payment. No vicarious human atonement ever avails
+or releases the primary human debtor. Never.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên knew almost as soon as Ivy herself did, had suspected
+it sooner than Ivy had. And Mrs. Sên knew why Ivy
+avoided her—never told her—not even when October had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>While he had lived, Sên King-lo always had paid for them
+both—his wife’s debt and his own.</p>
+
+<p>If he blundered once—always Sên King-lo was a man.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruby Sên was paying now.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XLIX">
+    CHAPTER XLIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>When they lingered together for a few moments after
+their guests were gone—as it was their custom to do,
+and usually for longer than they did to-night—Mrs. Sên did
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>
+not mention either Mr. C’hi or his daughter to her son. She
+had no need to ask, “How did you like my new Chinese
+friends?” She knew; and she had no wish to hear Ruben
+say it.</p>
+
+<p>And she sent him from her sooner than she wished, for
+she dreaded sitting alone here in front of the gentle fire—sitting
+alone and making the sharp stock-taking of life that
+she knew was hers to take before she slept. She sent him
+away because her shrewd mother-eyes saw that beneath his
+deep new happiness Ruben was strangely tired.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben was tired. Small wonder that he was. Bravely as
+he had borne it, the grind of the long weeks since the news
+of C’hi Yamei’s cruel death had shattered him at the threshold
+of the <i>kuei</i>, had worn him relentlessly. He had steeled himself
+to carry himself gaily, for his mother’s sake. His devotion
+to her, his great pride in her and his unquenchable enjoyment
+of her companionship had made even that unselfishness
+and sacrifice not only a matter of course, but had made
+it easier than it could have been to a different son of a different
+mother. But his sorrow for Yamei and for his loss of
+her had gnawed him ceaselessly; and the living grief that one
+hides, secreting it with constant vigilance beneath smiling
+face and debonair manner, has a sharper tooth than ingratitude.</p>
+
+<p>To-night’s revulsion—the sudden flood of joy and hope—had
+whipped him soul and body. He had been a widowed
+lover, a Chinese always to be childless, when he had come
+into this drawing-room a few hours ago. He had come in
+to know himself, almost instantly, again perhaps bridegroom—husband—father.
+Great blows of intense joy are harder
+to take quietly than the blows of sudden grief. Reprieve calls
+for sterner, firmer self-control than does sentence. The descent
+from the scaffold is more difficult, more fumbling, than
+the ascent. Pride—the very relief of knowing that it all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>
+will be over in a moment now—braces the criminal to the
+gallows. The sudden new lease of life devastates him mind
+and body—frays his human nerves more sharply than can
+the sight of the dangling rope.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had been, in mere good behavior and in respect of
+her, obliged to meet C’hi Yamei—come back to him from the
+dead—conventionally, to greet her almost casually—as soon
+as he could. It had not been easy. Dinner had been almost
+as much of an ordeal as a pleasure. He was not on sure
+ground with the C’his by any means. He dared not startle
+the girl or affront her father. He had had to guard sternly
+his eyes and voice—to watch his words. And he had had to
+avoid scrupulously making the Chinese girl in any way conspicuous,
+by glance or tone of his, at his mother’s English
+dinner table—conspicuous to a roomful of quick-witted, observant
+English people. He had had to turn away from her
+now and then and make small talk with the woman on his
+left—speak social nothings in English while his mind was
+thinking riotously in Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-rooms after dinner he had had to leave her
+a good deal of the evening, to mingle with his mother’s other
+guests, to be their host. He had had to let her go with no
+more open emphasis of his regret at her going than he had
+showed the others.</p>
+
+<p>None of it had been easy. Sên was very tired.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted his mother’s dismissal without reluctance—or
+pretense of it.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Mrs. Sên told him, “I am not going up yet. Clark
+will begin to undress me, whether I want her to or not, the
+moment she sees me; I know Clark! Send her word to go
+to bed herself—or pop your head in my door as you pass it,
+and tell her. I feel like toasting my toes here alone for a bit—and
+I’m going to. I’ve some very serious things to think
+out before I go to bed. I have tangled to-morrow rather, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>
+I must make up my troubled mind which important over-lapping
+engagements I’ll keep and which I’ll break. Just
+give me my engagement book, Rue—it’s down there, behind
+those carnations. I was grouching over it when Jenkins announced
+the Palmers.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben laughed and brought the little social volume to her,
+kissed her good-night, and left her unsuspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>And if he had wondered a very little that she, who had told
+him so enthusiastically that two Chinese were coming here
+to-night, had spoken no word of them now, Ruben had been
+glad that she had not. Even to her he longed not to speak of
+C’hi Yamei to-night.</p>
+
+<p>He was not surprised to find Kow Li waiting for him in
+his room.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had his mask off! The old man’s wrinkled yellow
+face was coruscated with delight and triumph. If Sên Ruben
+had any doubt how it was to end, Kow Li had none.</p>
+
+<p>But he too saw that Ruben was tired. He had expected
+him to be.</p>
+
+<p>Kow had known that the great Ta Jen C’hi Ng Yelü was
+to be Mrs. Sên’s guest here to-night. It was that that had
+brought the old millionaire from the curio shop to stand in
+servant-attendance behind a so noble Chinese Ta Jen’s chair,
+to see that inferior English “rice” was offered to a descendant
+of Mencius with decent ceremony. But Kow Li had not
+known that the Chinese maiden whose portrait had hung at
+the London Academy, and whom they—Lord Sên Ruben and
+he—had sought so ceaselessly and so unavailingly, was a C’hi
+lady. He too had believed <i>her</i> gone on-High; for Sên Ruben
+had told him when first back from Ho-nan, “Look for the
+perfect pearl-one no more, Kow Li. I have found her, and
+I have lost her. Kwan Yin-ko has gathered her into her own
+courtyard on-High.”</p>
+
+<p>Only that once had she been mentioned between them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kow Li had known Sên Ruben’s grief; had grieved for it
+and had respected it.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was C’hi Yamei mentioned between them to-night.</p>
+
+<p>Old Kow, wise in the blunders of rumor, had understood it
+all accurately enough, if not its detail, the instant he had seen
+Sên Ruben and the maiden of the picture together in the
+dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>The details of Ruben’s mistake he might learn some day,
+or he might not; it was of complete indifference to Kow Li,
+for it was of no importance.</p>
+
+<p>The flower-of-jade fact stood: Sên Ruben had found his
+heart’s desire.</p>
+
+<p>As though his master were again a little child, old Kow Li
+undressed and tended him. Kow Li tucked Ruben in lingeringly
+and left him.</p>
+
+<p>It were difficult to say which was the happier—the young
+Sên sleepless but dreaming, or the old yellow gray-beard padding
+softly with careful quiet down the richly-carpeted stairs
+of the hushed house.</p>
+
+<p>Probably Kow Li was. Ruben doubted and feared almost
+as much as he hoped and loved. Kow Li neither doubted
+nor feared; his cup was full; he was altogether jubilant.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên was not happy.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting alone in the vast drawing-room, the red-bound engagement-book
+she had not opened, a patch of brilliant color
+on the lemon of her satin gown, for the first time since her
+early girlhood Mrs. Sên looked her years; her face a little
+drawn, her brooding eyes heavy—not with sleep—a restless
+toe tapping the steel fender, a nervous hand picking at her
+skirt—watching a dying fire she did not see.</p>
+
+<p>It was morning when Mrs. Sên rose wearily, left the little
+red book unheeded where it fell, and dragged drearily up to
+her room.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_L">
+    CHAPTER L
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In China courtship—such pre-nuptial courtship as there is—is
+long and slow; longest and slowest among the girdle-wearers.</p>
+
+<p>Maturity sets the pace in China, and maturity takes a slow
+speed. And it is the fathers who canvass, accept or reject,
+bargain and rebargain, with infinite shrewdness and great
+deliberation the innumerable preliminaries of every marriage;
+the two fathers who at long last “make-arrange” all
+the hundred conditions of betrothal and the ten score details
+of the actual marriage function. And the indispensable
+<i>mei-jêns</i>, the professional or amateur matchmakers, paid not
+for piece work, but in proportion to the difficulty of their completed
+task and of the time it has taken them, eat up endless
+months and <i>yuan</i>. The longer the <i>mei-jên</i> can delay, without
+imperiling it, the betrothal ceremony—far more binding and
+inviolable than the marriage itself—and the longer the matchmaker,
+after the long delayed betrothal, again can delay the
+marriage day, the heavier can that “smiling-faced one” make
+his bill—often a truly terrible document—that is always paid.</p>
+
+<p>It would have taken Sên Ruben a long lapse of time to
+have married C’hi Yamei in China.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben Sên realized almost at once that the less elaborate
+and less circuitous ways of Europe would be more acceptable
+to C’hi Ng Yelü from his daughter’s suitor, so thoroughly
+had C’hi accepted the philosophy, more convenient
+than patriotic, of doing in Rome as those of Rome do.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben believed that C’hi would give the straight question
+a straight and immediate answer.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben Sên could have but little doubt that C’hi would
+answer him favorably.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span></p>
+
+<p>No one else, interested enough to watch C’hi and Sên together,
+had any doubt at all.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben was sure that he might woo and wed C’hi
+Yamei quickly in London—if C’hi Ng Yelü permitted it at
+all. Sên believed too that C’hi would. There was nothing
+of vanity, no touch of over self-assurance, in the lover’s conviction
+that this was so; for almost C’hi had indicated it. If
+this shocked Chinese-minded Sên somewhat, it also cleared
+his way very pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>That his own mixed blood was not going to prove a barrier
+in C’hi’s judgment, nor an offense to the older man’s
+taste, surprised Ruben less than it logically and normally
+should. For Ruben had so thought of himself always as
+purely Chinese that he was apt to overlook what other Chinese
+scarcely could. He <i>felt</i> Chinese—even in a dinner jacket in
+his London club—and because he felt Chinese he had come to
+consider that he was Chinese—impeccably Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>But he did suspect that, other things being equal, C’hi
+would not altogether object to an English-domiciled husband
+for his daughter. The old nomad liked being in England
+and said so calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Once when Sên had said how much he regretted that he
+could not live at home in China—probably not for many
+years—C’hi had very nearly rebuked him.</p>
+
+<p>“Stay where you are and be thankful,” Ng Yelü said
+sturdily in his ready English. “This is the more comfortable
+country of the two now. There is no telling what those rascals
+are going to turn old China into before long. China
+still awaits and needs her strong man. Our old hope that
+Feng Yu-hsieng might prove he, is shattered. It was Feng
+who drove our Son of Heaven out from the Sacred Forbidden
+City and, doing it, sank to the gutter-level of the world’s
+regicides. There is no daybreak in China yet, Sên. We who
+love her most firmly can only wait and watch. I choose to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span>
+do it here in England for this troubled present. Your duty
+is with your mother, unquestionably. If I were younger,
+I might feel called upon to stay away from Shan-si less than
+I do. But I am neither politician nor war-lord—not even
+much stuff for bannerman. And I am glad to have my girl in
+England’s safety. It might have been she that was martyred
+at An Mu-ti. That experience turned my stomach. My gorge
+rises, and my blood runs icy whenever I think of it. She is
+all I have got. I loved her mother. I miss my wife every
+day of my life, Sên. The girl is very like her mother. I
+have no wish to see her—as I saw her poor little cousin; no
+wish to have her killed—or worse—in some Peking anti-legation
+broil or mob riot. It will please me best if Yamei stays
+in England. I could come and go then—oh, I have not
+turned my back on my own country—I could come and go as
+I chose—live part of my time not too far from the one thing
+I care for, warm me at her husband’s fireside sometimes.”</p>
+
+<p>That was plain speech for a Chinese father.</p>
+
+<p>Sên did not exaggerate the significance. He thought it
+indicative, but not a direct personal opening offered to himself;
+still less a point-blank invitation.</p>
+
+<p>Sên was right there.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi liked Ruben and respected his intelligence enough
+to like to talk to him freely and with some intimacy. C’hi
+Ng Yelü was not husband-hunting for his daughter. He no
+more desired Sên to marry Yamei than he was opposed to it.
+He had no doubt that his lovely, charming and lovable girl
+would marry well and suitably. He expected her to marry
+a Chinese and, of course, a gentleman. An English duke
+come a-wooing of her would have had short shrift from C’hi
+Ng Yelü. But C’hi was sore afraid for China’s immediate
+future, though not for her ultimate future which he believed
+securely founded in the bedrock of Chinese character. Even
+if China were conquered—C’hi did not anticipate it—she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>
+would absorb and in absorbing reconquer, as she always had.
+But fearing his country’s near future, he hoped his only living
+child might marry one of the many traveled Chinese of her
+own caste who more and more were making long sojourns, if
+not permanent residence, in the happier West. He liked and
+esteemed Sên Ruben immensely, and he trusted him. But
+he did regard Sên’s white blood as some sort of a bar-sinister,
+very slight, but real and indelible. He would have preferred
+a son-in-law impeccably Chinese. To the son of an English
+father and a Chinese wife he would not have given Yamei.
+But a mother’s ancestry mattered so much less! Mrs. Sên
+had become Chinese at her marriage. And Ruben had so
+much that more than balanced the disadvantage of mixed
+parentage.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü was content to leave it with the gods, which
+was merely his easy way of putting it, for C’hi had little
+faith in any gods. His cosmopolitanism had purged all the
+theologies from him. Millions of educated Chinese who
+never have left their native province, never have seen a treaty
+port, or wished to, are adamant agnostics.</p>
+
+<p>All of which Sên understood rather accurately. He believed
+that C’hi would not repulse his suit; but he felt sure
+that C’hi would not have spoken so frankly had he actively
+wished to bring about that particular betrothal.</p>
+
+<p>Would C’hi Yamei be content to have it so? That was
+what he longed to know, and feared to learn.</p>
+
+<p>She did not dislike him or she would have spared fewer
+hours to him, granted him less of her friendliness, in her
+own home and here in London society.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>camaraderie</i> she gave him frankly and gaily seemed
+to warn him that Yamei did not care—perhaps never would.</p>
+
+<p>But, of late—for it was September now—she seemed to
+have grown shyer with him. That hinted that she had read
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>
+his purpose, and that it did not displease her, not even while
+it startled her girlish serenity.</p>
+
+<p>Sên had no doubt in whose hands his fate lay. He believed
+that spiritually and socially emancipated C’hi Ng Yelü
+would not try to force or influence C’hi Yamei’s inclination.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben was not sure—but he hoped.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice when he had suddenly spoken to her in
+Chinese C’hi Yamei had flushed exquisitely; as the weeks
+passed his hope grew.</p>
+
+<p>The flood-tide of his love was high.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LI">
+    CHAPTER LI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>But neither to C’hi nor to Yamei herself did Sên speak
+of his great desire. For his mother’s sake he would not,
+until her grieved anxiety over Ivy had passed.</p>
+
+<p>They had not spoken of it, but Ruben knew that his mother
+was suffering; almost knew how much she was suffering, so
+close and fine was the chord between them.</p>
+
+<p>The Gaylors had been in Dorset since early June. Ivy had
+wished it. And what Ivy wished Gaylor wished as heartily
+now. Her motherhood had given them a second and a better
+honeymoon. And in their closeness, and the tenderer ardor
+of his new loving of her, Ivy’s bitterness had lost something
+of its edge. But she had no wish for her mother, wrote but
+scantily, and never had referred to her approaching confinement
+to her mother. Mrs. Sên’s cut was deep and sore, but
+she bore it in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Tom knew, and rejoiced. The professional officials of the
+nearing event—nurses and physician—had been engaged, but
+beyond that Lady Snow was Ivy Gaylor’s only confidante.
+Ruby Sên was shut out from all part or place in the crown-hour
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span>
+of her daughter’s life, held at arm’s length from the
+coming of her first grandchild. It was aging her.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben kept very close to his mother and heaped his love
+about her, or she must have “carried on” less bravely.</p>
+
+<p>How would Sên King-lo have dealt with it—with Ivy,
+whom he had so loved—now? Ruby Sên wondered. She
+longed for him.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Snow wondered too and was glad that King-lo
+had gone on.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow, reticent as she always was when she believed
+it wisest or kindest, had said nothing to Sir Charles. But he
+had gathered a handful of tiny straws and had understood.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben too had divined it.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben understood and saw what Ivy was doing to their
+mother, and he blamed his sister harshly. Sir Charles, too,
+understood, but he did not blame Ivy. He had learned to
+blame no one for what they could not resist; it was many
+years since he had.</p>
+
+<p>When—the day before she went to Dorset, as she had promised
+Ivy she would, early in October—Emma spoke of it to
+him directly, and for the first time, Snow made no comment
+except a slow sigh. His wife put her hand on his shoulder
+as she stood beside his chair, left her hand so a lingering moment,
+and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>For several weeks Sên saw a little less of the C’his than
+formerly. He would not leave his mother more than she
+made him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên had neither dropped nor slighted Miss C’hi. That
+was an impossibility both for good manners and personal
+fairness. Miss C’hi had met her as accidentally as she had
+met Miss C’hi. The cordial advances of their first acquaintance
+had been made by her, not by Miss C’hi. The girl had
+never in the least pushed the acquaintance—almost had met
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>
+it with reserve. She had returned Mrs. Sên’s calls—always
+formally. The C’his had returned Mrs. Sên’s invitations.
+Nothing more than that.</p>
+
+<p>They had dined with the C’his twice in the Westminster
+house that C’hi Ng Yelü had kept in his tenancy for many
+years. Each time there had been many other guests and Mr.
+Sên had not taken the young hostess in to dinner, or been
+seated near her.</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi had no chaperon but her father in Europe.
+“Shades of China!” Snow had said to C’hi with a laugh; and
+C’hi, enfranchised and citizen of the World now, had chuckled
+his assent that probably all the gods of China—and certainly
+Etiquette-god—were athirst for his disobedient blood.</p>
+
+<p>Towards Mrs. Sên, as indeed to every one, the Chinese
+girl had held herself perfectly: courteous, pleasant, a little
+cold. Ruby Sên was too well-bred, and she was too essentially
+a nice woman, to cold-shoulder now in any way the girl
+she had courted at their first meetings.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên could only wait.</p>
+
+<p>She knew what Ruben wished and that he intended to win
+it if he could; knew it as certainly as if he had told her.</p>
+
+<p>Each day she expected that Ruben would bring her his
+great news and she steeled herself to meet it, less disturbed
+at its prospect, less mother-jealous of her boy’s new love
+than she would have been, if she were not so absorbed in her
+grieving at Ivy’s estrangement from her, or been less torn
+and jangled by what she feared the child’s birth might do to
+Ivy—what Ivy’s revulsion might be when Ivy saw her baby’s
+face.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben Sên did not intend to bring any added “pull”
+of joy or sorrow to his mother until she was less troubled.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that she must come to love Yamei very dearly, if
+he gave that daughter to her. He thought that he had kept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>
+his radiant secret well—even from his mother—the secret
+that he had broadcast to every social receiver in Mayfair,
+Kensington, Hampstead and half the Counties.</p>
+
+<p>In mid-October Gaylor wired to Mrs. Sên, “My daughter is
+magnificent and she has a fine soprano. Both well.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên hid her face in her shaking hands and sobbing
+pitifully prayed as she had not prayed before.</p>
+
+<p>She was alone—with it.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben had gone on an errand for her half an hour ago.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LII">
+    CHAPTER LII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Again it was a Chinese baby.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy gave a cry and turned her face into the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>“I never shall forget that cry, Charlie. It was the bleat
+of some little stricken wild thing—the whimper of a baby
+lamb caught in a cruel, jagged trap.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very Chinese?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was Ivy over again, as I first saw her.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow sighed dully.</p>
+
+<p>“How did Gaylor take it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—he played the man. I slipped down and warned
+him. And I told him what Ivy felt about it—told him
+straight out all the story of her own rebellion and misery.
+And he—yes, he was rather splendid. I don’t think he quite
+made head or tail of what it was all about. But I pounded
+it in—and he played the man. He was perfect with Ivy.
+You can ask the nurse.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know, Charlie, I don’t believe he’d have minded
+either—not on his own account, or Baby’s either. And when
+you come to think about it, why should he? He has no doubt
+that Ivy is the most beautiful woman in England. Why
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>
+should he mind having a very lovely daughter that is—dark—and
+all the rest of it, any more than a wife like that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hope he don’t,” Snow muttered uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>“But then you see, Baby isn’t pretty yet—that’s the worst
+of it. Ivy was a hideous baby, you remember.”</p>
+
+<p>“I remember you thought so.”</p>
+
+<p>“Luckily it is a girl—and that’s the only luck about it
+that I can see.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will win its way with her—sure to,” the husband said,
+but there was less surety in his voice than in his words. “Ivy
+isn’t heartless. She will come to love her baby, won’t she,
+Emma?”</p>
+
+<p>“Never! I don’t think she can. And perhaps the poor
+little thing will grow up to blame Ivy just as Ivy always has
+blamed <i>her</i> mother—to dislike her, even. Ivy has been cruel
+and unjust to Ruby.”</p>
+
+<p>“Cruel, but not unjust, I think,” Charles Snow said sorrowfully.
+“Justice can be very cruel—often is.”</p>
+
+<p>“But why should Ivy blame Ruby for having done years
+ago what she herself has done now? How dare she!”</p>
+
+<p>“Because Ruby began it; and probably Ivy is blaming herself
+now, dear, quite as much as she blames Ruby, or ever
+has.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then, that ought to cancel it!” Lady Snow spoke
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think so, Emma. And to my mind—and I suspect
+I’m right—Ruby’s fault was far graver than poor little
+Ivy’s. In the first place Ruby’s was the initial fault, out of
+which Ivy’s came about—was almost sure to. Ruby piled up
+a debt that her children and theirs were almost sure to have
+to pay in lifelong bitterness. Another thing: Ruby did not
+have to make a mixed marriage. Ivy had to—or not marry;
+for she had no race of her own. Ever thought of that, Em?
+She is not English; she is not Chinese. Mixed race is none.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>
+We have no right—can’t have under any possible circumstance—to
+write for them our children’s signatures beneath
+our I. O. U.s. It is a damnable form of forgery. The law
+does not penalize us for it, but life always does. I see Ruby’s
+misdeed considerably blacker than I see Ivy’s—in several
+ways. The quadroon is not quite so sticky a subject as the
+half-caste is; and has an appreciable chance of having a less
+sticky life—and less thorny. Into whichever of the two
+races Ivy married, her children would come into the world
+with one blood predominant—three-fourths English or three-fourths
+Chinese. If Ivy thought about it at all—wiser and
+older people than Ivy do most of their thinking afterwards—probably
+she banked on that English three-fourths; believed,
+or made herself think that she did, that when the babies came
+along they’d be English babies right enough. Now, poor
+girl, she knows—and Tom will, if he doesn’t grasp it yet.
+King-lo and Ruby took a law of nature into their own small
+hands. In doing it they took a bad risk for themselves; the
+debt fell due, and King-lo paid it. But they took a terribly
+greater risk for their descendants—condemned their own children
+to all the grave inconvenience, to put it no stronger than
+that, of mixed marriages, or of loneliness and sterility.”</p>
+
+<p>“How much of this did you say to Ivy?”</p>
+
+<p>“None of it,” Snow replied as he bent from his chair and
+laid a fresh log on the fire, “because I knew it was no use.
+In a way I broke faith with King-lo in not thrashing it all
+out with Ivy. But I knew that it would do no good at all and
+felt that I was keeping the better faith with him by not
+distressing her to no avail. But I said much of it to Gaylor;
+and a lot of good it did!”</p>
+
+<p>Presently Snow went on with the troubled theme.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s Ruben’s turn now, and it is up to me to say to
+him what I did not say to Ivy. I shall put it all quite specifically
+to Ruben and give him his father’s message in so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>
+many words. It amounted to a direct message, what King-lo
+said to me a few days before he died.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will it do any good—with Ruben?” the wife asked gently.</p>
+
+<p>“God knows! Yes; I think it may. Ruben will listen to
+me—as far as letting me say out my say and King-lo’s. And
+I’ll not put it off. I’ll have my talk with Ruben before it
+is too late. I believe I could have prevented their marriage—King-lo’s
+and Ruby’s—if I had tackled it in time, not been
+pig-headed and blind when you warned me what was coming
+years ago in Washington. I’ll not repeat my mistake of more
+than twenty-five years ago. I shall speak to Ruben at once,
+before he has fallen in love with any one—or thinks he has,
+which is quite as dangerous.”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite,” Lady Snow agreed with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Tea came in. Emma Snow was glad of that. Charlie liked
+his cup of tea, and he would sit down to drink it. She was
+so sorry for him, walking up and down in patent discomfort.
+Poor Charlie, who did not know that Ruben <i>had</i> fallen in
+love—very much in love too! Should she tell him? No—he
+was fretted enough for one day. Probably she’d better
+warn him a little later—or perhaps not, but let him go to his
+talk with Ruben with a free mind.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Snow shook her head a little anxiously at the sugar
+basin, and frowned too at the unoffending cream jug as she
+bent over them, and filled her man’s cup.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LIII">
+    CHAPTER LIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Gaylors had come back to London and Ivy had left
+her child in their little place in the country.</p>
+
+<p>Easter was late this year. The Park was gay with crocuses
+and snowdrops, and Kensington Gardens were gayer with
+snowdrops, crocuses and sturdy English babies. The Houses
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>
+were sitting; society was in full swing and exuberant fettle;
+Mrs. Gaylor scintillating like some joyous, brilliant star in
+the social orbit. And her husband went with her everywhere.
+A great many women envied Ivy Gaylor, and not a few
+owned it.</p>
+
+<p>Only Emma Snow knew the cold, poisoned under-current
+of Ivy Gaylor’s real life—though Mrs. Sên suspected what
+she did not dare to probe.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy had met her mother, as it seemed, quite naturally, and
+without either inviting or evading the few questions that had
+seemed to Mrs. Sên unavoidable—less awkward, though awkward
+enough, to ask than to omit to ask.</p>
+
+<p>Oh—yes—the baby was quite well. Yes, thanks, the nurse
+was excellent, the under-nurse was right enough. Vaccinated—yes,
+Ivy thought so. No—they hadn’t named her yet,
+but some one would have to soon; there’d be a scandal in the
+county and a riot in the Gaylor family if it wasn’t christened
+soon.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy made no apology for having ignored her mother during
+the months when a young mother usually clings to her own
+mother very closely. But she thanked Ruby quite prettily
+for the silver Mrs. Sên had sent. No—she didn’t know when
+they’d be going back to Dorset—she and Tom. She was
+enjoying herself hugely in town—more than she ever had
+before. No doubt Tom would rather be in the country,
+sneaking after rabbits and gloating over his cabbages and
+curly kale; but Tom was a good boy and did as he was told.
+She had no idea when they’d be back in Dorset—but if Mrs.
+Sên cared to run down any time, Griggs and Mrs. Clegg
+would make her very comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Ruby Sên took it quietly; that she did as part of her
+penance.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that she had lost her daughter and she hid her
+hurt. Nor did she blame Ivy for it. Life had taught Ruby
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span>
+Sên human justice, and she knew that Sên King-lo might
+have lost his wife if he had not been so wonderful to her
+that time they’d been in Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên motored alone to Dorset and gathered Ivy’s unwelcomed
+baby into her own arms and heart, and held it very
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên stayed with her tiny grandchild several weeks
+until she felt that her being there so long, while Ivy was in
+London, might be causing caustic comment, and she owed it
+to Ivy to stay no longer.</p>
+
+<p>One thing comforted Ruby Sên. She did not believe that
+Ivy did not love her little baby. It was not so that Mrs.
+Sên read her child’s conduct. She believed that if there had
+been no mother-love in Ivy’s heart, Ivy would not so stress
+and flaunt callous indifference. She knew that Ivy was suffering
+intensely; and she believed that it was the suffering
+of love—suffering more for child than for self. And Ruby
+Sên had the courage to hope that the little baby, in its own
+way and God’s time, would heal Ivy’s torn heart, as Sên
+King-lo’s manliness had healed her of her cruel folly years
+ago when she had caviled at his country and revolted from
+his kindred in Ho-nan, who had welcomed her, and whom he
+had loved. It was not for Sên King-lo’s wife to censure their
+daughter for a fault that had been her own; and King-lo’s
+widow—who was still his wife—was loyal to his manliness,
+not in payment, not chiefly in gratitude, but in growth, and
+in the womanliness that had been his marriage gift to her; a
+marriage gift increased and enriched in all their days together.</p>
+
+<p>Her estimate of Ivy was less shrewd than Emma Snow’s—but
+she was Ivy’s mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên was sorrowful as her car swept back to London,
+and she was anxious; but she did not despond.</p>
+
+<p>She counted on Ruben, and, though she knew that it would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>
+gall her a little just at first, she was looking forward to the
+time when he would give her a daughter who would love
+her—when his unfortunate <i>penchant</i> for Miss C’hi had
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>It was after tea-time when Mrs. Sên reached home. She
+was a little tired and she wanted tea rather badly.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben was not there to meet her. That chilled her a little,
+and quite unreasonably for she had not warned him or the
+servants of her coming, partly because she had not determined
+until actually on her way whether she would go to Ashacres
+for a few hours, or directly to London, partly because she
+had wished to leave him quite unfettered. She thought that
+Ruben had sacrificed his time to her too much of late. But
+she longed for him as she went into the house, and because
+she did not find him, the familiar rooms looked almost unhomelike.
+In spite of her usual sturdy common sense, his
+absence suddenly seemed an ill omen.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sên had been out all day, Jenkins said; had come in
+to change soon after lunch and had gone again in less than
+half an hour. No, his master had left no message, and had
+not said that he would be dining at home.</p>
+
+<p>There was no reason why Ruben should have left any message,
+since he had not been expecting her, but it hurt her
+that he had not.</p>
+
+<p>The woman’s nerves were jangled. Ivy, the coming of the
+baby, and its problem had jangled them, old complications
+belching up after long years of comparative immunity, without
+King-lo to disentangle or destroy them, without Ruben
+to brace her, make her forget for an hour, without Ruben
+to pour her tea for her. Ruben always poured when they
+were alone.</p>
+
+<p>The silver teapot dragged heavy in her hand, the cup and
+saucer looked solitary; she felt solitary—and neglected.</p>
+
+<p>Probably Ruben would be dining out too! He’d come home
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span>
+to change though and would offer to break his dinner engagement.
+But she’d not allow him to do that.</p>
+
+<p>Tea alone—dinner alone, if she dined. Oh, well—it was
+her own fault.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Emma or Charlie would look in presently, if
+only to learn if she were back. She hoped neither of them
+did.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they’d phone.</p>
+
+<p>It didn’t matter either way.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LIV">
+    CHAPTER LIV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei wore her Chinese robes to-day. Out of her
+own sleeping room she never did that in London—rarely
+even there, so entirely had her father imbued her with his
+own “when in Rome.” But to-day was an anniversary and
+she had tired her hair as she wore it on gala days at home in
+Shan-si, and had taken from the copper studded red leather
+box, where she kept her most intimate treasures, a suit of
+her pretty Chinese garments—trousers, long overhanging
+tunic, little padded shoes—and had slipped into them just
+because she wished to; had put them on for a few moments
+and then had felt that she could not take them off—that she
+could not wear English clothes to-day. So the soft pongee
+biscuit-colored tunic with its edge of intricate embroidery, and
+its high spruce collar, and the shimmering blue and green
+crêpe trousers still appareled her when she went down to
+share her father’s very English breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>She had half expected C’hi Ng Yelü to chide her gently,
+probably with a laugh—perhaps even to bid her change.</p>
+
+<p>But C’hi did not. She reminded him too greatly of another
+Chinese girl, who before Yamei’s birth had come to
+him across China to be the one perfect flower of all his fragrant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span>
+courtyard, reminded him too poignantly of his girl-wife
+who had trembled so exquisitely when his arms had folded
+about her, lifted her out from her bride-chair, and borne her
+across his threshold. All her bride-belongings were carried
+behind her by her father’s coolies and among them was that
+same box of crimson leather that stood now at the foot of
+Yamei’s bed here in England as it had stood for years at the
+foot of her mother’s sleep-couch, smelling then as now, when
+you opened it, of carnations and heliotrope and violets.</p>
+
+<p>The footman threw the butler a glance and the impeccable
+butler did not rebuke him by so much as the glower of an
+eyelash. C’hi Ng Yelü made no comment on tunic, stick-pins
+or just-showing trousers; and Miss C’hi stayed as she
+was all day, even to the tiny gold ear-rings that almost all
+unemancipated Chinese women wear, the tight-packed blossoms
+above her ears and the delicate straight-cut fringe of
+hair on her forehead that proclaimed her an unmarried girl—the
+very short downy fringe that would disappear at marriage,
+unless it grew deeper and heavier because her nuptial
+portion was that of a “number-two.” But no C’hi girl had
+been given so in marriage for three thousand years; to be born
+a C’hi girl was to be born the first wife of some man who was
+sash-wearer and lord-one.</p>
+
+<p>Two years ago to-day the fighting fish of Sên Yolu had
+beaten the fighting fish of Sên Pling in the amber pool among
+the bamboos and soap-trees. Did Sên Ruben remember?</p>
+
+<p>That was what C’hi Yamei kept asking herself all day
+long. She had asked it as she woke, asked it as she dug
+her spoon into her grapefruit, wishing the grapefruit a
+pomolo; asked it as she carried her pretty loose-hanging
+draperies and her trembling stick-pins to the pleasant upper
+room which was peculiarly C’hi Yelü’s and hers, the sitting
+room to which English visitors rarely were admitted—not
+even Miss C’hi’s English girl friends. For C’hi Yamei had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>
+made many girl friends in London, liked several of them
+very much indeed and felt real affection for one or two.</p>
+
+<p>The long room had windows at each end that looked out
+on to the quiet leafy square that fronted the house and down
+on the garden where a sun-dial on the velvet grass told the
+hour as often as the English sun would let it. There were
+roses beyond the dial, and wistaria and clematis disputed the
+red brick garden walls with jasmine and juniper. Yamei’s
+doggies were chasing and tumbling on the lawn, Chinese dogs
+that were Chinese born and bred.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei stood a long time at the window watching them
+and laughing at them; asking herself if, by any chance, Sên
+Ruben would remember the anniversary of a Ho-nan fish
+fight. Why should he? Well—just possibly because he had
+so disapproved of it, as she had.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the other windows Yamei would not look. Why
+should she watch the street below their front door? She was
+not interested in its traffic. She was expecting no one. Who
+would call at this hour? Probably she’d not trouble to see
+any one that did call later. She would not waste this Chinese
+dress of hers on a supercilious crowd of chattering visitors
+down in the drawing-room, who would not appreciate its
+lovely symbolic embroideries, or dream how many Chinese
+needles had plied in its patient making. And she had a
+fancy to stay all day gowned as she was now. Perhaps Sên
+No Fee was thinking of her now—naughty No Fee who had
+watched the horrid fish fight, and watching had sickened in
+the soap-tree’s hollow. No Fee would not know that this was
+the anniversary of the fish fight. No’s little feather mind
+was not notched by dates—or much else—unless her approaching
+marriage really had notched it deep. But that madly
+gay one, for all she was as prankish as any pair of sleeve-dogs,
+had a warm and constant heart. No Fee had not forgotten
+her, C’hi Yamei was sure. It was a pity-thing that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>
+Sên No Fee could not write or read. Many of the Sên ladies
+could do both, but No Fee had scorned to learn and Sên Kai
+Lun had so spoiled her! No Fee would have written to her
+sometimes, for all she was a lazy minx-one, and she in turn
+would have written back to No and told her rare things of
+London. No Fee would have been glad to hear that they had
+met Sên Ruben, and his mother, seen the house they lived
+in, spoken with them. There would have been no need to
+tell No Fee how often she’d made speech with Sên Ruben.
+But something of him No would like to hear for No Fee had
+had much affection for her cousin-one Sên Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>One would have been wise to write with caution to Sên
+No Fee; No had a babbling tongue. And much that one did
+and permitted here in London would not be understood in
+Ho-nan; would seem more and other than it was.</p>
+
+<p>The long room was sparsely furnished; the sparse furniture
+was rich.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü always called it, when speaking to his
+daughter, <i>Shu Chai</i>—which Englished is “Reverence Books
+room”; to the servants—the C’his had only English servants
+in London—he always spoke of it as the library. Library
+was an absurd misnomer; the long room housed scarce more
+than a score of books. C’hi Ng Yelü was charming, intelligent,
+a great reader of one or two daily papers, but he was
+neither scholar nor bookworm.</p>
+
+<p>But the Chinese nomad who had lived in England so much,
+and was, unlike most of his countrymen, so instinctively a
+citizen of the world that he had come to find life more comfortable
+and much more amusing in London than in China,
+still was Chinese at heart. His memories of China were
+good; his memories of Shan-si were dear and tender. He
+called this almost bookless room of his London house <i>Shu
+Chai</i> in memory of a room in hill-cupped, river-washed
+Shan-si, in which C’hi Ng Yelü had learned to read and to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>
+brush his characters, his infant hand so small that it did not
+grasp easily or too surely the mahogany stem of his writing
+brush; the room in which C’his more scholarly than he had
+stored and treasured their priceless books and scrolls for many
+leisured centuries.</p>
+
+<p>This room of theirs, that few others ever entered, had many
+more traces of Yamei his daughter than it had of C’hi Ng
+Yelü. The girl’s work-basket stood on the top of the Brinsmead,
+high up there to keep it out of the reach of destructive
+canine paws and jaws. Yamei’s embroidery frame stood in
+a corner. Her lute, which she sometimes played, was on its
+low table, the girl’s low stool beside it. The open grand
+piano which she very rarely touched was hers too, and more
+distinctively feminine belongings than the little ribbon-decked
+work-basket littered the piano’s long rosewood top.</p>
+
+<p>Yamei sat down beside her embroidery frame and drew a
+needle out of an apple-blossom, and began “painting” with
+it rather listlessly. Miss C’hi was more intent on a fish fight
+in Ho-nan than she was on needlework.</p>
+
+<p>Had Sên Ruben by any odd chance remembered?</p>
+
+<p>Of course not!</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps he had, after all; for the box a servant brought
+to her as she sat tinting a blossom’s petal was full of pale
+yellow roses—and she had plucked a yellow rose and carried
+it in her hand to the house with her when they had gone
+together from the bamboo walk, across the garden to the <i>kuei</i>
+door—she and Sên Ruben—that first day of all.</p>
+
+<p>And the girl fell a-dreaming, idle at her work frame, a
+dimpled face bent wistful-eyed over an open florist’s box of
+pale yellow roses. She would not have told No Fee a word
+of those yellow roses if she had been writing. Often Mr.
+Sên had sent flowers to Miss C’hi before this—very often.
+There was nothing in it, of course. Every man did it to
+every girl in London. But No Fee could not have understood
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>
+it at all. Men did not do it in Ho-nan. Probably it happened
+often enough in Hong Kong and those places now—all
+sorts of barriers were down in the treaty ports—but it did
+not happen in Sênland, nor in C’hiland either. C’hi Yamei
+laughed softly, cuddling a big box of roses on her knee, drawing
+a yellow rose across her face—just because the satin
+petals were fragrant and pleasant to feel. She laughed softly,
+trying to think what the nuns at An Mu-ti would say if they
+heard of “such goings on.”</p>
+
+<p>But roses are thirsty things and yellow roses must not be
+neglected—not by a Chinese girl who should treat all yellow
+roses with great reverence, because in the home of the wild
+white rose, the gardeners who train them over trellises of
+lacquer ko’tow to the yellow roses that grow in the imperial
+gardens.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei swept all her belongings off the piano, and
+put her roses there in a great crystal bowl of cool water. She
+did it herself. And one rose she kept back from its fragrant
+fellows; C’hi Yamei drew its long stem through a buttonhole
+of her tunic. It was such a rose that she had drawn
+through such a tunic’s buttonhole as she passed into the <i>kuei</i>
+two years ago in Ho-nan.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LV">
+    CHAPTER LV
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The heart of a man stood still; Sên’s face flooded with
+color.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was bending over his roses. She did not know he
+was there and her face was eloquent; C’hi Yamei whom he
+saw lovelier because she wore her Chinese garments.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên Ruben knew that the time had come for him to
+speak—not to her, though he believed even that C’hi Ng
+Yelü, the adopter of Western ways, might condone, but to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>
+C’hi Ng Yelü himself, sending Kow Li as preliminary suitor
+and go-between.</p>
+
+<p>He would approach the Chinese maiden as a Chinese should.
+No rougher, Western wooing was possible between his love
+and hers. It was hard to keep back the words that surged
+from his heart to his lips, but he would do even that to show
+his reverence for C’hi Yamei, the jade of his soul. Kow
+should approach C’hi Ng Yelü, and should come as the
+matchmaker sent by Sên Ruby. That meant more delay, for
+his mother might stay even a week longer with the new-come
+grandchild in the nurseries that Ivy its mother had forsaken.</p>
+
+<p>A week of seven eternities! But no less than the most
+would he offer to C’hi Yamei the yellow jasmine of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben saw the rose on her breast. It gave him a message.
+His nails found the flesh of his palms as he clenched
+his hungry hands, and his breath tangled in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted her so!</p>
+
+<p>The girl bent her head still lower over his roses. The
+smile that curved her lips grew sweeter, more tender, and
+Ruben knew that if that dear face touched those yellow roses
+he should stride across the long room and snatch his happiness
+to him—before it was given.</p>
+
+<p>Lest that temptation came—not to be mastered by human
+man who loved as he did—Sên Ruben spoke quickly. He
+dared not stand watching longer her lips almost caressing the
+roses he had sent her; he could not turn and go.</p>
+
+<p>“Good afternoon, Miss C’hi.” He steadied his voice almost
+to coldness, and he prayed that he had steadied his eyes.
+“Good afternoon. Please don’t turn me out; Mr. C’hi sent
+me up here to wait for him. He promised that you would
+put up with me until he came back. He was leaving the
+house as I came up the steps, but he will be home again in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span>
+an hour. I have strict orders to wait for him—here with
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>He rarely spoke to C’hi Yamei in English when they were
+alone but he had not dared speak in Chinese now.</p>
+
+<p>The girl started at the sound of his voice—Ruben saw
+that; but what of it? She probably would have started if
+Billings, the aldermanic butler, had accosted her so unexpectedly.
+Had he been less busy with gripping himself, he also
+might have seen that C’hi Yamei had paled a little at the
+sound of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>“May I come in?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi smiled, turned away from the flower-decked
+Brinsmead, and went to a seat near the far windows—the
+window that looked down on the garden.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know that Father was going out,” she began.
+“Oh—yes, though, I did—I forgot—he said something about
+it at lunch. Please sit down.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thanks. I wonder if Pling and Yolu are inciting poor
+little Burmese fish to murder and suicide to-day.” He
+glanced at his wrist. “It is just on the Hour of the Tiger
+at home. I hope my cousins are taking their pleasure less
+ruthlessly than they did two years ago to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope so,” Miss C’hi agreed.</p>
+
+<p>So—he did remember.</p>
+
+<p>She turned towards the window, for she felt that her face
+was flushing.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope that my father had an umbrella,” the girl said
+lamely. “See, it is raining.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên rose and went to the window. “So it is. I did not
+notice that it threatened to as I came.”</p>
+
+<p>That was quite true. Ruben Sên had paid no attention at
+all to the weather as he walked from Kensington to Westminster.
+And he had not noticed whether Mr. C’hi had gone
+out armed with an umbrella or coatless and hatless.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span></p>
+
+<p>A fine thick drizzle was falling. Ruben liked it; it seemed
+like a veil shutting them in here gently—almost a symbol.</p>
+
+<p>“Now you can’t turn me out!” he laughed softly as he
+turned and faced Miss C’hi. “It was not raining when I
+came in and I have no umbrella.”</p>
+
+<p>“How careless!” the girl mocked him. “No sensible person
+ever goes out in England without an umbrella; it is riding
+a tiger. But I can lend you an umbrella, Mr. Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will you? One of your own?” His voice said, “I’ll not
+return it to you ever; I’ll keep it as long as I live, Yamei.”</p>
+
+<p>But he sat down again, as he spoke, facing her. Apparently
+he was not braving the outside drizzle at once.</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi played with her girdle.</p>
+
+<p>For a time neither spoke.</p>
+
+<p>The man had no wish to speak—no wish to break their
+companionable, intimate silence. It was intimate.</p>
+
+<p>The girl could think of nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>The gathering rain tinkled the window panes, tapped on
+the glass like fairy fingers.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” Ruben said at last in a queer low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Miss C’hi looked a puzzled interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>He moved a hand in salutation towards her embroidery-bordered
+sleeve. “You are all Chinese to-day, C’hi Yamei, a
+Chinese flower wrapped in Chinese silk,” Sên Ruben murmured
+in Chinese, “all of a Chinese maiden’s lovely Chinese
+strewments”—his eyes swept from the little padded shoes to
+the pretty dangling stick-pins—“all as it should be, Lady
+C’hi Yamei, all but the face-paint.”</p>
+
+<p>“I couldn’t find my face-paint box,” the girl explained; she
+would have spoken more truly if she had said that she had
+no face-paint box here in England. But she was making
+words to shut off a silence she feared, catching up idle words
+carelessly to keep their talking safe.</p>
+
+<p>She knew now what was coming, and she too wished her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span>
+lover whom she loved to say it to C’hi Ng Yelü. She wished
+it so, not because she cared a Japanese <i>yen</i>—or one small
+cowrie shell—for the conventions of East or of West, but
+because it would be easier to hear it first from the father
+voice that had spoken all the intimate, tender words she ever
+had heard. Moreover, though she herself cared not a jot now
+for East or West, she was keenly sure that Sên Ruben cared
+everything for China. C’hi Yamei was not minded that he
+should realize, as she herself did, how little she now preferred
+Chinese ways and customs—if she preferred them at all—to
+those of England; for she knew that he would find it a flaw.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover C’hi Yamei came of a race of women who for
+thousands of years had only been wooed so before their
+wedding-day—wooed by the go-between’s overtures and a
+father’s acceptance of them. Probably this influenced her
+rather deeply, and made her share far more than she suspected
+Sên’s conviction that his wooing of her in any but
+the old accredited Chinese way would be a slighting of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was deeply stirred and knew that she was. Almost
+she wished that Sên would go. She felt shy of him—they
+alone here in “Reverence Books” to which the servants would
+usher no chance caller, and she in her Chinese garments,
+harem clothes that seemed to demand harem seclusion for a
+Chinese maid who wore them. Décolleté at his mother’s
+dinner-table, dancing a dozen times with his arm lightly
+about her, laughing and chatting with him at dozens of functions—a
+little less freely, though, than nice English girls
+would have done—Miss C’hi never had felt at all shy with
+Mr. Sên. But she grew oddly and naturally shy with Sên
+Ruben now, since they were Chinese and she in Chinese
+dress. Worst of all she feared that at but a word of more
+direct love-making she should cry. Her tears were near. To
+avoid what she half thought might break from him, she said
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>
+the first frivolous and very English thing she could think of,
+rising and going towards the other window as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben went with her of course.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had jumped up quickly. Her stick-pins tinkled
+as she went, and a tiny pack of apricot-colored flowers fastened
+not securely enough over an apricot-colored ear loosened and
+shifted. Miss C’hi halted and lifted a tiny jeweled hand to
+push the truant bunch of buds back to where a girl’s hair-flowers
+should be. She lifted both hands, in case the other
+little flower-bunch had slipped too, and accidentally her impatient
+tiny fingers pushed back the little straight fringe of
+down that lay like silken dust on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>“Now you are a wife, Yamei!”</p>
+
+<p>It broke from Sên Ruben involuntarily as he devoured with
+leaping eyes the strip of naked brow they should not have
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yamei’s face had found its paint!</p>
+
+<p>Her tunic rose and fell with the flesh that fluttered beneath
+it. In spite of herself the girl’s eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>But she laughed softly, a sound as silver and elfin as the
+tinkle-tinkle of the jeweled stick-pins in her hair—a soft outburst
+of mirth, that is a giggle, but should be described by
+a prettier word. But it cannot.</p>
+
+<p>The lover saw the rush of color painting her face; he saw
+the dimples in the uplifted apricot-tinted arms from which
+the loose sleeves had fallen; he saw the dew in Yamei’s black
+velvet eyes, saw her lashes tremble, and the ring-jewels
+tremble from the trembling of her fingers; he saw the girlish
+mouth quiver.</p>
+
+<p>And Sên turned and fled.</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare stay.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Sên knew that the time had indeed come for him to speak
+to C’hi Ng Yelü.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LVI">
+    CHAPTER LVI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>If he had not found his mother at home when he went in,
+Sên would have gone to her the next morning after learning
+by ’phone whether he’d find her at Ivy’s in Dorset or at
+Ashacres.</p>
+
+<p>It brooked no delay now and Ruben’s heart wished none.</p>
+
+<p>He would speak with his mother at once, and she would
+send for Kow Li, and send Kow her <i>mei jên</i> to C’hi Ng
+Yelü.</p>
+
+<p>Sên’s heart reeled with music—the old, old music of which
+love makes every great lover a <i>maestro</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên had come, a servant told Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow he would speak to her, but not to-night, Sên
+determined, when he saw her sitting alone at the tea-table.
+He saw instantly that she was tired and lonely. Then saw
+the welcome and joy that leapt in her face and eyes as she
+held out her hands.</p>
+
+<p>To-day and to-night were his mother’s, hers only.</p>
+
+<p>He had no fear that she would seek to thwart or dissuade
+him. He hoped that she would welcome his news and the
+request he would make. But not to-night!</p>
+
+<p>His cup had brimmed over to-day. He would fill and
+sweeten hers to-night.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên was a great lover as Sên King-lo his father had
+been. They were great lovers because their souls were great
+and because their loves were few.</p>
+
+<p>Sên King-lo had loved two women: his mother, who had
+died while he was a babe, but whom all his life he had loved
+well—though he could not remember her—and the English
+girl who now was his widow Ruby Sên.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben loved three women and never was to love another;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>
+he loved his mother. Ivy, his sister, and C’hi Yamei,
+the daughter of C’hi Ng Yelü.</p>
+
+<p>Strain and age faded out of Mrs. Sên’s face. Ivy would
+come to love the little baby; all would be well with Ivy again.
+That Ivy ever would come to forgive and wholly love her,
+Mrs. Sên scarcely hoped now—could not hope, after the bitter
+experience of the chasm between them that Ivy’s expectant
+motherhood had made. But let that go! Ivy’s own happiness
+was all the mother asked. In Ivy’s she would find her own,
+and in Ruben. The mother of such a son need not keep
+sorrow long.</p>
+
+<p>Sên rang for fresh tea and cut her cake; he waited on her,
+petted her, amused her.</p>
+
+<p>The woman’s face cleared; presently it flushed like a delicate
+sun-warmed rose. Her eyes were sparkling when Ruben
+left her at the door of her dressing-room, and she was laughing
+when she rang for her maid.</p>
+
+<p>They dined alone. The meal was gay.</p>
+
+<p>They sat alone together in her own sitting-room, and all
+their gay loving talk was of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It was the mother who exclaimed how scandal-late it was—“almost
+the Hour of the Ox, Sên Ruben! You think I
+can’t tell the time in Chinese, do you? I can tell a lot of
+things in Chinese, Ruben!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben caught his mother in his arms and held her close
+and long before he kissed her good night; an English kiss
+he always had given her.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered a little in her room after his mother had gone,
+touching things that were hers, standing a long time in front
+of his father’s picture, regarding it gravely; and his heart
+spoke to the heart of Sên King-lo.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s love of his father—whom he could not remember—always
+had been living and intimate, as Sên King-lo’s love
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span>
+had been of the mother he could not remember. Such abiding
+love is not unusual—in China.</p>
+
+<p>In his own room Ruben stood a long, long time looking
+across London toward Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>The house was very still.</p>
+
+<p>All London seemed hushed in sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Did C’hi Yamei sleep?</p>
+
+<p>How good the gods were!</p>
+
+<p>How rich he was!</p>
+
+<p>What perfect happiness!</p>
+
+<p>His mother and Yamei—both his.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow—it <i>was</i> to-morrow—he would sit by his mother
+and tell her his story, sharing its sweetness and joy with her.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruby whom his father had loved—and Sên C’hi Yamei
+his bride, whom he adored!</p>
+
+<p>The gods were on-High; all was well in the world of Sên
+Ruben!</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben’s eyes were misty as he turned away from his
+open window.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a Chinese room. It might have been any rich
+young Englishman’s room, though few such were as simply
+furnished. But an ivory Kwan stood near his bed, a far more
+beautiful portraiture of the “Hearer-of-cries,” than the pictured
+Kwan that hung beside his mother’s bed as it had hung
+for years beside Sên King-lo’s narrow bed.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben had a few Chinese trifles tucked away in a
+drawer.</p>
+
+<p>He found a bundle of tapers—a red prayer too—and lit
+incense and prayer paper before his ivory Kwan Yin-ko.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben slept well and late. And so did Mrs. Sên.</p>
+
+<p>But C’hi Yamei was wakeful and restless. C’hi Yamei
+turned again and again on her pillows until a new day crimsoned
+over gray London. But Yamei was not unhappy.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LVII">
+    CHAPTER LVII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>After as glorious a sunrise as England often sees, the
+day again turned to rain; not the soft veil of misty
+drizzle of yesterday, but a hard thudding downpour that persisted
+and grew to a sullen vicious storm of leaden rain.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese love all weathers, seeing beauty, finding blessing
+in each. To them the long twisted icicles hanging off
+the eaves of a hut are as exquisite as the red flower-heavy
+passion vine clambering a lacquer trellis; the lowering clouds
+of black winter that blot the sky from earth as beautiful as
+the wild flowers that clot the sweet-scented meadow-grass of
+early summer. Ruben caught neither chill nor omen in the
+black tumbling storm that almost blanketed the breakfast-room
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên never had been depressed by any weather; August
+heat never had wilted her, girl or woman; the worst London
+fog never had disgruntled Ruby Sên.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben snapped on the electric lights with a laugh, and his
+mother poured their coffee with a smiling tranquil face.</p>
+
+<p>And when they had breakfasted, and went across the hall
+arm-in-arm, the morning-room was bright with flowers under
+the silk-softened electric lights that shone, not too coldly or
+garishly, on pictures and cushions, bits of marble, ivories and
+bronze, cabinets and bric-a-brac. The outer rage and dark
+but made the luxurious little room a nest of comfort and
+friendliness; a place of plenty and taste that was fit confessional
+where the priest was love and the guiltless penitent
+about to show his heart to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên put his mother into her favorite chair, brought
+her another cushion which she did not need but liked to have
+because he had crossed the room to get it for her. Then he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span>
+drew a stool close and, holding the arm of her chair with his
+hand, told her his story.</p>
+
+<p>He told it tenderly and proudly—tender to her his mother,
+tender of C’hi Yamei, his love. His eyes never left his
+mother’s face—glad blue eyes that were fearless and trusting.
+His low voice did not falter once.</p>
+
+<p>The telling was not brief. Love lingered over the old, old
+story—the hours they had spent together in Ho-nan, he and
+C’hi Yamei, good times, and wise, serious times too, that they
+had shared in London; words she had spoken, things he had
+said, places they both had liked, people they had laughed at.
+He had not known for a long time if he could win so much
+as her liking, and then, presently, he had dared to hope. He
+had known at once how it was with him. He had known that
+before he had met Miss C’hi in Ho-nan.</p>
+
+<p>The mother all but cried out when he told her of his falling
+in love at Burlington House with a picture, and had vowed
+himself to it—had sworn to search the world for the girl in
+that picture.</p>
+
+<p>That fatal Academy! Ruby Sên could hear Ivy’s outbreak
+after <i>she</i> had seen that Academy portrait—an outbreak of
+swollen, poisoned misery a mother could not forget. She had
+heard it anew as she held Ivy’s unloved baby, her own widowed
+heart almost bursting with love of them both—daughter and
+grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>She had not heard before that Rue had seen the portrait
+of “A Chinese Lady.” He had mentioned it to no one but
+Kow Li. And he had loved it! Betrothed himself to it!</p>
+
+<p>That seemed as fantastic to the English-born woman as a
+revolting “dead marriage,” an absurd “vase marriage,” or
+any other of the nuptial abnormalities that she knew did take
+place now and then in China. But she knew that if Sên
+King-lo had fallen in love with a picture and had vowed himself
+to it, he would have held to the oath while he lived.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span></p>
+
+<p>How like Lo their Ruben looked sometimes! He did now;
+and how like his father’s, his voice!</p>
+
+<p>Not even Sir Charles Snow, who had searched for it, perhaps
+hundreds of times, ever had seen a trace of King-lo’s
+face in Saxon Ruben’s or heard a note of King-lo’s voice in
+the boy’s; but now and then Ruby Sên did.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Ruben, their son, very like her husband to-day.
+The beautiful molding of the mouths had a sameness; a sudden
+lift of deep-fringed blue eyes and of black, a lilt of voice
+that rang softly and caressed; and Rue used his hands—very
+English hands, unlike Sên King-lo’s—in moments of quiet
+emotion just as Lo had. Ruby Sên often saw her husband
+in their son; and what she saw was there—more, perhaps, an
+inner something that, piercing through the flesh, marked it
+with lines and hints of contour so fine that only the eyes of
+the wife and mother who loved them both could see them.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben went on with his joyous telling—a child in his eager
+outpouring to his mother, a man in his proclaiming of his
+love and craving and claiming of C’hi Yamei as mate and
+wife. Ruben went on turning a knife in the heart of his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>It was not yet she would have him marry. Ruben was so
+young!</p>
+
+<p>It was not a Chinese wife she would have him choose, not
+a Chinese daughter she could learn or school herself to love—to
+share him with.</p>
+
+<p>And he looked so English—more English than she herself—and
+had lived so naturally a normal English life, in English
+ways!</p>
+
+<p>Months ago she had felt this coming, and had schooled
+herself to meet and accept it. But it had receded from her
+fear of late, partly because she had been so locked with Ivy’s
+estrangement and with Ivy’s anxiety. And the strain and
+grind of the last few months had weakened her and her fund
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span>
+of resolution. Mrs. Sên heard Ruben to the end, all her being
+in revolt; and then she failed him.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Ruben—<i>must</i> you?” she cried in open bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben’s face changed—as a confiding child’s that the
+mother he loved and trusted had struck when it had lifted to
+her for a caress.</p>
+
+<p>“Must you announce it just yet, dear?” the mother added
+quickly, and very tenderly. “Ivy is absolutely lost in misery
+just now. Baby will pull her out of it, I am sure. It is the
+dearest baby, Rue! It’s a perfect duck! Ivy <i>cannot</i> resist
+it. But let us give Ivy a few weeks—let us, can’t we—you
+and I and C’hi Yamei? Not thrust our happiness in front
+of her until she has found her own happiness again?”</p>
+
+<p>The woman leaned back against her cushions a little pathetically.</p>
+
+<p>She had made her <i>amende</i>. The mother had played up
+splendidly to her boy. And she knew that she should not
+fail him again. She would welcome C’hi Yamei cordially
+and hide what she felt about it always.</p>
+
+<p>That was her penance for her willfulness of long ago. But
+it was a mother’s selfishness too. She would not lose Ruben.
+The Chinese girl should not come between them—not altogether!</p>
+
+<p>For Ruben’s face—and her memory of the unalterable constancy
+of Sên King-lo, his father—had told her, even as she
+cried, “Ruben, must you?” that he <i>must</i>, that it was inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that it was done and knew that it was not for
+her to smirch or sour his gladness with any sadness of hers.</p>
+
+<p>She would deceive him to the end to hold him hers.</p>
+
+<p>She did not believe that Ruben would marry without her
+consent. She had no doubt that he would hold to the most
+sacred sacrament of Chinese manhood: devotion and fealty
+of a Chinese son to his mother. The ball was at her feet!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span>
+She could banish C’hi Yamei from Ruben’s life; but if she
+did, Ruben would pay the price. And not even to obey or
+gratify her would he love again or be coaxed to any other
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben should not pay her debt. She would pay it to the
+utmost that it could be paid—the last small coin of suffering
+and of renunciation.</p>
+
+<p>He had chosen the Chinese of his two irreconcilable birthrights.
+She would not forbid him.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps I am wrong though, Rue. I believe I have lost
+my sense of proportion—I’ve fretted so over poor Ivy. Yes—it
+was just feeble-minded nonsense. Ivy has her own life
+now, a very full and happy one, if she’ll let it be so—and
+she will presently, I’m sure. She is an enormously lucky girl
+with Tom—a husband made to order, I call him—and that
+perfect peach of a baby. Yes, dear, it is your turn now—your
+turn at the wheel of happiness; <i>our</i> turn—yours and
+Yamei’s and mine. Give her my love to-day, Rue,” she
+leaned to him and took his face in her hands, “and bring
+my daughter to her mother.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben drew his mother’s hands down and kissed them lingeringly.</p>
+
+<p>“You will love her, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do love her!”</p>
+
+<p>Sên’s face blazed his happiness.</p>
+
+<p>“But, if you’d rather London didn’t know yet—that is, if
+I can get C’hi Ng Yelü’s consent, and hers, Mother—of
+course it shall be so. Why should London be informed any
+more than consulted! It’s no business of London’s, is it?
+And, Mother dear, I’d rather not even ask them yet—Mr.
+C’hi or Yamei—if you would rather I waited. But there is
+something I must tell you, before you decide. I was there
+yesterday—”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên laughed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Really!” she mocked him lovingly.</p>
+
+<p>Sên laughed back at her happily.</p>
+
+<p>“We were alone, she and I, and I lost my head, or very
+nearly did—I don’t exactly remember just what I said.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can imagine, Rue,” the mother laughed. “And,” she
+added gravely, “I know how you said it, and how a girl’s
+heart beat; your father wooed me when I was a girl.”</p>
+
+<p>They were silent for a long moment.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not do that, dear. At least, I hope not. But I
+think she understood me.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên nodded softly. She remembered.</p>
+
+<p>“And I do feel that I ought not to wait an hour longer
+than <i>you wish me to wait</i> before putting it clearly to C’hi
+Ng Yelü.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly not! Go to him to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Won’t you send, Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“I, dear? I will do whatever you wish. Rue. I will go
+myself, or ask Mr. C’hi to come to me; just whatever you
+like best. But, dear, really it is your job, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not in China, Mother.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—of course. I forgot. We had no go-between, your
+father and I, Rue. It—it just happened.”</p>
+
+<p>“It very nearly just happened yesterday,” Ruben owned.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me just what you would like me to do and say, Rue.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Mother.” Sên’s voice and face brimmed with
+his gratitude and it hurt the mother that they did.</p>
+
+<p>She hid that though.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you send for Kow Li or let me send him to you?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên understood. “And send him from me to C’hi
+Ng Yelü—my <i>mei jên</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, please.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not Cousin Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—please. The <i>mei jên</i> need not be a man of quality—almost
+never is, at home.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span></p>
+
+<p>Home! The mother’s heart winced again; again she hid it.</p>
+
+<p>“Kow Li will do it perfectly. He is a Chinese and of our
+province, a servitor of our family for centuries. Kows have
+been henchmen of the Sêns for thousands of years, you know.
+Why, Kow is our ideal <i>mei jên</i>, born for the part. And,”
+Sên chuckled, “how it will delight him to go to C’hi Ng
+Yelü and negotiate the marriage of the noble C’hi’s accomplished
+and virtuous daughter and the loathsome, ignorant,
+deformed son of the lady Sên Ruby!”</p>
+
+<p>Still the woman smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“But, I say, Mater, I think I ought to tell Cousin Charles
+what we are up to—don’t you?—before it is signed, sealed
+and delivered. He <i>has</i> been almost Providence to me, hasn’t
+he? And so jolly good to me always. I think I owe him that
+courtesy. I’ll blow in at Kow’s shop this afternoon, shall I?
+And then go on to Sir Charles and have my talk with him
+while you are giving your orders to Kow.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not this morning, Rue? Chinese affairs of great
+moment should be begun at the sun-up.” Ruby Sên knew
+that Ruben had said “this afternoon” because he would not
+leave her abruptly, or even seem willing to; but she had set
+her foot, her naked woman’s foot, on the hot plowshare of
+Ruben’s young man-desire, and she meant to stint her sacrifice
+of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>And she knew that, though his lips and his love of her—his
+cherishing of her and of her <i>first</i> place—had said, “this
+afternoon,” the heart of the man she had borne was crying,
+“now!”</p>
+
+<p>But Ruben was fine too.</p>
+
+<p>“Not much sun-up about it in London to-day, is there!
+No, please. There’s not all <i>that</i> hurry. I haven’t seen my
+mother for weeks. You needn’t think I am going to let you
+turn me out until after lunch for I am not! The morning
+is ours, Mrs. Sên, whether you like it or not. After we have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span>
+lunched I’ll trot off to the picturesque suburb of Bloomsbury
+and then on to the House of Snow.”</p>
+
+<p>His mother’s laugh thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps she would have found it easier to have had
+him go now. It had to be done—so, the quicker the easier.
+And Mrs. Sên would have liked to be alone—just for an hour—now.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LVIII">
+    CHAPTER LVIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Kow Li wept—unashamed.</p>
+
+<p>The old Chinese in his happiness shook like willow
+leaves in stormtime.</p>
+
+<p>He fell at his master’s feet and blessed them.</p>
+
+<p>Then he bobbed up as if his old body had been provided
+with very excellent springs, and began rummaging chests and
+wardrobes, almost forgetting and quite ignoring Sên Ruben’s
+presence, in his tremulous, tremendous excitement in selecting
+the costliest and most beautiful garments he owned, coat,
+cap and petticoat, shoes, pouch, top coat and fan for the most
+important toilet of his lifetime. The servant-crest of the
+Sêns would show for all to see on his shoulders and breast
+when he waited upon the lady Sên Ruby and when, her
+<i>mei jên</i>, he waited upon the lord C’hi Ng Yelü. That servant-crest
+blazoned the proudest fact of his life, but the raiment
+it jeweled and ennobled would be fine and beautiful, as befitted
+the go-between sent by a Sên to a C’hi.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben spoke, and Kow did not hear him. Kow Li was
+drenching a singlet of gossamer silk with costly perfumes.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben stood and watched the old millionaire servant, and
+Ruben Sên’s laughing blue eyes were very tender.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li made a wonderful toilet. A Son of Heaven might
+have worn it at a proud palace function. Ruben wondered
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>
+if any servant would have been licensed to go abroad so finely
+clad in China. And he wondered with a grin how Kow Li
+proposed to journey so clad across London.</p>
+
+<p>It takes a great deal to astonish London. Victoria Street
+and Hyde Park are blasé to extreme sartorial exhibitions that
+run a gamut from the unique toilets of ultra-modish ladies
+to those of Hottentot potentates. But Sên had no doubt
+that Kow Li would astonish and stir London to-day and he
+grinned again to think what C’hi Ng Yelü’s stolid English
+servants would feel at the sight of Kow Li ko’towing at Mr.
+C’hi’s hall door.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li, clad at last, surveyed himself severely in the long
+lacquer-framed glass and grunted with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Still trembling with happiness and swelling with importance,
+he padded from god to god—and this room of his was
+full of gods—and lit before each god as many joss-sticks as
+he could find receptacles to hold.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s lips were moving in prayer, more filial and respectful,
+more leisured and earnest than the god-ones of
+China always get.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben spoke again; Kow answered at random in a quavering
+voice, and Sên slipped quietly away and off on his own
+good errand—off to tell Sir Charles Snow, his father’s tried
+and trusted friend and Ruben’s own.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long way from Kow’s curio shop to the Snows’
+home, but Ruben walked it because he did not think to hail
+a taxi or see any one of the many that hailed him.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên need not have been quite so keenly amused at
+old Kow Li. Young love can do things as absurd as ever
+does old love that has loved a lifetime. Love that has lasted
+a lifetime has the finer dignity, the deeper sanctities. Love
+of kindred, love of lover are not the only loves. Kow Li’s
+love of his Sên was older than he; it was lifetime old, and
+as old as their old, old race.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên crossed London on a rainbow. All life was
+a-shimmer. He cut an intimate acquaintance on Pall Mall,
+a man he had chummed with at Eton and Cambridge, and
+he very nearly lost his life at Hyde Park Corner—and never
+knew that he had done either. Why should he? He was off
+to Paradise <i>via</i> the Snows’! Half an hour with his Cousin
+Charles, perhaps, and then back to wait with his mother until
+Kow came with C’hi Ng Yelü’s answer.</p>
+
+<p>There’d be none of the long-drawn-out prematrimonial
+barter that there so often was in China. All he had he was
+willing to give—oh, so gladly. A Sên who was Sên King-lo’s
+heir and dear old Kow Li’s needed no dower with his bride.
+Not that C’hi Ng Yelü would barter either. Yamei was the
+pulse of Ng Yelü’s heart—his only child.</p>
+
+<p>There need be no more delay than their tender care of
+Yamei’s dignity necessitated. She should have all the delicacy
+of approach that was her Chinese birthright. But he
+thought that even of that C’hi Ng Yelü would not prove a
+stickler.</p>
+
+<p>Dear old Sir Charlie—how pleased he would be!</p>
+
+<p>How soon would he be permitted to see her again?</p>
+
+<p>Would she pale or flush? Both, he thought. Would she
+blush first, or laugh a little brokenly, or lose first the lovely
+cherries painted on her cheeks? Would she look at him?</p>
+
+<p>No—he was almost sure that she would not look at him at
+first.</p>
+
+<p>And while Ruben trod the London streets in ecstasy, walking
+on the golden air of anticipation, Ruby his mother sat
+alone and took new stock of her altered life.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone to her own room when Ruben left her, telling
+them to send Kow Li to her when he came, but to disturb her
+for nothing else whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>She sat facing King-lo’s picture, the companion of so many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span>
+of her hours, and she thought Lo’s dark eyes regarded her
+tenderly and approved her.</p>
+
+<p>She had failed him in their marriage. Little by little she
+had realized it as her widowed years had gathered in on her.
+While he had lived she had not suspected it. King-lo had not
+let her suspect it—not even in Ho-nan where she had slighted
+his people’s welcome, had shrunk from his kindred, recoiled
+from his Chinese home, spurned his Chinese home life that
+he had so deeply loved.</p>
+
+<p>She might have been so much more to King-lo; might
+have rounded out in perfect harmony his life that she had
+dwarfed and pricked. She had repented it, little by little,
+when it was too late to atone to him at all. She repented it
+now—and now she would not fail him. She could not heal
+Ivy’s life; only Baby and Tom—and God—could do that.
+But she would not stunt their only son’s life, neither maim,
+nor scorch, nor chill it.</p>
+
+<p>She would share it as she had not shared King-lo’s.</p>
+
+<p>That atonement she still could make.</p>
+
+<p>She would make it fully, she would make it freely.</p>
+
+<p>What was she to set her judgment, her prejudices and narrow
+pride of race, against such a husband’s Chinese judgment
+and preference—or Ruben’s! Reading backward with
+the cleared sight of ripe maturity and suffering, she saw herself
+less than dust before the precious stone of King-lo’s
+character—less than nothing weighed by his unalterable manliness;
+she a peasant whom a king had espoused and cherished;
+a pauper in character whose debts he had paid and
+canceled; she had been womanish, Sên King-lo had been a
+man.</p>
+
+<p>One need not repeat mistakes; that was the one good thing
+about them.</p>
+
+<p>She would not repeat her mistake of long ago. It had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span>
+a mistake of ignorance then; now it would be a mistake of
+willfulness, a crime of selfishness.</p>
+
+<p>What right had she to say with which of his two races
+Ruben should identify himself—to which he should prepledge
+his children? None.</p>
+
+<p>She would welcome C’hi Yamei; she would do it sincerely.</p>
+
+<p>She would love Ruben’s wife.</p>
+
+<p>If they made their home in Ho-nan—Ruben in his heart
+would wish it, she suspected, as Sên King-lo had longed for
+it—she would make her home there, if she found that she
+could do it without intruding, and without cramping or discounting
+their life there.</p>
+
+<p>Or—if that were beyond her compassing—she would live
+her life out alone at Ashacres, and here in London in such
+contentment of loneliness as she could muster; seeing Ruben
+sometimes—she was sure she could count upon that much!—writing
+to him, hearing from him.</p>
+
+<p>She had lost Ivy. She would not lose Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>And she would stay near him, wherever he lived, if she
+could do it without embarrassment to him. What was country?
+What were customs—the food one ate, the clothes one
+wore? Not much to the companionship and friendship of a
+widow’s only son and of her grandchildren.</p>
+
+<p>She would <i>be</i> Chinese. It was her right—she the wife of
+a Sên, the mother of Sêns.</p>
+
+<p>She had learned to care for China since King-lo had gone.
+She would seek out its beauties and wealths and make them
+hers. His people should be hers and he would know, and be
+glad.</p>
+
+<p>She had clung to her Chinese widowhood, had flaunted it
+even. She had boasted that she was Chinese. She would
+make it true now.</p>
+
+<p>But Ruby Sên’s face was drawn as she sat alone by her
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span>
+fire building her dream of love and sacrifice. She knew that
+she would miss England and English ways. She knew that
+she could but wish that Ruben had loved and chosen elsewhere.
+It would have cost her less to have held out motherly
+arms and a kind welcome to an English girl.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands clasped on her knee were clenched, and her
+eyes were pinched with pain that was stronger than she as
+she sat there alone waiting for Kow Li.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad when at last Kow came. The sooner the
+better now!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LIX">
+    CHAPTER LIX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sir Charles was at home and alone.</p>
+
+<p>No one lived who was happier than Ruben Sên was
+when he went into Snow’s den.</p>
+
+<p>He felt assured that his love would not be refused. He
+was contented to wait a few hours, even a few days, because
+so much delay was due to C’hi Yamei. Kow Li would make
+a perfect go-between. And since he could not be with Yamei
+yet, it would be the next best thing to hear Sir Charles’
+congratulations.</p>
+
+<p>He knew how glad his Cousin Charles would be, how
+warmly and sincerely Snow would congratulate, and how
+his kinsman and best friend of friends would approve!</p>
+
+<p>Snow heard him out without a word, and the old man’s
+face was all kindness and friendship and understanding;
+nothing but that.</p>
+
+<p>Then—very slowly, quietly, fully—Charles Snow told
+Ruben Sên Sên King-lo’s story; told the son his father’s <i>true</i>
+story.</p>
+
+<p>Snow exaggerated nothing; he softened nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben stiffened—then slouched brokenly in his chair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was some time before Ruben spoke and when Snow had
+said it all, he said no more.</p>
+
+<p>“You mean,” Ruben began hoarsely, and broke off miserably.</p>
+
+<p>“That I think you ought not to do it, Rue—ought not to
+marry at all. I believe it myself very strongly, have no doubt
+about it at all. Your father had none. It was his wish, his
+request to you when he was dying. I wish I had told you
+sooner. I thought there was plenty of time, but I had no
+business to think so. I ought to have told you long ago. I
+wish to God I had. And if you had not come to me to-day,
+I should have sent to you to come to me to-morrow. I’d
+give more than I can say not to have put it off—until the
+mischief was done.”</p>
+
+<p>“That need not trouble you, sir,” Sên said huskily. “The
+mischief—at least to me—would have been done all the same.
+That part of it is of no importance. My father loved my
+mother dearly, didn’t he?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very dearly and to the end. But it cost him too much,
+Ruben; it cost him more than the love of any woman is worth
+to any man. Exile broke your father’s heart, Ruben; homesickness
+killed him. And his death was a death of terror
+because he feared that you and Ivy might marry; knew what
+it probably would cost you not to marry—especially Ivy—and
+knew what it was bound to cost your children or theirs
+if you did.”</p>
+
+<p>“But he was happy with Mother?”</p>
+
+<p>“As happy with her as a man who has mismarried can be.
+Happy in her herself, and in serving and shielding her.”</p>
+
+<p>“She never knew?”</p>
+
+<p>“Never. He kept it from her and it cost him his life—as
+noble and fine a man as ever lived. I think you will obey
+him, Ruben. You are made of his stuff, unless I have misunderstood
+you all these years.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Did you tell Ivy what he said?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—because I knew that it would do no good and much
+harm. I could not save Ivy. But I told Gaylor—you know
+with what result. I have told you because I believe that you
+will let me save you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Save me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—exactly that. And save C’hi Yamei.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên screened his face with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles went on—because he must. “I believe that
+you will let your father save you. I am saying all this to
+you for him—saying it in his name, at his request. I believe
+that you will come to see it as he did, and will yield—because
+you are a Sên.”</p>
+
+<p>Again they were silent.</p>
+
+<p>Then, “But to be perfectly fair, I must tell you also that
+your father hoped that, if you decided against his wish, and
+married in spite of it, you would marry a Chinese girl”—the
+gray misery on Ruben’s face lifted a little—“one more
+or less Westernized, the daughter of some Chinese family
+living, and apt to stay, in England.” Ruben’s face grayed
+again at that.</p>
+
+<p>“Sên King-lo knew that you were Chinese, and knew that
+little Ivy was English. It was for her he feared most.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ivy has been very happy since she married,” Ruben interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>“Very. But her Chinese-faced baby has destroyed her happiness.
+Her misery at its birth was pretty bad. Your Cousin
+Emma was there.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a Chinese girl I wish to marry. While Mother lives
+I shall make my home where Mother prefers to live—here,
+of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“But your heart is in China.”</p>
+
+<p>“My heart is in China and, if I lost my mother, no matter
+how many years from now, I should go home to China and
+stay there.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span></p>
+
+<p>“On my soul, I believe you belong there!”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles smiled a little sadly.</p>
+
+<p>“All true, Ruben,” the older man went on. “If you marry,
+this marriage you propose is as little against your father’s
+judgment as any you could possibly make. But his last
+prayer was that you would refrain from marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>“Because of my children?”</p>
+
+<p>“Chiefly because of your children, and of theirs—but not
+altogether. Remember, Ruben, your father had tried it out
+loyally and earnestly, tried it out with the one woman he ever
+loved and whose companionship was infinite delight to him
+always. She never palled on him. How many husbands do
+you believe can say that? Your mother was the one great
+personal love of your father’s life. He could not remember
+his mother. You have your mother. He tried it out for all
+it was worth, Rue—put up the finest fight I have ever seen;
+and he lost. And he was a man of tireless pluck and of infinite
+tact. But it broke him—heart, soul and body. His
+last years were lived in torment. His marriage was a sacrifice.
+When he was dying in the garden at Ashacres he begged
+you not to marry; I believe that he is begging you not to
+now—personally and actually—begging you from his still
+troubled life somewhere on-High.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên turned his face down on his arm; his shoulders
+were not steady.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Snow gave him time.</p>
+
+<p>“But,” Sên argued again, “my children would be preponderantly
+Chinese.”</p>
+
+<p>“We should hope so—<i>actually</i> so, as well as in blood proportion.
+But Nature is a jealous god. Nature plays nasty
+tricks—sometimes many generations after. It is safer to
+count on Nature’s vengeance than on her forgiveness.”</p>
+
+<p>Sên put up still one more protest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Kow Li probably has gone to C’hi Ng Yelü already—Mother
+was sending him. Just possibly C’hi Ng Yelü has
+consented already.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is too bad,” Snow said gravely. “But it is not
+betrothal, even so. Not until the gifts have been exchanged.
+And C’hi is not the man to hold you to such a promise if
+you did not wish to fulfill it.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben could not deny that.</p>
+
+<p>“I was with her yesterday, sir. I—I think it would hurt
+C’hi Yamei, if it were broken off.”</p>
+
+<p>“That was what your father said when I tried to persuade
+him, as I <i>and he</i> are trying to persuade you to-day. It was
+that that clinched it—their marriage—with your father. He
+took the risk for her sake to spare her temporary hurt and
+humiliation—took the risk for you and Ivy that he forbids
+you to take, Ruben! It will be less unkindness to C’hi Yamei
+to so pain her now, than to let her live to hear her children
+called ‘mongrels.’”</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben winced as Sir Charles had seen his father Sên
+King-lo wince at the same thrust a quarter of a century ago
+in Washington.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment Ruben got up heavily and moved to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke again, but Sên gave Sir Charles a not discourteous
+look before he opened the door and went.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Sir Charles Snow struck a match, sighing deeply.</p>
+
+<p>Snow believed that this time he had won.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LX">
+    CHAPTER LX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Sên stumbled home.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên looked up with a sunny smile as he came
+into her room. The effort and strain it cost her to show a
+complacence she did not feel were so sharp and hard that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span>
+they blinded her to the change in him—a gait that shambled
+a little, pallor, hurt eyes, a mouth clenched and drawn.</p>
+
+<p>“Has Kow been?” Ruben asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>“And gone. He should be back before long, unless they
+exchange incredibly long Chinese speeches. I told them to
+send him up here—and told him to come up as soon as he
+did get back. Rue, he was a picture! I never saw such a
+sight in my life. If Mr. C’hi is not vastly impressed by the
+sumptuous get-up of my <i>mei jên</i>, all I can say is, he ought
+to be!”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben nodded—as nearly brightly as he could, and sat
+down wearily.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh—well, it doesn’t matter,” he murmured listlessly. “It
+doesn’t matter.”</p>
+
+<p>“Doesn’t matter? What doesn’t matter? Why, Rue, what
+is wrong?” Her son’s distress had reached her. “Cousin
+Charles didn’t rag you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” Sên answered with a weary smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not! And you would have snapped your fingers
+at it if he had. But something has gone wrong since you
+left me. What?”</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên looked full in his mother’s face. The misery in
+his eyes knifed her; she saw his set face break, his clenched
+mouth waver and twitch.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben!”</p>
+
+<p>Before Sên could answer—if he could have answered just
+then—Kow Li came through the door, closed it behind him,
+and bowed profoundly to them both.</p>
+
+<p>There was no Chinese impassivity on that old yellow face.
+It blazed with joy and pride as unmistakably as his bedecked
+person blazed and crackled with embroidered satins and fur-lined,
+coral-buttoned silks. The slant old eyes twinkled like
+glow-worms, his thin lips were pursed in triumph, and he
+waved his tiny ridiculous unfurled fan with all the pomp
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span>
+with which a peacock spreads his tail. Kow Li radiated congratulation,
+joy and self-complacency.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên smothered a groan; the woman choked back a
+sigh; she had had scant hope that C’hi would send back an
+unfavorable reply. She had tried not to hope it but her first
+glance at Kow Li assured her that Kow had not failed,
+scarcely had needed to ask, and that C’hi Ng Yelü had not
+even pretended to be less than pleased and willing, but had
+scorned to assume towards the suit of a Sên the strong
+parental reluctance that would have been the better Chinese
+etiquette. C’hi Ng Yelü had welcomed the proposal, would
+make no difficulties at all of any sort, was fully prepared to
+cut out all the preliminary bargainings and cross-negotiations
+that even an easy-going C’hi Ng Yelü who had a shred of
+family self-respect must have insisted upon in China. The
+match was made! Ruby Sên’s breast quivered once in spite
+of her. But her smile was cordial and serene.</p>
+
+<p>And Ruben saw what she saw. C’hi had given him Yamei!</p>
+
+<p>And he must slaughter the gift—leave it untouched—thrust
+it back!</p>
+
+<p>He had heard his father’s voice in Snow’s study. It was
+not Sir Charles who had convinced him; it was Sên King-lo
+who had convinced and sentenced him; sentenced him to lifelong
+soul-ache, everlasting longing and loneliness; sentenced
+him to put slight upon the maid he worshiped heart and
+body; sentenced him too, perhaps, to hurt her!</p>
+
+<p>It did not occur to Sên Ruben to evade the sentence. A
+Chinese son must pay his father’s debts to the last fraction
+of a <i>cash</i>, to the last husk of one millet seed.</p>
+
+<p>Sên King-lo had sinned against his blood—had defiled the
+blood of China and defiled his Clan. Reparation must be
+made; the mixed blood must not continue to be dispersed
+through Sên veins. The debt must be paid. Sên King-lo’s
+son must make the bitter sacrificial payment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span></p>
+
+<p>So Sên Ruben saw it.</p>
+
+<p>What he might suffer—or C’hi Yamei—was nothing to the
+cleansing of a father’s crime, less than nothing to the rehabilitation
+of the honor, the family purity, of the Sêns.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben Sên did not flinch; he knew that he should not flinch
+again. But his soul was sick, his heart was blistered, and
+his flesh ached.</p>
+
+<p>In itself the hideous payment was terrible; but there was
+more! He must give no sign. While they lived never must
+his mother know; never must she suspect why he did what
+irrevocably was his to do.</p>
+
+<p>That, perhaps, was the hardest of all and doubly hard;
+for not only must he hide that he was hurt, and that he had
+made a sacrifice, but—for his mother’s sake—he must brand
+himself poltroon, turn-coat, jilt.</p>
+
+<p>He must do a noble thing as if it were a foulness; he must
+make his sacrifice look a treachery.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles would know. But Sir Charles Snow would not
+speak. No one else must even suspect, least of all his mother.</p>
+
+<p>No one—but C’hi Ng Yelü. Even the gods would grant
+him that—that he might explain—show his soul—to Yamei’s
+father. And C’hi Ng Yelü would tell Yamei what he would.</p>
+
+<p>He must leave C’hi Yamei to her father now, C’hi Yamei
+whose life he had thought to keep and cherish in his own.</p>
+
+<p>He should not see Yamei again.</p>
+
+<p>He would not see Yamei again.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li was bursting to speak. But Kow Li far sooner
+would have died than have smirched this great occasion by
+such foul breach of Chinese etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s lips twitched, his petticoat rattled with the agitation
+of his knees; but he might not speak until they questioned
+or bade him say—the lady Sên Ruby who had sent
+him on her perfumed errand or the lord Sên Ruben who was
+his worm-and-servant’s master.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruben rose, and stood facing them both. His face was
+grave but it was calm; and his voice was clear and steady.</p>
+
+<p>“The lord C’hi Ng Yelü did not repulse our offer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, great and worshiped master”—Kow Li <i>had</i> to speak.</p>
+
+<p>But Sên checked him with an upheld hand. “I regret that
+he did not, for there will be no such marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have changed my mind, Mother,” Sên told her quietly.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not believe it! Changed your mind! You, Ruben!”</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Kow Li believe it for an instant. The old Sên
+servant did not attempt to speak; he could not have spoken,
+had Sên Ruben bade him. But a long angry hiss lashed out
+from between his grinning lips—a hiss that was Kow Li’s
+oath to rip out the life of the only Englishman he ever had
+entirely liked and respected, the one Western that he had ever
+trusted.</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li knew who had done this. Mrs. Sên had told him
+that Ruben had gone to Snow in courtesy to tell him what
+was afoot. And Snow had found some hellish way to prevent
+Sên Ruben’s purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Presently—when he found leisure and convenience—he
+would take the life of Sir Charles Snow. But that was nothing
+at this moment; one did not turn from the jungle path
+to crush a flea when one hunted a tiger. There was more
+importance than that small thing to do now; the Englishman’s
+dastard necromancy was to undo now. It should not
+stand or prevail. Sir Charles Snow who had pretended
+friendship and loyalty for Sên King-lo and for Sên Ruben,
+who had pretended that he liked and revered China, should
+not spoil the life of Sên Ruben and dishonor and balk the
+best hope of the Sêns. Kow was bitterly disappointed in Sên
+Ruben—humiliated that a Sên had so proved weakling, cheap
+wax to be melted by a mere Englishman’s treacherous breath.</p>
+
+<p>There is not much that is bitterer than to despise what we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span>
+most love. Kow Li was despising Sên Ruben now. Kow Li
+never had despised a Sên before, he who had served them
+man and boy for all his lifetime, and in the service of his
+fathers had served them faithfully for thousands of years.</p>
+
+<p>Why had the vile Englishman wrought this thing? Gods!
+because he had some other wife of his own selection whom
+he intended Sên Ruben to wed—an English wife!</p>
+
+<p>And again a long sound of a scorpion that hissed its rage
+thrashed across the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben,” Mrs. Sên asked, “what did Cousin Charles say
+to you? You have <i>not</i> changed your mind. It is useless for
+you to tell me that; I know you too well. It is absurd! You
+have not and, if you had, your mother would tell you that
+you must not. You told me yourself that you had as good
+as told Miss C’hi and probably her father <i>has</i> told her now.
+You are Sên King-lo’s son; I shall not forget that, even if
+you do!”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li’s being ko’towed to a white woman! It had not
+happened before.</p>
+
+<p>“Mother,” Sên answered gently, “it was not Cousin Charles.
+I cannot explain now—it would take too long—and there is
+a thing I must do at once. The credit or discredit is not
+Sir Charles’—it is my own, you may believe me. And we
+must leave it at that—for to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you say so, you think so, I know. But I am sure that
+it was,” Mrs. Sên persisted. “He tried to prevent our marriage,
+your father’s and mine.” Kow Li’s old eyes widened
+before they narrowed to a line; he had not known that before.
+“I forgave him—a long time afterwards. But I ought
+to have remembered, and not have encouraged you to go to
+him to-day. He did all he could to spoil my life once; he
+shall not spoil yours!”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing shall,” Sên promised gravely. “I give you my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span>
+word of honor, Mother,” he added, “that not an iota of the
+responsibility is his—Cousin Charles’.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whoever—whatever is responsible, you simply cannot do
+it, my son. What would your father say if he knew? Over
+and over I have heard him say that a Chinese promise cannot
+be broken. Your father would be ashamed of you, Ruben.”</p>
+
+<p>She did not see Ruben wince at that, but Kow Li saw, and
+a glimmer of the truth flickered towards his mind—and Kow
+Li was sorely troubled.</p>
+
+<p>“I am ashamed of you, Ruben. I never thought to be that!
+But you cannot do it; you cannot break your word to the
+woman you have wooed—a Chinese girl, Ruben! Your Sên
+blood—Chinese blood—has been your great pride. You have
+seemed English because you look it, and because you have
+lived here all your life. But you have been Chinese always.
+I have been glad that you were, and I have wished that he
+might have known it. Perhaps he does know it, Ruben; know
+that I bore him a Chinese son. I hope he does. You must
+be Chinese in this, Ruben. There is divorce in China—not
+frequently, but there is; but a Chinese betrothal <i>never</i> is
+broken; even death cannot break it.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li gestured confirmation gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“There is no betrothal,” Sên reminded them. “Nothing
+makes one or binds either family until the first gifts have
+been exchanged. No one is pledged—thank God! Kow has
+sounded C’hi—that is all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rubbish!”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry to seem in the wrong—in this—to you,
+Mother,” Sên pleaded, “but I must take my way in it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Think of that poor girl!”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall think of C’hi Yamei while I live—as I have since
+that first time at Burlington House. Kow—old friend—we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>
+are sorry to have sent you on a bootless errand. Go now.”</p>
+
+<p>Kow Li never had disobeyed a Sên. He backed towards
+the door. He looked to have shriveled; all his splendid raiment
+hung about him limply. Kow Li went without a word;
+at the door he bowed to them both profoundly. He did not
+look again at Sên Ruben his master, but he gave Sên Ruby
+a deep look of supplication.</p>
+
+<p>She might succeed when they two were alone! And, if she
+did, Kow Li would worship her as he worshiped the Spirit
+of Sên Ya Tin.</p>
+
+<p>“Rue”—she held out her hand, and Sên went to her, and
+sat down beside her on the arm of her chair, and touched her
+hair with his hand—“it was rather curt dismissal for poor
+old Kow that! But we’ll make it up to him! Now, dear,
+that we are alone—just you and I—you’ll explain?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not to-day, Mother. I can’t stand much more now—and
+I have something to do that is not easy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it something about the C’his?—tell me that much,”
+the mother whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“No!”</p>
+
+<p>The puzzled woman knew that Ruben had answered her
+truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>She left it then—for the present. She would see Charles
+before she probed or fretted Ruben again.</p>
+
+<p>They stayed so while her little jeweled clock ticked several
+minutes into the past.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ruben bent down and kissed his mother.</p>
+
+<p>“I am going out again, dear. But I’ll be back in time for
+dinner.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not—” she began.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—to C’hi Ng Yelü. I must explain to him as far as
+I can; and I must not put it off. Miss C’hi was going to the
+Mortons’ this afternoon. If she did, C’hi has said nothing
+to her yet. And I would rather speak with him when she is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span>
+not at home. We might meet accidentally—and I’d rather
+not. I’ll be back for dinner, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên made no attempt to dissuade or to delay him; she
+did not dare.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LXI">
+    CHAPTER LXI
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The things that we anticipate with the most dread almost
+always gall us less than we feared they would.</p>
+
+<p>One can suffer only so much at any one time over any one
+thing; it is one of the great mercies of human existence that
+each individual’s capacity for pain is strictly limited. If
+dread is craven coward, sufficiently applied it turns anæsthetic,
+and numbs the nerves it first has tortured. Often, too, the
+bad quarters of an hour we agonize over in the night have
+a gracious habit of blowing over. Again, the creditor we face
+quakingly and with raw humiliation proves rather a jolly
+good fellow at shorter range, and lets us down softly.</p>
+
+<p>His interview with C’hi Ng Yelü was harder and worse
+than Sên had expected it to be; and he had counted upon
+its being incredibly difficult and painful.</p>
+
+<p>He was taken to C’hi at once. It was evident that the
+servant who let him in had had his orders.</p>
+
+<p>As they went through the hall Sên Ruben heard a girl
+laugh—a clear, soft laugh of perfect happiness. C’hi <i>had</i>
+told her, and she was glad! Ruben believed that a note he
+never had heard before in Yamei’s flute-like voice told him
+that!</p>
+
+<p>She would not come to her father’s room unless she was
+sent for—perhaps not even then, while he was there—Ruben
+was sure of that; nor would she come downstairs at all. She
+would run no risk of meeting him in the hall—if only she
+learned that he was here! But it unmanned him to know
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>
+that she was in the house at all. It made what he was going
+to do seem more dastardly, a more intimate, more brutal
+affront to her whom he loved. Was she wearing her Chinese
+dress again to-day? He thought so! And she had not cared
+to go to the Morton “at home.” Had she one of his roses—yesterday’s
+roses—tucked in her little jacket?—nestling at
+her chin perhaps! What was she doing up there in that
+room? They had been together there yesterday! Pranking
+gently up there with her little Chinese dogs, perhaps. Or
+was she standing beside the piano, bending over a bowl of
+yellow roses, telling them, laughing it to them shyly—her
+love story? Her love story and his! Gods!</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü did not give him a Chinese welcome, but
+swept Sên’s low obeisance of deep respect aside with a
+chuckle, caught Ruben’s hand and shook it warmly.</p>
+
+<p>“Sit down, my dear fellow, have a cigar. We are not in
+China—we won’t pretend that we are. You really should
+not perpetrate a ko’tow in English-cut trousers; the two
+don’t click.”</p>
+
+<p>He took Sên by the shoulders and pushed him down willy-nilly
+into an easy chair—an ideal chair to smoke in and to
+lounge in, but no chair at all to make black confession in.
+It was not a chair to sit in while you affronted a man telling
+him that you withdrew your offer of marriage, insulting his
+daughter!</p>
+
+<p>Ruben took the cigar—too embarrassed to decline it—and
+laid it down.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi chuckled again. “’Pon my word, Sên, that funny old
+bird—Kow Li, isn’t he?—nearly caused a riot in the hall.
+One of the housemaids was passing through the hall when
+Billings let him in, and caught sight of him. She scuttled
+down to the housekeeper’s room in high hysterical delight,
+and I gather, from the sounds that penetrated a wall and
+three doors, that every domestic retainer I have was lined up
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span>
+in the hall, and peeping over the staircase to feast their eyes
+on him as he went. Some <i>mei jên</i>, what, Sên! He certainly
+did you credit!”</p>
+
+<p>“He felt greatly honored to come, sir,” Sên said ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>“He dressed the part!” C’hi chuckled again.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben began at once—haltingly, lamely enough.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Yelü smoked, and heard him through without a word.
+He gave no sign—even he smiled—coldly, once or twice.
+But Ruben felt C’hi stiffen, and knew that C’hi Ng Yelü’s
+Chinese blood was boiling and frothing.</p>
+
+<p>When Sên had done, C’hi bowed to him graciously across
+the table, then spoke with almost elaborate courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>“You are quite right, Sên. Pray do not distress yourself
+about the little incident in the least. Believe me that I do
+not; I assure you that I do not. And my daughter never will
+know of it. I have not mentioned it to her.” Sên Ruben
+believed it a lie, and applauded it. “Much of what you have
+just urged against what was suggested to me, by Mrs. Sên’s
+messenger a few hours ago, I already felt very strongly, but
+I preferred not to state such delicate objections to a mere
+go-between who had been sent to me by a Sên—preferred to
+temporize, because of my great regard for your noble clan.
+But to you yourself I must have stated my objections quite
+frankly before we went any farther—to you, of course, not
+to Mrs. Sên—”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not take the slight race difference quite as seriously
+as you do. I think you exaggerate it—on my soul, I do—but
+frankly, in spite of my very great regard for you, while
+I should not have forced my daughter’s inclination—I resolved
+long ago never to do that—I should have regretted
+the arrangement had it been arranged. But I have reason
+to think that if, after our conference—yours and mine—I
+had been persuaded to broach it to her, she would have declined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span>
+it. I feel that I can say this to you without offense,
+because I am confident that you will be glad to know that
+Miss C’hi’s personal interest has not become involved.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very glad, sir,” Sên forced out through stiff lips. He
+admired C’hi Ng Yelü enormously.</p>
+
+<p>“My girl likes and values you very much as a friend. But
+I am sure that she would have asked me to decline the unquestionably
+great honor that Mrs. Sên’s suggestion did us
+both.”</p>
+
+<p>“Father!” C’hi Yamei cried gaily, dancing lightly in from
+the hall, “I want you to come and—” Then she saw that
+C’hi Ng Yelü was not alone, saw who was with him and stood
+a moment motionless in confusion, her lovely face crimson
+as a bride’s veil. Then with a little smothered cry she fled
+from the room.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen her again—in yesterday’s robes; and he had
+seen the bunch of yellow roses at her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Sên had sprung up at the sound of her voice; he turned
+away and went to the window, and standing there with his
+back to the room Sên Ruben set his teeth hard in his lip.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi had risen too—to go to his child, to ask her gently
+to excuse him until his business talk—of matters at Peking—with
+Mr. Sên was finished.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not needed to do that—Yamei had not given
+him time.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps her coming, and what her confusion—and something
+else in her eyes before she dropped them—had told,
+had moved C’hi Yamei’s father as intensely as it had Sên
+Ruben.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi did not sit down again—he went to the window.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben!”</p>
+
+<p>Sên swung round.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü’s face was working. Sên’s was ghastly.</p>
+
+<p>“Ruben, let us sit down again, and talk this over sensibly.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span>
+We must thrash it out now—without pride or subterfuge;
+there is too much involved for either.”</p>
+
+<p>“Let me go, sir,” Sên pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet!” C’hi Ng Yelü urged, as one who asks a favor,
+but asks it as a right.</p>
+
+<p>They both sat down.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know just what report of how he fared with me
+the <i>mei jên</i> Kow Li gave, or if you have seen him.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have seen him, sir—but he said very little. I—I put
+it off.”</p>
+
+<p>“It doesn’t matter either way. I indicated to him that your
+mother’s offer was not unwelcome to me. It was not. It is
+not. I wish the marriage, Sên. I approach no man for C’hi
+Yamei; there are few whose approach of me I would have
+welcomed, few that I would have reported to her. She has
+not lacked suitors; she will not, for she is beautiful and sweet
+and I am rich. But I care for her happiness more than I
+care for all other things, more than I ever have cared for any
+other thing but her mother’s and the love her mother gave
+me. My care for C’hi Yamei’s happiness is more than my
+pride. You are not bound to go on with the contract which
+I believed was made—I do not hold you so bound—but I
+want you to consider gravely what this sudden decision of
+yours may do to Yamei.” Ruben moaned. “She has not
+lived the life of a Chinese girl here where we have spent so
+much of our time, nor has she lived it at all strictly in China.
+She has seen a good deal of you, Sên. She may have read
+what was in your heart until to-day.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is there still. It always will be there,” Sên muttered
+miserably.</p>
+
+<p>“She may have understood; she may have responded, as
+English girls do. You saw her now—she flushed and ran
+away. Why? We live in changed times now, even we Chinese.
+The Son of Heaven himself has chosen to go among
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span>
+men as a man of the new ways. We may see a Chinese Empress
+unveiled and unpainted at a London function before
+long; little would surprise me in this time of flux and transition.
+The bars are down, Sên. We cannot put them up,
+you and I. I, for one, do not wish to put them up again.
+I want China to find her rightful place in the sun—and not
+in insular isolation. I may be wrong, I may be right; but
+that is how I feel about it. I do not feel that your Western
+blood is an advantage to mine; but is it the insuperable barrier
+that your fine sensitiveness thinks it? I believe not.”</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü said more—a good deal more.</p>
+
+<p>Sên made little reply.</p>
+
+<p>But the sum of all he said remained, “I must pay my
+father’s debt.” And he also said that he would not do C’hi
+Yamei what, as he saw it now, would be an irrevocable wrong;
+that he would not put her, as marriage with him must inevitably
+put her in both hemispheres, at social discount.</p>
+
+<p>C’hi Ng Yelü bowed to a decision he saw that he could not
+shake; and they parted friends.</p>
+
+<p>As C’hi heard the outer door close, he went heavily across
+the hall, up the stairs, and reluctantly into Yamei’s room.
+He would not delay his telling her what he must tell; the
+sooner the wound, the sooner its cure—if he and time and
+her own pride and youth could cure the hurt it was his sorrowful
+lot to deal his only child.</p>
+
+<p>Ruben went slowly, with feet that disliked their office. It
+was improbable that he would come here again; he hoped
+that he should not. But he could not go abruptly. He had
+to linger and lag—weakly, perhaps—keeping a last lonely
+tryst with the house from which he shut himself out forever;
+prolonging still the “sweet sorrow” of his parting.</p>
+
+<p>The Square was empty, and Sên waited a few moments
+looking up at Yamei’s windows—the window where they had
+stood together yesterday. The window was open.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span></p>
+
+<p>Was she there?</p>
+
+<p>Had C’hi gone to her yet? He knew that C’hi Ng Yelü
+would not put off long the difficult cruel-kindness that had
+been thrust upon him.</p>
+
+<p>A cry! Yamei had cried out—and then he heard her sob.
+A little hurt girl was weeping bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben went wearily home.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he and his mother went to Ashacres; and
+Ruben Sên never saw C’hi Yamei again.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LXII">
+    CHAPTER LXII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>“You haven’t dressed? You told me to order the car
+for four.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t want to go to the garden party, Tom. I’m sick
+of functions. London gets hotter and hotter—and dustier
+and grubbier—and all the people we know grow stupider and
+stupider every day!”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m blowed!” But Tom Gaylor was inured to surprises
+of various sorts from his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“I want to go home—to Dorset. I want to go now, Tom.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do! Right! That suits me down to the ground.
+Best Christmas present I’ve had since I was six. London <i>is</i>
+abominably stuffy just now, if you ask me; and garden parties
+never were my dying request; invention of Satan, I call ’em.
+I’m your traveling companion with all the heart in the
+world. When shall we go? Next week? I don’t suppose we
+could manage to-morrow—or Monday—could we, Ivy?”</p>
+
+<p>“I want to go now.”</p>
+
+<p>“To-day?”</p>
+
+<p>“Now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—I <i>am</i> blowed. Always were a decisive girl though,
+weren’t you? It’s now we go. Wait till I find a hat, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>
+tell Jones to tank up good and plenty. It’s a goodish distance
+my lady wife is taking me, and not too many dumps
+to get good Mex this side of Winchester. We can just about
+make home for nine o’clock dinner, if we don’t get run in
+for speeding. You’d better ’phone Mrs. Clegg or Briggs or
+there won’t be any dinner. I don’t forget the one-course
+banquet of dried haddock and egg sauce they gave me the last
+time I blew in unexpected. Got a few people dining here
+to-night, haven’t we? You sit down and write them a few
+untruthful telegrams while I negotiate Jones. Shall we take
+your maid with us, or send her by train?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care who goes with us, if only we can start now.
+And we’ll be off a good deal sooner if you talk a good deal
+less!”</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Gaylor, the rest is silence. What about tea? We
+can get it at Winchester! Jolly decent tea there last time.”</p>
+
+<p>“None this. Sandwiches and a thermos. Ring that bell.
+I am not going to stop at Winchester or anywhere else. I’ll
+be ready in exactly fifteen minutes; see that you are, and
+that Jones is—petrol and all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madame, I shall in all my best obey you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do get along and do it, then!”</p>
+
+<p>“Right!” And Gaylor made for the hall and Jones, laughing
+and flinging another apt Shakespearian tag at Ivy as he
+went. He was riotously glad to be going home. The rabbits
+would be thick as fleas, melons and the last peaches dead ripe—and
+the geese eating their heads off.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In their Dorset home the battle began which Mrs. Sên had
+foreseen was inevitable, but which Lady Snow had believed
+was already lost; a terrible silent battle between Ivy herself
+and her old rankling sore and humiliation on the one side,
+and on the other a little dark-skinned baby and mother-love.</p>
+
+<p>At first Gaylor thought that it was “coming all right.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span>
+Ivy spent long hours with her baby, in the house and in the
+gardens; and watching them, when Ivy did not know that he
+was near, he saw Ivy—several times—cuddling the little dark
+face to hers, picking its tiny fingers apart, counting its toes;
+once he saw the young mother laugh at her child, and the
+baby gurgled and grinned in delightful return.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bonnie baby, delicately fat, dimpled, ready to smile
+at a hint, perfectly willing to lie on its back by the hour and
+stare straight up at nothing in a grave friendly way. It
+would grip your finger with the grip of a determined rosebud
+petal, it snatched at trinkets, did its best to swallow its own
+doubled fist, adored the absurdest faces you could make at
+it, chortled and shook with amusement when you tickled it
+under its very soft chin, listened appreciatively when you
+whistled or sang or made the most gruesome noises. It loved
+bright colors, cooed to the sunset, held out its hands for every
+flower it saw. It never cried, and it had the three deeply
+marked wrinkles on each wee wrist which the Chinese call the
+bracelet of lifelong good luck. In short, it was a baby that
+would have been proclaimed and adored in any courtyard
+from the Jade Gate to Shanghai.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy was happy and natural—for a time; then the revulsion
+came.</p>
+
+<p>She avoided her child.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes grew haggard and hard.</p>
+
+<p>She took to sitting alone, far off in the garden, or locked
+in her own room. Touching her pillow by chance in the dark,
+Gaylor felt it wet. Twice when he woke he felt that she had
+not slept. More than twice he woke in the night and missed
+her, and found her pacing up and down in some other room
+in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Baby had lost the first round. Prejudice and old hurt
+pride had proved stronger than love and womanly instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor longed to say something, do something—but what?
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span>
+For the life of him he couldn’t think what to say or to
+attempt; and fearing to blunder, shy of the subject too, he
+left it alone and was abominably worried—perplexed at a
+twisted situation as only a man, and an English man at that,
+can be. And he was miserable—not with any quantity or
+quality of misery approaching Ivy Gaylor’s own—but quite
+as miserable as any mere man who is trying manfully to do
+his best ought ever to be made.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên had been right—the little baby pulled its mother,
+but it could not prevail. She knew now that she loved it;
+but it could not comfort her. She revolted and rebelled for
+it and its future as for years she had for her own and for
+herself. The more she saw it, the more she shrank from it.
+The more she yearned over it, the more she recoiled.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of her child—the sound of its voice—became a
+torture.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor was not surprised when his wife said defiantly one
+night at dinner, “I am going back to London in the morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll go by car?” was all the comment he made.</p>
+
+<p>“Unless you’d rather stay here and shoot—and farm.”</p>
+
+<p>Tom smiled. “I’d much rather go with you.”</p>
+
+<p>His wife’s eyes fell to her plate.</p>
+
+<p>She wished very much to say, “thank you” nicely, partly
+because she cordially thought he deserved it, partly because
+the servants were there—but a lump jumped in her throat
+and made her mute.</p>
+
+<p>Except that he asked presently, at just what hour she would
+like to start, their going was not mentioned again until he
+went to her the next morning to ask if she were ready.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite,” Ivy said; and she already wore hat and coat and
+gloves.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband looked at her with a longing in his eyes that
+she understood—and ignored.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I won’t be long,” he said. “I’ll just have a look at the
+kiddy.”</p>
+
+<p>Ivy nodded indifferently and made no motion to follow
+him to the nurseries.</p>
+
+<p>Gaylor went very slowly, hoping in spite of himself that
+Ivy would come too just for a minute or two.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone longer than she had expected, longer than he
+had intended; and when he came down Ivy had left the house,
+and was waiting for him in the car.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear,” her husband said, taking the door of the car from
+the servant’s hand into his own, “Baby is ill—looks pretty
+queer to me, and nurse is frightened too. I don’t suppose
+it’s much, but I’ve ’phoned for Dr. Brand, and I think one
+of us ought to wait and see what he says. I won’t go—not
+till Brand’s been here anyway, if you don’t mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“What a bore!” She tried to speak indifferently, but her
+face had blurred instantly. “She never has been ill before,
+has she?”</p>
+
+<p>“I never heard she was,” the man said awkwardly. Neither
+its father nor its mother knew much about how their baby
+had been most of its tender little life. Probably it had not
+been ill before; the most competent nurse scarcely would have
+failed to send word of any ailment more alarming than
+hiccups.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose we’d better stay,” Mrs. Gaylor said grudgingly,
+“until the Doctor has seen her,” but her husband felt her arm
+tremble as he drew her coat off in the hall. And Ivy Gaylor
+slipped her hand in his, and went up to the nursery with
+him. Tom had been afraid she would not go there. He
+almost had half feared she might go on to London as she
+had planned.</p>
+
+<p>The man loved his wife better than he understood her.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight Ivy’s unwanted baby died in her arms.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span></p>
+
+<p>Long after the little body had stiffened they could not take
+it from its mother.</p>
+
+<p>And the old physician, watching Ivy Gaylor, drew Gaylor
+aside, beckoned the nurse to him, and said, “We must not
+push her now. We must not thwart Mrs. Gaylor in anything.
+This is going to half kill your wife, Mr. Gaylor. It
+may kill her. She will never get over it. Some mothers are
+stricken so at the loss of a child—not many, but some are.
+I have seen one or two in my own practice; I know the signs.
+Mrs. Gaylor will need infinite care and patience—and, above
+all tact. <i>We</i> cannot help her. There is nothing we can do
+but wait.”</p>
+
+<p>Something leapt at Gaylor’s heart that was not all pain
+or grief.</p>
+
+<p>“Please go,” the mother said presently without looking up,
+and they left them alone—the girl-mother nursing her dead
+child.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the mother was as motionless as her baby.</p>
+
+<p>Then—she pressed it to her a little closer, bent her face
+over it, and kissed it again and again, washing the little
+yellow face with her tears, washing her baby for burial.</p>
+
+<p>Ivy tore her gown apart and pressed the tiny hands, ice
+cold, yellow baby hands, against her bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Between her agonized sobs Ivy crooned to her little baby.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese baby had won.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_LXIII">
+    CHAPTER LXIII
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Years—of mingled pleasure and pain, as most human
+years are—have passed.</p>
+
+<p>The Gaylors jog on. Gaylor still chafes for a son—and
+knows that his wife will not again accept motherhood. But,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span>
+understanding her scruple but little, not sympathizing with
+it at all, he cleaves to her loyally—keeping the vows he gave
+her in marriage.</p>
+
+<p>And he has his dogs and guns, his horses, a host of friends,
+a young cousin whose name also is Tom Gaylor, an upstanding
+public school boy whom he likes very much, and he has
+his cabbages and his tenants.</p>
+
+<p>There are many unhappier women in London society than
+Ivy Gaylor, and not a few who are less envied. But her heart
+is buried deep in a tiny grave in Dorset. As long as she
+lives she will grieve and long for her little lost baby—grieve
+and will not be comforted.</p>
+
+<p>Through obedience, renunciation and service Ruben Sên
+has won through to happiness.</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed his father, renounced his young and bounding
+love, and all his life is a service of love to his mother. He
+has made her happiness; he has paid Sên King-lo’s debt.
+And he knows that in the gods’ good time he will go again
+to China—to live there among his own people, serving them,
+living for them, when his mother, gone on-High to Sên
+King-lo, no longer has earthly need of his services or his love.</p>
+
+<p>He is content to wait.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sên and Ruben her son live more and more at Ashacres,
+the bond between them closer, sweeter, firmer, as the
+slow moons come and go over Sên King-lo’s grave in the
+churchyard of the old squat-towered Church of Brent-on-Wold.</p>
+
+<p>Sên Ruben has set his soul against regret and sorrow, and
+regret and sorrow have left him.</p>
+
+<p>He does not forget—he is not of that caliber—but he remembers
+in calmness, as he remembers in tenderness that
+still is quick, C’hi Yamei, in robes of lemon and blue and
+jade, yellow roses in her hands, her little Chinese dogs frisking
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span>
+about her as she walks, facing the sunrise among the
+bamboos and wild white roses of Shan-si.</p>
+
+<p>He has chosen his life. He knows his future as the man
+whose character is strong and fine always may, because it
+builds that future, since always character is destiny.</p>
+
+<p>While Sên Ruby lives he will be with her at Ashacres.
+When her spirit has gone to his father’s he will make his last
+long earthly journey—across the Atlantic, across the Pacific,
+homing back to Ho-nan to live for Ho-nan, to live for the
+Sêns. Some boy of his clan shall be his by adoption, that
+Sên King-lo’s grave and Sên Ruby’s never shall lack descendants
+to worship at them.</p>
+
+<p>For he will not go back to Ho-nan alone.</p>
+
+<p>He has promised Sên Ruby—she demanded the promise—that
+her coffin and Sên King-lo’s shall rest in one grave in
+the old Sên burial garden, beside the grave of Sên Ya Tin,
+with the temple and <i>pai-fang</i> the old Queen-one of Sênland
+builded to Sên King-lo, sending their jeweled shafts of love
+and understanding over the yellow roses, through the quivering
+bamboos, to lie on their graves.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="GLOSSARY">
+    GLOSSARY
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class='glossary'>
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Babies</span>”—peasants, servants.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cash</span>—a small coin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ch’ih</span>—a roofless paved courtyard. At great functions it is roofed
+and floored.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chop</span>—official stamp of a merchant or man of high position. It
+binds every important Chinese contract and edict.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dragon Throne</span>—the throne of China.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Girdle-Wearers</span>—aristocrats.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grass-Characters</span>—a fine and difficult form of Chinese writing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hanlin</span>—a graduate of the Hanlin “college.” One who has passed
+the highest Peking examinations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hsien-Jen</span>—wiseman, soothsayer, wizard who lives in a hill or
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hsi Hua T’ing</span>—a hall between gardens and walls where ceremonial
+meals are served.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I-Pang-Lo</span>—a musical instrument.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">K’ang</span>—stove.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kin</span>—a musical instrument.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">K’O-Tang</span>—guest-hall. (In a modest establishment it is the one
+room of importance, and is put to many social and family uses.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ko’tow</span>—prostration of great respect—to kneel and touch the ground
+with the forehead. (Also written <span class="smcap">Kot’ow</span>, <span class="smcap">Kotow</span>, etc.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kuei</span>—the women’s apartments. In good establishments it is a
+building of many rooms and verandas surrounding a courtyard.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kwan</span> or <span class="smcap">Kwan Yin-Ko</span>—the goddess of mercy. (There are varied
+spellings.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lamps-of-Mercy</span>—fire-flies.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lang</span>—roofed passage.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Li</span>—a Chinese measurement of distance, about one-third of a mile.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mei-Jên</span>—match-maker, go-between, marriage broker.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pai-Fang</span>—a memorial arch of great honor, usually in commemoration
+of some act of great sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pan-Kou</span>—a musical instrument.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ruyie</span>—an emblem of good luck, often made of jade. It never is
+large, but usually beautiful, and may be very valuable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sacred Prisoner</span>—the Emperor of China.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Shu-Chia</span>—“Reverence books”—library, reading-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Silks</span>”—paintings. The greatest Chinese artists have painted on
+silk.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Son of Han</span>—a Chinese. They hold it their proudest title, except
+the Cantonese who do not so style themselves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Son of Heaven</span>—the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Spirit Wall</span>—a devil screen placed outside an entrance to prevent
+evil spirits from entering.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ta Jen</span>—a great man—a man of importance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">T’ien Ching</span>—“Heaven’s Well”—the ladies’ courtyard in the center
+of the <span class="smcap">Kuei</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ting</span>—courtyard.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Tingchai</span>—yamen runner—messenger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ting Tzŭ Lang</span>—the passage that leads from the Great Gate to the
+Reception Hall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Tsa Hsing</span>—village of mixed families. (The inhabitants of the majority
+of small Chinese country villages usually are of only one
+family or clan.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Tuchun</span>—war lord—military governor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Vermilion Palace</span>—the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City—Peking.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Yamen</span>—official residence, usually a mandarin’s—a government office.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Yang-Lao-Ti</span>—nourish-old-age-land.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Yellow-Robes</span>”—priests—monks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Yuan</span>—the Chinese dollar (fifty cents). Often, but incorrectly,
+termed <span class="smcap">Yen</span>. The <span class="smcap">Yen</span> is a Japanese coin and strictly speaking
+there is no Chinese <span class="smcap">Yen</span>, but “chopped <span class="smcap">Yen</span>” are used in some
+parts of China.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='mt6 center'>THE END</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">
+    Transcriber’s Notes
+  </h2>
+
+
+<ul>
+  <li>Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.</li>
+  <li>Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original.</li>
+  <li>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+   public domain.</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77722 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-01-16 18:55:59 -0800
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-01-16 18:55:59 -0800
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