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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/77722-0.txt b/77722-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2507cd3 --- /dev/null +++ b/77722-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13383 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77722 *** + + + + + This eBook was created in honour of + Distributed Proofreaders’ 25th Anniversary. + + + + +RUBEN AND IVY SÊN + + + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + THE SOUL OF CHINA + IN A SHANTUNG GARDEN + MR. AND MRS. SÊN + THE FEAST OF LANTERNS + MR. WU + THE GREEN GODDESS + + + + + RUBEN AND IVY SÊN + + BY + + LOUISE JORDAN MILN + + [Illustration] + + “_I go to prove my soul! + I see my way as birds their trackless way. + I shall arrive!_” + + NEW YORK + FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY + MCMXXV + + + + + _Copyright, 1925, by_ + FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY + + _All rights reserved_ + + + _Printed in the United States of America_ + + + + +_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._ + + + + +TO MONA FROM HER MOTHER + + + + +RUBEN AND IVY SÊN + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The Sên servants had had no doubt of what was coming, not even Tibbs, a +recent acquisition below stairs, who had only seen her mistress once +and by luck, through the larder window. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +When they learned that their mother had refused Lord 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +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, Lady Snow came nearer really caring for +Chinese-faced Ivy than she ever had before, and much nearer than she +could have believed possible. + +“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!” + +“Forgive your mother! You have no right to say that, or to think it,” +Lady Snow said sternly--more sternly than she felt. + +“_You_ 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.” + +“Haven’t I been good to you, Ivy?” + +“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 _try_--had to _remember_ 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.” + +“No one pities you, child. No one could.” + +“You do!” + +Emma Snow made no reply. + +“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 _must_ 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!” + +“You are half-English, Ivy,” Lady Snow reminded her gently. + +“_Half!_” All the agony of the sore old interracial tragedy was packed +in the girl’s one bitter word. + +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. + +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. + +“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 +_like_. 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!” + +“Ivy!” + +“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--_and_ looked it!” + +The woman’s eyes filled with tears. She knew that her easygoing but +socially exigent son-in-law certainly would not, and she bent her eyes +on her work, and hastily stitched a blue petal on a red rose. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“Hush, dear.” + +“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.” + +“You wouldn’t like it when you had,” Lady Snow said gently. + +“I’d like it better than being what I am--looking as I do.” + +“You don’t know what you are saying, dear.” + +“I know what I am feeling.” + +Lady Snow sighed. + +“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?” + +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. + +“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.” + +“Because her Chinese husband is dead!” the girl interjected. + +“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.” + +“Don’t! Don’t tell me about him. I can’t stand it.” + +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. + +“Don’t!” the girl shuddered. + +Lady Snow unfolded her needlework again, to steady herself with +something mechanical and because she could think of nothing not quite +hopeless to say. + +“Why did Mother do it?” the passionate voice went on suddenly. + +“Do what, dear?” But Emma Snow knew. + +“Marry a Chinese man!” + +“They loved each other very dearly.” + +“It was horrible!” + +“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.” + +“I am--to have an English father--and to have an English name.” + +“But your mother changing her name wouldn’t change yours.” + +“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.” + +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. + +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 _Englishman_ ever does--_any_ Englishman--a footman, a +sweep or a potman!” + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +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. + +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 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. + +But Snow often wondered. + +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. + +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 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. + +How much did Ruby Sên look ahead--_how clearly_? She gave no sign. + +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? + +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? + +Snow was sure that there were rocks and dangerous shoals ahead for poor +little Ivy. Did her mother know it? + +Were there rocks or shoals ahead for Ruben? Did his mother suspect that +too? + +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. + +Charles Snow suspected a good deal about Ruben; but he _knew_ 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 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? + +How could he best serve Ruben and Ivy Sên? + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +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. + +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. + +“A débutante need not necessarily wear white,” Lady Snow urged, “quite +a number don’t.” + +“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?” + +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. + +“I’d rather have it all white, Mother--like other girls.” + +Ruby Sên put her hand lovingly on her daughter’s shoulder. “It shall +be as white as ever you choose, Baby.” + +“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.” + +“It’s rather young wear for forty odd, don’t you think?” Mrs. Sên +laughed. + +“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.” + +“And go to dances--_and dance_, won’t you, Cousin Emma?” Ruben demanded. + +“I most certainly shall.” + +“Don’t you care for white, Mrs. Sên?” Lord Whitmore persisted. + +“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! + +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. + +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. + +“Quite right, dear; cry it out,” was all he said. + +The girl did. These wild tears were past gulping back. It would have +choked her. + +“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!” + +“Of course not. And your mother is very nearly as brunette as you are, +Ivy.” + +“Brunette!” + +“I wish you didn’t mind,” Whitmore said gently. + +“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 be a +nun--only I’d hate it! And they wouldn’t have me!” + +“No vocation? I quite agree,” Whitmore spoke lightly to cover an +emotion of sympathy he would not show. + +“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!” + +“I predict you’ll have an awfully good time--your first season, and +afterwards--” her friend said, changing the subject rather lamely. + +Ivy sighed rebelliously and unhappily. + +“I wish you’d smoke, and give me one.” + +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. + +“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.” + +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. + +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!” + +“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 time to get here and give +yourself time to be sure that it _is_ Mr. Right. You’ll have dozens of +suitors; be careful not to take the wrong one.” + +“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?” + +“More than anything in all the world.” Whitmore met the girl’s anxious, +beseeching eyes steadily. + +“I wish you’d make her then.” + +“That is just what I am going to do.” + +“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?” + +The Englishman laughed tenderly before he said earnestly, “Yes, Ivy, +even if she were a Zulu lady.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +Ivy Sên shook her head sadly. + +“I don’t believe it!” she said again. “I’ll have to take a derelict or +an idiot.” + +“God forbid!” + +“I wish He had forbidden my birth; He ought to have,” Ivy cried +passionately. “If only I _looked_ 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? No one on earth would ever suspect Ruben +of having Chinese blood, would they?” + +“No one,” the man admitted. + +“But I believe he _is_ 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!” + +Whitmore nodded. He would have given many acres to have known how to +comfort Ruby Sên’s daughter. + +“Dear,” he told her, with his hand on her hair, “how I wish you were my +daughter! And I hope you will be.” + +Ivy caught Lord Whitmore’s other hand and gripped it pathetically. +“Would you truly let me _be_ your daughter? Could you feel as if I +were?” + +“Try me.” As the man looked at her, the answer was sufficient. + +“Oh, that helps me! You wouldn’t be ashamed of me?” + +“I’d be awfully proud of you, little daughter.” + +“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. + +“Love it.” + +“Me--with an English name! a truly English name!” 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 _am_ English, Lord Whitmore, _all_ of me except the odious yellow +envelope I’m caged in. English!... I wonder--would you _adopt_ me--make +it my legal name?” + +“Why, of course, little Ivy,” the man told her instantly. But to +himself he added, “If your mother would let me do it.” + +Then, at the look the dark little girl paid him, Lord Whitmore bent +down and kissed her gently on her forehead. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +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 +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!” + +“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.” + +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 _here_--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 _docile_. What happened to Ivy between +tea and dinner?” Lady Snow very rarely, if ever, had seen Ivy docile. + +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 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. + +On Thursday Lord Whitmore tried his luck again. + +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. + +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. + +It was nearly noon and getting hotter, when they let their horses walk +and turned back towards the Priory. + +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 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. + +“Do you like Ruben?” Ivy demanded. + +“Thoroughly,” the man told her truthfully. + +“You are not as fond of Rue as you are of me, though?” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“I wonder what Rue will be--what he’ll do. What do you think?” + +“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.” + +“Almost all of it is Mother’s and all of it is in her control.” + +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.” + +“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.” + +“Good gracious, Ivy; I hope not; it would grieve his mother, I am sure.” + +“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.” + +“I hope not,” Whitmore repeated. “Why do you say you hope Ruben will +never marry? You indicated the other day that you intend to.” + +“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.” + +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. + +It was she who broke their silence presently. “Did you know my father +at Cambridge?” she asked impulsively. + +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. + +“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.” + +“I wonder if you’d still wish to marry our mother if you had.” + +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. + +“Not often--Englishmen--the widow of a Chinaman they have known--have +_seen_.” + +The Englishman riding beside her studied his mare’s ears. He had no +answer for Ivy. + +“I suspect that that is why you _are_ willing to marry his widow. Are +you never jealous of his memory?” + +“Not a mite.” Whitmore looked the girl full in the face and smiled +again as he spoke. + +“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 _why_ +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 _been_. 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 _was_, 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!” + +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 _must_ be changed. + +“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?” + +“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!” + +“Now?” + +“Yes; now. I think you might. Will you?” + +“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.” + +“Why not?” Ivy pouted. + +“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.” + +“Oh--don’t trouble to think them up; the four you have furnished will +do to go on with.” + +The girl set a quicker pace then; and they went side by side fairly +fast for a mile or two. + +There was no one in sight when they reached the Priory door. + +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.” + +The man laughed at her gently, patting her shoulder lingeringly as he +said, “That would be quick work, Ivy.” + +As he went off towards the stables, a bridle in each hand, the girl +called after him, “I wish you would try though!” + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +He thought it was a pathetic little figure standing there in the dim +wide doorway. And the dark mutinous face was very wistful. + +“I’ll do my best,” Whitmore called back, “if I see a ghost of a chance.” + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +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. + +She was tired. + +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 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. + +The day was exceedingly hot. The long business morning had both bored +and fagged her. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _could_ be lovelier, smell +sweeter, than these. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +What a lover he had been! + +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. + +Ruben had been but a toddler then, Ivy a baby. + +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. + +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. + +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 friends and gravely troubled her +kindred by marrying a Chinese. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +A squirrel scurried softly through the grass where standard roses grew +imperially beautiful from delicate carpets of emerald. + +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. + +She dreamed of Sên King-lo, and saw John Whitmore. + +“Day dreaming?” he asked, as he seated himself, and shied his panama +hat not unkindly at a now hurrying little squirrel. + +“No,” Mrs. Sên said crisply, “_living_. Living contentedly in a very +beautiful castle.” + +“Enjoying it very much--you looked.” + +“Intensely,” Mrs. Sên told him. + +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. + +“May I have it?” he asked, holding her eyes with his, reaching his hand +for the rose she held. + +She shook her head very slightly, a queer little smile answering him +too, and fastened the ruby rose at her breast. + +“Dear--” he urged. + +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? + +But perhaps the other man knew--the man that the wife thought was there. + +How was an Englishman to know that they two were not alone there among +the roses--he and the woman he loved? + +But the woman knew and rejoiced. And the soft glow on her face, the +throbbing sweetness her senses felt, were for _him_, standing there +facing them, a Chinese man--no ghost--living and visible to the heart +of a woman. + +“Won’t you let me come into your castle--your castle of +contentment--and live there with you?” the Englishman pleaded. + +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. + +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. + +“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!” + +“I wish you would love some one else, Lord Whitmore,” Mrs. Sên said a +little wearily. + +“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.” + +“And I gave mine--all mine--more than twenty years ago.” + +“I know,” Whitmore said nicely, but he flushed slightly, in spite of +himself. “But Mr. Sên is dead.” + +“Not to me,” Ruby Sên said proudly. + +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?” + +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 _could_ be. + +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! + +“Can you give me nothing?” the man repeated. His voice shook in his +eagerness, and his hand tightened on hers. + +The woman turned in her seat, faced him squarely and shook her head as +she gently released her hand. + +“Why?” + +The question vexed Mrs. Sên. Surely she had told him why clearly, +already. + +“Is it because you can’t?” Whitmore demanded hotly, “or because you +won’t?” + +“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. 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 +_not_ 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.” + +And Whitmore realized that that was final. + +He accepted defeat gallantly. + +“I will not trouble you again,” he promised quietly. + +The brown fingers gave the white ones a friendly little grip. + +How enormously she liked him! And she could have cried then for the +nice girl who had missed him. + +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. + +“Done in!” he said to himself grimly as he went, “done in by a dead +Chinaman! My word!” + +And Mrs. Sên stayed on in the rose-garden with her man who was with her +there among their roses. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +Ivy forgot her grievance, forgot to be unhappy--for a time. + +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. + +The girl was girlishly happy; and because she was happy, suddenly +docile and sweet. + +Mrs. Sên was radiant and grateful; her one trouble had passed. Ruben +went back greatly relieved to keep his last term at Cambridge. + +“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 _see_ a few of the pictures, wouldn’t you? We’ve +been twice, and I haven’t seen a thing but other women’s hats.” + +“I have a fitting at eleven, dear; and you know the Bessingtons are +lunching here--and Caverley.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“I’ll race you up the stairs,” the girl offered as they went through +the hall. Ivy’s arm about her mother’s waist. + +“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?” + +“Like a vixen, but I took it out of her--had a scrumptious ride.” + +Ivy scurried up the stairs to change her habit. Mrs. Sên followed her +happily, a little more slowly. + +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. + +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 _Morning +Post_, and to 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 _the_ picture this year or who had painted it. + +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. + +“Most enough for one day?” the girl suggested. + +“Darling, we must see Maud Towner’s miniature! She’ll never forgive us +if we don’t.” + +“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.” + +Mrs. Sên nodded indulgently and plodded off to the Miniature Room. + +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. + +But she noticed a thin crowd gather once or twice at a canvas across +the room and linger there a little. + +“Think of painting _her_!” she heard a girl say indignantly to another +as they turned out of the small group about the picture. + +“No accounting for tastes!” the other stranger replied with a shrug. + +So it was some woman’s portrait. Was she notoriously déclassée, or only +plain, Ivy wondered idly. + +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.” + +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. + +“Devilish pretty Chink, I call her,” the younger man said, and they +both laughed. + +Ivy stiffened, gave them a cold little haughty stare, and passed them +to the picture. + +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. + +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? + +Had that man with the ruddy hair meant the girl in the picture was a +pretty Chink, or that _she_ 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. + +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. + +The winter of Ivy Sên’s discontent had come again. + +The mother saw that it had, and saw why. + +They appeared--the girl on the canvas and the girl in the flesh--as +China Smiling in Sunshine and China Frozen in Shadow. + +Ruby Sên’s mother-heart stood still for a moment. Then she smiled and +said gaily, “Here I am, dear.” + +“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.” + +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. + +Under the Piccadilly Archway Mrs. Sên stopped abruptly and held out her +hand to one of two men who were lighting their cigarettes there. + +“Why, Roland! It is you, isn’t it?” + +The ruddy-haired man of Ivy Sên’s discomfiture said, with his foot +on the cigarette he had flung down, hat, gloves and stick dexterously +clutched in his left hand, that it certainly was. + +“It’s Roland Curtis, Ivy; Cousin Lillian’s youngest boy,” Mrs. Sên +explained. + +Curtis went red, and dropped his gloves. But Ivy Sên smiled sweetly and +held out a cousinly hand. + +“I saw you admiring my portrait in there just now, Cousin Roland,” Ivy +said, innocently. + +Roland Curtis mumbled something--no one understood what; he least of +all. + +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. + +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. + +“Your friend?” the woman said with a glance that said, “You may +introduce him, Roland,” and, of course, had to be obeyed. + +Roland Curtis’s only wish was to disappear quickly and permanently; he +gave the introduction reluctantly and awkwardly. + +“Oh--don’t you know Tommy Gaylor?” + +“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?” + +Gaylor said that they were, and said how glad he’d be to call if he +might--and meant it. + +“You’ll come soon, won’t you, Roland?” + +Roland promised that he would, and vowed to himself that he would +not--soon or ever. + +“Why don’t you bring them home to lunch with us now?” Miss Sên +suggested. + +Yes; Ivy was going to make trouble! Mrs. Sên knew it, and Tom Gaylor +suspected it. + +“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!” + +“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. + +Curtis was speechless. + +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.” + +She let her new-found cousin escape then--but she made him shake hands +with her again. + +Mrs. Sên made no comment as she and Ivy went leisurely homeward. She +would choose a wiser time. + +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. + +She hoped that Ivy would be nice to the Bessingtons at lunch. + +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. + +It was true. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Mrs. Sên knocked lightly on her girl’s door--knocked timidly. + +But Ivy called, “Come in, Mother,” pleasantly. + +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. + +The girl was sitting listlessly at an open window and her head lay +wearily against the pillow behind it. + +“It is after four, dear. Have you had any tea?” Mrs. Sên knew that +Ivy’s luncheon tray had been refused at the door. + +“I don’t want any.” + +“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?” + +“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. + +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 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. + +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. + +Ivy kept her word. She always did. She drank two cups of tea and ate a +little fruit. + +“I ought to like tea, oughtn’t I?” she exclaimed ruefully as Parker +took the tray away. “How I hate it!” + +“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. + +Ruby Sên had never been a coward. She came near to it now. + +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. + +But Mrs. Sên met it quietly, with nothing but love and motherliness on +her placid face. + +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 not to--“All Chinese like tea, don’t they, Mother? All but +me.” + +“Most of them do, I think, dear.” + +Ivy knotted her tiny hands together tightly, and brooded down at them. + +Mrs. Sên longed to lay her hand on Ivy; but the mother did not dare +touch her daughter. + +“We are going to a dance to-night, aren’t we?” Ivy asked wearily. + +“Two--unless you’d rather stay at home--to the Graingers and then on to +the Hillyards.” + +“Do you care to take me? Do you like to take me about with you?” + +“I love to, Ivy,” Mrs. Sên said gently. + +“I should think you’d hate to! I wouldn’t do it, if I were you!” + +“Your eyes are a little red, dear; but they won’t be when you have +bathed them,” Mrs. Sên replied weakly. + +Ivy laughed miserably. “I wasn’t thinking of my eyes. Because of my +face, I mean.” + +Mrs. Sên had known that, and she knew that Ivy had known that she did. + +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. + +“Ivy, do you feel so badly about it? Can’t you conquer it, dear? It +isn’t anything really. It’s just a prejudice.” + +“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 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. + +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. + +“Ivy, darling, do you think you’d feel it less in China? Shall we go to +China, and live there--you and I?” + +“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.” + +Mrs. Sên covered her shivering face with her hands. + +Even in her own pain, Ivy Sên pitied the mother she was mauling; tried +to stop; and could not. + +“Why did you do it, Mother? _Why_ did you do it?” + +“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.” + +“A noble Chink!” the girl hissed the offensive word. + +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.” + +“Thank God, I can’t remember him!” + +“Ivy!” + +“I mean it, Mother. I hate him, I loathe the thought of him, with a +yellow, monkey face like mine.” + +Ruby Sên’s eyes flashed fire. And she rose from her seat, the accuser +now, no longer the culprit. + +“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--_pretending_ 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!” + +“Including my face!” + +“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!” + +Ivy rose too and stood facing her mother. + +“And you never regretted it? Never once?” + +“Never once.” Ruby Sên believed it was true. She forgot a few days she +had spent in China. They had been wiped out by a man’s invincible +manliness, a Chinese husband’s forbearance and loyalty and lasting +charm. + +“Do you not regret it now?” + +“Ten thousand times no!” + +“And you would do it again--knowing what it has cost me? You love me, +Mother!” + +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.” + +The girl put her hands closely on her mother’s shoulders, and held her +so. + +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. + +Gently the girl pushed her mother down into a low chair and knelt +beside her. + +“I cannot understand you, Mother.” + +“I think you will some day. And I understand you, Ivy.” + +“Did no one warn you?” + +“Every one.” + +“But you took your way!” + +“I took my way--as probably you will take yours some day.” + +“You were in China with him, lived there for nearly a year once before +I was born, didn’t you?” + +“For some months.” + +“Did you like it, Mother? Were you happy there? Did you like +China--like being the wife of a Chinese _there_?” + +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.” + +“You met his people?” + +“We stayed with them.” + +“Oh! And they were horrible?” + +“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.” + +Ivy shuddered. + +Ruby Sên waited miserably for Ivy to go on, for she herself could find +nothing to say that she felt would help at all. + +They stayed silent for several long unhappy moments before Ivy spoke. + +Then, trying not to say the words that blurted out--“Do you know why I +do not like to come into your own rooms?” + +“I’m afraid I do.” Mrs. Sên spoke gently, but the quiet words writhed +through ashen lips. + +“Because there is a picture of him in each of them! Oh, Mother, Mother, +how could you? You--an English girl! And it was not for his money! I +know that. It would not have hurt me quite so much, if it had been!” + +“His money had nothing at all to do with it.” + +“Oh! how I hate him! I hate him--I loathe him!” + +“Ivy!” the mother sobbed. + +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. + +“I am a beast to hurt you! But I can’t help it, I can’t help it!” the +girl sobbed. + +“I don’t want you to help it, dear.” + +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?” + +“Many.” Ruby Sên smiled down at her girl tenderly. + +“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.” + +“Ivy! My little Ivy!” + +“I will, Mother!” + +“Don’t punish me that way, dear.” + +“You are punishing me!” + +“Punishing you, Ivy--now!” + +“Yes!--Mother, will you marry Lord Whitmore--for me? _That_ would help +me--make life so much easier for me.” + +“I cannot do that. I never will do that, Ivy.” Mrs. Sên spoke kindly, +but the firmness of her will in that was unmistakable. + +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 was--caged behind bars she could not +break--that nothing ever could break; the cruel bars of distorted, +disconsonant race. + +“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.” + +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. + +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.” + +Ivy Sên continued her miserable pacing up and down. Her eyes were bad. +Her face was hard. + +But in the very whirl and surge of her pain she was suffering for her +mother. + +Mrs. Sên was suffering for her child. + +Again the mother waited, while she could. + +“Ivy!” + +Ivy paused and turned. + +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. + +Ivy hesitated, faltered--then went to the mother, threw herself down at +her mother’s knees. + +“I wish I had the pluck to kill myself!” + +Mrs. Sên made no protest. The only reply she made was the touch of her +hand on Ivy’s hair. + +“We must dress now, dear,” Ivy said after a moment--a 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.” + +“Do you care to go--to-night?” Mrs. Sên asked. + +“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. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +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: + +“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. + +Roland Curtis sank down into the big lounge chair, moistened his lips +impatiently, and read. + +The signature had surprised him--not pleasantly. The contents of the +note perturbed him uncomfortably--What a little cat! + + “What’s the use of hiding? Mabel Wade was furious that you backed out + at the eleventh hour. She had to ask her 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. + + “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 _she_ wasn’t in the gallery, you know, until afterwards. + She is expecting you to call. _I want you to._ You aren’t afraid of + me, are you. Cousin?” + +“The little yellow cat!” Curtis muttered, with an angry frown. + +He read the letter again--to him the most upsetting letter he ever had +received. + +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!” + +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. + +Mrs. Sên was out; Miss Sên was at home. Worse--she was alone. + +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. + +“Cousin Roland” was horribly embarrassed. He did _not_ 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. + +Miss Sên met him gaily. She was not embarrassed and she bent herself to +amuse and reassure him. + +She succeeded measurably. + +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. + +“She talks all right,” he confided to Gaylor in the Club billiard-room +that night. + +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 _early_. You had to ride early, if you +got it in at all, with all there was to do every single day. _Must_ +he go? Mother would be so sorry to have missed him. “You _will_ come +again, won’t you?--to see Mother--and me. I know everybody now. Cousin +Roland; but I have not many friends.” + +“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!” + +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. + +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 +_cousin_. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +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. + +It looked like a modest enough curio shop but the pundits 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.” + +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 _were_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Kow Li was richly but soberly clad in dark blue brocade. His coat was +buttoned with delicate peach-blow corals exquisitely 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 and his outraged sense of fit +social behavior broke through his immediate sense of servitude in +protesting words. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +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. + +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.” + +“Well--you’re old, aren’t you, Kow?” + +“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.” + +“Come off it, Kow Li,” the boy chuckled, swinging a disrespectful leg +back and forth against the costly table. “Draw it milder, old dear.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“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?” + +“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.” + +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 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. + +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. + +Ruben’s blue eyes came back at last to the patient yellow face. + +“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!” + +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. + +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.” + +“I wonder if I shall ever see that Ho-nan home of mine?” the boy said +wistfully. + +“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 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. + +“I wonder!” Ruben sighed. + +“May the unworthy servant presume to ask his illustrious lord a +question?” + +“Fire ahead! Want to know which gee is going to lick the favorite on +Thursday? Don’t I wish I knew!” + +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.” + +“And you know as much about horses as you do about porcelains and +paintings, don’t you, Kow?” + +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. + +“He trusted you in all things, I think,” Ruben said gravely, speaking +again in Chinese. + +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. + +“He rode well, you say!” + +“My lord!” The two whispered words were a pæon of praise. They +acclaimed Sên King-lo the greatest rider who ever had ridden; a +_slight_ exaggeration, that to Kow Li was none. + +“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 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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +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. + +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. + +Ruben thanked his stars it was only one. + +“Wait a bit, though. I _would_ 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?” + +The old Chinese’s face beamed with gratitude. + +“Your servant has sent some wine, my lord,” Kow said presently. “It is +excellent wine, my lord.” + +“I bet it is!” Ruben Sên’s wine was as admired at Cambridge, as his +tobaccos were, though less lavishly used. + +“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.” + +Ruben slid off the writing table, rushed upon Kow and threw a riotous +arm across the blue brocade-clad shoulders. + +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.” + +“Rites and flummery, rubbish! I’ll hug you all I like, you dear old +reprobate!” + +“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.” + +“I wish the fellows at the Hall could hear you, Kow. They’d raise a +hell of a rag.” + +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. + +“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. + +“China!” Kow Li said gravely. + +Ruben sat down on the window ledge and mused. + +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. + +Ruben twitched back the window’s amber curtain. “London is ugly--this +part of London,” he said presently. + +Kow smiled--a slow, deferential, wise old smile. + +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. + +If Kow Li understood the scrutiny, he gave no sign and he certainly +felt no resentment. + +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. + +“Kow Li?” + +“My lord?” + +“Can you lend me some money?” + +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?” + +Ruben sighed again. “A great deal of money,” he answered regretfully. + +Kow Li beamed. + +“A million, Kow?” + +“Pounds, English, sir?” + +Ruben nodded sadly. + +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. + +“In a week, my lord--unless it inconveniences you to wait so long.” + +“I need part of it _now_, Kow. How much now?” + +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. + +“Not quite two thousand now, my lord; seventy thousand to-morrow by the +Hour of the Horse; all in a week.” + +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.” + +It was pitiful to see; the way the old man’s face fell. + +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. + +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. + +“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. + +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. + +“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. + +“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 _all_ the +time--at least I can’t--there are so many more interesting things to +do. And money isn’t interesting, Kow Li.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“What am I to hold my wealth in trust for when it comes into my +control, Kow Li?” + +“For China!” Kow’s reply was swift and grave. + +“For China,” the boy said musingly. + +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.” + +“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 +_Shu Chia_--the “Reverence Books”--of the Chinese home in a Bloomsbury +side street. “What will his worm’s master read to-day?” + +“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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Two hours had gone before Ruben slowly closed the old book. + +“That was good!” the boy said. + +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. + +Ruben looked at his watch and laughed. “Too late to dine at home now. +Never mind--let us eat, Kow.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“When my mother was in China with my father,” Ruben said, “you were not +with them, were you, Kow?” + +“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.” + +“They were in China nearly a year?” + +“Nine moons,” Kow told him, “from the Pomegranate Moon to the Moon of +the Peach.” + +“My father took her to Ho-nan; to our old home there? Mother met our +family?” + +Kow Li bowed. “To the Ho-nan home of the Sêns, that 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.” + +“Did my mother like China? Was she happy there?” + +“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.” + +“They loved each other very dearly, didn’t they, Kow?” + +“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. + +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. + +“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. + +“You will love, my lord,” the old man said gravely. “You are a man.” + +“I wonder if I’ll ever love some girl greatly!” The boy spoke shyly +now, but he laughed again softly. + +“You will love greatly, Sên Ruben,” Kow Li answered proudly. “You are a +Sên.” + +“Wonder which it will be?” Ruben spoke almost to himself. + +“My lord?” Kow Li said huskily. + +“An English girl--like my mother, or a girl of my father’s race?” Ruben +explained. + +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. + +“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 _not_ like it?--did not wish to live there?” + +Kow Li’s face was expressionless. + +“Tell me, Kow,” the boy persisted. + +“My lord, this servant cannot tell what he does not know.” + +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. + +One more question he asked though: “What really killed my father, Kow? +He was young when he died. What killed him?” + +“The pill-men never knew,” Kow Li answered. “And they were eminent +pill-men.” + +But Kow Li knew what had killed Sên King-lo; and he knew that some day +he might tell Sên Ruben. + +But he would not tell unless he saw it necessary, or until the hour had +fully ripened. + +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. + +Ruben fell upon the bountiful meal with boyish gusto and appetite. + +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. + +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. + +It was midnight when Ruben--fortified by two half crowns--left Kow Li +bowing low at the shop’s open front door. + +The meal had not lasted so long as that. They had made music--Chinese +music on _kin_ and _i-pang-lo_, on _pan-kou_ and thin lacquered flute, +and talked again--of Ho-nan. + +Ruben walked home after all--slowly, thinking. + +Kow Li went upstairs again, up to the high room--to pray. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Mrs. Sên, in her prettiest rest gown, lounged happily in her favorite +chair, her hand on Ruben’s hair. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben was looking up at Sên’s portrait, studying it gravely, as he very +often did. + +“I wish I were more like him!” the boy said at last. “Don’t you, +Mother?” + +“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. + +“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. + +“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 standing there; and I could not find even the tiniest +improvement to suggest. It is a wonderful picture, Ruben.” + +“You have no picture of Father in Chinese clothes, have you? Not even a +photograph?” + +“Oh--no.” The quick reply came a shade unsteadily. And Mrs. Sên dreaded +what Ruben might ask her next. + +“I wish you had,” Ruben said. “We ought to have. It’s an indignity to +his memory, and to us, that we haven’t.” + +Mrs. Sên was thankful that her boy’s face was still turned from +hers--he still gazing at his father’s picture. + +“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. + +“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. + +“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!” + +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. + +“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.” + +“I think I looked rather nice, dear.” Mrs. Sên’s little 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. + +“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.” + +“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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +“You wouldn’t like to live in China, would you, Mother?” + +“I don’t think you would, dear.” + +“It is my country,” he reminded her. But he did not repeat the question +she had evaded. + +“I feel sometimes that I ought to be there. China needs her sons now.” + +“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.” + +Ruben grinned at that. + +“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?” + +“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.” + +“Why haven’t you? Do.” + +“Ivy wouldn’t like it.” + +“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.” + +“Ivy wouldn’t. Ivy can be trying; we both know--” + +“This is your father’s house, Ruben. While I am its mistress no +countryman of his will receive any discourtesy in it.” + +“Ivy can convey a good deal of insult from under the edge of an eyelid. +I don’t think we’ll try it, Mother.” + +Mrs. Sên nodded wearily. She knew only too well. She knew that better +than Ruben did. + +“We will find a way,” she told him. “I never have wished to keep you +from knowing your father’s countrymen.” + +“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 _Ivy Sên_ very long; she’s too lovely.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“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. + +“And you would like to--go there?” Ruby Sên caught her breath a little. + +“I want to, more than I have ever wanted anything. Do you mind, Mother?” + +“Of course not!” She hoped he had not heard the tremble she had felt in +her voice. “When?” + +“Soon, Mother. Couldn’t I go for a few months soon after I come down?” + +“Why not?” Mrs. Sên said brightly. “Of course you shall. But you won’t +see _much_ of China in a few months, Rue. It’s a vast place.” + +“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.” + +“Yes!” his mother agreed through lips that felt stiff. But her boy had +said, “before _we_ decide.” We--the sweetest word a mother can hear +from a son, said as Ruben had said it. + +“You couldn’t come too? You wouldn’t leave Ivy just now, I suppose?” +Ruben asked wistfully. + +“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!” + +“No fear!” was Ruben Sên’s sturdy answer. “May we leave what it is to +be until I come back from Ho-nan?” + +“You will come back? You will come back to me, Ruben?” + +Ruben Sên laughed merrily, a laugh that caressed her. “I _must_,” 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.” + +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. + +But the pictured eyes only smiled at her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +“May I announce myself?” Sir Charles Snow asked at the door, ajar in +the afternoon heat. + +Mrs. Sên made no reply to a question that needed none, and Ruben sprang +up in welcome. + +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?” + +“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.” + +“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?” + +There was a pause; Sir Charles seemed a little unready to go on. + +“Well?” Mrs. Sên prompted him gently. + +“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.” + +“Roland Curtis! That nincompoop!” Ruben blurted hotly. “Good Lord! She +mustn’t do that!” + +“I never have known Ivy drift into anything in her life,” Mrs. Sên said +more quietly. + +“Well--that was just my way of putting it, perhaps,” Snow said +uncomfortably. + +“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’ll_ 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!’” + +“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 _your_ 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.” + +“What!” Ruben cried. + +And Mrs. Sên looked at Sir Charles in surprise. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“That’s what Emma says,” Snow murmured. + +“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.” + +Neither asked what the mother thought those reasons were. + +“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?” + +“No,” Snow answered promptly. “There is nothing against the +fellow--except that there is nothing to him. That’s worse!” + +“What do you suggest, Sir?” Ruben said. + +“Counter attraction,” Sir Charles told him. “Emma did,” he added +honestly. + +“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.” + +“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?” + +“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. + +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 so much of late, but a girl who was +happy, unaffectedly, girlishly happy. + +Ruby Sên’s heart stood still. The man’s white eyebrows went up a line. +Ruben’s hand tightened on his mother’s sleeve. + +They all jumped to the same conclusion. + +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. + +“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. + +“An escape, dear?” her mother asked her. + +“You bet I have! I was going to marry the wrong man. Wouldn’t that have +been awful?” + +“It would,” Snow asserted grimly. + +“Perfectly awful! And I had quite made up my mind to. But I never +shall.” + +The mother was watching her girl anxiously. Mrs. Sên had paled a little +as Ivy rattled on. + +Ruben spoke. “Do you mean that you have refused Roland Curtis?” he +demanded. + +“I have not!” + +Ruben turned upon her almost roughly. “You have accepted that fool!” + +“I have not!” Ivy retorted contemptuously. “_You_ 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.” + +“All right,” Ruben promised good-naturedly, “I never will again--if you +aren’t going to have him. I am quite willing never to speak of him +again as long as I live. I should get over it if I never saw him again +either.” + +Ivy laughed at her brother as good-naturedly as he had answered her. It +was not in Ivy Sên to hold rancor to-day. + +“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. + +“By the way, Rue, Roland hasn’t asked me--and he never will!” + +“How do you know?” + +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. + +“My, how late it is!” she exclaimed. “I must dress; so ought you, +Mother. We’ve people dining, you remember.” + +They heard her laughing still as she ran down the hall--and the mother +caught a note of tears. + +“Well!” Ruben turned to his mother. “What do you suppose has happened?” + +“Counter attraction,” Mrs. Sên answered gravely. + +“Another man!” + +Mrs. Sên nodded--almost sadly. + +“Was she serious?” Sir Charles asked. + +“Perfectly!” Mrs. Sên told him; her voice was low and strained, and her +eyes were troubled. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +He stayed three hours. + +Going from room to room still puzzled and amused, scarcely glancing at +the pictures, he came upon a picture that held him. + +And Ruben Sên had no wish to escape from the thralldom. + +He knew why he had had to come into Burlington House; the boy flushed a +little at the knowledge. + +He had not bought a catalogue. He went back and got one, and hurried +again to his picture. + +When he found its number in the catalogue, it told him nothing. + +“A Chinese Lady”--he had known that. And he had recognized the famous +R.A.’s signature scrawled on the canvas. + +He could find out who she was, of course--and easily enough. + +But he wanted to know now. + +He was going to know that girl. His countrywoman--and dressed as a +Chinese girl should be! + +She was even lovelier than Ivy! + +Ruben Sên was wrong there. But he was not the first brother to make +that mistake and he won’t be the last. + +And how much lovelier Ivy would look if she dressed like that! + +Ruben Sên was right there. + +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. + +Then--something throbbing in his veins told him that it was more than +that. + +Perhaps she was in London even now--or had the English artist been in +China, and painted her there? + +It didn’t matter. He would find her. + +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! + +“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.” + +And Ruben knew that the question he had asked, almost idly, in +Bloomsbury, was answered. + +Sên King-lo’s son would give Sên King-lo no Western daughter. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +But Ruben Sên had not forgotten China--the homeland he had never seen. + +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. + +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. + +For Ruben Sên believed that he had found his life’s meaning and his +future. + +Boys are like that sometimes. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +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. + +Roland Curtis was smoking in the biggest lounge chair. + +“Hello!” Curtis remarked. + +“Hello!” Ruben replied. + +“Been waiting for you since two. Billings said you’d be home to lunch.” + +“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. + +Curtis nodded. “Looked after me all right. Off to Africa--or somewhere. +Wanted a talk with you first.” + +“I turned into the Academy--hadn’t had a squint at the pictures this +year. I got interested, and let lunch slide.” + +“I wish I’d never seen the place,” Curtis remarked dejectedly. + +“Didn’t care for it this year?” + +“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.” + +“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. + +“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. + +“Oh--so they do,” Sên admitted apologetically. + +“It was worse than that. Creditors and accidental damages can be +squared with £ _s._ _d._ Some things can’t. This can’t.” + +“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. + +“Me. I can’t. The way I’m feeling about it, and am going to go on +feeling about it--don’t you know.” + +“Feeling about what?” + +“Ivy. Supposed you knew. She won’t have me.” + +So Curtis _had_ proposed to Ivy, and, of all places, at Burlington +House! + +“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.” + +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. + +“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 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.” + +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. + +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!” + +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. + +“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! + +“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.” + +Much of that was Greek to Ruben Sên, but what he did understand fitted +in with his mother’s conclusion on Friday. + +“Who is Gaylor?” he questioned. + +“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?” + +It was Sên’s turn to exclaim, “I’ll watch it.” He did, silently but +most emphatically. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +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 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. + +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. + +Sir Hugh Lester was in London. Ruben Sên did not find it hard to meet +him. + +But there it ended. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben Sên had to let it go at that. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +He wished to be alone with China at first; presently Kow probably might +join him, since Kow so greatly wished it. + +But he would start on his pilgrimage alone. + +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. + +Only she could have held him in Europe now, unless a Chinese girl had +come from her canvas and bade him stay! + +That did not happen. + +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. + +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 _not_ glad to see Ruben +go. Quite aside from the natural wrench of being without him for the +first time since his babyhood--Cambridge 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. + +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. + +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. + +“Ruby’s a fool to let him,” she told Sir Charles, “and you have no +business to let her let him.” + +Snow rarely contradicted his wife. On occasions he could do it flatly. + +“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.” + +“Oh--would you! He’ll probably come back with a Chinese wife!” Lady +Snow snapped. + +“The wisest thing he can do--if he must marry at all.” + +“Charlie!” + +“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.” + +“Lot of good it will do!” + +“I think it may. Ruben is a Chinese son--very.” + +“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!” + +“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.” + +“All the more reason to keep him out of China! But, mind you, I don’t +believe it!” + +“All the more reason to send him to China. You may not believe that +Ruben Sên is a Chinese, but I know it.” + +“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!” + +“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.” + +“She’d feel rotten over it--if Ruben _did_.” + +“She never regretted her Chinese marriage. And God knows she never had +any reason to.” + +“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.” + +“How?” + +“She must!” + +Sir Charles Snow smiled. + +“And if she hasn’t, she ought to!” + +“You are incorrigible!” Snow laughed. + +“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!” + +“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.” + +“Rubbish! Won’t he! Ruby didn’t marry without yours, did she?” + +“I do not happen to be Ruby’s father.” + +“Same thing,” Lady Snow interjected. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“And so it would be; and it would be damnably unfair to Ruben--unless +she asked him not to marry at all. And _that_ 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.” + +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.” + +“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 +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.” + +“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. + +“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.” + +“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!” + +“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 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.” + +“Tell me,” his wife repeated, “_why_ are you so opposed to Ruben’s ever +marrying?” + +“Ruby is not to hear it--nor any one.” + +Lady Snow nodded. It was promise enough to the man who knew her. + +“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. + +But her husband’s confidence had startled her, and in her a new and +disconcerting thought. + +“Do you mean to tell me that King-lo was not happy with Ruby; that he +regretted their marriage?” + +“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.” + +“What did he sacrifice?” Lady Snow asked gently. + +“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?” + +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 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 +_chef_, but never with her dentist or her physician. + +“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.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Ruben Sên had no grief at going. He was so filled with anticipation +that it left no chink or crevice for regret or sadness. + +Sir Charles Snow and Kow Li saw him off; Ivy wouldn’t. Mrs. Sên felt +that she could not. + +All that mattered nothing to Ruben. His heart was singing--all the way +to China. + +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 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. + +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. & 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. + +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. + +Sir Charles Snow and Ruben Sên did not titter at Kow Li, or wish to; +nor did they smile or suppress a smile. + +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 _chop_ that marked Kow Li the servant and thrall of +the great clan of Sên--theirs from birth till death--and after. + +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. + +And Ruben Sên’s eyes misted. + + * * * * * + +No one stood waiting on the Victoria City pier to welcome him to China. + +Ruben had wished it so. + +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. + +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 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. + +No boy entirely, or fundamentally, Western could have felt so, or have +been so unashamed that he did feel so. + +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. + +He lifted his eyes to the bamboo belaced and lacquered green and +gold-gray hillside, and was glad! + +Then he went slowly across the deck, down the gangway. + +And Ruben Sên was in China. + +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. + +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. + +It did not seem strange to Sên as he stepped ashore--neither the place +nor its jabbering yellow crowds. + +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. + +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. + +His was an experience as indescribable as it was enormous. But it is +not inexplicable, for it was his by birthright. + +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, _know_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That was friendship and companionship enough. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Ruben spent a week in Hong Kong, and then went slowly to Peking. + +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. + +Peking baptized Ruben Sên with fire. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Much as Peking had hurt him, it had given him his manhood. + +He had come to Peking adolescent; he left it full grown, adult, as a +Chinese of twenty should be. + +He was barely nineteen in England, but here, a Chinese in China, Sên +Ruben was twenty, since he had been one year old at his birth, in +the somewhat illogical way that the Chinese count the years of human +lifetimes. + +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. + +Sên Ruben discarded Europe in Peking. + +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 _he_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _fight_ 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. + +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 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +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 _T’ien +Ching_, read it to them, translating slowly as he read, and bade them +council with him. + +Should he speed to Hong Kong, greet their white kinsman 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. + +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 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.” + +“Will he cut our gods into seven pieces--the profane heathen one?” a +woman shrilled in alarm. + +“He will demand his seventh share of all!” Sên C’hian Fan asserted +bitterly. + +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 _T’ien +Ching’s_ honorable-rule-place, and ko’towed thrice before he begged +with wheezy labored breath, “Grant, lord-one most high and ancient, +that this thy 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.” + +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. + +“We will set our dogs upon him at the outer gate,” a Sên stripling +cried hotly. + +Some counseled gentler methods, one spoke of fire, two suggested +poisons. + +“Let us keep him our prisoner,” spoke another. + +That was how the Sêns in Ho-nan took the news of Sên Ruben’s coming. + +They would have none of him. They rejected and forbade him. + +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 _T’ien Ching_ 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. + +Then a woman, smiling coldly, rose and stood before Sên C’hian Fan, +gestured them imperiously, contemptuously to silence. + +Instantly all were still. + +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. + +La-yuên’s place was great in Sênland. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_pai-fang_ memorial-arch when she went on-High, and she had great place +and voice among them while she lived. + +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 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. + +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. + +“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?” + +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. + +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. + +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, “_Is_ the man 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--” + +An Pin’s question was not finished. La-yuên caught a bamboo from Kow +Yong Shu--the _doyen_ 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. + +“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 our old +queen-one Sên Ya Tin, and to greet his kindred. The Sên shall have a +Sên welcome.” + +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. + +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. + +But An Pin kept from La-yuên’s path. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +When Ruben tore himself away from Peking he still was wearing English +dress. + +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. + +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. + +But Ruben had no mind to cross his fathers’ threshold wearing Western +garments. + +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. + +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. + +It called him. + +Sên bade his bearers lower his litter, and leaving it bade them +wait--he might be some time. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Nine-storied, up-tapering, the pagoda, like the temple and out-houses, +was angular; like them its roof dipped down in 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 temple priests smoke their pipes so--when they have the +tobacco. + +Matins! The priests were singing in the temple. + +The rite was not long; and presently they came to sniff the early day’s +fragrance or to forecast the day’s humor. + +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. + +Sên Ruben rose, and bowed them the obeisance of respect. + +Three returned it but the novice only stared. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _soy_ because of a thought that came of London +restaurants, lobster mayonnaise, Perrier Jouet ’76, pêche Melba, his +mother’s _chef_, the service her butler gave. + +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. + +For always the way of the Eurasian is hard and perplexed--a taint of +his blood, a taint in his mind: canker. + +The gods-room intrigued Sên Ruben and it rested and 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. + +It was packed with gods though only two or three were of fine +workmanship. + +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! + +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! + +_Lung Wang_, the god of clouds and water, was lacquer, and very lovely. + +The other gods--more than forty--were tawdry and hideous. + +_Kuan Ti_ above the high-altar was but a fresco, ill-drawn, badly +colored--as were his wife on his left hand and his concubine on his +right. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +What did English-born, London-bred Ruben think of it all? + +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. + +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. + +He had gained a lasting memory; he had made a lasting friend, even +though they two never met again. + +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. + +“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.” + +But Sên Ruben knew that he should not tarry long in China, now; knew +that he should keep his tryst in London with his mother, whether his +kinsmen hailed and claimed him or rejected and forbade him. + +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. + +Ruben felt queer--and looked it. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 trudged slowly down the rough path and off across +Ho-nan. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +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. + +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 _li_ by the outpouring of some village or townlet; all coming forth +to keep the Beginning-of-Spring festival. + +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 _Li Ch’un_. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Those carried there in their sedan chairs were gentlemen--not 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. + +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. + +Hello! What was that? + +Not--but it must be--the Spring-Ox! So--this was _Li Ch’un_, the great +greeting-of-Spring festival, oddly belated till now. + +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. + +Sên Ruben did not smile at the weird absurd Spring-Ox, for he knew what +it meant--and he was Chinese. + +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. + +Sên Ruben had come home. + +Sên Ruben knew that he had come home. + +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 people, the eager, symbolical +procession--all were sacramental to him. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 almost a moon of festival and +holiday. He would help to slaughter and burn the gigantic Ox and the +_Mang-Shên_--the huge paper man that was following it there, its driver +and plowman, the hardworked god of agriculture. + +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 _Ts’ai Shên_, the god of wealth, work hardest of +all. _Mang-Shên_ rarely rests, _Ts’ai Shên_ never rests at all. + +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 _Mang Shên_ was hatless, but wore +very stout shoes. The inordinate number of _Mang’s_ garments repeated +the yellow-headed Ox’s promise of intense heat; the scarf of white +that belted _Mang Shên’s_ 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. + +Sên Ruben was glad to see _Mang_ girdled with white, and was glad of +the promise of heat that the Ox and its driver gave; Sên Ruben rejoiced +in heat. + +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 _Li Ch’un_. + +His home-coming should be in some tranquil hour of quiet. + +To-night he would lie where his chairmen were camped beside a +willow-hung gurgling stream where the pink-backed trout were snoozing. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Long before he reached his camp Ruben knew that some one was following +him. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben swung round and waited. + +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 +_Li Ch’un_ was a worship of Spring. + +The woman came more quickly on, and when she had gained to where he +stood waiting, ko’towed and threw herself at his feet. + +In trouble? Wanted his help? he wondered. + +She should have it! The first of his race who had claimed his succor +here in the Province of his fathers! + +“What would you?” Sên Ruben asked--and his voice was a promise. + +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. + +“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. + +“Who are you?” he questioned her gently. + +“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.” + +“How comes it that you know me?” + +“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 _Mang-Shên_ 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.” + +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! + +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 a pretty painted child, no hands of +a man, save only the hands of Sên Po-Fang, had touched her before. + +“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.” + +“It leads to my camp,” Ruben told her. “There I will lie to-night, and +to-morrow, when their busied time of _Li Ch’un_ is past, will I beg the +welcome at the gate of our house.” + +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 _Li Ch’un_ and _Mang-Shên_. 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. La-yuên is skilled +in the touch of the music lutes. I entreat you, come home!” + +“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.” + +“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!” + +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.” + +“Must so it be, great lotus bud of a lotus clan?” La-yuên asked +sorrowfully. + +“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 _Mang-Shên_; 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.” + +“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 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.” + +“That you shall not,” Ruben said gently, “none of it! I forbid it.” + +La-yuên held out her hands in entreaty. + +“I forbid it! Truly, kind-one, my camp-place is well furnished with all +that I need.” + +La-yuên wrung her hands. + +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.” + +“I would see it,” Sên Ruben said eagerly. “Can I see it from yonder +hill-slope?” + +“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.” + +Sên Ruben caught his breath, turned and followed La-yuên without a word. + +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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +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 _pai-fang_ 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.” + +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. + +Ruben had seen it before in his dreams. For often Kow Li had boasted +and crooned to him of the pearl-of-all-temples. + +But Ruben Sên had not seen this! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +About three of the great outer pillars enormous metal, 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. + +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. + +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. + +Beyond the temple a _pai-fang_ 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. + +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 +_pai-fang_ were a prayer for the peace of his father’s soul. + +Sên Ruben gazed and knelt, looked long, and covered his face with his +sleeve. + +There was utter silence here. + +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. + +Sên Ruben looked again. + +His face was as still as the squirrel’s, almost as soft and shy, but +his heart was quivering; his being shook. + +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 _pai-fang_ and temple said to him. + +They spoke; he heard. + +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. + +Who shall say? + + * * * * * + +Sên Ruben rose. + +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. + +“Can you lead me there?” Ruben asked, without turning his head or his +eyes. + +“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. + +“I would go,” Ruben murmured. + +“It is no too far,” the woman answered. + +“I would lie there to-night--alone. I wish that none may know.” + +“No one need know,” La-yuên told him. “It is this same 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.” + +“To-morrow’s morrow at the Hour of the Snake I would go as I have +come--unseen, unknown.” + +“It shall be,” La-yuên said. + +“Lead me the way.” Ruben turned to her. + +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. + +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 _ginko_ 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. + +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. + +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 crunch of their +padded feet as the man and woman went across it, and in Ho-nan even the +grass is sweet. + +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. + +The day-star marked the Hour of the Hen on the temple eaves and stained +its gold on the green of the temple steps. + +Sên Ruben stood and watched the woman while she replenished the +fragrant smoldering fire stored in the gray stone pelican’s body. + +Then she left him without a word passing between them. + +He knew that she would come as he had bade. La-yuên knew that he would +keep his vigil alone. + +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. + +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 _pai-fang_. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +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. + +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. + +Ivy Sên loved fiercely--so intensely that everything else was wiped +from her consciousness. + +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. + +But Ruby Sên was pathetically thankful that Ivy was going to marry a +man whom she loved, simply and sweetly as happy girls did. + +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. + +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. + +To Gaylor he could find no objection. + +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. + +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 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. + +Lady Snow pounced upon her husband as soon as Gaylor had gone. The +interview had not been long. + +“Well?” she demanded. + +“Right enough, I think,” Sir Charles said a trifle drearily, “at least +he is, I mean.” + +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. + +“So--” she purred, “you didn’t turn him down!” + +“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.” + +“Charlie!” + +“It’s true, dear. I am sure that he does not know it; but I do.” + +“Why did he propose to her then? You say he has character; every one +who knows him well says that.” + +“I said that I believed he had more than the average share. In my +opinion the average share is very little.” + +“Why do you think he will find a thick skin useful?” + +“Often is.” And Lady Snow knew that, try as she might, she could drag +no clearer answer than that from her husband. + +“Why does he want to marry Ivy, if he is not in love with her?” + +“I did not say that he was not in love with her. He is--moderately.” + +“Moderate love!” + +“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.” + +“Ivy loves him very much. She is a changed creature.” + +“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.” + +“You don’t mean--” Emma Snow began miserably. + +“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 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.” + +“I hope you are wrong!” + +“I hope I am. Time will show.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The man drew the girl still closer, and she buried her face on his coat +with a little fluted sob. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +The Sêns were washing their cats. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 _Li +Ch’un_--was a great day in the princely Ho-nan homestead. + +Like every great function in China, Wash-the-Cats had begun almost +before dawn’s first faint crack. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The children ran and toddled and crawled in and out 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. + +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. + +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. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 cats, lest human eyes pay the penalty of lost sight for the +observance of an old custom. + +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. + +It was not the only scratch inflicted as the cleanly work went on; but +the Sêns worked steadily. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +If there were but the long cue of a hundred cats here, there 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. + +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. + +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 forgotten. The toilet of the ears is a terrible +business; a careless pen stated prematurely that the worst was over. + +But every sorrow has its end--even in the life of a cat in China. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +Sun Flower flew towards the temple--the temple that Sên Ya Tin had +builded to Sên King-lo. + +Sên C’hian Fan sprawled up unsteadily and made after. + +The onlookers were hushed and appalled. + +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. + +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. + +The cat won. + +Sên dashed after him into the temple. + +Again the cat dodged the man, hurtled out of the temple it had defiled, +down the steps and up a lemon tree. + +None followed Sên C’hian Fan into the temple--none might do that unless +he, the head clansman, bade it. + +Sên C’hian Fan lingered in the temple. + +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. + +They were wrong. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +Sên C’hian Fan’s face softened. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Blue English eyes and Chinese black eyes met--and locked. + +Sên C’hian Fan spoke first. + +“Greeting!” + +Ruben sprang to his feet, sprang up to make the salutations of respect +and obedience to his elder and kinsman. + +Sên C’hian Fan bowed in return to Sên Ruben. + +“Thou art welcome, far-come one.” + +“Thy servant has come home, sir my lord,” the boy said pleadingly but +proudly. + +Sên C’hian Fan smiled. “Come to thy rice, boy-one kinsman from beyond +the edge of the world.” + +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. + +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? + +But he would not question him here. Already they had chattered more +than was fit in the temple of a sacred tablet. + +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. + +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. + +And some of the peasant-ones fell down on their faces, prostrating +themselves half in fear, half in worship, thinking that a spirit-one +had come to them with Sên C’hian Fan from the temple of Lord Sên +King-lo. + +And Sên Ruben knew that the lord-one and _doyen_ 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. + +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. + +Devastated Wash-the-Cats was completed that day without the presence of +the clan’s headsman; most irregular! + +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 +_k’o-tangs_, 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. + +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. + +Host and guest faced each other across a small marble-topped table. +Their seats were stools. + +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. + +At first they said but little; C’hian Fan was hungry, Ruben after his +long fast was famished. + +But the man who was at home and accustomed here watched the other with +devouring curiosity, although he did not appear to watch him. + +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. + +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. + +When at last he asked, Ruben told him; gave the credit where it was due. + +“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.” + +“He has prospered exceedingly,” Ruben stated. “Li is a very rich +man--and a staunch friend!” + +“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. + +“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.” + +“What if I will not permit you to go back?” + +Ruben smiled a question--what did his kinsman mean? + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“No Sên will!” C’hian Fan answered. “When must you leave us, Sên Ruben?” + +“Long before the _ying su_ moon, I fear.” + +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 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. + +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. + +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? + +When would the English Sên speak? The sooner the better--speak, take, +and go! + +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. + +“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 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.” + +“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.” + +“That is what you wish?” + +“That is what I ardently wish, Sên C’hian Fan. I have crossed the world +for that; it is my soul’s desire.” + +“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. + +The answer was prompt. “Only that, nothing but that,” Ruben said simply. + +And Sên C’hian Fan did not believe Sên Ruben. + +“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. + +Sên C’hian Fan was watching Ruben intently. + +Ruben laughed. + +“Hello, old bean!” he said in English. + +Bruin growled at the unaccustomed speech--or perhaps at the easy +mockery in the white man’s voice. + +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. + +This stranger, who had come to spy and to despoil, was Sên-like, in +some ways! + +“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.” + +“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.” + +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. + +But he did venture a question that his seniority and their kinship gave +him full right to ask. + +“You have seen the maiden you desire?” + +“I have not met her--yet,” Sên Ruben said softly. + +Sên C’hian Fan was much puzzled. + +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. + +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? + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +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 _ruyie_. But for +it, functions were husks to La-yuên the widowed concubine. + +Her children were dead--her babe whom Sên Ruby had played with, and her +babe she had borne her dead lord. + +When Sên Po-Fang had died, La-yuên his concubine had died too! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Wash-the-Cats did not interest her. The welfare and order of larder +and _k’o-tang_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +La-yuên had counted without Sun Flower the meek-faced, tiger-like +tortoise-shell. + +In the temple doorway she paused, and looked toward the tablet-altar. +It was there that Lord Sên Ruben would be waiting for her, keeping his +vigil in its filial sacredness to its last instant. + +Sên Ruben was not there. + +The woman paled. + +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. + +Sên Ruben was not there! + +Had he gone? Or had he been found and dragged away? + +Where was Sên Jo Hiêsen; where was An Pin? But she knew that they both +were at Wash-the-Cats, were at it hard. + +Who had done this thing? + +What had befallen Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo? + +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. + +Alack! Not here, not there! + +She would to P’wing Nog; only P’wing Nog could help her now, the +_hsien-jen_ who lived in the cave in the sulphur-hill, and who knew all +things--and could tell them, if he would. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +La-yuên bowed, almost knelt, as she drew aside for C’hian Fan and his +companion. + +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. + +“Whither goest thou so hastening?” C’hian demanded. + +“To the eel pond, eminent Sên C’hian Fan.” + +“Thou liest,” C’hian laughed. “Coming from it mayhap, but thou art not +going to it, not as thy lilies ran.” + +“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. + +Lung Tin turned his head and growled at her insolently. La-yuên cuffed +him soundly on his pointed ear. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +It was a poser! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +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. + +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 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. + +But, on the whole, he was happier here in China than he ever had been +before, for he knew that he should find _her_ 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. + +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. + +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. 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. + +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!” + +So! It was coming at last. Well--he had known it would come; and it was +but just, and the law, that it should. + +“I knew that my father’s people were very rich, that their holding here +in Ho-nan was almost a kingdom--” + +“It is a kingdom, Sên Ruben. Every great patriarchal Chinese home-place +is that,” C’hian Fan interpolated quietly. + +“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.” + +“Home? You mean _here_, Sên Ruben?” + +“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 +_why_ 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.” + +“Widow-ones re-wed in England, I have heard, and that it is held not +dishonorable to do so there.” + +“That is truth. But my lily-mother will not wed again.” + +“Art sure?” + +“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.” + +C’hian smiled. He did not doubt it! + +“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 _yuan_ 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 _yuan_, 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.” + +“Seventy million _yuan_! 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 wronged in the courtyards of Sên Ya +Tin--that I have come to claim my seventh share in the family wealth.” + +“I supposed you knew the law--and the family practice,” C’hian said +smoothly. + +“Oh! Yes, I know that much of Chinese law. I have had a good tutor, +Cousin C’hian Fan.” + +“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. + +“But that does not matter,” Ruben laughed back. + +“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.” + +“You!”--Ruben’s voice cracked in his surprise and hurt--“Sên C’hian +Fan, you! _You_ 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.” + +“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 wits with _the_ Sên, blind him with willow leaves! A +half-Chinese outwit in indirection a Chinese whose beard was gray! + +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.” + +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 _yuan_--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.” + +“We should not miss it, Ruben,” the older Sên said oddly. + +“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.” + +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. + +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. + +“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!” + +“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 disobey her._ 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----” + +“An honorable gentleman,” C’hian said, “he is held high in China.” + +“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 _all Chinese_. +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 _would go_. “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 _yuan_ 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.” + +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. + +“Come when you come, always you shall have my love and 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.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +Sên Jo Hiêsen was yet for Ruben’s winning; and Ruben did not win Sên Jo +Hiêsen so quickly or so simply. + +They both saw--as the old man limped to them--that he was troubled and +agitated. + +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. + +“It has come!” + +“The new dwarf-tree?” C’hian asked lazily. + +“War has come!” + +Sên C’hian Fan took Jo Hiêsen’s news lightly. “There always is war +in China somewhere. Which of the brigand _tuchuns_ 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.” + +Jo Hiêsen huddled down on to the ground with great dignity, but he +would not smoke. + +“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.” + +Sên C’hian Fan laughed--but Sên Ruben was listening eagerly and his +young blood pounded in its veins, jumping angrily through his heart. + +“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 _yamêns_ 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.” + +“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. _This is war!_ 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?” + +“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. + +But the younger listener was well fired by Jo’s vivid words. + +“What hast thou heard, what message has reached our gates? May I know, +venerable, eminent Sên Jo Hiêsen?” Ruben begged. + +“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.” + +“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?” + +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. + +“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?” + +“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 +_tingchai_ 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 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. + +“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.” + +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. + +“Which of these mushroom generals would you join, which of them could +your conscience support, which your taste belly? Who are they? _What_ +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 _kuei_ +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. +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 +_Tuchun_ 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.” + +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. + +“I go to the war,” he repeated almost sulkily. + +“I will go with you, estimable Sên Jo Hiêsen.” + +“Why?” Jo Hiêsen and C’hian Fan exclaimed in a breath. + +“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!” + +“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.” + +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 would chain +Sên Ruben before he should follow mad Jo Hiêsen into death-trap ambush. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +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. + +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. + +But Sên Jo Hiêsen remembered how Ruben’s face had 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 Carmelite convent (though not like it in much +else) a Chinese harem is not a prison but a sanctuary. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben found her a glorious playmate; and she distinctly had a look of +Ivy--a lesser beauty but oddly like. + +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. + +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 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! + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +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 _kuei_--and +to associate with the men of his family, to be a Sên with the Sên men. + +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. + +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. + +When she made it, Sên Ruben refused her request. No Fee 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 _kuei_ 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. + +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. + +How ugly they were! How queer his boots felt! + +He hated himself in them almost as much as poor little Ivy had for +years hated her face in the glass. + +But he had promised; and he went, oddly uncomfortable, moving +awkwardly, feeling gauche, looking shy. + +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. + +The _kuei_ buzzed about him. + +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. + +Madame Sên, of Imperial blood, _doyenne_ here and supreme, 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. + +She called him nearer to her that she might examine and look her fill. +And she thanked him. + +“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?” + +“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. + +But No Fee giggled; and he heard it as a threat. + +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. + +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. + +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 _kuei_. Sên Ruben had no +doubt that, at some other time and place, No Fee would make her demand +again. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +Suddenly No saw his face darken, saw Ruben stand stock-still, nonplused +and perturbed. + +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. + +Sên Ruben had believed that Sên Toon had gone a-hawking 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. + +Toon made his way to Ruben. + +“Come into the woods with me,” Toon asked; “I want to talk to you.” +Toon said it in English. + +“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.” + +“Why change?” Sên Toon persisted in speaking English. + +Sên Ruben as persistently spoke in Chinese. “I loathe that you have +caught me in this masquerade that Sên No Fee extorted.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“Sên King-lo dressed so?” Sên Toon asked. + +“_In Europe_,” 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.” + +“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.” + +Ruben yielded. + +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. + +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. + +“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. + +“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.” + +Ah! Ruben pricked up his ears, and his face that had been all sympathy +was half clouded with fear. + +“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. + +“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 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.” + +“And there is some one else?” Ruben probed gently. + +“Ha?” Toon asked dully; he had not caught Sên Ruben’s meaning. + +“Some other maiden you love and long to wed?” Sên Ruben explained. + +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!” + +“It seems not to work out so,” Ruben protested. “All the wives in our +_kuei_ are happy, Sên Toon.” + +“They don’t know any better,” Sên Toon grumbled contemptuously. + +“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 _know_, that marriage success, marriage contentment in +China is to success and contentment of Western marriage as Omi is to a +hillock of clover.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“Since you love no other maiden,” he said, “surely all will be well. +Your father is wise. He will have selected a beautiful maid who is as +kind and accomplished as she is beautiful. Both your brothers dote on +their wives.” + +“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. + +“Does your father know, Sên Toon? He loves you greatly.” + +“No one knows but you. I could hold it no longer,” Sên Toon sobbed and +hid a tempest of tears in his sleeve. + +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. + +“Is it too late?” Sên Ruben suggested presently, “too late to ask your +honorable father’s indulgence, to tell him what you feel?” + +“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 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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Sên Ruben cried out in dismay when they left the thick-leaved grove and +he saw how high the day-star had risen. + +Sên Toon read his cousin’s thought. “I will get you to your pavilion +unseen, Sên Ruben. Our kinsmen shall not 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.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +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. + +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 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 _li_ beyond them lay the scraggling one-street +Village-of-the-Kows-Whose-Women-Spin-Well-and-Bear-Many-Sons. + +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? + +He caught his breath and his pulse quickened at the beauty of the +blossomed, hill-cupped place. + +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. + +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, love +of their color and story, and for the use we make of them with the +‘babies.’ For example of it, _Li Ch’un_. 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 _is_, 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 _Li Ch’un_, 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 _are_ 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.” + +“Shall we get in?” + +“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 +_yang-lao-ti_ unless she gave them welcome. _They_ 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, 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.” + +“Who does? Works in this wonderful orchard, brings her food and +prepares it?” + +“She does.” + +“Impossible--one feeble, bed-ridden old woman!” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“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 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!” + +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. + +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? + +Her face snarled, and she sprang to her height and stood facing them +both defiantly, enraged and forbidding. + +“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. + +Was it clairvoyance? Had gossip reached her? Or did she _see_ 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. + +“White son of the grandson of ruthless Sên Ya Tin, what have you here? +What seek you of Kow Lôk?” + +“Mother, I bring you gold.” + +Before Sên Toon could translate, she had held out her hand. “This +person will count it.” + +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. + +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 _yuan_ what Ruben knew he had given her. + +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. + +The floor was of hard beaten earth. The fireless _k’ang_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +“_Wah! Wah!_” the woman shrieked, “it smells of blood, 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.” + +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. + +Neither hoped to win aught from Lôk to-day. They motioned each other +that they would go. + +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. + +They turned to go. + +Kow Lôk laughed, and her laugh was ugly. + +“Stay!” she commanded. + +They knew that her word chained them. + +“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 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.” + +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.” + +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. + +He would come here again, he resolved, as he followed Toon down the +burnished crooked path and out of the unguarded gate. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +They did not speak of her again until they had made their way half +through the forest of walnut trees. + +“You promised me her story.” + +“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 _tsa hsing_ 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 _mei jên_ 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--” + +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. + +“--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, 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. + +“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 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.” + +“Did he never see her again?” + +“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 _was_ 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.” + +“And the girl, when he had gone?” + +“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 _yang-lao-ti_; she chose it herself. She would +have no other.” + +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 +_yang-lao-ti_ was. And he was ashamed to own that he did not. + +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 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.” + +“She chose a lovely _yang-lao-ti_, a fruitful and prosperous +‘nourish-old-age,’” Sên Ruben said. + +“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 +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.” + +Again they took their way in silence. + +Sên Toon was thinking bitterly of a bride that was coming to him from +Hu Peh--starting even now. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +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. + +Sên Toon was splendid in a bridegroom’s gorgeous trappings. + +The boy’s face was ashen--and looked the more ghastly for the gay +raiment he wore. + +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. + +Sên Toon was not embarrassed; social embarrassment is not a Chinese +trait; and his misery and distaste were far past mere embarrassment. + +His kindred gathered about him there at the Ting Tzŭ 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 _her_ 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 _kuei_ 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 _amah_ could have ruled her--certainly +her daughter-in-law would, if his wife pleased Sên Toon. True Sên Wed +O was regnant in the _kuei_; 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 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. + +Sên Ruben did not dwell in this or in any other _kuei_. 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? _Could_ he? It was jolly hard +lines on his cousin Toon, Ruben Sên thought. His sympathy was with Sên +Toon. + +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. + +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? + +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 moved, wearing right lordly the proud, peacocked +mandarin’s hat which even a peasant may ape at his bridal. + +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. + +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 _amahs_ could help them, and scampered off on their wee crippled +feet to prevent 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! + +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 _ch’ih_, watch all the ceremonies, bid her good-by in a +few days; but neither in _ch’ih_, _hsi hua t’ing_ 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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, were beautifully inscribed the names of the +fathers of the nuptial pair who still were those fathers’ chattels. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Sên Toon routed the pretty infant Amazons at last, or perhaps the +chief _amah_ 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. + +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, stamped at it contemptuously with +a red bridal boot, and carried the bride in his arms through the _ting +tzŭ lang_ and lesser _langs_, through the _t’ings ch’ih_, roofed and +decorated for the bridal ceremony. + +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. + +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 _ch’ih_--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. + +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 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 _t’ings_ and _langs_, 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! + +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 _ch’ih_, through the inner +garden and courtyard into her own room in the _kuei_, 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. + +For an hour the now wedded ones were left alone, then her bridesmaids +burst in upon them. And Sên Toon left 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. + +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. + +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 _kuei_, Sên Ruben +heard her chuckle. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +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. + +“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 _feet_, 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.” + +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 +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. + +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. + +“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. + +At the picnic among the graves some days later young Mrs. Sên Toon +made her real family _début_ 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. + +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’ _kuei_. 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. + +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +“What’s that to thee, plaguesome wanton-one? Cover thy face!” + +No whipped a film of gauze-scarf across a segment of her face, and +laughed roguish eyes at Sên Kai Lun across it. + +“Gods!” muttered Sên Kai Lun. Perhaps he knew what was coming, felt it. +And instantly Sên Ruben suspected. + +“_Who is he?_ You know him, my honorable father.” + +“Your _dishonorable_ tool-one!” Sên Kai Lun almost sobbed. + +“Hey, he was beautiful,” No Fee sighed. “I would wed with him. Send him +your _mei jên_.” + +“Never!” Sên Kai Lun ripped out with an oath. + +“I choose it,” No Fee told him softly. “Who is he? I will not be denied +to know his beautiful, honorable name.” + +“His name is the name of a toad, his family are thieves, his father is +a hyena.” + +No Fee laughed very softly. “I told you you knew him; the beautiful, +beautiful lord-one.” + +“This person knows him not,” Sên Kai Lun said sulkily. + +“Tush,” said No Fee, “you know who he is.” + +“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 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.” + +“The only son of your bitterest foe, Lun Koo Yêh; that is awkward,” +No Fee admitted. “_Yah! Yah!_ 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.” + +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. + +Ruben walked alone far into the night, when all the others had gone to +their lacquered pillows. Ruben paced and pondered. + +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. + +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. + +Oh, to find her! + +Too--he pondered and brooded over the words of a witch-woman’s +prophecy. Strange! Very strange! + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +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. + +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. + +Sên Ruben spoke to her of China, and she answered not unpleasantly. He +spoke to her of England. She made no answer. + +“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. + +“This woman-person saw you eye it the day your fool-one kinsman brought +you to spy upon her,” Kow Lôk answered pleasantly. + +“I would buy it, old-one.” + +“I will not sell it, White Sên.” + +“I will pay you big price for it.” + +“It has no price.” But she added, “Why do you covet it?” + +“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.” + +“Why should not Kow Lôk have her treasure, too? She has no other?” + +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. + +Then, “May I take a message?” Ruben asked her. + +“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.” + +Because he saw she wished it, Sên Ruben turned and left her; but first, +because she was old, and for the little 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. + +It was to tell the old peasant woman this that he had come again to her +peach-girdled nourish-old-age. + +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. +_Yie! Yie!_ 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.” + +Once more she called to him, over her shoulder when he had gone farther +from her, “No message, lord-one!” + +Ruben answered her, “No message, mother!” + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +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 that a grandmother-one would not live +so long to pester one. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That is no small part of the Eurasian’s tragedy--the inevitable revolt +of self against self. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +“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?” + +“Probably,” Sên Ruben said glumly. The more he heard of this strident, +emancipated Miss C’hi, the more he disapproved 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. + +“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!” + +No Fee hid her face in her hands--in mock modesty--and giggled +immoderately, winking wickedly at Sên Ruben between her wee slender +fingers. + +Sên Ruben pleaded a letter to write, and went off to his own pavilion. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +Early as the Chinese rise always, the Sêns were up well in advance of +that the next day. + +Guests of importance were coming. + +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. + +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. + +No Fee pelted from _k’o-tang_ 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +Sên Ruben trod softly as he went, reverencing the chastity of the young +unspoiled day’s virginity. + +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. + +“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. + +A tender shaft of glory slit through the darkness. + +Sunrise saluted Ho-nan. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +Behind the jubilant human throng stood a loose wall of ancient +trees--oak, soap, laurel, camphor, giant willow trees, delicate bamboos. + +The day-star was near to its rising. + +“Yah! Yah!” they whispered hoarsely. + +The fish were coming, each carried carefully in his tub of cedar. + +Plunk! Yolu-sun’s “Shark” was in the pool. + +Plunk! Plunk! Pling’s “Javelin” too was in the arena. + +How soon would they sense each other! How many heartbeats before they +dashed to combat?--two little gray fish, no longer than a man’s hand, +inert, uninteresting and uninterested. + +There was awesome silence. + +No Fee peeping from her hollow tree-trunk held her breath lest the +others hear it; a little frightened by the utter silence. + +Sss-s-ez! Javelin was swelling! + +He had seen his foe, or smelt him. + +Shark moved a tiny fin. + +Then they darted. + +Gray? Inert? Not now. + +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. + +The fighting fish locked, each gripping with his own the other’s jaws. + +Locked so, and teeth pierced--disputing every iota of the way--they +dragged each other back and forth half across the pretty placid pool. + +They were fighting fiercely. There would be no quarter. + +Blood trickles trailed them. These little Burmese fighting fish were +not “white blooded.” + +No Fee’s hands were icy, flaming red patched her face, her little mouth +was trembling. + +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. + +Back and forth, up and down, and their blood-trails with them, the +struggling fish pulled and pushed. + +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. + +Under the other, then above him, in turn; turn and turn about they +waged their blistering battle mercilessly, unfalteringly. + +They fought as if each knew that this first fight would be his last, +and had set his fish soul to die the victor. + +Suddenly they threw each other off. + +Shark turned and darted away--his torn fin dragging red and helpless +beside him. + +Javelin darted after, panting and exultant. + +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. + +The fight was over. + +Javelin floated dead and dismembered on the scale-strewn pool of battle. + +A little frightened Chinese girl was sickening in the hollow soap-tree. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_kuei_. + +The day-star leapt above the crinkling horizon, and the delicate +bamboos swayed joyously in the yellow sunlight. + +One bet and another--all told--two hundred thousand _yuan_ 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. + +All of which Sên Ruben missed--perhaps weakly, since he had come across +the world to see China as she was. + +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. + +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. + +Unless perhaps that he might find and win the maiden he dreamed of +always, there was no other thing which Sên Ruben so desired. + +Might it ever be? He wondered. + +For he knew that he would not urge it. It was not his mother’s consent +he longed for, but her willingness. + +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. + +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. + +“Who the devil!” Ruben muttered it in English. He had not learned to +think in Chinese in moments of young annoyance yet. + +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. + +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. + +No matter. His free time was over now, and he was not afraid of a +strange woman, if she was not of him. + +She did not seem to be. + +Whoever she was she came on confidently, almost as if she chose to meet +him. + +Sên Ruben wondered how they were going to pass each other--it would be +a tight squeeze! And tight squeezes of that sort were not countenanced +in China. + +The girl came on, neither quicker nor more slowly. + +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. + +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. + +And Ruben Sên looked full into the face of his lady of the picture. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +But C’hi Yamei spoke. + +“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. + +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. + +He wondered if she felt what thrilled and shocked through all his blood +as their hands held. + +All his life Sên Ruben would regret sharply that she first had spoken +to him in English. + +Why had she? he wondered. Some day he would ask her! + +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? + +No Fee had bragged and vouched that she would--and would like it! + +Ruben winced to think of it. + +But he knew that, no matter what she had done, he was sealed to her +forever, heart, soul and kindled body. + +“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!” + +“Angry with you!” Ruben spoke in Chinese--his first words to her--and +he did not say “Miss C’hi”--he would not. + +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. + +“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 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.” + +Sên Ruben did not say that the luck was his--the greatest luck he had +ever had; but perhaps he looked it. + +C’hi Yamei almost smiled as her eyes fell. + +“Did then my cousin No Fee watch, as she threatened me she would, the +fish fighting?” + +“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--” + +Ruben saw the dark eyes fill with tears, saw the red lips quiver as +C’hi Yamei broke her speaking abruptly. + +“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 _feel_.” + +“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?” + +Narrow as the path was, somehow they contrived to go side by side for +most of it; and as they walked they talked. + +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. + +He liked English ways for English girls, but he felt that they profaned +Chinese girlhoods. + +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. + +They chatted as they went; and C’hi Yamei did not speak to him again in +English. + +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 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. + +They went slowly through the sunset, through the bamboo coppice and +through the meadows of little, smiling wild flowers. + +And Sên Ruben rejoiced that C’hi Yamei was not clad in Western garments. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +They two were excluded--Jo Hiêsen not suspecting that he was, Ruben +rather more than suspecting it. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +It did not inconvenience Sên Ruben. + +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. + +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. + +C’hi Yamei walked among the fragrant-blossomed, fruiting peach-trees +sedately; gracious, maidenly and shyly responsive. + +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. + +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. + +Yamei, speaking softly, told Sên Ruben of her mother who had gone +on-High years ago. + +Ruben told C’hi Yamei of his mother who was a white rose. + +Ruben told her of his sister Sên Ivy, than whom but one maid was +lovelier. + +“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. + +He knew now why she had, but he asked to hear how she would tell it--if +she told it. + +She did not tell it, but her answer was not untruthful. + +“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 _had_ sense.” + +“That is improbable,” Sên Ruben remarked gravely. + +“It is improbable,” C’hi Yamei agreed as gravely. + +“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?” + +“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!” + +“It is the tongue I love; the tongue of my father’s fathers!” + +“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!” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“Would you like to be a bird, Sên Ruben?” + +“Nay, C’hi Yamei,” Ruben answered, “I like best that I am a man, and +where I am.” + +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. + +Perhaps C’hi Yamei knew which of these it was that Sên Ruben meant. + +No more than such was most of their talk. + +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 thing in the soul of a man, the one +great need of a man’s life. + +Did she answer him at all? + +Sên Ruben had no idea. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +Sên Yamei! + +Sên C’hi Yamei! + +Two days only remained of his stay in Sênland. + +It was quiet now in China. Even _talk_ of war was done. + +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 _pai-fang_ 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. + +Sên Ruben had said good-by to the graves, the _pai-fang_ and the +temple; good-by--“The gods of China be with you”--good-by until he came +again. + +Now he was saying good-by to the lovely laughing orchards 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. + +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. + +The water-clocks were dripping the Hour of the Dog when he came to +the house and passed through the long _t’ing-tzu-lang_ and across the +_ch’ih_ to the _kuei_ 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. + +A sound of sobbing checked him at the edge of the harem courtyard. + +No Fee lay face down beside the flower-wall, and the women gathered +about her were weeping too. + +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 as it was vixenish and memorable. +But this was grief--the grief of a child whose heart was breaking. + +“Hush, pretty maid-one,” a serving-woman pleaded, whose own sobs +disfigured her words. “The lady Yamei went on-High from a holy place--” + +The broken voice went on, but Sên Ruben heard no more it said. + +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. + +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. + +“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!” + +Sên Ruben heard no more. + +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.” + +Heavily, unsteadily, a stricken man turned and went. He could hear no +more! + +Sên C’hian Fan, coming from the wax sheds, saw Sên 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. + +All the night hours Sên Ruben lay in the temple Sên Ya Tin had builded. + +Night was chill in Ho-nan now. Sên Ruben felt not cold, nor felt the +hardness of the temple floor. + +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.” + +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. + +All night long the women wailed. But the men were mute. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + + +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 _why_, as some wild prey of the chase makes for +forest cover to writhe and die in peace. + +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. + +The end of his world had come. + +He had died a space ago at the house-panel of the _kuei_ courtyard. + +Life was a husk and a death. + +Sên Ruben knew that he was dead; and he wished it even more than he +knew it. + +The dream he had dreamed mocked him. + +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. + +He did not think of his father he never had seen, but Sên Ruben +suddenly knew that he wanted his mother. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +But he thought of his mother. + +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 him, his very manhood crushing him face-down on the night-chill +lacquer floor. + +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. + +He would go to his mother and give the rest of his years--his emptied, +widowed years--to cherishing service of her. + +His pain would stay, his longing never would be still or lessen, but a +great and beautiful living sweetness was left him. + +His world was not empty while his mother lived. + +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. + +Had his mother suffered as he suffered now? + +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. + +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. + +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! + +Daybreak slivered the inner temple with pearl and pale silver-gold. + +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. + +His kindred took their parting of him at the great gate--the men of his +house, and Sên No Fee. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + + +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. + +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. + +“Rue, we’ll have snow-balls if this lasts; and won’t I pelt you!” + +“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?” + +Ruby Sên nodded. “Lots of tea, Ruben; I am famished. I wonder where the +others are?” + +“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.” + +“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. + +They were lovers--Ruben Sên and his mother. + +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. + +Never should his mother have the hurt of knowing that he had been +wounded in Ho-nan. + +Sir Charles Snow, coming from the library in search of tea and +companionship, saw and heard them, before they knew 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“Glad to be home, boy?” + +“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.” + +“He will be uncommonly glad to see you.” + +“Bring him back with you, Ruben,” Mrs. Sên said. + +“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.” + +Mrs. Sên sighed softly. + +“But she ought to,” Ruben added briskly. “But, I say, 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!” + +“She is very happy!” the mother told him. + +Snow stirred his tea very slowly. + +“Ruben,” Lady Snow said, as she pushed through the sitting-room’s +portière, “your face is the color of a red, red rose. Guilt?” + +“Not that altogether, Cousin Emma; blushing from the buffets of +December’s gale, I wouldn’t wonder. It tingled us, didn’t it, Mother?” + +“It was glorious,” Ruby said, “but the wind did cut a bit as we hurried +home.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +Ruben Sên only smiled. + +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? + +“Where are Ivy and--her husband?” Ruben asked Lady Snow. + +“Goodness knows. They’ll turn up at dinner. They don’t wear their +welcome out, do they!” + +“Is he good enough for Ivy?” Ruben persisted. + +“Quite--while he makes her happy. Any man is good enough for any +woman--and more than good enough--if he makes her happy.” + +“Will it last?” Sên’s voice was openly anxious. + +“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?” + +She would not have made the oblique reference to Ivy’s Chinese +appearance if either Ivy or Gaylor had been here. + +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 _how_ he’d say it, in answer to Emma’s +question, “Did you see any girls in China half as pretty as Ivy?” + +Ruben’s answer came promptly and Sir Charles Snow did not catch +anything beneath it--and yet-- + +“I saw one that looked a lot _like_ 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 _kuei_. 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.” + +“She looks like Ivy, you say?” + +“Yes, Mother, very.” + +“And did you like China, now that you have really been there--seen it?” +Lady Snow demanded. + +Sir Charles smiled. + +“Like China, Cousin Emma?” The question had startled Sên; it seemed to +him both inexplicable and fatuous. + +“Did you like it as much as you thought you would?” his mother asked +gently. + +“Yes, quite,” Ruben spoke promptly. + +“More, even?” There was just a touch perhaps of anxiety in Mrs. Sên’s +voice. Both the men caught it. + +“No, Mother; just as I believed that I should like it.” + +Snow smiled again. + +“I wonder you ever came back,” Lady Snow remarked lightly, “and came +back so soon too!” + +“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.” + +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. + +Ruben began then--resolutely, Sir Charles thought--to talk of other +things: friends and happenings in England. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + + +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? + +Ruben did not--even avoided the subject, Snow thought. + +Why? + +Was it because the wonderful place and people had so 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! + + * * * * * + +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. + +But Snow knew, quite by accident, something that spoke to him of a +strong undercurrent. + +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. + +Ruben was going to his father’s grave. + +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. + +But Sir Charles Snow lay awake a long time thinking. + +Twice after that he knew or suspected that Ruben had gone at night, to +Sên King-lo’s grave. + +Naturally he did not watch Ruben, or pry into it in any way. It was +pressed upon him. + +“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?” + +The old butler bridled angrily and almost openly. + +“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 _you_ doing, prowling about at two-thirty?” + +Ivy flushed prettily. “Tom and I got talking in front of the +fire--talking over _your_ 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?” + +“Out!” Ruben said with a laugh, and flecked her with a pellet of bread. + +Ivy flecked him with another; it had been a favorite nursery pastime of +theirs. + +Then they both laughed and Lady Snow came in; and the next remark made +was about Christmas trees. + +The other occasion was as trivial, and as unprompted by Sir Charles. + +He had no doubt that Ruben had been to Sên King-lo’s grave each time. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + + +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. + +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. + +And Ivy Gaylor was moderately happy. + +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. + +The old weak-spot of marriage had found them out, as it usually does: +“woman’s whole existence,” and man’s sagging 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. + +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--_and its constant expression_. 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? + +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. + +It was her determination that hers should be a childless marriage. It +hurt. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + +His wife knew, and it cankered. + +It made her own not-to-be-satisfied longing a double cross, a longing +that whipped her mercilessly. + +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 son to +be branded as long as he lived with an un-English face, or a girl to +suffer as she herself had done. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Gaylor considered his wife the prettiest thing in London, a judgment in +which he was far more acute than he often was. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + + +“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.” + +“One of your grand crushes, Mother?” + +“Who ever heard of a crush at dinner--except in a cheap restaurant! +Don’t be silly, Rue,” Ivy broke in mockingly. + +“I apologize, Mrs. Gaylor.” + +“A very small dinner,” his mother said, and changed the subject without +saying who her guests at dinner that night were to be. + +“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. + +“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.” + +“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. + +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. + +“Worried, Mother?” Sên came and laid his hand on her arm. + +“No, dear--no,” she answered quickly, almost too quickly. + +“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.” + +“You are here for everything good and helpful and a joy to your mother, +my Ruben. There is nothing to pass over--truly.” + +“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 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?” + +“Of course they do. Wonderfully happy!” And again Ruben, who knew her +so well, thought that the mother answered almost too quickly. + +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. + +“I say, Mater, Ivy wasn’t put out at not being asked to eat here +to-night, was she?” + +“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.” + +“I think it was something about dinner here to-night,” Ruben insisted. + +“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.” + +“But, I say!” Sên blurted out hotly. “That’s a bit _too_ 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!” + +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. + +A more English son, every bit as devoted to his mother as Ruben was, +would have been disgusted and amused; Sên saw red. + +Mrs. Sên laughed. + +“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.” + +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?” + +“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.” + +“Very,” Ruben said softly. + +“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 strangers here; they only left Ho-nan a few weeks ago. +Welcome them, Ruben.” + +“Welcome them--just from Ho-nan!” An inscrutable something pulsed in +his eyes. “You bet I will!” + +“Order! Order!” Sir Charles exclaimed as the Snows came in unannounced. +“No loose language in the presence of ladies, young cub.” + +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. + +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. + +Ho-nan--it hurt to think of Ho-nan! But he always did. + +Sên Ruben’s wound had not healed. + +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 could not have +done it--_she_ 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 _Chinese_ 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. + +It wasn’t worth puzzling over; he’d know before long. + +“Come in!” + +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. + +Kow Li was beaming; Kow Li’s old crinkled yellow face was radiant. + +“What the devil’s the joke, Kow?” + +“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.” + +“The hell you are!” + +Kow Li bowed, his hands meekly hidden in his sleeves. + +“Look here, do you mean it, Kow?” + +Kow Li bowed lower than before. + +“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.” + +“My lord,” Kow’s voice trembled a little in his eagerness, 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? + +“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--” + +“I don’t believe it!” + +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.” + +“Well then, I am going to rule you to-night! What does it mean, Kow? +What are you up to?” + +“O lord-one, a very great Chinese gentleman eats your rice to-night--” + +“He won’t think much of it, if there is _rice_--English-cooked +rice!--on our menu to-night. I’ll give him a tip to cut out the rice +course.” + +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 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!” + +“Does my mother know?” + +“She, at my prayer, permitted me the happiness, my lord.” + +“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!” + +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. + +He disapproved its appointments--but he had seen many Western +rice-rooms. + +As for Mrs. Sên’s irreproachable butler, and all his bevy of spruce, +important and immaculate footmen, Kow Li ignored them. And they left +him alone. Mrs. Sên had given her orders. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + + +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. + +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. + +The girl he was chatting with laughed a trifle shrilly as Jenkins made +an announcement. Sên did not catch it. + +Mrs. Sên called him to her; and Ruben turned to her and was face to +face with C’hi Yamei. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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?” + +Sên let her take his hand; it amounted to that. + +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 _was_ 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. + +Sên murmured something in reply, speaking too low for even Mrs. Sên +and C’hi to catch it. Perhaps C’hi Yamei 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. + +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. + +It was too late for Mrs. Sên to remake her dinner seating arrangements; +she regretted that it was. + +“Why did it startle you so to see us again, Mr. Sên?” Yamei asked, as +they went towards the dining-room. + +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. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +The man’s heart leapt at the shyness that came into her voice. + +“Thank God that it was only a rumor!” + +“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 here. And black would +not have been mourning to us.” + +“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.” + +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 _had_ 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. + +“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 _here_.” + +Miss C’hi nodded brightly. “You call it ‘home’--Ho-nan?” + +“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?” + +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.” + +“Yes,” Sên admitted, “it was my mother’s country--until her marriage.” + +C’hi Yamei smiled at Sên’s reminder and at its assertion. She liked him +that he would not compromise. + +“You like English men better than you do English women, then, Miss +C’hi?” + +“How have you jumped to that conclusion, Mr. Sên?” + +“No--you told me.” + +Miss C’hi denied it with a crinkled lip, and a questioning lift of her +delicate very black eyebrows, eloquent and unambiguous. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“Which do you think the best way,” Sên asked gravely, “the women’s way +of living here, or at home?” + +“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 +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.” + +“With me? Talking here with me, in my mother’s house?” Sên broke in. + +“Of course,” the girl asserted with a tiny teasing laugh. “I believe,” +she added gravely, “that there is more true freedom in a Chinese _kuei_ +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.” + +Sên laughed softly. + +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.’” + +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. + +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. + +And so it proved. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + + +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. + +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 _doyen_ and regnant-one in +the _kuei_ of his Ho-nan home. + +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 _was_ 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 character, that every race that ever has conquered the +Chinese has been conquered more vitally and permanently by the +Chinese--has _become_ 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. + +“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?” + +“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.” + +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. + +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 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? + +“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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +C’hi Yamei had gained a serf. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + +Nature had her way; Nature outwilled and outwitted Ivy Gaylor. + +For some time Ivy locked her new secret fast--her rage, her fear and +her intense joy. + +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. + +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. + +“I shall kill it, if it looks like me!” + +“You will love it dearly, no matter what it looks like, Ivy,” Emma Snow +told her crooningly. + +“They do it sometimes--quadroons--don’t they?” + +“I think so--sometimes,” Lady Snow admitted. + +“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!” + +A lesser woman might have chided, “Hush, Ivy!” but not Emma Snow. + +She put an arm about the other’s heaving shoulders. + +“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 _has_ 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, 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.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“Does your mother know?” Emma asked softly. + +“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 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!” + +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. + +For a long time neither spoke. + +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! + +And she did help Ivy. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +There were days when again Nature had its way--days 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. + +But those days were few. The grieving bitterness that followed, and +that swamped her, was living, burning agony; dread of hate, dread of +shame. + +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. + +The pity of it that that right ever can be alienable! + +But Ruby Sên was suffering too. + +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. + +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. + +While he had lived, Sên King-lo always had paid for them both--his +wife’s debt and his own. + +If he blundered once--always Sên King-lo was a man. + +But Ruby Sên was paying now. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + + +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 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. + +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. + +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 _kuei_, 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +None of it had been easy. Sên was very tired. + +He accepted his mother’s dismissal without reluctance--or pretense of +it. + +“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 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.” + +Ruben laughed and brought the little social volume to her, kissed her +good-night, and left her unsuspiciously. + +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. + +He was not surprised to find Kow Li waiting for him in his room. + +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. + +But he too saw that Ruben was tired. He had expected him to be. + +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 +_her_ 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.” + +Only that once had she been mentioned between them. + +Kow Li had known Sên Ruben’s grief; had grieved for it and had +respected it. + +Nor was C’hi Yamei mentioned between them to-night. + +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. + +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. + +The flower-of-jade fact stood: Sên Ruben had found his heart’s desire. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Ruby Sên was not happy. + +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. + +It was morning when Mrs. Sên rose wearily, left the little red book +unheeded where it fell, and dragged drearily up to her room. + + + + +CHAPTER L + + +In China courtship--such pre-nuptial courtship as there is--is long and +slow; longest and slowest among the girdle-wearers. + +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 +_mei-jêns_, 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 _yuan_. The +longer the _mei-jên_ 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. + +It would have taken Sên Ruben a long lapse of time to have married C’hi +Yamei in China. + +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. + +Ruben believed that C’hi would give the straight question a straight +and immediate answer. + +And Ruben Sên could have but little doubt that C’hi would answer him +favorably. + +No one else, interested enough to watch C’hi and Sên together, had any +doubt at all. + +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. + +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 _felt_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +“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 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.” + +That was plain speech for a Chinese father. + +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. + +Sên was right there. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +Would C’hi Yamei be content to have it so? That was what he longed to +know, and feared to learn. + +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. + +The _camaraderie_ she gave him frankly and gaily seemed to warn him +that Yamei did not care--perhaps never would. + +But, of late--for it was September now--she seemed to have grown shyer +with him. That hinted that she had read his purpose, and that it did +not displease her, not even while it startled her girlish serenity. + +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. + +Ruben was not sure--but he hoped. + +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. + +The flood-tide of his love was high. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 of her daughter’s life, held at arm’s +length from the coming of her first grandchild. It was aging her. + +Ruben kept very close to his mother and heaped his love about her, or +she must have “carried on” less bravely. + +How would Sên King-lo have dealt with it--with Ivy, whom he had so +loved--now? Ruby Sên wondered. She longed for him. + +Charles Snow wondered too and was glad that King-lo had gone on. + +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. + +Ruben too had divined it. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Mrs. Sên could only wait. + +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. + +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. + +But Ruben Sên did not intend to bring any added “pull” of joy or sorrow +to his mother until she was less troubled. + +He knew that she must come to love Yamei very dearly, if he gave that +daughter to her. He thought that he had kept 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. + +In mid-October Gaylor wired to Mrs. Sên, “My daughter is magnificent +and she has a fine soprano. Both well.” + +Ruby Sên hid her face in her shaking hands and sobbing pitifully prayed +as she had not prayed before. + +She was alone--with it. + +Ruben had gone on an errand for her half an hour ago. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + + +Again it was a Chinese baby. + +Ivy gave a cry and turned her face into the pillow. + +“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.” + +“Very Chinese?” + +“It was Ivy over again, as I first saw her.” + +Sir Charles Snow sighed dully. + +“How did Gaylor take it?” + +“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.” + +Sir Charles Snow smiled grimly. + +“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 should he mind having a very lovely daughter that +is--dark--and all the rest of it, any more than a wife like that?” + +“Hope he don’t,” Snow muttered uncomfortably. + +“But then you see, Baby isn’t pretty yet--that’s the worst of it. Ivy +was a hideous baby, you remember.” + +“I remember you thought so.” + +“Luckily it is a girl--and that’s the only luck about it that I can +see.” + +“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?” + +“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 _her_ mother--to +dislike her, even. Ivy has been cruel and unjust to Ruby.” + +“Cruel, but not unjust, I think,” Charles Snow said sorrowfully. +“Justice can be very cruel--often is.” + +“But why should Ivy blame Ruby for having done years ago what she +herself has done now? How dare she!” + +“Because Ruby began it; and probably Ivy is blaming herself now, dear, +quite as much as she blames Ruby, or ever has.” + +“Well, then, that ought to cancel it!” Lady Snow spoke sharply. + +“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. 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.” + +“How much of this did you say to Ivy?” + +“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!” + +Presently Snow went on with the troubled theme. + +“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 many words. It amounted to a +direct message, what King-lo said to me a few days before he died.” + +“Will it do any good--with Ruben?” the wife asked gently. + +“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.” + +“Quite,” Lady Snow agreed with a laugh. + +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 _had_ 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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + + +The Gaylors had come back to London and Ivy had left her child in their +little place in the country. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Ruby Sên took it quietly; that she did as part of her penance. + +She knew that she had lost her daughter and she hid her hurt. Nor did +she blame Ivy for it. Life had taught Ruby 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. + +Mrs. Sên motored alone to Dorset and gathered Ivy’s unwelcomed baby +into her own arms and heart, and held it very tenderly. + +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. + +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. + +Her estimate of Ivy was less shrewd than Emma Snow’s--but she was Ivy’s +mother. + +Mrs. Sên was sorrowful as her car swept back to London, and she was +anxious; but she did not despond. + +She counted on Ruben, and, though she knew that it would 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 _penchant_ +for Miss C’hi had passed. + +It was after tea-time when Mrs. Sên reached home. She was a little +tired and she wanted tea rather badly. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The silver teapot dragged heavy in her hand, the cup and saucer looked +solitary; she felt solitary--and neglected. + +Probably Ruben would be dining out too! He’d come home to change +though and would offer to break his dinner engagement. But she’d not +allow him to do that. + +Tea alone--dinner alone, if she dined. Oh, well--it was her own fault. + +Perhaps Emma or Charlie would look in presently, if only to learn if +she were back. She hoped neither of them did. + +Perhaps they’d phone. + +It didn’t matter either way. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + + +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. + +She had half expected C’hi Ng Yelü to chide her gently, probably with a +laugh--perhaps even to bid her change. + +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 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. + +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. + +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? + +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 made many girl +friends in London, liked several of them very much indeed and felt real +affection for one or two. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +The long room was sparsely furnished; the sparse furniture was rich. + +C’hi Ng Yelü always called it, when speaking to his daughter, _Shu +Chai_--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. + +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 _Shu Chai_ in memory of a room +in hill-cupped, river-washed Shan-si, in which C’hi Ng Yelü had learned +to read and to 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. + +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. + +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. + +Had Sên Ruben by any odd chance remembered? + +Of course not! + +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 _kuei_ door--she and Sên Ruben--that first day of all. + +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 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.” + +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. + +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 +_kuei_ two years ago in Ho-nan. + + + + +CHAPTER LV + + +The heart of a man stood still; Sên’s face flooded with color. + +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. + +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 C’hi Ng Yelü himself, sending Kow Li as +preliminary suitor and go-between. + +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. + +A week of seven eternities! But no less than the most would he offer to +C’hi Yamei the yellow jasmine of the world. + +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. + +He wanted her so! + +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. + +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. + +“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 +an hour. I have strict orders to wait for him--here with you.” + +He rarely spoke to C’hi Yamei in English when they were alone but he +had not dared speak in Chinese now. + +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. + +“May I come in?” + +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. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“I hope so,” Miss C’hi agreed. + +So--he did remember. + +She turned towards the window, for she felt that her face was flushing. + +“I hope that my father had an umbrella,” the girl said lamely. “See, it +is raining.” + +Sên rose and went to the window. “So it is. I did not notice that it +threatened to as I came.” + +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. + +A fine thick drizzle was falling. Ruben liked it; it seemed like a veil +shutting them in here gently--almost a symbol. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +But he sat down again, as he spoke, facing her. Apparently he was not +braving the outside drizzle at once. + +Miss C’hi played with her girdle. + +For a time neither spoke. + +The man had no wish to speak--no wish to break their companionable, +intimate silence. It was intimate. + +The girl could think of nothing to say. + +The gathering rain tinkled the window panes, tapped on the glass like +fairy fingers. + +“Thank you,” Ruben said at last in a queer low voice. + +Miss C’hi looked a puzzled interrogation. + +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.” + +“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. + +She knew now what was coming, and she too wished her lover whom she +loved to say it to C’hi Ng Yelü. She wished it so, not because she +cared a Japanese _yen_--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. + +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. + +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 the first frivolous +and very English thing she could think of, rising and going towards the +other window as she spoke. + +Ruben went with her of course. + +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. + +“Now you are a wife, Yamei!” + +It broke from Sên Ruben involuntarily as he devoured with leaping eyes +the strip of naked brow they should not have seen. + +C’hi Yamei’s face had found its paint! + +Her tunic rose and fell with the flesh that fluttered beneath it. In +spite of herself the girl’s eyes filled with tears. + +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. + +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. + +And Sên turned and fled. + +He did not dare stay. + + * * * * * + +Sên knew that the time had indeed come for him to speak to C’hi Ng Yelü. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + + +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. + +It brooked no delay now and Ruben’s heart wished none. + +He would speak with his mother at once, and she would send for Kow Li, +and send Kow her _mei jên_ to C’hi Ng Yelü. + +Sên’s heart reeled with music--the old, old music of which love makes +every great lover a _maestro_. + +Mrs. Sên had come, a servant told Ruben. + +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. + +To-day and to-night were his mother’s, hers only. + +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! + +His cup had brimmed over to-day. He would fill and sweeten hers +to-night. + +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. + +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. + +Sên Ruben loved three women and never was to love another; he loved +his mother. Ivy, his sister, and C’hi Yamei, the daughter of C’hi Ng +Yelü. + +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. + +Sên rang for fresh tea and cut her cake; he waited on her, petted her, +amused her. + +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. + +They dined alone. The meal was gay. + +They sat alone together in her own sitting-room, and all their gay +loving talk was of themselves. + +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!” + +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. + +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. + +Ruben’s love of his father--whom he could not remember--always had been +living and intimate, as Sên King-lo’s love had been of the mother he +could not remember. Such abiding love is not unusual--in China. + +In his own room Ruben stood a long, long time looking across London +toward Westminster. + +The house was very still. + +All London seemed hushed in sleep. + +Did C’hi Yamei sleep? + +How good the gods were! + +How rich he was! + +What perfect happiness! + +His mother and Yamei--both his. + +To-morrow--it _was_ to-morrow--he would sit by his mother and tell her +his story, sharing its sweetness and joy with her. + +Sên Ruby whom his father had loved--and Sên C’hi Yamei his bride, whom +he adored! + +The gods were on-High; all was well in the world of Sên Ruben! + +Sên Ruben’s eyes were misty as he turned away from his open window. + +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. + +And Ruben had a few Chinese trifles tucked away in a drawer. + +He found a bundle of tapers--a red prayer too--and lit incense and +prayer paper before his ivory Kwan Yin-ko. + +Ruben slept well and late. And so did Mrs. Sên. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben snapped on the electric lights with a laugh, and his mother +poured their coffee with a smiling tranquil face. + +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. + +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 drew a stool close and, holding +the arm of her chair with his hand, told her his story. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +That fatal Academy! Ruby Sên could hear Ivy’s outbreak after _she_ 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. + +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! + +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. + +How like Lo their Ruben looked sometimes! He did now; and how like his +father’s, his voice! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +It was not yet she would have him marry. Ruben was so young! + +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. + +And he looked so English--more English than she herself--and had lived +so naturally a normal English life, in English ways! + +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 of resolution. Mrs. Sên heard Ruben to the end, all her being +in revolt; and then she failed him. + +“Oh, Ruben--_must_ you?” she cried in open bitterness. + +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. + +“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 _cannot_ 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?” + +The woman leaned back against her cushions a little pathetically. + +She had made her _amende_. 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. + +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! + +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 _must_, that it was inevitable. + +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. + +She would deceive him to the end to hold him hers. + +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! 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. + +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. + +He had chosen the Chinese of his two irreconcilable birthrights. She +would not forbid him. + +“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; _our_ 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.” + +Ruben drew his mother’s hands down and kissed them lingeringly. + +“You will love her, Mother?” + +“I do love her!” + +Sên’s face blazed his happiness. + +“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--” + +Mrs. Sên laughed. + +“Really!” she mocked him lovingly. + +Sên laughed back at her happily. + +“We were alone, she and I, and I lost my head, or very nearly did--I +don’t exactly remember just what I said.” + +“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.” + +They were silent for a long moment. + +“I did not do that, dear. At least, I hope not. But I think she +understood me.” + +Mrs. Sên nodded softly. She remembered. + +“And I do feel that I ought not to wait an hour longer than _you wish +me to wait_ before putting it clearly to C’hi Ng Yelü.” + +“Certainly not! Go to him to-day.” + +“Won’t you send, Mother?” + +“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?” + +“Not in China, Mother.” + +“Oh--of course. I forgot. We had no go-between, your father and I, Rue. +It--it just happened.” + +“It very nearly just happened yesterday,” Ruben owned. + +“Tell me just what you would like me to do and say, Rue.” + +“Thank you, Mother.” Sên’s voice and face brimmed with his gratitude +and it hurt the mother that they did. + +She hid that though. + +“Will you send for Kow Li or let me send him to you?” + +Mrs. Sên understood. “And send him from me to C’hi Ng Yelü--my _mei +jên_?” + +“Yes, please.” + +“Not Cousin Charles?” + +“No--please. The _mei jên_ need not be a man of quality--almost never +is, at home.” + +Home! The mother’s heart winced again; again she hid it. + +“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 _mei +jên_, 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!” + +Still the woman smiled. + +“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 +_has_ 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.” + +“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. + +And she knew that, though his lips and his love of her--his cherishing +of her and of her _first_ place--had said, “this afternoon,” the heart +of the man she had borne was crying, “now!” + +But Ruben was fine too. + +“Not much sun-up about it in London to-day, is there! No, please. +There’s not all _that_ 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 lunched I’ll trot off to the picturesque suburb of +Bloomsbury and then on to the House of Snow.” + +His mother’s laugh thanked him. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII + + +Kow Li wept--unashamed. + +The old Chinese in his happiness shook like willow leaves in stormtime. + +He fell at his master’s feet and blessed them. + +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 _mei jên_, 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. + +Ruben spoke, and Kow did not hear him. Kow Li was drenching a singlet +of gossamer silk with costly perfumes. + +Ruben stood and watched the old millionaire servant, and Ruben Sên’s +laughing blue eyes were very tender. + +Kow Li made a wonderful toilet. A Son of Heaven might have worn it at a +proud palace function. Ruben wondered 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. + +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. + +Kow Li, clad at last, surveyed himself severely in the long +lacquer-framed glass and grunted with satisfaction. + +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. + +Kow Li’s lips were moving in prayer, more filial and respectful, more +leisured and earnest than the god-ones of China always get. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _via_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +Dear old Sir Charlie--how pleased he would be! + +How soon would he be permitted to see her again? + +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? + +No--he was almost sure that she would not look at him at first. + +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. + +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. + +She sat facing King-lo’s picture, the companion of so many of her +hours, and she thought Lo’s dark eyes regarded her tenderly and +approved her. + +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. + +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. + +She would share it as she had not shared King-lo’s. + +That atonement she still could make. + +She would make it fully, she would make it freely. + +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. + +One need not repeat mistakes; that was the one good thing about them. + +She would not repeat her mistake of long ago. It had been a mistake of +ignorance then; now it would be a mistake of willfulness, a crime of +selfishness. + +What right had she to say with which of his two races Ruben should +identify himself--to which he should prepledge his children? None. + +She would welcome C’hi Yamei; she would do it sincerely. + +She would love Ruben’s wife. + +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. + +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. + +She had lost Ivy. She would not lose Ruben. + +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. + +She would _be_ Chinese. It was her right--she the wife of a Sên, the +mother of Sêns. + +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. + +She had clung to her Chinese widowhood, had flaunted it even. She had +boasted that she was Chinese. She would make it true now. + +But Ruby Sên’s face was drawn as she sat alone by her 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. + +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. + +She was glad when at last Kow came. The sooner the better now! + + + + +CHAPTER LIX + + +Sir Charles was at home and alone. + +No one lived who was happier than Ruben Sên was when he went into +Snow’s den. + +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. + +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! + +Snow heard him out without a word, and the old man’s face was all +kindness and friendship and understanding; nothing but that. + +Then--very slowly, quietly, fully--Charles Snow told Ruben Sên Sên +King-lo’s story; told the son his father’s _true_ story. + +Snow exaggerated nothing; he softened nothing. + +Ruben stiffened--then slouched brokenly in his chair. + +It was some time before Ruben spoke and when Snow had said it all, he +said no more. + +“You mean,” Ruben began hoarsely, and broke off miserably. + +“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.” + +“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?” + +“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.” + +“But he was happy with Mother?” + +“As happy with her as a man who has mismarried can be. Happy in her +herself, and in serving and shielding her.” + +“She never knew?” + +“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.” + +“Did you tell Ivy what he said?” + +“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.” + +“Save me!” + +“Yes--exactly that. And save C’hi Yamei.” + +Ruben Sên screened his face with his hands. + +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.” + +Again they were silent. + +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. + +“Sên King-lo knew that you were Chinese, and knew that little Ivy was +English. It was for her he feared most.” + +“Ivy has been very happy since she married,” Ruben interrupted. + +“Very. But her Chinese-faced baby has destroyed her happiness. Her +misery at its birth was pretty bad. Your Cousin Emma was there.” + +“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.” + +“But your heart is in China.” + +“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.” + +“On my soul, I believe you belong there!” + +“Thank you, sir.” + +Sir Charles smiled a little sadly. + +“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.” + +“Because of my children?” + +“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.” + +Ruben Sên turned his face down on his arm; his shoulders were not +steady. + +Sir Charles Snow gave him time. + +“But,” Sên argued again, “my children would be preponderantly Chinese.” + +“We should hope so--_actually_ 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.” + +Sên put up still one more protest. + +“Kow Li probably has gone to C’hi Ng Yelü already--Mother was sending +him. Just possibly C’hi Ng Yelü has consented already.” + +“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.” + +Ruben could not deny that. + +“I was with her yesterday, sir. I--I think it would hurt C’hi Yamei, if +it were broken off.” + +“That was what your father said when I tried to persuade him, as I +_and he_ 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.’” + +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. + +After a moment Ruben got up heavily and moved to the door. + +Neither spoke again, but Sên gave Sir Charles a not discourteous look +before he opened the door and went. + +Slowly Sir Charles Snow struck a match, sighing deeply. + +Snow believed that this time he had won. + + + + +CHAPTER LX + + +Sên stumbled home. + +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 they blinded her to the change in him--a +gait that shambled a little, pallor, hurt eyes, a mouth clenched and +drawn. + +“Has Kow been?” Ruben asked abruptly. + +“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 _mei jên_, all I can say is, he +ought to be!” + +Ruben nodded--as nearly brightly as he could, and sat down wearily. + +“Oh--well, it doesn’t matter,” he murmured listlessly. “It doesn’t +matter.” + +“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?” + +“No,” Sên answered with a weary smile. + +“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?” + +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. + +“Ruben!” + +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. + +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 with which a peacock spreads his tail. Kow Li radiated +congratulation, joy and self-complacency. + +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. + +And Ruben saw what she saw. C’hi had given him Yamei! + +And he must slaughter the gift--leave it untouched--thrust it back! + +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! + +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 _cash_, to the last +husk of one millet seed. + +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. + +So Sên Ruben saw it. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +He must do a noble thing as if it were a foulness; he must make his +sacrifice look a treachery. + +Sir Charles would know. But Sir Charles Snow would not speak. No one +else must even suspect, least of all his mother. + +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. + +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. + +He should not see Yamei again. + +He would not see Yamei again. + +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. + +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. + +Ruben rose, and stood facing them both. His face was grave but it was +calm; and his voice was clear and steady. + +“The lord C’hi Ng Yelü did not repulse our offer.” + +“Oh, great and worshiped master”--Kow Li _had_ to speak. + +But Sên checked him with an upheld hand. “I regret that he did not, for +there will be no such marriage.” + +“Ruben!” + +“I have changed my mind, Mother,” Sên told her quietly. + +“I do not believe it! Changed your mind! You, Ruben!” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +There is not much that is bitterer than to despise what we 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. + +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! + +And again a long sound of a scorpion that hissed its rage thrashed +across the room. + +“Ruben,” Mrs. Sên asked, “what did Cousin Charles say to you? You have +_not_ 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 _has_ told her now. You +are Sên King-lo’s son; I shall not forget that, even if you do!” + +Kow Li’s being ko’towed to a white woman! It had not happened before. + +“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.” + +“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!” + +“Nothing shall,” Sên promised gravely. “I give you my word of +honor, Mother,” he added, “that not an iota of the responsibility is +his--Cousin Charles’.” + +“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.” + +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. + +“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 _never_ is +broken; even death cannot break it.” + +Kow Li gestured confirmation gravely. + +“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.” + +“Rubbish!” + +“I am sorry to seem in the wrong--in this--to you, Mother,” Sên +pleaded, “but I must take my way in it.” + +“Think of that poor girl!” + +“I shall think of C’hi Yamei while I live--as I have since that first +time at Burlington House. Kow--old friend--we are sorry to have sent +you on a bootless errand. Go now.” + +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. + +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. + +“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?” + +“Not to-day, Mother. I can’t stand much more now--and I have something +to do that is not easy.” + +“Is it something about the C’his?--tell me that much,” the mother +whispered. + +“No!” + +The puzzled woman knew that Ruben had answered her truthfully. + +She left it then--for the present. She would see Charles before she +probed or fretted Ruben again. + +They stayed so while her little jeweled clock ticked several minutes +into the past. + +Then Ruben bent down and kissed his mother. + +“I am going out again, dear. But I’ll be back in time for dinner.” + +“Not--” she began. + +“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 not at home. We might meet +accidentally--and I’d rather not. I’ll be back for dinner, dear.” + +Mrs. Sên made no attempt to dissuade or to delay him; she did not dare. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI + + +The things that we anticipate with the most dread almost always gall us +less than we feared they would. + +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. + +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. + +He was taken to C’hi at once. It was evident that the servant who let +him in had had his orders. + +As they went through the hall Sên Ruben heard a girl laugh--a clear, +soft laugh of perfect happiness. C’hi _had_ 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! + +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 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! + +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. + +“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.” + +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! + +Ruben took the cigar--too embarrassed to decline it--and laid it down. + +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 in the hall, +and peeping over the staircase to feast their eyes on him as he went. +Some _mei jên_, what, Sên! He certainly did you credit!” + +“He felt greatly honored to come, sir,” Sên said ruefully. + +“He dressed the part!” C’hi chuckled again. + +Sên Ruben began at once--haltingly, lamely enough. + +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. + +When Sên had done, C’hi bowed to him graciously across the table, then +spoke with almost elaborate courtesy. + +“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--” + +“Thank you, sir.” + +“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 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.” + +“Very glad, sir,” Sên forced out through stiff lips. He admired C’hi Ng +Yelü enormously. + +“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.” + +“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. + +He had seen her again--in yesterday’s robes; and he had seen the bunch +of yellow roses at her breast. + +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. + +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. + +But he had not needed to do that--Yamei had not given him time. + +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. + +C’hi did not sit down again--he went to the window. + +“Ruben!” + +Sên swung round. + +C’hi Ng Yelü’s face was working. Sên’s was ghastly. + +“Ruben, let us sit down again, and talk this over sensibly. We must +thrash it out now--without pride or subterfuge; there is too much +involved for either.” + +“Let me go, sir,” Sên pleaded. + +“Not yet!” C’hi Ng Yelü urged, as one who asks a favor, but asks it as +a right. + +They both sat down. + +“I do not know just what report of how he fared with me the _mei jên_ +Kow Li gave, or if you have seen him.” + +“I have seen him, sir--but he said very little. I--I put it off.” + +“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.” + +“It is there still. It always will be there,” Sên muttered miserably. + +“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 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.” + +C’hi Ng Yelü said more--a good deal more. + +Sên made little reply. + +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. + +C’hi Ng Yelü bowed to a decision he saw that he could not shake; and +they parted friends. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Was she there? + +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. + +A cry! Yamei had cried out--and then he heard her sob. A little hurt +girl was weeping bitterly. + +Sên Ruben went wearily home. + +The next day he and his mother went to Ashacres; and Ruben Sên never +saw C’hi Yamei again. + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + + +“You haven’t dressed? You told me to order the car for four.” + +“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!” + +“I’m blowed!” But Tom Gaylor was inured to surprises of various sorts +from his wife. + +“I want to go home--to Dorset. I want to go now, Tom.” + +“You do! Right! That suits me down to the ground. Best Christmas +present I’ve had since I was six. London _is_ 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?” + +“I want to go now.” + +“To-day?” + +“Now.” + +“Well--I _am_ blowed. Always were a decisive girl though, weren’t you? +It’s now we go. Wait till I find a hat, and 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?” + +“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!” + +“Mrs. Gaylor, the rest is silence. What about tea? We can get it at +Winchester! Jolly decent tea there last time.” + +“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.” + +“Madame, I shall in all my best obey you.” + +“Do get along and do it, then!” + +“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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +At first Gaylor thought that it was “coming all right.” 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. + +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. + +Ivy was happy and natural--for a time; then the revulsion came. + +She avoided her child. + +Her eyes grew haggard and hard. + +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. + +Baby had lost the first round. Prejudice and old hurt pride had proved +stronger than love and womanly instinct. + +Gaylor longed to say something, do something--but what? 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. + +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. + +The sight of her child--the sound of its voice--became a torture. + +Gaylor was not surprised when his wife said defiantly one night at +dinner, “I am going back to London in the morning.” + +“We’ll go by car?” was all the comment he made. + +“Unless you’d rather stay here and shoot--and farm.” + +Tom smiled. “I’d much rather go with you.” + +His wife’s eyes fell to her plate. + +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. + +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. + +“Quite,” Ivy said; and she already wore hat and coat and gloves. + +Her husband looked at her with a longing in his eyes that she +understood--and ignored. + +“I won’t be long,” he said. “I’ll just have a look at the kiddy.” + +Ivy nodded indifferently and made no motion to follow him to the +nurseries. + +Gaylor went very slowly, hoping in spite of himself that Ivy would come +too just for a minute or two. + +But she did not. + +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. + +“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.” + +“What a bore!” She tried to speak indifferently, but her face had +blurred instantly. “She never has been ill before, has she?” + +“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. + +“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. + +The man loved his wife better than he understood her. + +At midnight Ivy’s unwanted baby died in her arms. + +Long after the little body had stiffened they could not take it from +its mother. + +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. _We_ cannot help +her. There is nothing we can do but wait.” + +Something leapt at Gaylor’s heart that was not all pain or grief. + +“Please go,” the mother said presently without looking up, and they +left them alone--the girl-mother nursing her dead child. + +For a long time the mother was as motionless as her baby. + +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. + +Ivy tore her gown apart and pressed the tiny hands, ice cold, yellow +baby hands, against her bosom. + +Between her agonized sobs Ivy crooned to her little baby. + +The Chinese baby had won. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII + + +Years--of mingled pleasure and pain, as most human years are--have +passed. + +The Gaylors jog on. Gaylor still chafes for a son--and knows that +his wife will not again accept motherhood. But, understanding her +scruple but little, not sympathizing with it at all, he cleaves to her +loyally--keeping the vows he gave her in marriage. + +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. + +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. + +Through obedience, renunciation and service Ruben Sên has won through +to happiness. + +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. + +He is content to wait. + +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. + +Sên Ruben has set his soul against regret and sorrow, and regret and +sorrow have left him. + +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 about her as she walks, facing the +sunrise among the bamboos and wild white roses of Shan-si. + +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. + +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. + +For he will not go back to Ho-nan alone. + +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 _pai-fang_ 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. + + + + +GLOSSARY + + + “BABIES”--peasants, servants. + + CASH--a small coin. + + CH’IH--a roofless paved courtyard. At great functions it is roofed and + floored. + + CHOP--official stamp of a merchant or man of high position. It binds + every important Chinese contract and edict. + + DRAGON THRONE--the throne of China. + + GIRDLE-WEARERS--aristocrats. + + GRASS-CHARACTERS--a fine and difficult form of Chinese writing. + + HANLIN--a graduate of the Hanlin “college.” One who has passed the + highest Peking examinations. + + HSIEN-JEN--wiseman, soothsayer, wizard who lives in a hill or mountain. + + HSI HUA T’ING--a hall between gardens and walls where ceremonial meals + are served. + + I-PANG-LO--a musical instrument. + + K’ANG--stove. + + KIN--a musical instrument. + + K’O-TANG--guest-hall. (In a modest establishment it is the one room of + importance, and is put to many social and family uses.) + + KO’TOW--prostration of great respect--to kneel and touch the ground + with the forehead. (Also written KOT’OW, KOTOW, etc.) + + KUEI--the women’s apartments. In good establishments it is a building + of many rooms and verandas surrounding a courtyard. + + KWAN or KWAN YIN-KO--the goddess of mercy. (There are varied + spellings.) + + LAMPS-OF-MERCY--fire-flies. + + LANG--roofed passage. + + LI--a Chinese measurement of distance, about one-third of a mile. + + MEI-JÊN--match-maker, go-between, marriage broker. + + PAI-FANG--a memorial arch of great honor, usually in commemoration of + some act of great sacrifice. + + PAN-KOU--a musical instrument. + + RUYIE--an emblem of good luck, often made of jade. It never is large, + but usually beautiful, and may be very valuable. + + SACRED PRISONER--the Emperor of China. + + SHU-CHIA--“Reverence books”--library, reading-room. + + “SILKS”--paintings. The greatest Chinese artists have painted on silk. + + SON OF HAN--a Chinese. They hold it their proudest title, except the + Cantonese who do not so style themselves. + + SON OF HEAVEN--the Emperor. + + SPIRIT WALL--a devil screen placed outside an entrance to prevent evil + spirits from entering. + + TA JEN--a great man--a man of importance. + + T’IEN CHING--“Heaven’s Well”--the ladies’ courtyard in the center of + the KUEI. + + TING--courtyard. + + TINGCHAI--yamen runner--messenger. + + TING TZŬ LANG--the passage that leads from the Great Gate to the + Reception Hall. + + TSA HSING--village of mixed families. (The inhabitants of the majority + of small Chinese country villages usually are of only one family + or clan.) + + TUCHUN--war lord--military governor. + + VERMILION PALACE--the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City--Peking. + + YAMEN--official residence, usually a mandarin’s--a government office. + + YANG-LAO-TI--nourish-old-age-land. + + “YELLOW-ROBES”--priests--monks. + + YUAN--the Chinese dollar (fifty cents). Often, but incorrectly, termed + YEN. The YEN is a Japanese coin and strictly speaking there is no + Chinese YEN, but “chopped YEN” are used in some parts of China. + + +THE END + + + + +Transcriber’s Notes + + + • Italics represented by surrounding _underscores_. + + • Small caps converted to ALL CAPS. + + • Obvious typographic errors silently corrected. + + • Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original. +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77722 *** diff --git a/77722-h/77722-h.htm b/77722-h/77722-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f9648f --- /dev/null +++ b/77722-h/77722-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,15992 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + RUBEN AND IVY SÊN | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; 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} +.t1 { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: .1em; + word-spacing: .2em; margin-top: .5em; } +.t2 { margin-top: 2em; font-size: 80%; font-weight: bold; } +.t3 { margin-top: .25em; font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 2em; + word-spacing: .1em; letter-spacing: .1em; font-weight: bold; } +.t4 { margin-top: 6em; font-size: 90%; letter-spacing: .1em; } +.t5 { letter-spacing: .1em; } +.t6 { font-size: 90%; letter-spacing: .1em; } + +.copyright { margin: 4em auto; } +.copyright p { text-align: center; text-indent: 0; font-size: 80%; } +.c1, .c2 { font-size: 100%; } +.c3 { margin-top: 8em; } + +.author-note { margin: 4em 20%; } + +.dedication { margin: 4em auto; } +.dedication p { text-align: center; text-indent: 0; + font-size: 170%; letter-spacing: 0.05em; + word-spacing: .1em; +} + +.half-title { margin: 4em auto; font-size: 220%; + font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: .1em; + text-align: center; text-indent: 0; } + + </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. & 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> diff --git a/77722-h/images/colophon.jpg b/77722-h/images/colophon.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f6e8c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/77722-h/images/colophon.jpg diff --git a/77722-h/images/cover.jpg b/77722-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e90d670 --- /dev/null +++ b/77722-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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