Ruben and Ivy Sên

By Louise Jordan Miln

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Title: Ruben and Ivy Sên

Author: Louise Jordan Miln

Release date: January 16, 2026 [eBook #77722]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1925

Credits: Terry Jeffress and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


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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.


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