It was not late the next morning when Mr. Sên’s orchids came—to Lady
Snow, of course. He sent nothing to Miss Gilbert—but she could scarcely
expect her confession-book back so soon. One wrote in confession-books
at one’s leisure, and when in the mood. That was understood.
“I wonder if he’ll pay his dinner-call today?” Emma said to her husband,
when at lunch he’d remarked on the splendid blooms on the table, and
she’d mentioned who had sent them.
“I don’t suppose he’s going to live here,” Ivy Gilbert remarked rather
unnecessarily.
“I don’t suppose he is,” Lady Snow said cheerfully, “but he’s sure to
call promptly—Charlie said so.”
“I?” the knight she’d quoted demanded.
“You said the Chinese were punctiliously polite. It amounts to the same
thing.”
“Bless my soul!” Sir Charles muttered.
“I think I’ll go out calling tomorrow instead of today. I’d be vexed to
miss him.”
“Do you like Mr. Sên?” Ivy asked indifferently.
“I don’t dislike him. I thought he was good fun. Do you, Ivy?”
“Which?”
“Both.”
“He is not my idea of fun.”
“Nor mine,” Sir Charles added.
“But he doesn’t bore me—if that’s what you mean,” the girl owned
lazily. “As for liking him—I don’t know him. I’ve met him three or four
times. What does that amount to? And, you know, my likes are few. They
don’t stretch to China.”
“Nor your knowledge,” her cousin Charles reminded her.
Ivy nodded contentedly. She was not interested in China or in the
Chinese; and she was not going to pretend that she was, even to please
dear old Charlie. She’d be polite—for him—but surely that was enough.
“Wouldn’t you better put your orchids in the drawing-room, Em?” she
said, with a laugh.
“I intend to,” Lady Snow retorted. “There is a big vase full there
already. I brought these in here for Charlie to enjoy.”
“Thank you, my dear.” He might have added—but did not—that he did not
care for orchids, except when they were growing.
“But I shall only have them in here at meals.”
“The peripatetic orchids,” Ivy said gaily. “Well, you and the orchids
will have to entertain Mr. Sên all alone, Emma, if he comes. I’m off to
Miss Julia’s.”
“I rather think I’ll have plenty of visitors today—though it isn’t my
day,” Lady Snow returned. “It is in the _Post_, and it’s sure to be
copied in the _Evening Star_, that Mr. Sên King-lo dined here last
night.”
“Great Scott!” was her husband’s comment.
Ivy giggled.
“Yes,” Emma told her, “I did. Justine knows a reporter. I never have any
difficulty getting my nice bits in.”
“I wouldn’t do that, dear,” Snow said uncomfortably.
“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re a man. I shall. I like them in. Marion
Lawson will be green. He never dined there _en famille_.”
“You didn’t put that in!” her cousin cried. And Sir Charles looked
distinctly disturbed.
“No,” Lady Snow owned. “But I shall tell Marion.”
“I’m sure you will,” Ivy laughed, and the man retired philosophically to
his ice-pudding.
“You’d have looked nice if he hadn’t turned up after all,” the girl
remarked.
“Well—” the other confessed, “I almost was in a wee panic. But I felt
pretty safe. He’d accepted, and Charlie says their word is as good as
another man’s bond.”
This time her husband did not expostulate or contradict.
They were dining out that evening, and Ivy hurried back in time to
dress.
“Well,” she asked, as they drove away towards Fifteen-and-one-half
Street, “did Mr. Sên call, Emma?”
“No,” Lady Snow admitted, “he didn’t. But half the girls in Washington
did. Emmeline Hamilton called, of course. She came early and stayed
late. I thought she’d never go. She stole an orchid. And when she saw
that I’d seen her sneak it into her vanity bag, she simpered and
sighed—like this——”
Ivy giggled.
Sir Charles told her, “You giggle just like a Chinese girl, Ivy.”
She frowned with vexation. It was too much! Her own cousin!
“Oh—” he had seen the frown—it was still light—“you needn’t frown.
Chinese girls have the prettiest giggles imaginable—not a scrap like
our women giggle—for all the world like the tinkle of ivory bells. So
is yours. I say, giggle again. Can you?”
Ivy gave him a dagger look.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I’m blowed if you don’t look a bit Chinese too
sometimes. Your eyes—or something. And you do tonight in that gown, and
with those stick-pin things in your hair.”
The girl bit her lip sharply. She was wearing her new red dress
again—she never had many gowns to choose from—and the garnet rings
dangled in her hair. Charlie had seen what the Chinese man had claimed
to see. It was intolerable!
When Ivy Gilbert followed Lady Snow into the drawing-room the girl’s
eyes were still stormy.
That was on Tuesday.
Sên King-lo called on Lady Snow the next afternoon. She was out, and her
cousin was with her. Mr. Sên left three cards.
On Thursday he came duly to breakfast—five minutes before the hour.
To his surprise, and then amusement, and not a little to Ivy’s dismay,
Sên King-lo and Miss Gilbert had breakfast alone.
The children, who as a rule shared and excited that meal with their
parents, were closely interned in their schoolroom quarters, because of
unattractive colds that might, their mother thought, develop into
whooping-cough. A cable from Downing Street had sent Sir Charles in hot
haste and breakfastless to the British Embassy an hour ago. His wife had
danced a slight but painful sprain into her left ankle the night before,
and was obliged to breakfast in bed.
Miss Gilbert explained and apologized, and led the way to the
breakfast-room.
Sên had the tact not to offer to defer his breakfast visit. It would
have been an enormity, of course, but for some puzzle of a reason Ivy
had half expected it. And it had crossed Lady Snow’s mind that he
might—but she had not said so.
Miss Gilbert was annoyed, and still more annoyed that she was. But her
annoyance wore off quickly. Sên King-lo saw to that as deftly as
unobtrusively. He greatly regretted missing Sir Charles. But he accepted
the small situation quite as the very small thing it was, and set
himself to dispel the displeasure that he clearly saw, though Miss
Gilbert felt sure that she hid it completely.
He thought that this girl with the intangible but haunting something of
China about her, disliked him. He did not resent it in the least. He
himself disliked a good many acquaintances. He was sorry for her that
the three small family accidents had driven her into a tête-à-tête meal
that he saw jarred. It didn’t enchant him. He preferred looking at Miss
Gilbert to talking to her. But he scarcely could gaze at her in silence
from melon to preserved ginger—so he addressed himself to chat away her
ill-ease and displeasure. Why she had elected to ride with him at all
still puzzled him. He was sorry she had, and vexed with himself that he
had troubled her with the invitation. He’d make it up to her as well as
he could. She should enjoy that ride if he could contrive it.
Why she so minded breakfasting alone with Sên King-lo was a question the
girl herself could have answered but lamely. She often had lunched alone
with a man friend, and as often had given tea in Emma’s absence to a man
she knew even more slightly than she did Mr. Sên. If she could ride with
this man, it was no great odds to break her cousin’s bread with him.
Uncle Lysander’s smoldering disapproval at her elbow might have
disconcerted her a little perhaps—for, while it angered her, she must
have somewhat sympathized with it. It is not pleasant, unless one is
very self-sure indeed, to feel that the servant who offers you cutlets
and omelette considers you bad form. But the Snow servants—except
Justine—were all English, and it was evident that neither Dawson nor
William saw any indignity in bending over Mr. Sên’s chair. She did not
know why she disliked this breakfast so—but she did. Unreasonable,
perhaps. But the fact stood.
For all his intelligence Sên King-lo was at fault in his explanation of
the displeasure he recognized. It did not occur to him that this English
girl did not object to breakfasting alone with _him_, but with _a
Chinese_. He put it all down to a personal dislike of him personally. It
did not vex him in the least. Had he believed that she thought him
beneath her—which he did not—it would not have vexed him. Had he
realized that it was the Chinese race that she looked down upon and
considered socially unfit, it would have vexed him as little. Sên
King-lo, the sash-wearer, was even more sure, far more sure, of his race
than he was of himself. His estimate of self was humble. His estimate of
China was very proud. He was proud and joyous to be Chinese.
They breakfasted briefly, but before he moved back her chair, Ivy had
confessed to herself that the West had done this stranger within its far
gates well—for, if Mr. Sên never had seen a Chinese girl, he
exquisitely knew how to treat an English girl, and how to care for her
tiniest comforts. And she complimented Western sojourn and example for
what centuries of Chinese breeding had given—as nothing else can.
They went to their waiting horses, outwardly cordial, but inwardly each
was a little perturbed. Ivy very much doubted if he could ride—what she
called ride. He dressed the part without fault, which she always had
thought that only a British man could do—but, after all, it was much a
matter of tailor and boot-maker; no doubt Mr. Sên had a London tailor.
Sên wondered how well his companion could ride. He loved to _go_. Never
mind—he reproached himself—this was _her_ ride, and, if she couldn’t
ride, they’d walk. And she should enjoy herself—this girl with his
mother’s name—who was starting off, he knew, so reluctantly. Why, he
wondered again, was she going at all?
She could mount—that was his first discovery. She rose a feather-weight
from his hand. Her discovery was that her unusual escort could mount her
at all. That he did it expertly was a pleasant surprise. And she
realized that his slender hand had been rock-firm under her foot. It was
a good beginning at least. In the pleasure of even that small relief she
smiled down at him graciously as he straightened her habit.
“Why, Mr. Sên,” she laughed, “you must have mounted many girls. I
thought from what you said the other night that you scarcely had ridden
with one.”
He laughed back at her, lingering a moment at her bridle. “I never have
ridden with one, Miss Gilbert—never with any girl. But I have mounted a
great number of ladies—one any number of times—no less a personage
than a duchess—the Duchess of Westershire. So, you see, I’ve had
distinguished practice.”
“Never!” the English girl cried. “The Duchess of Westershire must weigh
fourteen stone, if she weighs an ounce.”
“Nearer forty, I’d wager.”
“You needn’t tell me she can ride.”
“She can mount,” Sên insisted.
“Didn’t she crack your hand in two?”
“Went up like down.”
“Did she ride to hounds?”
“She rode towards them,” Sên stated guardedly.
Ivy chuckled. And Sên King-lo swung up into his saddle.
It was a better beginning than Miss Gilbert realized. Make a Chinese
laugh, or help him to laugh, and his world is yours—at least for the
moment.
They eyed each other’s horsemanship guilefully. There was nothing for
either to cavil at yet. The girl’s seat was perfect. Sên’s was no less.
Still he was cautious. The groom behind heard them laugh more than
once—but it was she who suggested, as they turned into Dupont Circle,
“A little faster?”
Still Sên King-lo set but a moderately quickened pace. They still were
keeping it so when they met Miss Smith face to face. But he had no doubt
now that this girl could ride, and her English eyes, almost as quick to
horsemanship as his were to most things, knew that Sên King-lo rode as
well as a Derby jockey.
And, if he rode today to please a girl who—he thought—disliked him,
Sên King-lo rode to win.
They rode far, and after the banks of Rock Creek they pushed on into the
country, and rode faster and faster.
“How joyous!” she called to him once, in a camaraderie that knew no race
distinctions.
“Glorious, isn’t it!” Sên answered.
“You ride better than Charles does even,” she told him blithely; “and
you ride our English fashion. You rise in your saddle.”
“I learned to ride in England when I was a boy at school,” he explained.
“But I usually ride American fashion when I jog off by myself.”
“Why?” she asked quickly.
“I enjoy it more.”
“Oh,” the girl said, a little disdainfully.
“You ought to try it,” he ventured. “Don’t you think it prettier?”
But the English girl would not own that. “Our way is the kinder,” she
insisted.
“To the nags? Yes,” Sên agreed, “it certainly seems so. But your
cavalrymen did not rise in their stirrups until recently. You should try
it—sometimes.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t like learning new ways, Mr. Sên.”
“Or languages?”
“You don’t call Chinese a new language, do you?”
“It would be to you,” he retorted. “By the way, there are a great many
distinct Chinese languages, nearly sixty. I wonder which you’d
admire—least.”
“Horrors!” the girl cried. But she laughed softly—because he had said
“least” when she’d thought he was going to say “most.”
And he laughed back at her, because the speed they’d gone was tingling
in his blood.
“Thank you, Mr. Sên,” she said, as they stood waiting for Dawson or
William to open the door. “I have so enjoyed it.”
“Truly?” He asked it gravely.
“I’ve loved it,” she told him.
“I wonder then,” Dawson heard him say, “if you’ll let me take you again
some day?”
“I’d love it,” she answered.
The Chinese man gave her a grateful look. It was sincere. He was
grateful that a girl who disliked him, had had—as he knew she had—a
good time. And he was gratified that he had done what he had tried to
do. Sên King-lo was very human.
That afternoon he sent Lady Snow a wealth of flowers—a note of
condolence for her accident, all fragrant with their perfume.
And this time Ivy too had her tribute, tea-roses, and on the card he
sent with them Sên King-lo had written a word: “Thanks.”
Again Miss Gilbert took her blossoms to her own room. There were flowers
enough in the drawing- and sitting-rooms, and Emma’s room looked like a
flower-show. Ivy put her roses in water—one bud she tucked in her gown.
She was fond of tea-roses.