Sên King-lo gave a cry; a thousand words could not have said more.
Ivy and he had lunched at Miss Julia’s—blind Miss Julia—and were
walking home through the woods, at least as far as the river. They might
find a cab near the bridge, or, if not, they could take a street-car
there.
Here in the quiet old wood where two months ago he had brought his new
revelation, to be alone with it, to creep into Nature’s rest, to lift
his eyes to the sky and the darkling hills, to cool his burn and still
his soul amid the trees where now buds swelled and hidden sap lifted, to
wash and clean his hands and his spirit in the crisp air that whispered
of summer—they loitered a time because it was so beautiful here, and
because they were together.
June flowers grew in the grass; a beryl and cinnabar sky crowned and
mantled the world. The trees were heavy and big with leaf, grave and gay
with a score of greens. Bees hummed to the wild roses. An old
apple-tree, late but lusty of blossoms, buffeted and bent by a thousand
gales—but its good roots held—lay prone on the ground. Its flowers lay
a perfumed white and rose veil heaped on ferns and hare-bells. A baby
squirrel sat bolt up on the prostrate gnarled trunk, industriously
washing his baby face. The summer air had a score of scents and bore on
its fragrant warmth one message. And married birds were teaching their
babies to fly.
They ought not to have come here—the man and the girl who had grappled
their wills to renouncement—not here to this perfumed place of
fulfilment.
It was here that Sên King-lo had brought his new joy and sorrow one late
afternoon in April—had sat an hour where the cleanly squirrel sat now,
and had fought his first round in his battle with self.
He had made up mind and purpose then in the only way he could. Marriage
between him—Chinese—and an English girl, even if he could win her to
it, which he believed he could not—must not be; should not. And from
that he never had wavered, did not waver now. He had thought it all out
bit by bit and had made his paramount resolve, and little by little the
plan of his nearer days. Since he might not ask what he most craved, he
would hold but the faster, while he might, to what he already had:
friendship and sweet welling companionship. He never could marry; it was
written; and because it was, he would garner every dear memory he could
to comfort his years. But again and again the dream came of an English
Ruby sitting in firelight and garden—_his_ firelight, _his_
garden—while his eyes played with her hair. He knew it a dream. He
would not, if he could, have it a fact. But he knew he would keep it
forever and dream it again and again while his years lasted. Take it
home with him some day and dream it again when he sat a childless old
man on the banks of the Yellow Sorrow.
They ought not to have come here or lingered.
Sên King-lo knew his own strength; but, Chinese though he was, he did
not know Nature’s.
“What a ripping old hero,” he said, pointing down to the prostrate tree,
“game to the last.” He gathered her a spray of the rosy apple-blossoms
and buds and filched for his coat another. “We must come here—in
September. The apples that grow on so brave a tree should be good—full
of tang, like wine. We’ll eat them in September. It’s a bargain?”
“But I am going home in August,” she told him and added lightly, though
her lips felt stiff, “Didn’t you know?”
Sên King-lo gave a cry.
Their eyes met.
There was neither China nor England—nor Virginia. There was only a man
and a girl—and Nature: in all the world nothing else.
“You must not go—from me,” he said. “I cannot live without you. You are
my life.” He held his arms out to her with a gesture that pleaded—but
claimed.
Ivy took a step towards him.
Sên King-lo did the rest. He wrapped his arms and his love about her. He
laid his face on her face.
Presently he whispered words in her ear—Chinese words. She knew none of
them—but she did not hear them as strange.
He cupped her face in his hands and put it from him a little, that he
might learn it again, that his eyes might speak his love to her eyes.
And her eyes did not falter. They took what he gave.
“Will you come _home_—with me—some day—to China?”
“To the end of the world,” she told him. She had not spoken before.
And he took her back into love’s tender, reverent crushing, his face
against her face.
There was neither England nor China, nor Virginia: there was only
Heaven.
A gray cloud darkened the beryl and cinnabar sky. The Potomac ran
colder.