Sir Charles had meant well, and so had Miss Julia; but the result of
their united effort was that they hastened it on. It has happened
before.
It was Ivy herself who, though she did not directly say it, showed Sên
clearly that she wished it so.
She was unhappy at her cousin’s. Emma Snow was all that was kindest. But
Sir Charles could not hide his displeasure and the something too of
shame that he felt. He did not blame Sên King-lo as much as he felt that
he ought. He saw great excuse for Sên King-lo—for his impulse, if not
for his stubborn persistence. Men loved. It came and it went. But it had
to come. Shut off from his own people, debarred from the women of his
race, it was inevitable that his manhood should turn to some one of the
women among whom he lived. And Sir Charles appreciated what Ivy’s appeal
and lure had been—appreciated it all. Desdemona, on the stage, usually
is golden-haired and tea-rose faced. A finer art would show her Venetian
dark. Sir Charles heard the Chinese note in Ivy’s laugh and knew that
the colors she oftenest wore and the dangling things she instinctively
thrust in dress and hair had a Chinese touch—and how that must be in
Sên King-lo’s eyes. Although she did not know a _taotai_ from a
_compradore_, a _hong_ from a _pai’fang_ or a _k’o-tang_, a _tong_ from
a _yamên_, yet he now and then heard a Chinese sentiment from her
English lips, caught a Chinese trend and bias in her mind. Her
sensitiveness was as Chinese as it was girlish. Her love of flowers and
that she liked one or two or a spray far more than she did a mass of
them, her fondness for stringed-instruments—the harp was more to her
than the piano or organ—her interest in handwritings, and a dozen
traits, small enough singly, were not unlike those of the Chinese. Her
horror of debt—he never had known her to owe a farthing—her pride and
her quick sense of humor were more general in China than they were in
England. He could understand Sên’s madness, even while he steeled his
soul not to condone it.
But he saw no excuse for Ivy. To him she seemed the victim of wilful and
headstrong infatuation. Sên King-lo was a rich man, and Snow partly
realized how the girl loathed her poverty. But he was just enough to
know that in this she had given dollars and cents no thought. And there
were rich men and to spare here in Washington and at home in
England—and Ivy had beauty, personality and charm. Of course she
wished—whether she knew so or not—to marry. Every nice girl did—and
should. But an English girl as nice as he had believed his cousin to be
would have lived forever unwedded and childless, rather than marry an
Oriental. He had not forgotten Lotus; but he had been a boy then, and
she not much more than a child who never had seen a man of her caste but
not of her blood—until she had looked up from his arms into his face.
And, too, that had been very different—love’s young dream in a
lotus-garden, the dream that all Nature and strange circumstances had
conspired to make it. And he had had the sound sense and the stern
British good taste to renounce it. And it had been a long time ago.
Ivy had lost caste with her cousin. And, in spite of himself, he showed
it. And the girl, sensitive, proud and dependent, felt it intensely.
They had been close friends, particular chums until now, and now they
were merely a disgusted kinsman and an outraged kins-girl.
Then, too, money was pinching her: the need and lack of it. Lessons were
a thing of the past now. Emma Snow good-humoredly had insisted upon that
and then regretted that she had, for Ivy flatly refused even a dime of
Charles’ money that she had not so much as pretended to earn. Her purse
was empty, and she needed new gloves. Emma missed seeing a ring and a
brooch of Ivy’s and suspected that she had sold them.
And most of all now the girl longed to get away from the house in which
even her cousin’s bread tasted bitter. She refused the dishes she liked
best, stole many bits of needlework from Justine, and mutilated almost
her last ten dollars to buy stuff she made into a little frock that
Blanche didn’t need, and counted how many of the meals she unwillingly
ate its shop value would have paid for. She burned her electric light
sparingly, bought her own stamps and used as few of them as she could,
and walked to save street-car fares.
They were married in August—Sên King-lo was eagerly glad to have it
so—and Washington society had no wedding-day treat.
There were neither bridesmaids nor cake. And they left Washington in an
hour after. Sên King-lo had had no difficulty in arranging for an
official transfer to London; for the semidiplomatic position he held
under China’s new Republic was elastic, a roaming brief when he chose,
and its itinerary very much at his own discretion.
Earlier than social Washington often stirred from its beds, Sên and Ivy
were married in a small quiet church in a small quiet tree-shaded
street. And before Washington knew of the ceremony Mr. and Mrs. Sên were
on the Atlantic.
Sên King-lo had wished intensely that Sir Charles Snow should give his
cousin away and had urged it, jealous for her that she should come to
her husband as English girls were accustomed to do. But Snow _could_
not, and Ivy would not have allowed it.
So Abraham Kelly, wearing a flopping gray frock-coat and feeling as if
his maiden aunt had caught him at a game of draw-poker in a churchyard,
gave Ivy away, while the Chinese Minister looked on with a beam on his
face and rage in his heart.
No girl-friend was there. Only Emma Snow and Dr. Ray stood beside her,
and, except the clergyman, no one else was there. There was no music.
But for the ruby-red bud in Sên King-lo’s lounge coat, there was not a
flower, unless the red peppers he himself had bought at dawn at the
market—and that Ivy wore in the little gray frock that Elenore Ray had
given her—counted for flowers.
There were more old clothes than new in Ivy Gilbert’s trousseau, and
those that were new were Dr. Ray’s gift.
From Emma the girl would take nothing, for Emma too had been a penniless
bride, and Ivy would accept nothing for which Charles Snow’s money had
paid. Lady Snow was greatly hurt, but she understood and forgave.
It sounds a sad wedding and a drear one. But the man and the girl that
stood at the altar were radiant-eyed. Neither had a doubt now.
They said goodbye in the vestry—the two women holding Sên King-lo’s
wife in their arms lingeringly—and she and he breakfasted alone in his
rooms, to be dismantled now. Then Mr. and Mrs. Sên caught the next train
for New York.
They dined alone. Ivy still wore her peppers dangling in a gown they
matched, a red dress which—he had told her so now—he had thought like
the wedding-dress of a Chinese bride, the night she had given him her
confession-book.
Three days later they sailed for Liverpool. Mrs. Sên was glad to go;
_she_ was going home, and New York had not been entirely comfortable.
Washington necessarily is cosmopolitan and race-seasoned. No one had
looked at her askance when she had walked its streets beside a Chinese
friend or lingered with him in the Corcoran Gallery—unless the darkies
who met them did. New York was different. Ivy thought that the man who
served their meals was curious, and she had a tingling sense that the
shop-discipline deferential courtesy of the clerk at Tiffany’s was all
for Sên’s purse—less than none of it for their companionship. She
thought that several passersby on Fifth Avenue looked at them odiously;
twice she saw a lip curl, and once a woman laughed.
She did not regret Washington. But she was glad to leave New York.
The voyage was smooth, and her cabin was sweet with lilies that kept
their waxen freshness and their intoxicating perfume well past-midocean.