Mrs. Sên clapped her hands and the “boy”—a wrinkled-faced Chinese of
sixty—brought in the teapot and the crumpets.
She had seen Lo’s chair as the bearers carried it up the path, and she
was sure he’d want his tea as soon as he could get it, after being
coolie-jolted all the way from the Bund to the top of the Peak, this
broiling, brazen day. She knew she wanted hers.
She frowned a trifle impatiently as she rearranged her tea-table a
little. To Sung had forgotten the sugar again. Lo didn’t take sugar
here—but she did. Well, she’d not take sugar today, for Lo would be
here in a moment now and, if she called the servant back to bring it,
probably Lo would hear and see; and she didn’t want her husband to know
that To Sung had forgotten her sugar again—if he had forgotten it. It
had infuriated Sên King-lo when it had happened once before. His face
had blazed and he had hurled some terrible words at old To Sung, and
Ruby had seen a Chinese side of her husband that she never had seen
before. To Sung had listened with an expressionless face to the torrid
abuse and had gone for the sugar basin when Sên had ended. But only Mrs.
Sên’s insistence had saved him dismissal. “I thought you had to be
deferential to every old person,” she said as she sugared her half-cold
tea. “Every rule has its exception, even in China,” Sên had told her,
“and I’ll have no servant of ours forget the slightest service to you.”
She did not dare, for poor old To’s sake, to have Lo know that he had
forgotten, or neglected, to bring her sugar again.
They were wonderful servants, these Chinese house-servants of hers, and
the bungalow on the Peak ran on even smoother and more noiseless wheels
than her admirable London ménage had: more tempting dinners even more
perfectly cooked—service swifter and surer. But now and then some
personal English need of her own was overlooked. And for all the
expertness and well-nigh perfection, Mrs. Sên felt that it was a
chillier service than that her London servants had given her. She
ignored it, tried to believe that she did not know why it was, brooded
over it rather, and hid it from Lo whenever she could.
It was the one small blemish in her delight in her new life in a new
place, though she began now to wonder how soon people would begin to
call.
“Young China” has done some remarkable things to Hongkong, if it has
done nothing else. Sên King-lo found Victoria less to his liking than it
had been. But Ruby, who was seeing her first of the Orient now, was
entranced with Hongkong. It was all so unexpected, so unlike anything
she ever had seen or imagined, that its every oddity and burlesque had a
charm and seemed a picture. She never really tired of the bizarre
kaleidoscope of the Hongkong streets, but when she was a little satiated
with the incredible medley and cram of the odd human mêlée and the
narrow, sign-hung streets, she had only to rest her eyes on the
boat-flecked water, or lift them for refreshment and delight that never
failed to the Peak and its slopes; and always she had the home-haven of
the bungalow and its hillside garden.
Sên saw it differently. Whatever his country had gained in freedom and
in international grip, he had an appalling feeling that it had lost in
beauty and in manners. And once or twice he felt that the soul of China
was tarnished, and his taste, if not his reason, veered more and more to
Sir Charles’ attitude: “Would that the Manchu were back on the
dragon-throne.” It seemed to him that the new Chinese Democracy was
overblown and that it was underbred. His countrywomen, that he saw
everywhere in the city streets, hurt him almost intolerably. Chinese
girls, no longer girlish, “walked out with their ‘young men,’ ” girls so
preposterously clad that conjecture often might leave their sex a
toss-up, figures so absurd and meaningless that no comic paper in Europe
would have reproduced them, or known what to call them if it had.
Chinese women wearing spats and rakishly tilted fur caps, thin
peek-a-boo blouses and scant tweed skirts cut half-knee high and
violently patterned with checks so big that neither a “darky” woman nor
a “nigger minstrel” would have worn them in St. Louis or Chicago, stood
in strident groups on thoroughfare corners, discussing in shrill,
unabashed voices diseases and “causes” of which the courtyard-sheltered
woman never had heard. He saw one making a “book” at Happy Valley, he
heard another call her escort “old bean,” and when he heard two young
Chinese girls placidly discussing abnormalities, sex, and grimmer things
with men not much older than they, and saw an undoubtedly respectable
matron at a restaurant wearing a monocle and reading through it a French
novel of which he would not have allowed Ruby to touch the cover, Sên
King-lo felt that Ts’z-hi had died too soon, and all the sweetness and
soundness of Chinese womanhood with her.
But he reflected that Hongkong always had been a drag-net for flotsam
and jetsam, and he hoped and _prayed_ that when he had journeyed on into
the interior he should find his country less “advanced” and changed, the
waters still clear and tranquil in the lily-tanks, the tulips and
violets still at ease in the gardens, the wild roses by the bamboo-edged
waysides still white and sweet. The emancipation of his traveled mind
failed him a little, and his soul revolted hotly that East no longer
_was_ East.
His countrymen struck him as less changed in appearance, and less
unmannered, than his countrywomen did; but he missed the costume he
himself had not worn for many years. He missed old ceremonial greetings,
old suavities, old detachment, and even the down-hanging queue and the
tight braids of hair closely bound about half-shaven heads. Many a man
with whom he had business offered him a whiskey and soda or a big cigar
who yesterday would have given him a tiny bowl of tea or a long-stemmed,
small-bowled, betasseled pipe. Sên King-lo was as homesick for China in
Hongkong as he ever had been in Washington and was homesick in a sorrier
way.
He always was glad to get back to the bungalow on the Peak which he had
taken and furnished for Ruby through a cablegram sent from Vancouver.
Sên King-lo had not cared to take his English wife to a Hongkong hotel.
They had been in Hongkong several months now, during which time he had
been away more than once on the bank’s business, once with Ruby, twice
without her. He did not intend to take her with him again when he went
on a business journey. There had been a hint of unpleasantness for
them—not between them—more than once on that one journey, hints that
had reached him more clearly than they had her. He understood the
language and the people; she did not.
She had amused herself comfortably enough on his two brief absences, and
he would have been glad to hope that he might persuade her to remain in
Hongkong when he went to Ho-nan to see his grandmother at his old home.
Ruby had certain social assets here that could not be ignored or too
ruthlessly discounted. The Governor was a lifelong friend of Sir Charles
Snow’s; his wife a distant relative of Lady Snow’s; and in London Ruby
and he had dined with them and they with the Sêns. It had not been
possible for Mr. and Mrs. Sên to be excluded from Government House. And
that gave her a chance of amusement which might, he thought, be a little
more cordial if he himself were away. But Sên knew so well that his wife
would not be persuaded to remain behind when he went to Ho-nan that,
much as he wished it, he scarcely urged it. What was the use?
Sên King-lo began to see, faint but growing clearer, the same writing on
the wall that Sir Charles had seen, and been aghast but not surprised to
see, at Kensington.
Eagerly determined that this holiday and homecoming of his should be all
Lo’s, filled to the brim with all that would make it happiest for him
and pleasant to remember, Mrs. Sên cared very little how many Europeans
called on her or how many did not; but she was keenly anxious to know
and “make friends” with Chinese women, that she and Lo might come and go
among his Chinese friends, seeing them in their homes and in the Sên
home. Sên had hoped to gratify her in this, believing that it would be
easy enough under the change in woman’s position in China. To an extent
he had, but it hadn’t worked.
Chinese ladies had called on Mrs. Sên—a few; two had invited her to
lunch; and one, more emancipated perhaps, or perhaps more good-natured,
or it even might have been under a husband’s control, had gone so far as
to bring her daughters with her the second time she called. She had
dined once at the Sêns’ bungalow and had once invited them both to dine
with her husband and herself—on which occasion neither of her daughters
had been present.
But all this visiting had been as barren to Ivy as Sên realized it to be
perfunctory, if not, as he suspected, actually enforced. Ivy knew no
Chinese. Only one of the Chinese ladies who had called upon her knew a
few words of English. Great international issues may be reconciled and
solved _via_ interpreters, but feminine intercourse cannot be. The day
Mrs. Sên lunched with Mrs. Eng-Hung, the English lady was provided with
English cutlery; but its newness was assertive—almost a protest—and
the hostess ate with chopsticks. When Mrs. Sên offered to shake hands
with her Chinese women visitors, the palms that met her outstretched
hand were instant and courteous but limp and irresponsive. And the
husband of every Chinese woman that called even once either was under
some large business obligation to Sên King-lo, or aimed to be. Several
Chinese ladies whom, through their husbands, Sên had asked to call upon
his wife, did not do so. Sên had little doubt that Mrs. Ma T’en-k’ai had
made her sudden journey to their country home rather than do so; and Ma
T’en-k’ai was deeply in debt to Sên for financial advancement. Yen
F’eng-hui, who owed more to Sên King-lo’s influence than any other man
in Hongkong did, frankly told King-lo that he would not permit Mrs. Yen
to know an Englishwoman who had married a Chinese. He did not blame Mrs.
Sên for being English, that would be absurd, since we all had be to born
where the gods decree. There were English ladies in Hongkong whom he
would not forbid his wife to meet, though he had no wish that she
should; but he held strong and unalterable views concerning such
inter-racial marriages. He hoped that his honorable friend would pardon
him. Sên King-lo did more than that: he liked Yen for his upright
frankness, and courage—it takes courage to defy your banker—and Sên
King-lo could not condemn Yen, who had never been out of their
birthland, for feeling and saying stoutly what he himself had felt as
strongly scarcely four years ago, he who had traveled far and wide, from
whom long foreign sojourn and alien associations inevitably had rubbed
off many natural angles.
So he did all he could to fill his wife’s Hongkong hours pleasantly, to
keep a sour thing from her. He knew that he would be glad when they were
once more on the Pacific, with their steamer’s prow turned towards the
east.
Lo did not notice the absence of the little sugar-basin, and he drank
his Chinese tea and ate his English crumpets in high contentment.
“They can’t have done you very well at the Club today at lunch,” Ivy
said severely, as he passed his cup for its second refilling and helped
himself to a fourth macaroon.
“I had an excellent lunch,” her husband asserted, “but not at the Club.
I lunched and wined at the hotel with a lady.”
“And she gave you the flower in your coat!”
“She did.”
Mrs. Sên giggled. “You took Mrs. Yen out to lunch on the sly! Did you
have a private room?”
“I did not,” Lo said sadly, “take Mrs. Yen out to lunch. It would not
have been permitted.”
Ivy wanted a second cup of tea, but she would not take it for fear that
Sên would miss the sugar-basin. She always took three lumps, and she
knew that he always watched her hands. So she munched a sandwich instead
and quenched her thirst with a mango.
“I lunched with a lady, though.”
His wife knew that he wanted her to say: “Who was she?” and because she
knew it, she said nothing.
And because she would not ask, he would not tell her—yet. They often
played that game, and Sên usually won. If an English woman could wait,
so could a Chinese man.
“Is the home mail in, Lo?”
“No, not even signaled yet, dear.”
Sên looked about the pretty room as he lit her cigarette. They had
finished their tea.
“Ruby,” he said, as he gave it to her, well and truly lit, “I believe
you’d make home out of a soap-box and an old coffee sack.”
“I’d try for you, Lo,” she told him.
“I’ll match this against any room on the island,” he added.
“But you furnished it,” his wife reminded him.
“Yes—by wire. But I didn’t _make_ it. You did that. I didn’t rearrange
it. I didn’t put those flowers in that vase or Ruben’s picture in its
lacquer frame—” Sên broke off, silenced by a sudden grinding thought.
He had seen and understood the look in Chinese eyes when they first had
seen that photograph, had seen and quickly looked away. Ah well——
“But,” he added, “I did bring the one perfect thing in the room, and put
it here.”
Mrs. Sên looked about her drawing-room in surprise. What had Lo actually
chosen and bought that was here! Not the cabinet, not the screen, not
the quaint and costly teapot with a writhing dragon for handle and a
slender snake curled up asleep on its top, not the lovely cups with
butterflies poised on the delicate rims and a dear little red “ladybird”
inside each fragile cup. What—then she understood and giggled again—a
pretty sound from her, if not a pretty word, and shook her clasped hands
at him in the pretty Chinese way he’d taught her.
But not even for such a compliment (and they’d been married almost five
years now!) would she ask the question he was waiting for her to ask.
“I lunched, all alone, with a lady,” he said at last, “and she is coming
to lunch with you tomorrow.”
Still Mrs. Sên waited.
“You used to know her.”
“Oh—some one turned up from London.”
“No, from Washington.”
Ivy threw him a mock-horrified look. “Sên King-lo, you have been
lunching with Emmeline Hamilton! She’ll sue you for breach of promise.
What fun for Hongkong! Lady Montsurat’s face will be a picture.”
Sên laughed. Then he drew the carnation from his coat and leaned towards
her and tucked it in Ruby’s frock.
Then she knew that it was some one she had cared for, cared for very
much. And she cared for so few people—for so very few women.
“Lo,” she whispered, “it isn’t—it isn’t——”
“Yes, it _is_. Dr. Ray is in Hongkong, and Miss Julia is with her!”