Ruby had not noticed that her husband had avoided going out with her in
Hongkong and was avoiding it more and more; but it was so. He was
imperatively busy now, crowding into days the work of business drive and
finesse that might well have over-crowded weeks, if not months, for a
less capable man. He could not well take his wife to _hong_ and to
counting-house, to long bank conferences that more often than not ran
with a strong political under-current—the very life-blood of young
China, if not of China itself—or to more secret and smaller conclaves
which took place behind well-barred doors, when only two or three
Chinese gathered to speak together in slow, hushed tones and anxious
quiet words. But this was not the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Sên so rarely
were seen together in Hongkong. The reason lay close and well-guarded in
Sên King-lo’s breast: a tiny coiled serpent that lifted its narrow
hooded head now and then, meeting Sên’s eyes with sly, cold, wicked
eyes, and sometimes at night hissing softly in his ear. There were
functions to which he might have taken her, long rambles which invited
and beckoned, water-side strolls, leisurely peak-side climbs. And there
was Happy Valley, the incessantly recurring Derby Day of all the
Anglo-Chinese world and his wife, and there was Church Parade, as smart
a function, if more narrowed, as London’s own, and far more picturesque.
But Sên avoided and evaded them all whenever he could. Every hour that
he could spend with Ruby at the bungalow he did, and he filled them all
so full of intimate charm and gay comradeship that they fed her all the
happiness and content that even she—greedy of both—could crave or
assimilate. And sometimes she chid herself sharply that she could be so
happy so far from Ruben. But Sên King-lo had no doubt of her
motherliness for he saw the look in her eyes as they turned to the
harbor on “home mail” day.
Sên King-lo was doing his utmost, and his English wife did not
suspect—not yet, at least—the cancerous price that a Chinese soul
already was paying for a bunch of red peppers an English girl had tucked
in a jade-green dress once in Virginia.
A few days after Dr. Ray had visited them Mrs. Sên insisted that her
husband should go with her to a shop in Victoria City at which she had
been tempted the day before by some ivories and a Satsuma gift-jar she
did not feel competent to buy without Lo’s endorsement of their value.
She knew she admired them and _wanted_ them. Lo would know whether they
were admirable or not, and worth half the stiff prices the Chinese curio
merchant asked for them. She insisted that King-lo should go with her
and decide. He had no way of escape, unless he took the drastic one of
telling her frankly why he wished not to go shopping with her in
Victoria City. The risk of some discourteous glance or half-smothered
word that she might or might not catch or interpret seemed to him less
than the risk of making to her the intolerable explanation. So he
yielded and went.
At the door of the curio-shop, a famous shop which rich globe-trotters
had made a veritable Mecca of the extravagant, Mr. and Mrs. Sên drew a
little back to let a woman, or rather a group of three, all
parcel-laden, pass out.
Miss Julia Townsend came first, her arms very full—she never carried a
parcel less worthy a place in her hands than a prayerbook, a lace-edged
handkerchief or a vinaigrette, in Virginia. But the curio-hunter’s fever
was on her now, and she came from No Wink’s shop hugging as many bulky
and shapeless paper-wrapped burdens as she could clasp in both arms and
hands, her long crêpe gown trailing behind her as never a skirt of hers
had dragged in the dust the plebeian populace trod, before. Dinah and
Lysander came just behind her, each carrying a pack-horse load of
bundles and boxes and brown-paper knobs. Lysander looked mulish, and his
ebon was a sable pallid. Dinah grimaced as she waddled, throwing
friendly, fat, kittenish glances to all and sundry as she came. Miss
Julia moved, as she always did, at a queenly pace, with a queenly mien;
but her old face glowed with the art-lover’s victory-look. She thought
she had found treasure of great price in the curio shop of No Wink.
The doorway was narrow. Sên King-lo drew back and uncovered, as he would
to any woman for whom he made way. His wife waited at his elbow
noncommittal, neither offering recognition nor advance, nor hinting
retreat. Miss Julia neither hurried nor slowed. She looked at Mrs. Sên
with unacquainted eyes, then turned them on Sên King-lo and went
leisurely on, with a slight inclination of her proud old head, an
inclination paid to the small courtesy their drawing aside had been but
in no way an inclination to either of them.
Her servants followed after her. Uncle Lysander gave Sên King-lo a
vicious glare that would have been insolence had it been less absurd.
But Dinah gave them both a caressing giggle, and a wide look of
friendship and fealty out of her surprised faithful eyes.
Ivy passed on into the shop, with a proud little laugh that was not
cattish. And Sên King-lo stood and watched his old friend until she was
out of sight, his hat in his hand, love and respect and regret in his
beautiful Chinese eyes.
Then he turned and joined his wife and addressed himself to the wares
and the price-list of old No Wink.
The curio-seller was courteous. He knew of Sên King-lo’s wealth, but his
courtesy was frigid and unbending. And Sên King-lo, who had laughed in
his generous soul at black Uncle Lysander, could have throttled No Wink.
Much as he had loved her, tenderly as he always had shown it, Sên
King-lo showed his wife an added affection, a warmer tenderness, a
deeper deference that night. But Sên King-lo’s eyes were sad even when
they laughed at her. And To Sung began to believe that his master was
crazy.
They never saw Miss Julia again, rarely spoke of her again to each
other, and she never again to any one mentioned either of them.
The next day Sên King-lo went again, and alone, to No’s curio-shop.
At lunch her husband gave Ruby Sên a string of pearls. She already had
more pearls than she often wore; but she cried out in wonder at the
burnished pigeon-breast tints gleaming softly on these and examined
curiously the odd clasp of beaten and twisted lead that fastened them.
That same afternoon Miss Townsend received from No Wink, the
curio-dealer, a cube-shaped, red crêpe-lined box of camphor-wood and an
obsequious note. He begged his distinguished and generous patron’s
acceptance of the unworthy and nearly valueless curio he ventured to
offer her and explained that it was an old and honored Chinese custom to
make some humility gift of appreciation to noble and liberal customers.
Miss Julia Calhoun Townsend did not relish accepting a gift, no matter
how small, from a shop-keeper and said so to Dr. Ray, but she liked even
less to resent as an over-familiarity what so evidently was an act of
respect, and a Townsend always held old customs sacrosanct. So she kept
the “trifle,” and before she left Hongkong, made a point of going again
to the curio-shop and spending there a sum which she made no doubt was
many times the value of the crinkled cup in the camphor-wood box.
But Elenore Ray, who had given some study to ceramics, though she had no
idea that this bit of Satsuma was one of the rarest pieces, the gem of
No’s collection, and had been, hundreds of years ago, the rouge cup of
an Imperial bride, knew that the brownish Satsuma handleless cup was
good and very old; and she had no doubt who had paid for it and sent it
as a loving-cup, brimming with golden drops of “kindness yet.” But, only
seeing that it was carefully packed and well guarded, she said nothing
of what she “guessed”—a Southern woman’s fineness of soul perhaps,
perhaps a physician’s deep-rooted habit of silence.