The rural social strongholds in England are far less complacent and
easy-going than London is. London is something of a jade and unbends to
any fun. The “county” is a prude, respectable to a degree. “County”
never bends. London’s the more human and undoubtedly has the better
time. If “county” has a finer art of living, London has the prettier
knack, and the gayer, more amusing.
“Give me the county for my funeral,” Emma told Sir Charles, “but let me
live in London every time.” But Lady Snow was frivolous and meant to
stay so.
And even Sir Charles, who saw through most things, could not see why the
Sêns had moved to Surrey in October, almost on their return from China.
London could be trusted to keep its welcome of Mr. and Mrs. Sên warm,
but he doubted considerably whether the semi-county of Brent-on-Wold
would welcome them at all.
Sên King-lo had his reasons, of course, and probably they were good
ones; but Sir Charles could not think what they were.
It was Sên’s doing, not Ivy’s, Snow was sure.
Ruby had been quite willing to make the home-move that her husband had
suggested, but not glad. London was her Mecca and always would be; but
she was content to live wherever Lo wished, if it might be with him and
not in China. She knew that she would not be prisoned in Surrey, or
forbidden long drinks of London’s wine. King-lo was no wing-clipper,
least of all of hers. If he longed for country life, or chose it for
some other reason, she was more than willing to have it so. It was his
turn to have his way, she felt sincerely. And what did it matter, if
they were together, with Ruben, bonnier than ever, toddling at their
feet, clutching at her skirts? Sên King-lo had no entire monopoly of
loyalty and sunny niceness, or of fineness and bigness.
Sên King-lo had not suggested their moving because of any longing he
felt for flowers and trees, open spaces, and running water. All such
things were one to him now. London meant a great deal to Sên. And his
opportunities for the big Anglo-Chinese work he still meant to do, and
to do with his might, opportunities for the personal touch and mutual
yeasting of friendly minds and foemen’s, which are so much of all
international work’s success, were in London tenfold what they could be
in any other spot in Europe. But he knew that he was very tired, and
that unless he rested certain mental and personal forces of his that had
suddenly worn thin, his hand might lax hopelessly and fall away from its
helm. There was work to do that needed him for its best doing. Ruby
needed him, and would need him more and more as Ruben grew older. For
Sên King-lo already knew what no one else suspected, not even Charles
Snow, that Ruben’s Saxon body was but the sheath of a mind and spirit
and inclination intensely Chinese. Sên saw a coming day when it might be
for him to stand between Ruby and their boy; to curb Ruben, to comfort
Ruby, to spare her all he could, to save Ruben from mistakes that were
the heritage of the father’s son. And the child that was coming in
December—how might it not need him, how might not Ruby need him because
of it?
It was because of all this that Sên King-lo had turned from the vivid
rush and inexorable pull of London life to the haven-quiet of the place
he found and bought in Surrey.
Winter was mild that year in England. The drooping weeping-ash trees
were naked of their leaves, fires were comfort as well as “company,” of
course; but the grass still kept a hint of greenness; the holly was
scantily berried; here and there a tiny flower-face peeped up from the
rock garden; an heroic, insensitive, old rose-vine was erratic enough to
put forth a shivered, puny bud; a japonica-tree at the sunniest stretch
of the south wall frankly threatened to flower. There was no demand at
all for skates, but there was some for racquets by young and
enthusiastic players.
The Snows were staying with Sên and Ruby, and the cook took her orders
from Lady Snow, for a time. There was a trained nurse in the house, and
the local doctor whom Mrs. Sên had chosen “dropped in” at tea-time
fairly often, at Sên King-lo’s request.
Today Ruby had not come down to breakfast, Emma had left the cook to her
own devices, and Sir Charles thought that the doctor was upstairs now
and had been there a deuce of a time.
Sir Charles Snow was smoking strenuously, not in the big drawing-room,
but in the pink-and-white absurdity which the servants called “the
downstairs boudoir”—the big drawing-room’s near neighbor, almost
annex—and that was worse, for the “boudoir’s” dainty, expensive
fripperies were perfect caches for smoke-smell and smudge. But a man, at
least an English man, has a right to do what he likes when a whole house
is at sevens and sixes, every woman in it looking important, meals late,
fires neglected, and men ignored or snubbed.
“It is too damned still,” Snow grumbled irritably to his third cigar.
Suddenly the big man jumped like a nerve-ridden woman—at least his
heart did—at a sudden sound.
But it was only a sympathetic tail thumping ingratiatingly at his feet.
“Hello yourself!” Snow replied, glad even of a terrier to speak to.
“_You’ve_ no business in here. Wait till my lady wife sees you—only, if
you take my advice, Bimbles, you won’t, old boy.”
Bimbles yapped a pleased reply.
“Oh, all right,” Sir Charles retorted; “if you don’t care, I don’t.”
Even a dog’s company was better than none.
The door opened, and Emma hurried in—but before his wife had closed the
door again, Snow had heard a tiny cry.
“Well?” he demanded anxiously. Emma looked “bad,” he thought. And that
wasn’t her way!
His wife made no reply, except to sob and throw herself, almost
vixenishly, in a chair.
“Tell me,” he begged her brusquely.
“Oh, Charlie, it is too terrible,” Emma wailed angrily.
“Ivy?”
Lady Snow shook her head. “All of us. It’s a Chinese baby.”
Charles Snow looked at her with gloomy eyes.
“The ugliest baby I ever saw. It isn’t like a baby. It’s like a hideous
little Chinese god, and it looks ten thousand years old.”
“Then it mustn’t,” Sir Charles remarked grimly; “only an emperor may
look ten thousand years old.”
“Well, then,” his wife retorted, “it looks twenty thousand. It hasn’t
any eyes—just up-and-down wrinkled slits. It’s all cheek-bones and
_yellow_—cheek-bones right up to its awful little eyebrows. It hasn’t
any nose, and what it has is wider than its mouth, and those horrid
up-and-down slits that I suppose are its eyes, if it _has_ any eyes,
keep waggle-waggling all the time, blink, blink, blink.”
Snow sighed, a smothered, dreary sigh. Emma’s description sounded
Chinese enough.
“Looks like Sên, then?” he said.
“It does nothing of the kind!” Lady Snow stormed. “I tell you it is the
most hideous, living thing I ever saw—and more Chinese-looking than any
Chinaman I ever saw. It looks like Low Tease, or whatever you call him,
when he was nine hundred years old, in those awful illustrated Chinese
books of yours, and it looks twice as Chinese as Low Tease does.”
“Lao Tze was a mere boy of two or three hundred when he died, dear,” Sir
Charles murmured gently.
“I don’t care!” Lady Snow snapped through her angry weeping. “It looks a
disgrace! So there!”
“Are you sure? Sure that Ivy’s baby looks so _very_ Chinese?”
“Sure? Of course I’m sure! I’ve seen it, haven’t I? I tell you, it _is_
Chinese. Nothing on earth would make me believe that it was Ivy’s child
at all—if I didn’t know.”
“Has she seen it—seen it as you have?”
“She’s seen it, and I suppose she _saw_ it. She saw a speck of fluff or
something on his coat when King-lo gave her a drink, and laughed at him
for being untidy, and flicked it off.”
“Did she seem to mind?” Snow asked.
“Mind? Mind a speck of fluff? Oh, the baby! Mind the awful Chinese look
of it? She didn’t seem to, but she must. And she’ll hate it! How she’ll
hate it!”
“I hope not,” Charles Snow said gently.
“Of course she’ll hate it. I hate it now! And King-lo ‘minded’!”
“How do you know?” Snow asked quickly.
“Oh, I don’t know—but he did. How can I explain every single thing to
you? You ought to know by yourself. I’m too upset to go on talking
forever. He minded terribly, I tell you. He went to the window and stood
looking for ages—at nothing. Even his back minded. He never stirred
until Ivy called him back to her. He minds. I nearly dropped. Don’t
_you_ mind, Charles?”
“I’m not glad,” Sir Charles said gravely.
“Well,” his wife conceded bitterly, “that’s something. Not glad! Wait
till you see it, Charles Snow! ‘Finest race on earth!’ Well, perhaps
they are, but—” She finished the sentence and began another, but the
rest of her words were quite inarticulate through the thick smother of
fresh sobbing.
“Boy or girl?”
The commonplace and very usual question seemed to steady her.
“That’s the worst of it,” she answered desperately but clearly. “It’s a
girl.”