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RUBEN AND IVY SÊN
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE SOUL OF CHINA
IN A SHANTUNG GARDEN
MR. AND MRS. SÊN
THE FEAST OF LANTERNS
MR. WU
THE GREEN GODDESS
RUBEN AND IVY SÊN
BY
LOUISE JORDAN MILN
[Illustration]
“_I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive!_”
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
MCMXXV
_Copyright, 1925, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
_Had the date of the death of Sên King-lo, the father of Ruben and Ivy,
as implied in “Mr. and Mrs. Sên,” been adhered to strictly in this
present novel, it would open considerably later than 1925. The author
has preferred to ignore the dates of the previous story rather than to
place this story in years of which she can know nothing. “Ruben and Ivy
Sên” is not intended as a sequel to “Mr. and Mrs. Sên,” though it grew
out of the earlier story._
TO MONA FROM HER MOTHER
RUBEN AND IVY SÊN
CHAPTER I
The servant who let him in one Tuesday in May knew that Whitmore had
come to make Mrs. Sên an offer of marriage, and when the man let the
peer out half an hour later, Jenkins had no doubt that his mistress had
refused the offer.
How he knew, Jenkins could not have told you. It was years since
Jenkins had listened at door ajar or keyhole--not since he’d been a
very under footman. Mrs. Sên did not hobnob with her maid. Avenues of
intimate information open to servants in many households simply did not
exist in Mrs. Sên’s homes. But Jenkins knew.
Every one had known that Lord Whitmore was going to propose to Ruby
Sên. It had been patent for more than a year. And only three people
had been at all doubtful of what Mrs. Sên would answer: the three who
knew her best. Sir Charles Snow, his wife, and Ruben--Ruby’s son--had
wondered whether or not Mrs. Sên was going to marry Whitmore. Ivy had
no doubt that her mother would. Society took it for granted, and,
since Whitmore never had shown the slightest inclination to let any
other woman lead him to the matrimonial altar, Society approved the
prospective arrangement.
The Sên servants had had no doubt of what was coming, not even Tibbs, a
recent acquisition below stairs, who had only seen her mistress once
and by luck, through the larder window.
When Jenkins had announced Whitmore in the morning-room the man had
been as confident as the suitor. Half an hour after, when Jenkins let
lord Whitmore out, Jenkins had been as surprised as Whitmore, and very
much more disappointed.
Jenkins had served Mrs. Sên for nearly ten years, and it was his
uniform experience that when Mrs. Sên said a thing she meant it--and
went on meaning it. When Jenkins closed the front door on Lord
Whitmore’s departure, Jenkins had given up the match.
John Whitmore had done nothing of the sort. He had never asked a woman
to marry him before, and he had no intention of letting this one woman
off from doing it. Give her time he’d have to, that was obvious. But he
was going to make her marry him, and before very long. A man does not
need to delay his wedding day needlessly at fifty. He cared everything
for this one woman. He was determined to have her for his wife, and
greatly as he wished it for himself, his determination was in no way
selfish.
He was sure that their marriage would be almost as much for her
happiness as for his own, and even more for her advantage, a
satisfactory and comfortable settlement. It was all very well for her
now, but she’d grow old some day like the rest of the world. It stood
to reason her two children would marry. She’d be far happier with him
ten or twenty years from now than she would alone. And in the meantime,
whether she knew it or not, it would be a great advantage to Ruben and
Ivy and a very great help to their mother, for the boy and girl to have
a father--such a father as he’d be to them. He was very fond of little
Ivy, and any man would be proud to have Ruben call him father.
When they learned that their mother had refused Lord Whitmore--it was
he himself, not Mrs. Sên, who told them and told the Snows that she had
done so--Ivy was furious and bitterly disappointed, but Ruben was glad.
Lady Snow was disgusted, but she was not surprised; Ruby Sên never
would surprise Emma Snow again. Emma always had known how apt Sir
Charles’ cousin was to take life’s bit resolutely in her teeth. Once
at least she had bolted with it. And in all their almost lifelong
acquaintance, which from the first had been a sisterly intimacy, Emma
only once had known Ruby to change her mind. Lady Snow had no hope that
Mrs. Sên would change it now.
Sir Charles Snow was not surprised either, and he was glad in spite of
his sincere liking and respect for Whitmore. He doubted if any second
marriage could satisfy a woman who had been the wife of Sên King-lo.
But he saw as clearly as Lady Snow the advantage to his cousin of
marriage with Whitmore. He believed that the friendship and support
of such a husband as John Whitmore would be a very great advantage
and bulwark to Ruby in the difficult times he foresaw when Ruben and
Ivy were a little older. He knew how such a marriage and stepfather
would soothe Ivy. Sir Charles Snow was very sorry for her, and tried
his manliest to love misplaced little Ivy as much as he pitied her. He
tried to love her even half as much as he loved Ruben--and failed.
Snow in some half obscure way felt that the sacrifices Sên King-lo had
made--the sacrifice of life itself and the heavier sacrifice of bitter
exile--were in part justified, a little atoned for, by his wife’s
refusal to marry again.
When Ruby Gilbert, living there with them, had convulsed Washington by
marrying a Chinese, Sir Charles Snow had disliked it even more than
his wife had, and had opposed it strenuously. But he had opposed it
from a sense of cousinly duty and not because he had much hope that
his opposition would have any effect. He had disliked it most for his
girl cousin, but he had dreaded its consequences most for his friend
Sên. He had been sure that its consequences would be disaster and that
it was Sên who would pay. Lady Snow had not opposed it at all. She was
ultra-practical and she had seen no reason to attempt the impossible.
Snow had proved right, as he often did. It was Sên King-lo who had paid
and not the English girl whom he had married. Charles Snow and a wise
old woman in Ho-nan and Kow Li, Mr. Sên’s servant in Washington, who
had a Chinese curio shop now in a side street near the British Museum,
knew that Sên the Chinese had paid. No one else knew--unless Sên’s
widow did. Charles Snow often wondered whether his cousin Ruby ever had
had even an inkling of what the marriage that her husband had kept so
happy for her had cost Sên King-lo.
For Sên’s sake Charles Snow, though it grieved him, had not exactly
regretted Sên King-lo’s death--fourteen years ago now--in Surrey. Emma
Snow had liked Sên cordially; she had had to go on doing so even after
the “abominable” marriage; but she had not been able to ignore--in her
own cool head, for she never had voiced it--that King-lo’s death had
cleansed her kinswoman’s social slate of a regrettable record. In her
own way, lighter than Snow’s but as sound, Lady Snow had been staunchly
loyal to Ruby and King-lo and to the marriage that never had ceased to
rasp her. But she had hated it from first to last. She had always felt
it a detriment not only to herself but to her two children, Blanche
and Dick, and had felt that it would have injured and compromised any
social standing less secure than Charlie’s and hers. And because she
felt as she did about their cousin’s Chinese marriage, Emma Snow’s
sunny, unflinching loyalty had been a braver thing than Sir Charles
Snow’s. Lady Snow felt that Ruby had made a sorry sacrifice and had
lost caste, had taken an appalling risk with criminal willfulness. Snow
had had no doubt that the sacrifices, the smirch of caste, the ghastly
risk, had been Sên’s tenfold more than Baby’s.
Only one detriment remained to Ruby now in Lady Snow’s opinion--Ivy.
Mr. and Mrs. Sên had had two children, both living now with their
mother in old Kensington. Ruben the elder was Saxon fair, a very
charming boy. Ivy, two years younger than Ruben, was intensely
Chinese in appearance, and a handful. Lady Snow loved Ruben and was
proud of him; but she was ashamed of Ivy Sên, because of what the
girl’s unmistakably Chinese face told and emphasized. Emma Snow was
clear-eyed enough to see that the Chinese-looking half-English girl
was almost incredibly lovely; and the woman was too well experienced
in social England to have any doubt that Ivy, rich, accomplished and
quick, would be a social sensation and success. But Emma Snow could
not forgive the girl her Chinese face, though Heaven knows she tried
to. After all, Lady Snow was not responsible for an adamant prejudice
that was also a wholesome common sense--something she was unable to
shake off because it was stronger than she and part of her own not
inconsiderable strength. Even that wise old diplomat, Charles Snow,
who made no mistake about the greatness and fineness of the Chinese,
who admired and loved them, and who held himself honored in his many
Chinese friendships, winced at Ivy’s slant black eyes, yellow skin and
the pretty musical lilt of her up-and-down “courtyard” voice.
Whether Mrs. Sên regretted her only daughter’s Chinese appearance, or
was gratified that Ruben her son looked and seemed so English, not even
her Cousin Charles knew, who knew her better than any one else, not
even excepting Ruben.
But both Sir Charles and his wife knew that Mrs. Sên loved her children
passionately and they believed, mistakenly, that she gave them an equal
love.
Ruben Sên worshiped his mother; he gave her a tendance and fealty that
a Western mother rarely wins. And not even Sir Charles Snow--always
watching, because of a promise he had given dead Sên King-lo--suspected
that there was one thing that Ruben Sên, even now, loved more
passionately than he did his mother.
We are so used to ourselves, so accustomed to our own blemishes of mind
and body that we carry them tranquilly enough until some sharp knock
shows them to us vividly, somewhat as others see them. Little Ivy Sên
was self-centered and self-satisfied, even for one of her sex. And
though looking in the glass was one of her most favored pastimes at a
very early age, she was ten or twelve before she once wondered why she
looked so little like her mother, or realized in the least how queerly
her face differed from all the other girls’ faces! When she did realize
it a looking glass tortured her. But she looked into it more than ever,
obsessed by it much as lepers are!
Ivy Sên both loved and hated her mother, and Mrs. Sên knew it. She
accepted her child’s love gratefully; suffered her child’s hatred and
gave no sign. Ruby Sên did all that she could to lighten the cross that
she knew Ivy carried. But there was one thing that she would not do for
Ivy; she would not marry Lord Whitmore--or any other man.