The day that Ivy came to her, appealing for her help to overcome
“Mother’s wicked obstinacy,” and broke down and wept out what until now
she had never told any one, Lady Snow came nearer really caring for
Chinese-faced Ivy than she ever had before, and much nearer than she
could have believed possible.
“I could almost forgive her; I think I could,” Ivy pleaded, “if she
would marry him. Why doesn’t she? There is every reason why she
should--and not one single reason not to!”
“Forgive your mother! You have no right to say that, or to think it,”
Lady Snow said sternly--more sternly than she felt.
“_You_ know that I have!” the girl insisted passionately. “How would
you like to have a Chinese face? You’d loathe it, as I do. You do
not like me; and I like you for it--for not liking me--not liking me
because I look Chinese.”
“Haven’t I been good to you, Ivy?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl’s shrug of contempt was Eastern--a “courtyard”
petulance--“as good as ever you could bring yourself to be. But you’ve
had to _try_--had to _remember_ to be kind to me every time. Every one
is good to me. I’m rich and so is Mother, and she goes everywhere and
knows every one worth knowing--that’s why. I don’t want people to be
good to me. I could kill people when they pity me--and perhaps some day
I will.”
“No one pities you, child. No one could.”
“You do!”
Emma Snow made no reply.
“Everybody pities me that has any sense. I have no doubt that my own
mother does. She ought to. Ruben doesn’t--he envies me. But Rue’s mad.
Cousin Charles never shows that he does, but of course he pities me
too, for all his liking for Chinks. Every one _must_ pity me who cares
for me the least little bit--every one who isn’t a lunatic like Ruben.
I don’t want people to be good to me. It’s impudent of them, and it is
not what I want. There is only one thing on earth I want. I want to be
English!”
“You are half-English, Ivy,” Lady Snow reminded her gently.
“_Half!_” All the agony of the sore old interracial tragedy was packed
in the girl’s one bitter word.
Emma Snow’s heart ached for the girl and she said the most healing
thing she could think of. “You are very beautiful, Ivy.” She laid a
caressing hand gently on Ivy’s shoulder.
They were alone in Lady Snow’s own sitting-room, she with a bit of
embroidery she’d taken up desperately, as a refuge for her eyes, when
Ivy’s words had become dangerous. The girl was hunched on a stool at
the other’s knee in a willowy attitude that was pretty but not Western.
Ivy was facing the other, and not so near that she could not look up at
her very directly.
“I used to think so,” Ivy Sên said sadly, “when I used to look in
the glass years ago--saw how I looked, and didn’t know what I looked
_like_. But now I do know and my own face is the most repulsive sight
I ever see. I dare say I’ll be the rage--for one Season--when Mother
presents me; but what sort of a rage? A joke! People will like to look
at me and laugh and point me out to each other as the daughter of the
English woman who married a Chinaman. ‘Miss Sên the Society mongrel’;
that’s what they’ll call me!”
“Ivy!”
“It’s what I am. And it’s what they’ll call me. ‘See! there she is--the
mongrel beauty!’ Oh, I’ll be the rage all right! How would you like to
hear Blanche called a mongrel? Do you think that Rupert Blake would
have fallen in love with her, let alone married her, if she’d been a
half-caste--_and_ looked it!”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. She knew that her easygoing but
socially exigent son-in-law certainly would not, and she bent her eyes
on her work, and hastily stitched a blue petal on a red rose.
“Ivy,” she said slowly, “I want to help you--truly I do, dear. I want
to persuade you to help yourself; it’s the only way, your only way
out. Accept it, Ivy, once for all and make the best of it. You don’t
like it; a great many girls would. Take the good of it, Ivy--there’s
lots of good, and good-luck too, in it--and put your foot on the rest
of it--what you think the bad of it. Don’t let it lame you. Really you
shouldn’t! Above everything else, don’t let it make you bitter. Nothing
spoils a girl like being bitter. Begin on little things. Don’t say
‘Chink,’ dear. It isn’t nice. Your cousin Charles won’t even let me say
‘Chinaman’; he broke me of it years ago. Say ‘Chinese,’ dear.”
“Chinks!” the girl on the stool retorted viciously. “That’s what they
are. I loathe them. I am a Chink, Cousin Emma; and it won’t wash off.
Pretty! Oh, yes, I dare say I am pretty in an odious Chink way. But
there isn’t a girl in England who is English and looks English, that I
wouldn’t change places with to-morrow--now--this hour--and thank God
for letting me do it.”
“Hush, dear.”
“I would! Have you seen our new kitchen maid? Her name is Tibbs, Ada
Tibbs; she has a bad cast in one eye; she hasn’t any eyebrows--scarcely
any eyelashes. I nearly had a fit when I saw her. She has the most
hideous face I have ever seen. But it is English! I would change places
with Ada Tibbs, and be thankful and glad of the chance to.”
“You wouldn’t like it when you had,” Lady Snow said gently.
“I’d like it better than being what I am--looking as I do.”
“You don’t know what you are saying, dear.”
“I know what I am feeling.”
Lady Snow sighed.
“Can’t you make Mother do it? Can’t you? She ought to. It wouldn’t
wash the Chinese off my face--nothing ever will do that--but it would
whitewash it a little. Mother owes it to me. I could almost forgive
her, if she would. And I want to love my mother! Can’t Cousin Charles
make her?”
Lady Snow shook her head slowly, folding away her needlework, smiling
sadly. She was thinking of twenty years ago, when Sên King-lo and Ruby
Gilbert had fallen in love, and had married.
“I have known your mother for more than thirty years, Ivy, and I never
have known any one even once able to ‘make’ her do anything against
her will. I can’t quite see why you are so terribly anxious that your
mother should marry Lord Whitmore. Your mother has about everything
that a woman can have to make life comfortable and interesting and
beautiful too--for her and for you and Ruben. She is enormously rich.
She still is a beautiful woman. Her position is as secure and desirable
as any woman’s in England.”
“Because her Chinese husband is dead!” the girl interjected.
“Listen to me, Ivy. Your father was a very great gentleman and I never
knew a more charming man. Sir Charles loved and respected him. Sên
King-lo was a great man, Ivy; a noble by birth, and entirely noble in
nature.”
“Don’t! Don’t tell me about him. I can’t stand it.”
Emma Snow’s eyes fell at the tragedy in the girl’s. “He loved you very
dearly,” she said sorrowfully. She was too bitterly sorry for Ivy Sên
to reproach her beyond that.
“Don’t!” the girl shuddered.
Lady Snow unfolded her needlework again, to steady herself with
something mechanical and because she could think of nothing not quite
hopeless to say.
“Why did Mother do it?” the passionate voice went on suddenly.
“Do what, dear?” But Emma Snow knew.
“Marry a Chinese man!”
“They loved each other very dearly.”
“It was horrible!”
“You might not have thought that if you could have known him and seen
how he was held, dear. I’ll be honest with you, Ivy; we were not glad
but it was impossible to feel that our cousin had married beneath her.
Why are you so anxious to have a stepfather, Ivy? Most girls are not.”
“I am--to have an English father--and to have an English name.”
“But your mother changing her name wouldn’t change yours.”
“I’d see that it did! He’d be willing. I know he would. To be his
daughter, and be called by his name, would make me seem a little more
English. That’s what I want, above everything on earth.”
Lady Snow doubted if Ruby Sên would allow her children to discard their
father’s name--felt rather sure that Ruby would not--even if she did
marry Whitmore. But there was no need to annoy the excited girl by
telling her so, particularly as Emma was convinced that Mrs. Sên never
would marry Lord Whitmore.
Perhaps Ivy suspected the other’s thought for she demanded, “Do you
know what I am going to do, the day I am twenty-one? I am going to call
myself by some other name--some decent English name. And I shall marry
the first Englishman that asks me the day after I’m of age and my own
mistress, if any _Englishman_ ever does--_any_ Englishman--a footman, a
sweep or a potman!”
Lady Snow laughed lightly though she could have cried more easily,
and touched the other’s face softly with her hand. “Don’t be a goose,
little one,” was all she said. But Lady Snow’s heart ached bitterly for
Ivy Sên.