On the surface Mrs. Sên lived pleasantly and calmly, as scores of such
Englishwomen do--London, Surrey, moderate travel, ample means, good
health, “troops of friends,” not a worry; a radiant, if placid, life,
peculiarly free from grave care or petty annoyances. At forty she was
much more than good-looking and she had charm, the personal charm that
had been hers from childhood, and the deeper charm of the woman who has
accepted experience and has assimilated and used it wisely. Sir Charles
Snow, probably her most trusted friend as well as her kinsman, often
questioned if his cousin lived less smoothly in her hidden depths of
being than on the untroubled surface. After fifteen years of identical
questioning Snow had found no answer, reached no conclusion.
The rich widow was completely her own mistress; by her husband’s gift
wealthy in her own right, her fortune under her sole control, she the
only guardian of their two children. To be sure, her husband had died
as he had lived, a Chinese subject. By Chinese law--and international
equity could not well have disputed it--all that Mr. Sên had left,
including even his widow and their children, belonged to his family
in Ho-nan. Whether or not those British-born children could have
maintained British citizenship as against Chinese allegiance, had the
Sêns in Ho-nan raised and pressed the point, Ruby, the dead Chinese
man’s widow, was indubitably a Chinese subject. She could only regain
the British rights of her birth by remarriage with a British subject,
or possibly, in the new dispensation which has given woman so much--and
taken from her so very much more--by naturalization. Mrs. Sên had
shown no disposition to do either; and the question of her right to
the guardianship of her boy and girl, her right to bring them up in
England, and as English, had never been raised. The Sêns in China had
made no move, expressed no wish, offered no advice. Gifts came to
Kensington once in a great while, always gifts of value. But with one
exception all those gifts had been sent to Mrs. Sên herself and not
to her children. Mr. Sên’s grandmother had sent Ivy Sên some splendid
birth-gifts, too priceless to have passed into the girl’s own keeping
even yet. Except for that, no Chinese relative of Ruben and Ivy Sên
had approached them even indirectly. Chinese minds had enough upheaval
to contemplate at home now without reaching across the world for more.
Mrs. Sên’s rule of them and her own life was undisputed.
But Snow often wondered.
He knew that Ruby had not forgotten the man she had so willfully
married. The woman was no ingrate, nor was she dull. Only an abnormally
treacherous woman could have put such a mate out of her life, merely
because he had died bodily. And only an inordinately dull soul could
have forgotten in the bagatelle of fifteen years the charm and chivalry
that had never failed her in the crucible of married intimacy. The
heyday of so great a spirit as Sên King-lo’s can know no passing. It
cannot die. Ruby Sên was neither treacherous nor dull.
But had she ever realized all that her Chinese husband had been? While
he lived had she suspected anything of what he had given her, done for
her, sacrificed for her? Snow believed that she had not. But had it
come to her, even in part, since Sên’s death, as past truth often does
come to us after many years? He could not tell.
How much did Ruby Sên look ahead--_how clearly_? She gave no sign.
How were the two children of the mixed marriage going to turn out? What
would their lives be? Motherhood had lain lightly upon his cousin as
yet. Would it press upon her more heavily presently?
When he was dying their Chinese father had insisted to Snow, whom he
had trusted peculiarly, that Saxon-fair Ruben in mind and nature was
intrinsically and intensely Chinese, but that Chinese-looking Ivy was
as intensely English. It was clear that the dead man had been right
about his baby daughter. Ruben was keenly interested in all things
Chinese and eagerly anxious to learn all he could about Sên King-lo.
Was it curiosity, or was it trend? Was it individual, or was it race?
Snow was sure that there were rocks and dangerous shoals ahead for poor
little Ivy. Did her mother know it?
Were there rocks or shoals ahead for Ruben? Did his mother suspect that
too?
Ivy Sên had been educated chiefly by governesses and they had found it
difficult work but never dull. Ruben had gone from public school to his
father’s old college in the Cam-side ’Varsity, and both at school and
at Cambridge Ruben Sên had grooved into the life with his fellows as
easily and neatly as any English one of them all.
Charles Snow suspected a good deal about Ruben; but he _knew_ nothing,
except that Ruben Sên was upright, quietly sunny, exceptionally able,
tenderly fond of his sister, lover and worshiper of his mother. Many
English boys are fond of their sisters, especially an only brother of
an only sister; and if love-of-mother is a Chinese characteristic, it
is not an un-English trait. Snow understood Ivy perhaps better than
he did Ruben. He was not sure that he understood Ruben at all. The
old diplomat with years of Anglo-Chinese experience back of him, many
Chinese friends, firmly-rooted Chinese sympathies, was sorely sorry for
little Ivy Sên. Had he cause, he often asked, to be even sorrier for
Ruben? Had blue-eyed, white-skinned Ruben the bitterer, deeper cup to
drink?
How could he best serve Ruben and Ivy Sên?
His own children needed little even from him; nothing more than
a fatherly and friendly hand on their shoulders now and then.
Both Richard and Blanche were true to type and all went well and
creditably with them. Snow still felt great interest in national and
in international affairs. But he held a watching brief now. He had
been out of office for nearly a year. He had served his king and his
country truly and well in all four of the globe’s quarters, and in the
cabinet as well as at the Foreign Office. But “party” no longer lured
him. He thought not too well of either party now. England would “muddle
through” of course. Charles Snow was too English to doubt it for a
moment. And he hoped to God that old China would “muddle through” too!
But keenly as he tried to watch and read all the shifting tangles of
East and West, Old and New, the man’s most immediate interest, though
he had to veil it carefully, was to serve Ruben and Ivy Sên, and by
doing it to keep faith with Sên King-lo, who had trusted him and in
dying had bequeathed to Snow a trouble that he could not take with him
into the churchyard.