Mrs. Sên intended to present Ivy at next season’s first Drawing-Room.
It was about that the four women were talking earnestly over the
strawberries and cream of tea in the garden one July afternoon at the
Blake’s place in Dorset.
Snow and his son-in-law, Rupert Blake, and Whitmore were more amused
than interested in the keen discussion of the important palace toilet,
but Ruben Sên lounging on the grass near his mother was vitally
interested. Ruben “loved clothes” like the veriest woman. Color and
line fed Ruben Sên, and he never was cold to ornament.
“A débutante need not necessarily wear white,” Lady Snow urged, “quite
a number don’t.”
“Yes; and I wish you wouldn’t,” Ruben broke in eagerly. “One of the
lovely girlish colors would look ever so much better. White looks flat
by artificial light, Ivy. Don’t you think so, Mother?”
Ivy darted her brother a tiny sinful glance from her narrow eyes. She
knew what Rue’d like her to wear. Then she sighed softly, for she
knew well enough that she’d look best dressed as Ruben would have
chosen--dressed in a blaze of colors, shapeless sacks of gorgeous
embroideries, jewels of three or four colors, her black hair worn in
some fantastic fashion. But she had no intention of looking her best at
the cost of wearing a Chinesey dress. She answered gently enough. This
was one of Ivy Sên’s gentle days, and for all that she had said to Lady
Snow less than a year ago, Ivy loved her beautiful mother very dearly,
and rarely hurt her deliberately.
“I’d rather have it all white, Mother--like other girls.”
Ruby Sên put her hand lovingly on her daughter’s shoulder. “It shall
be as white as ever you choose, Baby.”
“I wonder why I never have seen you wearing white,” Whitmore said to
Mrs. Sên, as he took her empty plate. “I don’t remember that I ever
have.”
“It’s rather young wear for forty odd, don’t you think?” Mrs. Sên
laughed.
“Rubbish!” Emma Snow scolded. “Mean to tell me that I look
mutton-dressed-as-lamb?” Her cool gown was snow white. “I shall wear
white when I’m eighty--on days like this.”
“And go to dances--_and dance_, won’t you, Cousin Emma?” Ruben demanded.
“I most certainly shall.”
“Don’t you care for white, Mrs. Sên?” Lord Whitmore persisted.
“I am like Ruben, I like plenty of color. And in our country we only
wear white for mourning!” John Whitmore had vexed her an hour ago,
or she would not have answered him so. Whatever Ivy Ruby Gilbert had
been, Mrs. Sên almost never was catty. And when she felt her daughter’s
fingers stiffen a little under hers she wished she had left it unsaid.
The man had been a bore of late and being bored always infuriated her.
Ruby Sên had outlived several faults. She could not outgrow that one.
Moreover, harmless and conventional enough as the man’s questions had
been, his tone had been a little possessive, and for that she had
flicked him--but she had not meant to touch Ivy on the raw. Ruby Sên
looked after her child with regretful eyes as the younger Ivy slipped
quietly away and across the garden. Oh, if only Ivy need not feel it
so! Their lovely Ivy, ashamed of her own loveliness!
Ivy Sên went slowly across the grass almost to the other side of the
great garden until she was in the thick of the beech trees.
When Lord Whitmore came upon her suddenly almost an hour later the girl
was crying bitterly. He had seen Ivy Sên in a tempest of tears before
this--and more than once. They were old friends and staunch allies. In
a sense they were fellow conspirators. He sat down beside her on the
garden bench and laid a fatherly arm about her shoulder.
“Quite right, dear; cry it out,” was all he said.
The girl did. These wild tears were past gulping back. It would have
choked her.
“Why can’t they let me forget it--ever?” she wailed when her tears were
nearly spent. “I was happy till they reminded me. I’ve loved being
here; I suppose I’ve no business to feel at home anywhere--but I always
do here with Blanche and Rupert. I care more for them than for any one
else--next to mother and Rue, and I love Dorset so dearly. I wish we
lived here always. Half the Dorset people never heard of China. Then
they had to go on about ‘color,’ and ‘lovely flowing lines,’ and remind
me! What they meant was that the clothes English girls wear would
look ridiculous on me. ‘Natives’ need lots of red and orange--that’s
what they meant! And then Mother had to go and speak as if she were
tar-brush too--which she isn’t!”
“Of course not. And your mother is very nearly as brunette as you are,
Ivy.”
“Brunette!”
“I wish you didn’t mind,” Whitmore said gently.
“So do I,” the girl retorted bitterly. “Mind it! Girls born as I was
ought to be smothered at birth. If my courage was half as much as what
I suffer over it, I’d take the suicide-way out. Yes; I would--and have
every right to--precious more right than they had to bring me into a
world in which there is no place for such as Ruben and me. Perhaps I
shall too--do it--some--time. Oh, I have thought of it. Or, I’d be a
nun--only I’d hate it! And they wouldn’t have me!”
“No vocation? I quite agree,” Whitmore spoke lightly to cover an
emotion of sympathy he would not show.
“There ought to be convents for half-castes! The League of Nations
ought to start one. That would be one useful thing to their credit
anyway!”
“I predict you’ll have an awfully good time--your first season, and
afterwards--” her friend said, changing the subject rather lamely.
Ivy sighed rebelliously and unhappily.
“I wish you’d smoke, and give me one.”
Lord Whitmore obliged her in both particulars, looking over his
shoulder in their most probably vulnerable direction as he held out his
cigarettes to Ivy. Sixteen-year-old Ivy was not forbidden an occasional
cigarette--but Mrs. Sên preferred them to be very occasional, and in
selected society.
“I don’t care whether I have a ripping time or a perfectly horrid time,
Lord Whitmore--if only some one will want to marry me.”
Whitmore was distressed, but he was not going to show it; and he only
partly understood. He had no doubt whatever that every girl wished
to be married, and that most girls were greedy for suitors. But it
distressed him to hear any girl say it.
Perhaps Ivy Sên divined this and probably her own taste also disallowed
it, for she added apologetically as well as petulantly, “Oh, let me
talk to you, say just what I want to! I’ve only let myself ‘go’ about
it once before in all my life, nearly a year ago, to cousin Emma. It’s
choking me--it often is; let me talk to you about it; do!”
“Of course; talk away, child; say everything you wish to. But, Ivy,
take it from me that you need not have any anxiety about Mr. Right;
he’ll appear promptly--sure to. Give him time to get here and give
yourself time to be sure that it _is_ Mr. Right. You’ll have dozens of
suitors; be careful not to take the wrong one.”
“I don’t care whether he’s Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong--not tuppence. Mr.
Anybody’s all I ask for, if only he’ll marry me. You,” she added before
the man could get in a word, “you do still want to marry Mother, don’t
you?”
“More than anything in all the world.” Whitmore met the girl’s anxious,
beseeching eyes steadily.
“I wish you’d make her then.”
“That is just what I am going to do.”
“I wonder,” the girlish voice was openly dubious. “Tell me
something--would you want to marry my mother if she had had a Chinese
father--and looked it?”
The Englishman laughed tenderly before he said earnestly, “Yes, Ivy,
even if she were a Zulu lady.”
“I don’t believe it! And I shouldn’t like you if it were true. You
couldn’t! No nice man could. You say that plenty of men will be
ready to marry me, and perhaps they will, poor men--adventurers and
nincompoops. No man of your sort or Rupert’s will. They couldn’t.
That’s why I say Mr. Anybody--any man that will take my money in
payment for making me Mrs. Anybody English.”
“You will not need to bribe your way into wedlock, Ivy. Many a man of
our own sort will love you--bound to--and not give two hoots for your
blessed money.”
Ivy Sên shook her head sadly.
“I don’t believe it!” she said again. “I’ll have to take a derelict or
an idiot.”
“God forbid!”
“I wish He had forbidden my birth; He ought to have,” Ivy cried
passionately. “If only I _looked_ English, I wouldn’t mind it half so
much. Why couldn’t Ruben look this way? I believe he’d like to, and why
couldn’t I look as he does? No one on earth would ever suspect Ruben
of having Chinese blood, would they?”
“No one,” the man admitted.
“But I believe he _is_ a little Chinese. And I am English! Every atom
and fiber of me is English. I love every blade of grass that grows in
England--every leaf on every tree, every gravestone in the old village
churchyards--the cattle in the pastures, the little thatched cottages,
the long, leafy lanes; even when Mother has taken us to Italy and
Spain--my poor yellow face wasn’t quite so noticeable there, and I had
the comfort of knowing that it wasn’t--even then, much as I enjoyed it,
I was terribly homesick all the time for England. I am sorry for every
one who isn’t born English. To me there is no other thing half so proud
and beautiful as being an English man or woman. Oh, it’s hard to have
to pity myself because I am only half English, and don’t look as if I
were English at all! I wonder if you can understand, even a little, how
hard it is!”
Whitmore nodded. He would have given many acres to have known how to
comfort Ruby Sên’s daughter.
“Dear,” he told her, with his hand on her hair, “how I wish you were my
daughter! And I hope you will be.”
Ivy caught Lord Whitmore’s other hand and gripped it pathetically.
“Would you truly let me _be_ your daughter? Could you feel as if I
were?”
“Try me.” As the man looked at her, the answer was sufficient.
“Oh, that helps me! You wouldn’t be ashamed of me?”
“I’d be awfully proud of you, little daughter.”
“God bless you!” The girl’s voice choked; her tears were near again.
“You’d let me be called ‘Ivy Whitmore,’ wouldn’t you?” she whispered.
“Love it.”
“Me--with an English name! a truly English name!” The girl drew a long
breath, as if she were drinking slowly the wine of the garden’s English
roses. “It--it--oh--then I’d wait for Mr. Right--wait ever so long.
I’m not horrid really,” Ivy said eagerly, “but I am so hungry to have
an English name. Our name hurts me. I loathe it. It isn’t fair that I
should have to be called an odious thing like that--and Mother won’t
even let us leave off that silly fool’s cap of a triangle on top of the
E. I _am_ English, Lord Whitmore, _all_ of me except the odious yellow
envelope I’m caged in. English!... I wonder--would you _adopt_ me--make
it my legal name?”
“Why, of course, little Ivy,” the man told her instantly. But to
himself he added, “If your mother would let me do it.”
Then, at the look the dark little girl paid him, Lord Whitmore bent
down and kissed her gently on her forehead.