When Ruben refused the gift of the most beautiful horse animal--there
never was question or thought of payment between Ruben and Kow Li;
there could not be--the disappointment on the old man’s face was
ridiculous--perhaps; Ruben thought it pathetic. Ivy would have thought
it an impertinence. But Ivy did not like Kow Li and she had not seen
him for years. Even Mrs. Sên would have thought it far-fetched. But
Ruben Sên was in tune with Chinese emotion.
What the dickens he’d do with another horse he couldn’t think, and he
hadn’t a horse he could part with without a wrench. But old Kow wasn’t
going to be balked of the pleasure of giving him twenty horses if he
wished.
Ruben thanked his stars it was only one.
“Wait a bit, though. I _would_ like to have the mare, Kow; she sounds a
beauty.” Kow Li’s eyes sparkled. “I tell you what we’ll do. Ivy has a
hankering for White Queen and the Queen and I don’t quite hit it off as
well as we did.” White Queen had not come to him a gift from Kow. “Yes;
I’ll let Ivy have Queen, that’s what I’ll do; for I simply must have
the new mare. What’s her name, Kow? Where is she? When can I see her?”
The old Chinese’s face beamed with gratitude.
“Your servant has sent some wine, my lord,” Kow said presently. “It is
excellent wine, my lord.”
“I bet it is!” Ruben Sên’s wine was as admired at Cambridge, as his
tobaccos were, though less lavishly used.
“The cases,” Kow advised, “are marked ‘one,’ ‘two,’ and ‘three.’ The
wines all are excellent. But may your servant venture to suggest that
the cases marked ‘one’ and ‘two’ are suitable for you and your most
valued friends? He hopes that the wine in the cases marked ‘three’
should be reserved for his lord’s own august use.”
Ruben slid off the writing table, rushed upon Kow and threw a riotous
arm across the blue brocade-clad shoulders.
But Kow Li pulled away with a protesting cry: “My lord--my lord, you
must not do that; the noble Sên must not touch his slave.”
“Rites and flummery, rubbish! I’ll hug you all I like, you dear old
reprobate!”
“Reprobate indeed, O most high, but it gnaws his bowels that the hand
of the Sên should soil itself on the coat of a servant. I beg you not
again, noble Lord Sên.”
“I wish the fellows at the Hall could hear you, Kow. They’d raise a
hell of a rag.”
Kow Li smiled with suave contempt--the contempt of East for West. Kow
Li the Ho-nan peasant did not consider it of any concern what any
number of English boys raised.
“China!” Ruben Sên said with a laugh as he strolled to the window, but
there was more than amusement in the way he said it.
“China!” Kow Li said gravely.
Ruben sat down on the window ledge and mused.
Kow Li waited his master’s pleasure and his mood. The old man sat down
on a stool lower than the window ledge, lit his pipe, and began to
smoke.
Ruben twitched back the window’s amber curtain. “London is ugly--this
part of London,” he said presently.
Kow smiled--a slow, deferential, wise old smile.
The boy studied the Bloomsbury roofs awhile, and listened to the jangle
of the Oxford Street traffic. Then he turned his head again; and he
sat quite still for minutes and studied the pipe smoker’s old wrinkled
face, the face of the man whose race had been retainers of Ruben’s own
for more than a thousand years.
If Kow Li understood the scrutiny, he gave no sign and he certainly
felt no resentment.
Presently Ruben smiled, a very beautiful smile that rejoiced the narrow
old eyes that watched. Sên King-lo had smiled so. A touch of mischief
crinkled the edge of Ruben’s smile. Then he sighed and his face grew
suddenly grave.
“Kow Li?”
“My lord?”
“Can you lend me some money?”
Kow Li’s smile was beautiful too. “No, my lord, your servant cannot
lend you what is yours. What sum do you command, my lord?”
Ruben sighed again. “A great deal of money,” he answered regretfully.
Kow Li beamed.
“A million, Kow?”
“Pounds, English, sir?”
Ruben nodded sadly.
If Kow Li was startled he did not show it and if his old heart stood
still for an instant’s fraction, it was because one million pounds
would almost destroy what he had hoarded for Ruben Sên. But he answered
instantly.
“In a week, my lord--unless it inconveniences you to wait so long.”
“I need part of it _now_, Kow. How much now?”
Kow Li made a quick calculation. He looked at the sky. Of course, it
was long past banking hours. His heart was beating rapidly. Never
before had Ruben made such a request of him, never before heaped such
honor upon him. And he must not fail Sên Ruben the son of Sên King-lo.
“Not quite two thousand now, my lord; seventy thousand to-morrow by the
Hour of the Horse; all in a week.”
Ruben’s face rippled. “Now or never, Kow. A week’s no good. To-morrow
at eleven’s no good; I require half a crown now, and by the way that’s
all I do require at all, you wicked old spendthrift. So, dig me out two
and six, and if you don’t fork it out, it’s all the way home I’ll have
to walk.”
It was pitiful to see; the way the old man’s face fell.
Ruben Sên could have thrashed himself. Never again, he vowed, would he
tease dear old Kow Li, the truest, best friend a chap ever had.
Kow Li was bitterly disappointed. There was no doubt about that. But he
was not going to spoil Ruben’s fun though Ruben had spoiled his; the
plucky old boy smiled gaily, if a trifle shakily.
“You are merry, my lord!” It was not a quotation on the lips of Kow Li.
He read and knew his own poets, not ours.
But he was not going to relinquish quite so easily the great treat, the
exquisite privilege, that wicked Ruben had dangled so close under his
nose.
“Is there no little debt, no desirable expenditure to be arranged at
the Cambridge forest of pencils, my lord?” The old eyes pleaded wistful
as a dog’s, the old voice was eager.
“Sorry, old friend”--and Ruben was--“but there isn’t one. My allowance
beats me every time. My mother tells me to spend it all, enjoy it all;
Sir Charles has never advised me not to; I suppose he thinks that
because I’ll have so much to handle by and by, I’d better practice it a
bit now; but, hang it all, a fellow can’t remember to spend _all_ the
time--at least I can’t--there are so many more interesting things to
do. And money isn’t interesting, Kow Li.”
“Your years may find it so, my lord. It is a useful servant, sir;
a good watch dog, a universal passport, a very great weapon. Those
who have just enough, or a little less than that, can find intense
interest and mental development in its management. It is an exquisite
game--playing money, my lord. It will be denied you, I fear; because
you have so much. The masters of such enormous fortunes either grow
indifferent to their ledgers, or depute their care to hirelings, and
become the serf of their own abundance, unless they regard it in trust.”
Kow Li did not add--“as I do mine for you”--but his old eyes said
it, though it needed no saying. Ruben Sên knew it and accepted it
affectionately, incapable of the churlishness it would have been to
deprive the faithful old retainer of a warm happiness.
“What am I to hold my wealth in trust for when it comes into my
control, Kow Li?”
“For China!” Kow’s reply was swift and grave.
“For China,” the boy said musingly.
Ruben looked at his watch. “Let us read now, Kow Li. I can stay just an
hour longer. I say, don’t forget to give me that half crown before I
go. It’s too jolly hot to walk.”
“This inferior person will not forget,” Kow said, as he padded off
happily to the shelves, at the back of the long room, that were the
_Shu Chia_--the “Reverence Books”--of the Chinese home in a Bloomsbury
side street. “What will his worm’s master read to-day?”
“Bring me Mei Shêng,” Ruben commanded. It would have pleased him
better to have waited on Kow Li than it did to see that ancient friend
of his wait on him; but he knew where the old Sên retainer’s better
comfort lay. And he had offended and grieved Kow Li enough to-day;
offended by a familiar arm about his shoulder, grieved him sorely by
the disappointment his silly hoax of needing a large sum of money had
entailed.
Kow brought the precious volume--printed in Peking long before there
had been books or side streets in Bloomsbury; printed five centuries
before the birth of Caxton, written almost two hundred years before
the birth of Christ; and they sat side by side, the fantastically
capped old Chinese head and the young blond head bent together over Mei
Shêng’s living, pulsing pages.
Ruben read aloud. Kow Li corrected, but not often. Sên King-lo’s son
knew his father’s language fairly well; he had not found it hard to
learn; he liked its sounds. “Queer Chinese jargon” was music to the
ears of Ruben Sên.
Ruben knew that Kow Li loved him, but he did not guess the half that
Kow had labored and accomplished to make that love useful to his
young master, the only son of Sên King-lo, for whom his ambition was
boundless, for whom he dreamed great dreams.
Kow Li had had but little scholarship when he had followed King-lo to
Europe. Kow Li scarcely had known Mei Shêng’s name then, and scarcely
could have read one of Mei Shêng’s pages.
While Ruben Sên lay in his cradle Kow Li had taken his own education
very seriously in hand. For twenty years now Kow had striven as
diligently and carefully to master the Chinese classics as he had to
amass fortune; and for the same purpose.
Two hours had gone before Ruben slowly closed the old book.
“That was good!” the boy said.
It had been good. They had read deeply. Ruben had questioned as they
went and the old servant’s answers and comments must have delighted a
Hanlin.
Ruben looked at his watch and laughed. “Too late to dine at home now.
Never mind--let us eat, Kow.”
Kow Li struck the gong that stood on the table at which they had shared
and studied the five-word meter of great Mei Shêng. Ruben knew--and Kow
knew that Ruben knew--that the table-gong’s note could reach no one
outside the room, and that as he lifted the mallet in his hand, Kow Li
had pressed a floor button with his toe. You had to avail yourself of
Western methods of domestic convenience in Bloomsbury now and then,
even in so East-like an interior as this. But in this one room at least
Kow Li would not appear to do so. He always hit the table-gong when he
surreptitiously pressed the electric button hidden beneath the carpet.
And so did Ruben Sên when, sitting here alone, as he often sat, he
chanced to wish a servant to come.
They had not long to wait before the food Kow ordered was brought.
Quiet speed was one of the house’s many invariable rules. Kow Li never
hurried; those who served him never dawdled.
But they waited long enough, Sên and his fatherly servant-host, for the
younger to ask a question that he often had intended to ask.
“When my mother was in China with my father,” Ruben said, “you were not
with them, were you, Kow?”
“That one time Sên King-lo left his servant behind him. It was our only
separation from Sên King-lo’s childhood till he went on-High. I stayed
with you, my lord, in the home of the Sir Snow.”
“They were in China nearly a year?”
“Nine moons,” Kow told him, “from the Pomegranate Moon to the Moon of
the Peach.”
“My father took her to Ho-nan; to our old home there? Mother met our
family?”
Kow Li bowed. “To the Ho-nan home of the Sêns, that was their home
when Marco Polo went to the Court of Kublai. And when the jade-like
your mother stayed there in the courtyards of great Sên Ya Tin, Sên
King-lo’s wife met there all the Sêns that lived then.”
“Did my mother like China? Was she happy there?”
“I have heard that she liked it, my noble lord.” Kow Li had heard Mrs.
Sên say so. He also had heard, from Ho-nan, that she had disliked China
extremely. But he did not mention that. “And she was with her lord, my
lord.”
“They loved each other very dearly, didn’t they, Kow?”
“They loved each other very greatly,” Kow Li said gravely. Sên
King-lo’s marriage had cut Kow Li deeply; it had embittered him then;
it still did. He did not like Sên Ruben’s mother; it was impossible
that he should, since but for her, he believed that Sên King-lo would
have taken to wife a Chinese bride; Sên Ruben have had a Chinese
mother. But to no one had Kow Li ever told his dislike of Ruby Sên.
Until his own death Kow Li would keep faith with the dead Sên, his
master. Even Ruby Sên did not know that Kow Li disliked her; even Sir
Charles Snow, with his quicker understanding of the Chinese mind, did
not suspect it. And always he spoke her fair--and more.
But Ruben, half unconsciously, half suspected it. Kow did not often
speak to him of his mother. Kow never came to Ashacres unless one of
them sent for him. And--unless Kow liked his mother--Ruben believed
that his cousin Blanche Blake was the only Western whom Kow Li liked
at all. For Ruben Sên always thought of himself and his sister Ivy as
Chinese; although again he never had realized that he did. But Kow Li
knew, and rejoiced.
“I say, Kow Li,” Ruben laughed softly, “I wonder if I will love like
that!” He often spoke to this old servant of his father with more
downright boyish frankness than he ever did even to his mother.
“You will love, my lord,” the old man said gravely. “You are a man.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever love some girl greatly!” The boy spoke shyly
now, but he laughed again softly.
“You will love greatly, Sên Ruben,” Kow Li answered proudly. “You are a
Sên.”
“Wonder which it will be?” Ruben spoke almost to himself.
“My lord?” Kow Li said huskily.
“An English girl--like my mother, or a girl of my father’s race?” Ruben
explained.
Kow Li made no reply. But under his rich coat his old heart was beating
thickly, under his brocade skirt his old knees trembled. Ruben Sên had
prodded the raw sore of Kow Li’s greatest anxiety.
“My father loved China. You have told me so, and Mother has. Why did
they not stay there--make their home in Ho-nan? Was it because Mother
did _not_ like it?--did not wish to live there?”
Kow Li’s face was expressionless.
“Tell me, Kow,” the boy persisted.
“My lord, this servant cannot tell what he does not know.”
Ruben left it; but he knew that Kow Li did know, and he believed that
some day Kow would tell him. He intended that Kow should.
One more question he asked though: “What really killed my father, Kow?
He was young when he died. What killed him?”
“The pill-men never knew,” Kow Li answered. “And they were eminent
pill-men.”
But Kow Li knew what had killed Sên King-lo; and he knew that some day
he might tell Sên Ruben.
But he would not tell unless he saw it necessary, or until the hour had
fully ripened.
Servants came--Kow Li was amply attended and well served--and placed
food and drink on a table. They were Chinese servants, clad, as Kow
was, in Chinese garments. When the meal was served they withdrew, not
to come in again until the pressure of Kow Li’s toe, and the beat of a
gong they would not hear, bade them bring towels of fine, embroidered
napery and basins of boiling water.
Ruben fell upon the bountiful meal with boyish gusto and appetite.
It was food and drink as Chinese as can be served in London. Much
Chinese food cannot. It was delicious food, cooked Chinese fashion.
They drank from tiny bowls. They ate with chop sticks. And they ate
together in a parity of creature replenishment and enjoyment, if not of
appetite; Ruben was vastly the hungrier.
The Sên might not touch with his servant’s fingers, not brush Kow Li’s
costlier brocades with his lounge-suit’s tweed. Kow Li must speak to
Sên Ruben with words crawling-humble. But they might eat together, dip
their fingers in the one dish, wipe their fingers and their food-heated
faces on the same steaming hot towel. They might use the same pipe, if
they would. They often ate together here.
It was midnight when Ruben--fortified by two half crowns--left Kow Li
bowing low at the shop’s open front door.
The meal had not lasted so long as that. They had made music--Chinese
music on _kin_ and _i-pang-lo_, on _pan-kou_ and thin lacquered flute,
and talked again--of Ho-nan.
Ruben walked home after all--slowly, thinking.
Kow Li went upstairs again, up to the high room--to pray.