When Mrs. Sên’s letter reached the Sêns in Ho-nan it filled them with
consternation. Sên C’hian Fan read it twice and then again before he
summoned all the family--more than a hundred of them--to the _T’ien
Ching_, read it to them, translating slowly as he read, and bade them
council with him.
Should he speed to Hong Kong, greet their white kinsman as he landed,
dissuade him diplomatically, if he could, from journeying on to Ho-nan?
Or--there was smallpox in Ho-nan now. Should they intercept their
undesired kinsman with news of it at Hong Kong? There was no necessity
to state how far from their gates it was that the pox raged, or to call
his attention to Ho-nan’s area. He was more English than Chinese--his
mother’s countryman, not his father’s. Undoubtedly he was ignorant of
China--crassly ignorant of Ho-nan. Should they await his approach, let
him come? He might not come, might not find his way even, might change
his mind; he might linger at Hong Kong, in Peking, in treaty ports
until the months of his stay in Asia all were gone; he might discover
in Hong Kong itself the sorry inconvenience of being a white Chinese in
China. Kow Li, the peasant who had amassed wealth in England and who
sent such lavish tribute back to their temples here, had written that
Sên Ruben was very fair, very English. No doubt it was true; and he,
Sên C’hian Fan, made little of Kow Li’s added statement that at heart
and in mind Sên Ruben was Chinese and every inch a Sên, for Kow Li,
for all that he had prospered, was a peasant, one of their hut-born
“babies,” and no doubt his baby-intelligence had been warped and
enfeebled by the almost lifetime that the baby-one had lived in England
and other heathen countries.
Sên Jo Hiêsen spoke first. “It is not desirable,” he began, “that
this Englishman who calls himself a Sên should come here. It must
be prevented. He can claim his share of all we have. And though the
English woman whom Sên King-lo in his folly took for his Number
One makes no hint of this in her long, ill-written letter--not one
classical allusion in it, scarcely a courtesy, not one respectful
obsequiousness--no doubt that is her son-one’s object in coming here.
What love can he have of his father’s people, of our homestead or its
temples, he who was born of a white-skinned woman, and suckled of her
Christian milk? He comes to inventory and to claim. Or, if perchance he
does not, it is what he will do when he sees how great our possessions
are. The English are avaricious. They have found pretext to seize our
island of Hong Kong, land, by so-called rental, in a dozen treaty ports
and half the fructive wealth of Yangtze valley. They have robbed China
of her jades and her lacquers, her bronzes and her precious porcelains.
There are silks of Chao Mêngfu’s and of Ma Yuan’s, of Chien Shun-Chu’s
in London; and in a savage place called Chick-cow-go, I am told, a
score of our most rare beautiful jades are kept in a case of cheap
glass in a public place where heathen, barbarian men and women--men
and women linked together by their immodest arms--may look and gape
at what once were treasured in our sacred palaces and temples. When
this white-skinned one sees our store of treasure here, will he not,
in spite of the great wealth already by our holy Old-one sent to his
father, claim his birthright share--Sên King-lo’s full one-seventh
share--in all that is ours? I doubt it not! And when he does we cannot
withhold, not a millet seed, not one tea-brick, not a glass bangle, not
our cheapest laziest god, not an old cracked tea-bowl, not the oldest
house-broom; for his father’s full share is his by our immemorial
ancestral law, which no Sên may break or disobey.”
“Will he cut our gods into seven pieces--the profane heathen one?” a
woman shrilled in alarm.
“He will demand his seventh share of all!” Sên C’hian Fan asserted
bitterly.
An old man who had grown toothless in the service of the Sêns--as his
peasant fathers for long generations had--rose from the corner he had
squatted in, limped heavily to where Sên C’hian Fan sat in the _T’ien
Ching’s_ honorable-rule-place, and ko’towed thrice before he begged
with wheezy labored breath, “Grant, lord-one most high and ancient,
that this thy bug go now to the City of Victoria in our desecrated,
stolen island of Hong Kong, and slay the white robber-dog-one as he
leaves his ocean fire-boat.”
The Sên senior in the main line, and therefore regnant, motioned the
old decrepit back--but Sên’s gesture was as affectionate as it was
peremptory, and his eyes lingered kindly on the candidate for murder.
“We will set our dogs upon him at the outer gate,” a Sên stripling
cried hotly.
Some counseled gentler methods, one spoke of fire, two suggested
poisons.
“Let us keep him our prisoner,” spoke another.
That was how the Sêns in Ho-nan took the news of Sên Ruben’s coming.
They would have none of him. They rejected and forbade him.
Sên C’hian Fan had summoned them while the Hour of the Hare was young,
the great day-star pricking but sickly through the bat-black of the
night; gathered them together here in the _T’ien Ching_ on the first
thin edge of daybreak, as serious Chinese conference should be held.
But the day-star rode high above the mid-time of the Horse noon hour
before their talking of “how” so much as dwindled. For all their
unanimity of purpose they visioned and advocated method in almost
as many ways as there were Sêns and faithful Sên retainers here.
They canvassed it, tore and discussed it with hot, endless words as
only Chinese do. The Sêns themselves, those of them who were man and
adult, calmly and without gesture--for only when their kindred die may
girdle-wearers gesture or show distraction; the peasant-born retainers
less mannerly in face and demeanor.
Then a woman, smiling coldly, rose and stood before Sên C’hian Fan,
gestured them imperiously, contemptuously to silence.
Instantly all were still.
The widowed concubine La-yuên rarely spoke now; when she spoke no Sên
would ignore her words or interrupt them--and no retainer dared do
either.
La-yuên’s place was great in Sênland.
Once half the mirth and music of the flowery courtyards, now, almost
with Sên C’hian Fan himself, she was their law-giver, almost with the
gods and Sên Ya Tin their oracle.
Every tongue was silenced as she rose, every hand hidden in a sleeve,
every eye riveted on the paintless face of the coarse-robed concubine,
La-yuên.
When her lord Sên Po-Fang had died La-yuên had wailed loudest, torn
her flesh fiercest. When he lay new-buried in the graveyard where
they had left him, she had crept back to him, dug her a grave at
his feet, hurled herself into it, pulled down the wormy earth upon
her until it palled her in an airless prison and death-bed. She had
been missed. Then, what she had done was suspected, and she had been
hastily ungraved, brought back to consciousness after several days,
and forced to swear before her lord’s tablet that she would make no
second attempt. And the concubine that Sên Po-Fang had loved had kept
her word, for she was not highly educated, and did not know that
Confucius had taught that the gods keep no record of enforced oaths.
It had been impossible to let her die, for La-yuên had been big with
child--but all the Sêns loved and reverenced her for the attempt she
had made to follow her lord down to the Yellow Springs, there to solace
his purgatorial hours and serve him. The Sêns would build for her a
_pai-fang_ memorial-arch when she went on-High, and she had great place
and voice among them while she lived.
In her unhemmed one garment of rough hemp-cloth La-yuên cut a beggar’s
figure, and looked an aged shriveled woman. By years, she was younger
than Ruby, Sên King-lo’s English widow, but grief had blasted
her, self-burial had blanched and lined her, persistent fasting
and self-tortures had bent and grizzled her--and La-yuên looked a
grandmother of grandmothers.
But she stood her full height now, the little “secondary” wife of Sên
Po-Fang who had loved and pampered her--stood facing the Sêns, defying
and rebuking them.
“Curses be upon you,” she shrilled, one skinny arm extended imperiously
toward Sên C’hian Fan himself, her tear-worn eyes fierce on his. “You
will give Sên Ruben great welcome and most honorable tending; Sên Ya
Tin would have commanded it. Who here dares disobey our jade-and-lotus
Old-one? Is this the mat-hut of some scurvy peasant woman, or is it the
queendom of celestial Sên Ya Tin? There among the lemon trees stands
the temple Sên Ya Tin builded to the honor of Sên King-lo, perfume
gushing from the fountains among the yellow roses in its courtyard,
wine in his feast-cup always before his memorial-truth-stone amid the
snow azalias at the temple door. Shall you ill-welcome or misuse Sên
King-lo’s son in the very shadow of Sên King-lo’s temple, carved of
alabaster and jasper at the command of great Sên Ya Tin our queen-one?
Are you Sêns, or are you Nippon vermin?”
Not one answered. Sên Ya Tin, the easy-going tyrant who had ruled them,
had spoken to them through the paintless lips of her grandson’s angered
concubine.
They had cowed them--the old queen-one who had wailed Sên King-lo’s
death as a god’s and the concubine who had hallowed herself forever
with the suicide she had offered at the grave of Sên Po-Fang whom she
had loved.
Sên Ya Tin and La-yuên had spoken, and none of all here dared dispute
them--regnant ancestor and regnant concubine--until one brasher
than all the rest--a woman, for in China only woman’s tongue knows
no bridle, ventured, “_Is_ the man who comes a Sên? We know he is
white-faced and has yellow hair that ripples. Why should we think that
the foreign-devil, she who bore him--”
An Pin’s question was not finished. La-yuên caught a bamboo from Kow
Yong Shu--the _doyen_ of the dog-keepers--and smote An Pin across the
mouth. Blood, not words, rushed from the mouth of An Pin. But La-yuên
spoke.
“Vile one! Scavenger and lobster! Dirt-of-dirts! Liar! She was a
pearl! There are more here than La-yuên who remember Sên Ruby. Her
lord loved her. Heaven-like Sên Ya Tin received and acknowledged her,
piled soft words and great privilege about her, gave her welcome,
bade her god-speed. Sên King-lo walked beside his wife-one’s litter
when they went from the great gate, and Sên Ya Tin stood and watched
them smiling, till the distance stole them, and she our old queen-one
blessed them as they went. Always, until she went on-High, when Sên
Ya Tin sent a token to Sên King-lo she sent a token to Sên Ruby.
Where is the stomacher of diamonds that the Ming gave his favorite
daughter when she came here a bride in her bride chair six hundred
years ago? Where is Ya Tin’s priceless gold-lacquer tobacco-box with
the lizard of rubies on its lid? They are in the England, in the
casket-for-jewels of the girl child of Sên Ruby, sent when the ruby-one
bore her lord a daughter--a daughter whom Sên Ruby, whom her lord loved
and honored, carried between her heart and girdle even here in the
courtyards and pavilions of his people. Go! Go, thou stink-one, wash
thy blood-dripping mouth in vitriol of snakes! Crawl in the presence
of Sên Ruben who bears his mother’s jewel-name--crawl in his presence,
lest I slay thee. Sên Ruby is a white rose--the White Rose of China.
Our lord her son comes not to take even his own from us. He comes to
see the birth-place of his father, to worship by the grave of our old
queen-one Sên Ya Tin, and to greet his kindred. The Sên shall have a
Sên welcome.”
After that no more was said of slaying or rejecting him. And even
did Sên C’hian Fan give order that the rooms and the pavilion of Sên
King-lo should be readied and garnished for Sên King-lo’s son.
But when a letter came from Peking, beautifully brushed in Chinese, a
letter from Sên Ruben to his kinsman Sên C’hian Fan, telling that ere
the fourth moon had come Sên Ruben would crave entrance at the great
gate of his kindred, more than one of the Sên men frowned, and many of
the women contrived to secure hide-holes and put their best jewels in
them. That is how the Sêns in Ho-nan took it.
But An Pin kept from La-yuên’s path.