Very slowly, but quite surely, Ruben won them--won even Sên Jo Hiêsen
and the servitor who had begged to be sent to Hong Kong to assassinate
the English intruder. Of them all, only An Pin never quite “took to”
him--the phrase is as current in Ho-nan as it is in Dublin and Chicago.
That one dislike persisted in direct descent of La-yuên’s smack far
more than it existed against Sên Ruben himself.
There were days when Ruben Sên was homesick for England. You can’t
nursery a boy, half English by blood to start with, in a Surrey garden,
“breech him,” as it were, at Eton, give him his fresh young manhood
at Cambridge, and thrust him across the world, and leave him alone in
China for the most of a year--in a Chinese domain in far Ho-nan where
few others even thought of Europe, where English news rarely came,
and never an English book or newspaper--and have him take firm and
satisfied root at once. Ruben Sên did take root, but in rooting there
in the home of his people he had twinges of “growing pain”--some of
them sharp ones. Not even China can quite wipe England out from the
thought and longing of one who has lived in England as Ruben had. It
seemed to him preposterous not to know whether his ’Varsity or the
Oxford crew had won the race. He missed his mother and he wondered and
worried a good deal about Ivy.
But, on the whole, he was happier here in China than he ever had been
before, for he knew that he should find _her_ some day, and his young
masculine heart was confident that he should win her. And he knew also
that but for his mother he never would leave Ho-nan again; not even for
Ivy.
There were difficulties in his stay here, of course, his ingrowth in so
unaccustomed a human environment. And there were social and personal
quicksands that might have engulfed him, and might have divorced him
entirely from the kin of his with whom he so earnestly wished to
amalgamate. Kow Li had done wonders, but not even that astute and
devoted “baby”--the old Chinese millionaire of Bloomsbury who after
almost his lifetime of exile was fanatically Chinese--could give to the
eager and quick-minded half-caste what thousands of years and cultured
establishment, sacrosanct family conventions and, most potent of all,
natural environment had given to the Sêns here in Ho-nan.
But La-yuên, the widowed concubine who neither could read nor write
and did not know that China was a republic--or know what a republic
was--constituted herself his mentor, philosopher and slave and kept
near him always when she could--so unobtrusively that the Sêns scarcely
noticed it. And La-yuên steered him past the snags and drew him away
from the quicksands. Sên Ruben was the white son of her adoption and
love, the last love of her loyal life. She guarded him at every point,
and, although he never knew it, curbed and prompted him constantly.
For instance: Ruben never knew that it was something that La-yuên had
said, as she knelt in the aviary path one day dusting the earth and
the dew from his shoes with her sleeve, that caused him to say to Sên
C’hian Fan, as they sat smoking in the moonlight among the musk-roses
and globe-flowers that ran perfumed riot all over the marble terrace
that circled the apricot hill, “What a wealth of heritage--this!”
So! It was coming at last. Well--he had known it would come; and it was
but just, and the law, that it should.
“I knew that my father’s people were very rich, that their holding here
in Ho-nan was almost a kingdom--”
“It is a kingdom, Sên Ruben. Every great patriarchal Chinese home-place
is that,” C’hian Fan interpolated quietly.
“Oh--yes,” Ruben agreed, “and in a way and to an extent that even a
Chinese who was born and always has lived in the West and largely among
Westerns could not understand until he came back home.”
“Home? You mean _here_, Sên Ruben?”
“Assuredly. This is my home, Sên C’hian Fan, as truly, as deeply as it
is yours. But I again must leave it, go back to exile, as my father
did. I marvel that he chose to live so long in exile; wonder and wonder
_why_ he did. But for me it is the only path; the road my feet must
walk and keep to while my mother lives. I beg all the gods that my
exile may be long; but if my mother goes before me to the spirit of
noble Sên King-lo on-High, then will I come back to Ho-nan, and keep my
old years and my burial in this our home.”
“Widow-ones re-wed in England, I have heard, and that it is held not
dishonorable to do so there.”
“That is truth. But my lily-mother will not wed again.”
“Art sure?”
“Quite sure, I thank all the gods. And I would choose to go on-High
hand-in-hand with her, leaving my sons to mourn and worship at our
graves; would so choose it that she need not cross the cold death-lake
alone, or journey alone into the under forest until my jade-like father
meets and greets her. But if so the gods do not grant it, then will I
return to Ho-nan; nor will I come empty-handed; my father left a not
mean fortune--half mine when I shall be orphaned; not wealth perhaps
matched with thine--but still a sum that not even the coffers of the
Sêns could despise. What is our wealth here, Cousin? It would give me
pride to know, if you could name it.”
C’hian smiled. He did not doubt it!
“Sên Yung-lin can tell you that better than I can--in terms of money,
Sên Ruben. Yung-lin is our accountant. He will go through the books
and deeds whenever you choose that he should do so. Roughly--but in
this disrupted China of to-day it will be difficult to put a firm
value on anything that is not actual money, and not even that by any
money standard of yours, because the _yuan_ is so disestablished and
fluctuating in sterling exchange--roughly, as nearly as I can guess
it, our fortune to-day--land, claims, interests, shares, money,
jewels, other treasures, buildings, crops stored and growing, and all
altogether--is not less than seventy million _yuan_, growing towards
much more than that amount if this present threatening of civil war
comes to nothing, and provided China is developed not on insane
chimerical lines but on sane lines and on sound foundations.”
“Seventy million _yuan_! About seven or eight million pounds! What
a fortune! Splendid! By the way, C’hian Fan, it is cackled in the
courtyards--and I hate to be so wronged in the courtyards of Sên Ya
Tin--that I have come to claim my seventh share in the family wealth.”
“I supposed you knew the law--and the family practice,” C’hian said
smoothly.
“Oh! Yes, I know that much of Chinese law. I have had a good tutor,
Cousin C’hian Fan.”
“So did I suppose it. But I am not sure that you could enforce it--the
old Chinese law of equi-distribution--in this new Republic of China.”
C’hian Fan laughed as he spoke, but he was watching Ruben’s face more
narrowly than he showed.
“But that does not matter,” Ruben laughed back.
“It does not matter,” Sên C’hian Fan said gravely. “We shall not
repudiate your claim; you will not need to urge it. The edicts of Sun
Yat-sen and the edicts of Tsao Kun are nothing to us, not theirs nor
any other upstart’s; but the family laws of our great clan hold, and we
obey and honor them.”
“You!”--Ruben’s voice cracked in his surprise and hurt--“Sên C’hian
Fan, you! _You_ have not harbored that thought? Tell me that you could
not! Oh--forgive me, Sên; you were laughing at me--laughing at me that
I cared what foolish idle women-ones chattered in their courtyards--and
I deserved it. I would have battered in the face of any man-one who had
said or thought it; but one should not feel anything at the follies of
serving women. You were ‘pulling my leg’ as we say in England.”
“It sounds a Western expression,” C’hian Fan remarked silkily. Why did
this white-faced stripling hide behind the peacock so; did he expect
them to offer his heritage to him, entreat him to accept it, force
him to take it? If he did, he had mistaken his kinsmen. Sên C’hian
Fan would not smooth his way for him! Did this young, beardless one
think to cross wits with _the_ Sên, blind him with willow leaves! A
half-Chinese outwit in indirection a Chinese whose beard was gray!
Then--suddenly--Sên C’hian Fan thought of Sên Ya Tin on her death
mat, and of what had been her last commandment as she rigored in the
death-angel’s clutch. And--“I do not see,” he said gravely, “why you
should not wish to have what is yours, Sên Ruben, why you should not
take it--even if you do not need it. Wealth has the heartier appetite
for wealth, the world over, I have heard; of a certainty it is so in
China.”
Sên Ruben’s fair face flamed, his blue eyes glinted like rapiers. “I
see!” he said fiercely. “That I am rich, in England, has nothing to do
with it; I agree with you there. If I were here practically a beggar
and without one cash beyond my journey-money back to my mother, I would
not take so much as a ‘shoe’ from China--not a _yuan_--not a brass
cash. It is not that I would not take from you, from the family, what I
know is my rightful share, if I might stay in Ho-nan; it is that I will
not rob China. Never will I take one piece of Chinese money into the
West.”
“We should not miss it, Ruben,” the older Sên said oddly.
“China would miss it--or lack it. China needs her all now, and more. I
will not rob China’s birthright of my birthright. The West will bleed
her white unless she has a care, Sên C’hian Fan. It has made my blood
boil to see some of our treasure filched, and held in Europe; ivories,
pictures, bronzes, silks, needleworks, locked in Western museums,
decking English merchants’ houses, bartered for across the counters of
London shops. It has angered and hurt me, my cousin-one; now to see it
again when I go back will be unendurable.”
Sên C’hian Fan saw the moisture that had gathered in Ruben’s wide blue
eyes. And Sên C’hian knew that Sên Ruben had spoken sincerely.
But, being Chinese, a great generosity quickened and swelled in C’hian
Fan in answer to Ruben’s, in emulation of Sên Ruben’s. And he urged,
eagerly, sincerely, what but a few moments ago had seemed to him a
catastrophe and unfairness and to be avoided if Chinese honor--and a
Sên’s--could.
“Hear me, I charge thee. Sên Ruben whom I love well, whom I honor with
great and tender honor. I am the chief of all our house. I speak to you
for our noble ancestors, and I speak to you with the voice of our old
holiest, the incomparable Sên Ya Tin. It was her wish that the share
of eminent Sên King-lo never should be deviated from the fruitage of
his loins. We must not disregard her wish or disobey it. I dare not;
you must not--lest disaster fall on all our house, our ancestors be
disennobled, our graves desecrated. What Sên Ya Tin spoke must be!”
“Hear me now, O Sên C’hian Fan, kinsman and headman whom I love and
honor humbly.” Sên Ruben, sitting a little lower on the sloping sward,
turned on his stool and laid his hand with an impulsive boyish gesture
more English than Chinese on his cousin’s silk sleeve. “Even because I
so revere her jeweled memory, and because I love her--the very thought
of her--for her goodness to my mother, I dare disobey our great old-one
Sên Ya Tin the Queen of Sênland. _I disobey her._ In this thing I
disobey her now and always. Already before her passing did she give
great wealth to my father; she favored him beyond strictness of balance
when she willed him also one full seventh. Let that pass; Sên King-lo,
who would have had it otherwise, brooked it--brooked the great gifts of
Sên Ya Tin, and it is not for me to cavil at them. But he held them in
trust for China always; Sir Charles Snow, of whom I have told you----”
“An honorable gentleman,” C’hian said, “he is held high in China.”
“He has told me that over and beyond the great provision that Sên
King-lo made for my mother, and the good dower he locked for my sister,
he intended all he had to flow back to its home-source--here in the
queendom of Sên Ya Tin. Even when I was a babe-one he sensed that, in
spite of my long nose and colorless skin, I his son was _all Chinese_.
He expected me to live and work for China--” and Ruben believed it.
Sir Charles had faltered from telling Ruben uselessly that Sên King-lo
had feared to have Ruben go to China; had believed it useless because
he saw that Ruben _would go_. “He augmented all that his own father
left to him, and all the great pouring of Sên Ya Tin’s golden largesse.
By Sên law--sacred to you and to me--one-seventh of all here is mine.
Keep it for me, cousin-one and headman. I forbid that a _yuan_ of it
journey--as I must--from our own country. Keep it for me to thrive and
wax here, or to be spent for China’s preservation. I will come for it,
or send my sons for it; not to take or dissipate it, but to nurse and
pile on to it, when I come again to live with mine own people in my
old age, as now in my youth I long to, or send my sons to take their
place here in service of our family and of China. Haply, I may visit
you again, crave again your love and welcome, bringing my bride with me
to dwell a time in the courtyards of our women. I dream it--I pray the
gods to grant it.”
Sên C’hian Fan longed to question Sên Ruben of that bride of whom he
spoke so softly--almost as if he held her hand in the early morning
time of marriage. But he could not. The look in Sên Ruben’s blue eyes
lifted to the jeweled lace-work of the myriad many-colored stars that
hung sparkling over the moon-silvered bamboos and varnish trees checked
and hushed him of it.
“Come when you come, always you shall have my love and welcome, Sên
Ruben,” he said softly, “the love and welcome of your home and kindred.
Yah! Here comes Sên Jo Hiêsen and his face is heavy.”