If No Fee was a resource and a pal, she was a good deal of a nuisance,
too, at times. She not only wanted her own way always--Ruben had known
many girls and others who were not girls who did that--but invariably
No Fee took it; sometimes she took it much to his inconvenience. Often
she kept him away from his kinsmen when he wished to be with them.
He loved Sên No Fee; he had to, for the girl was sweet and full of
charm, and again and again she reminded him of Ivy. But he had not
come to China to play cat’s cradle, to chase butterflies, or to do
tomboy things with a girl. He had come there to steep himself in its
ways--the ways of its manhood, not in the softer ways of a _kuei_--and
to associate with the men of his family, to be a Sên with the Sên men.
Of all his Ho-nan kindred he most loved Sên No Fee, but to love and to
like are two quite different things, and it was Sên Toon whom he most
liked, with whom he best liked to be, and from whom as a Sên of his own
generation and much of his own age he wanted to learn the intimacies
of Chinese customs and thought. Toon had spent two years at Yale, and,
although Ruben had come to Ho-nan soaked in the history and spirit of
China, there was much he longed to learn and to realize that he found
easier to grasp through this kinsman, who could give it to him in more
or less Western terms as well as in the more intricate and indirect
twists and turns of Chinese expression. Sên Toon had liked the West,
thought it a jolly nice as well as a jolly queer place; and that also
made a quick bond between them. No Fee called and kept Sên Ruben from
Sên Toon oftener and longer than Ruben found it easy to forgive.
But the unkindest thing that No Fee did to Ruben was to make him put
on one day for her amusement his English clothes; and it took all No’s
cajolery and all her persistence to do it. Sên Ruben had no intention
of returning to England--and to his mother--wearing Chinese clothes.
He liked making himself conspicuous, striking an attitude, as little
as all nice Englishmen do. But he had even less intention of wearing
Bond Street materials and cuts in Ho-nan. The Chinese garments that he
had donned and carried awkwardly and with so much embarrassment in the
hill-perched monastery had grown more comfortable, seemed more his own,
than English tailorings, naturally and easily as he always had worn
them, ever had. He knew that he always should miss his Chinese clothes:
their ease, and, more than their ease, their color.
When she made it, Sên Ruben refused her request. No Fee pouted and
scolded; then she changed her tactics, discarded shrill peremptoriness
and coaxed as only Sên No Fee could coax. “Only once, to give me
pleasure, cousin-one who art dear to the heart of this little Chinese
girl” was hard to resist, and so was her hand on his sleeve, and so was
the wet in her eye. Sên Ruben wavered. Then the whole _kuei_ backed her
up, added its pleadings to hers. And when the oldest of his kinswomen,
Sên Wed O--a lady of royal lineage, whose vision of the world had been
bounded, he knew, by the walls of two courtyards, her father’s and her
husband’s--begged with the graciousness of the old aristocrat who had
no doubt that she and her white hairs would be obeyed, begged as a
kindness to her untraveled self, Sên Ruben yielded.
He chose a day when he knew that his kinsmen had gone hawking,
graybeards, youngsters and all. He made excuse not to go with them,
and when their gay cavalcade had jingled away he made a wry face and
changed into his English clothes.
How ugly they were! How queer his boots felt!
He hated himself in them almost as much as poor little Ivy had for
years hated her face in the glass.
But he had promised; and he went, oddly uncomfortable, moving
awkwardly, feeling gauche, looking shy.
But because he had promised his kinswomen he did it graciously. He went
to them with a smile, and he gave them their way of him. It was their
treat; it certainly was not Sên Ruben’s. Ruben Sên was not here.
The _kuei_ buzzed about him.
They pushed and they pulled; they gave him shrill cries and gurgled,
tittering; they felt him; they turned him about. They looked him over
and over with kindly, critical eyes. And the pet dogs sniffed at his
barbarian clothes and barked at him questioningly.
Madame Sên, of Imperial blood, _doyenne_ here and supreme, bade them
all leave him alone, bade them draw away to the edges of the courtyard
where they belonged. The women obeyed her, the wee dogs did not.
She called him nearer to her that she might examine and look her fill.
And she thanked him.
“You find me hideous, venerable, honorable mother-one,” Ruben said
when she, having spoken, gave him freedom of speech. “This miserable
person finds himself most hideous in these abominable, detestable,
foreign-land clothes. Just this once, O queen-one of all the Sêns! Thou
wilt not command it of thy slave-one again?”
“No,” Madame Sên nodded. Best Bond Street garments had not found favor
in her old, narrow, black-velvet eyes. And the gracious gesture of her
hand was a promise.
But No Fee giggled; and he heard it as a threat.
Madame Sên did not dismiss him, but she took up her embroidery frame
again, and Ruben read it as a sign that he might stay by her stool or
move about as he would.
He drew back a few paces, and the laughing courtyard rabble swooped on
him again; at least all the women did; the dogs played apart or snoozed
by the flower-wall.
They tottered about him on their richly shod golden-lilies. They looked
at him roguishly, screamed they were shocked at his trousers, which
some of them were. No demanded his coat then and there, that she might
try it on. Probably Sên No Fee would have had her way too, had Madame
Sên not glanced up from her needle with a word of protest which not
even No the hoyden dare disobey here in the _kuei_. Sên Ruben had no
doubt that, at some other time and place, No Fee would make her demand
again.
Ruben began to enjoy himself in their rioting mirth. He declined to
take oft his boots, that they might see and probably examine his
stockings; he declined to put on his coat the other way about; but he
gave up his cuff links and his tie-pin with pleasure; and presently
he fell in tune with their frolic mirth, chased No Fee over the
flagstones, joined willingly enough in a game of blindman’s buff. And
Madame Sên looked grave, kindly approval across her lacquer embroidery
frame.
There always is a strain of melancholy, a something, too, of bitterness
and rebellion in the Eurasian who is neither brutish nor a dolt. If
the strain of melancholy in Ruben Sên had been all but subconscious
in Europe, and sternly repressed so far as he had realized it, it had
been for that but the sharper. Until he came to China he had not felt
(or known that he did) mixed blood a disgrace, for he was incapable
of laying any shred of disgrace at the door of his parents; but he
always had grieved that the gods had denied him the full of his Chinese
birthright: the skin of his people, the set of their bones, the black
of their eyes, a home in Ho-nan.
For all that, his life had been happy: pleasantly placed, loved
and companioned by the mother he adored and of whom he was proud.
Too--there was great natural sunshine in Ruben Sên, the son of Ruby
Gilbert, at whose birth a star had danced, and the son of a man whose
race is tuned to contentment and gladness. He was young. And before
long he was pranking with his young kinswomen as gaily as they.
Suddenly No saw his face darken, saw Ruben stand stock-still, nonplused
and perturbed.
Sên Toon had come into the courtyard; stood watching them. Madame Sên
had smiled at Sên Toon affectionately when he made his deep salutations
to her, and she had smiled softly in her sleeve. She knew why Sên Toon
had been downcast and sad-eyed for more than a moon. And she knew how
his discomfort would pass, would die in sweetest music in a garden of
roses.
Sên Ruben had believed that Sên Toon had gone a-hawking with all the
others. And it cost Ruben more than a pang, he felt it a shame, that
Toon saw him foreign-land-clad in a Sên courtyard.
Toon made his way to Ruben.
“Come into the woods with me,” Toon asked; “I want to talk to you.”
Toon said it in English.
“I will companion you before that white and rose cloudlet has crossed
over the day star,” Ruben replied. He said it in Chinese. “Wait but
till I change into my own garments again. I will change quickly.”
“Why change?” Sên Toon persisted in speaking English.
Sên Ruben as persistently spoke in Chinese. “I loathe that you have
caught me in this masquerade that Sên No Fee extorted.”
“The first sensible thing I can recall that our wild and unpardonably
spoilt one has done. I envy you your Western clothes--they are manlier.
And I envy you much that they stand for.”
“Rubbish,” Ruben snapped more rudely than Chinese gentlemen, and above
all close kinsmen, often speak to each other. “I must change before I
come with thee. It would shame me till shame curdled my stomach did our
kinsmen returning from the chase see me dressed as I am.”
“Sên King-lo dressed so?” Sên Toon asked.
“_In Europe_,” Ruben admitted. “Almost one must there now. At least, it
seems more convenient, since most of us do. Kow Li does not. I honor
him that he does not. But I know no other Chinese living in London,
except Kow Li’s own servants, possibly too a few in ‘Chinatown,’ who do
not.”
“Come, let us go,” Sên Toon urged. “They are hawking far from here;
they will not return until the Hour of the Dog has died in the sky, and
more likely the Hour of the Pig. None will see what you wear but me and
the leaves on the trees.”
Ruben yielded.
Not again in Ho-nan, not for No Fee, not for the august Sên herself
would he wear foreign garments. But now he would not keep Sên Toon
waiting. No one would see them, Toon had said; and Ruben, without
suspecting the reason, still less suspecting the remedy, had seen for
weeks that his favorite kinsman was sorely out of gear. Toon wanted
to talk to him, and Toon should do it immediately, purge the troubled
stuff of his bothered mind through the confessional of fraternal
speech, if he could.
They made obeisance to Madame Sên, who waved them with a tiny withered
hand permission to go and gracious parting; tore themselves from the
clamoring girls; and Toon led the way out of the “flowery,” across a
flower-spangled meadow and into the thick of the walnut grove.
“What troubles you? Bid me what I can do,” Sên Ruben began when he
saw how hard Sên Toon found it to begin. Ruben was un-Chinese in his
dislike of delay--and in several things else.
“There is nothing you can do for me,” Toon spoke grimly, “unless you
can change places with me. I’d commit suicide, if it were not for the
grief to my mother. I’d cut and run were it not for the disgrace to the
girl.”
Ah! Ruben pricked up his ears, and his face that had been all sympathy
was half clouded with fear.
“A maiden you have seen by accident and wish for your bride?” Sên Ruben
could understand that. “Can’t it be arranged? Your father and mother
both are indulgent. Or is the maiden-one already betrothed? It isn’t a
peasant-one, is it, Sên Toon?” The still worse that he feared Ruben did
not word.
“I never have seen her in my life, but she is betrothed all right. They
are going to marry her to me when the Sky Lantern is at its full.” Sên
Toon began in English, then burst into passionate Chinese. His face
was twitching and his hands twisted his girdle angrily. “I am caught
in the coil of a poison-dragon, Sên Ruben, the creature has slimed me,
there is no escape.”
“And there is some one else?” Ruben probed gently.
“Ha?” Toon asked dully; he had not caught Sên Ruben’s meaning.
“Some other maiden you love and long to wed?” Sên Ruben explained.
Sên Toon laughed impatiently. “All the gods, no! Love--what chance has
a Chinese to love? Betrothed in our cradles, it may be, thrust into
wedlock with some strange girl-thing whom we are sure to hate, and
who’s sure to hate us!”
“It seems not to work out so,” Ruben protested. “All the wives in our
_kuei_ are happy, Sên Toon.”
“They don’t know any better,” Sên Toon grumbled contemptuously.
“They know a great deal, I have found,” Ruben defended, “and they all
are charming. And their husbands love them. Clearly that is so. I have
not been in this jewel country of ours many moons, but I have watched
even as a hungered child watches the face of his mother; and I have
learned, and I _know_, that marriage success, marriage contentment in
China is to success and contentment of Western marriage as Omi is to a
hillock of clover.”
“It works here sometimes,” the other owned grudgingly, “but I have
traveled, I have seen freedom. My soul cries for its freedom. I want to
choose my bride.”
Sên Ruben had no answer to that. He had chosen his bride, and no power
on Earth or on-High should dissuade him. He did not speak for a long
time. When he did he felt that his words were feeble.
“Since you love no other maiden,” he said, “surely all will be well.
Your father is wise. He will have selected a beautiful maid who is as
kind and accomplished as she is beautiful. Both your brothers dote on
their wives.”
“I swear to the gods that I will hate mine. Her face may be as
beautiful as an egg, her voice the voice of a lute in the moonlight,
but I will hate her. I spit at the thought of her, because she is
thrust upon me. Let her be the most charming maiden that ever came in
her red chair from courtyard to courtyard and the kindest, I swear to
all the gods that I will loathe her!” Sên Toon’s voice broke in his
pain; he was trembling violently. Sên Ruben feared that Sên Toon would
keep his terrible oath. Ruben’s heart was sore for his cousin, very
sore for the bride that would come when the moon rode at its full.
“Does your father know, Sên Toon? He loves you greatly.”
“No one knows but you. I could hold it no longer,” Sên Toon sobbed and
hid a tempest of tears in his sleeve.
Ruben Sên was revolted and ashamed. Ho-nan had gripped him and always
would hold him. But Eton and Cambridge held their grip of him too;
Ho-nan could not shatter all that they had bred and ingrained. All his
being was shamed to see a man cry! And his kinsman, a Sên! Sên Toon was
weeping wildly. He wept like a man battered and defeated, a man at bay
and exhausted. He wept like a whip-frightened child.
“Is it too late?” Sên Ruben suggested presently, “too late to ask your
honorable father’s indulgence, to tell him what you feel?”
“He would not understand,” Sên Toon said surlily. His breast still
heaved, but the tempest had passed. Ruben Sên thanked all the stars
that it had. “The inevitable will be. I was pledged to it before I
tasted the salt of Western freedom. I must go on with it. But, by
underworld god himself, no son of mine, still less a daughter of my
loins, ever shall go an unwilling victim to wedlock with a stranger.
I shall go on with it because I must. I can divorce her afterwards
perhaps. But to escape her, I must marry her first. A Chinese betrothal
cannot be broken--” Sên Ruben knew that that was true. “After betrothal
there is no loophole for the bride, and only one for the bridegroom. A
shopkeeper’s son may take it sometimes; I have heard that it has been
done in Canton, but no girdle-wearer can take it; for us it is not a
loophole.”
Sên Ruben assented. He knew that a dagger was worn conspicuously in one
of the groom’s high bridal boots, but that no gentleman, when he lifted
the red veil from a trembling girl’s face--and liked it not--could
throw that dagger in violence, repudiation and dismissal at her feet.
In theory, so could the bridegrooms of several provinces refuse the
new-made wife, and Ruben had heard that sometimes ere they sent him
to the nuptial chamber anxious parents had been known to ply a boy
bridegroom with wine that he might see his bride’s face, through a rosy
hue, fairer than it was. He doubted if the cruel custom held in Ho-nan
even among the peasant-ones. It was an offense no Sên could offer to a
maid who had drunk with him the red-tied marriage cup, worshiped with
him at the ancestral tablets.
The cousins walked on in silence. Ruben could think of nothing to say.
Sên Toon had said all his words, purged his angry heart as far as he
could.
Perhaps the leafy forest healed him: a cathedral sanctuary green and
faintly fragrant. For the troubled boyish face slowly cleared. Perhaps
the bright-winged birds cheered him as they flew friendly-low from tree
to tree and sang to him joyously.
Sên Ruben cried out in dismay when they left the thick-leaved grove and
he saw how high the day-star had risen.
Sên Toon read his cousin’s thought. “I will get you to your pavilion
unseen, Sên Ruben. Our kinsmen shall not see you, since you shrink it.
Just beyond that clump of loquats is a miracle. Also is it one of the
loveliest sights in all Ho-nan. I would show it to you. He who has not
seen the nourish-old-age of Kow Lôk the witch has not seen Ho-nan.”