Sên Ruben’s first move was to pay court to C’hi Ng Yelü, the father
of C’hi Yamei, and to win his favor if he could. It is not much use
to love a Chinese girl unless you can gain her father’s approval.
Though he had speech with her freely, and companionship, Sên Ruben
realized almost at once that her slight Westernism was but a garment
and no part of the lady Yamei; that at core she was as Chinese as he;
more deeply Chinese than Sên No Fee. She had called him “Mr. Sên,”
offered him her hand, spoken to him in English, in exquisite courtesy
to a somewhat solitary and presumably homesick stranger in a strange
land--an Englishman alone in China, alone in a place and among a people
so sharply different from his own that it was incredible that he was
not both miserable and awkward. It was her way of offering him China’s
best and kindest hospitality that had caused her to meet him on English
social terms.
He knew that no suitor would appeal to her who approached her except
through her father and with C’hi Ng Yelü’s approval. Only after
marriage could any lover woo C’hi Yamei.
But though courtly, genial C’hi Ng Yelü--on the social surface as
cosmopolitan as the daughter--met Sên Ruben’s respectful advances
cordially, Ruben’s design of ingratiation was frustrated.
The “bonfires,” as C’hian had called them, of civil broil flared up
anew, burst into mightier flames and spread. It looked as if the great
war had come. And all the household spoke of little else, even Sên
C’hian Fan who indeed, Ruben knew, had thought less lightly of the
“bonfires” than he had chosen to own to bellicose but decrepit Jo
Hiêsen.
In truth both Sên C’hian Fan’s apparent apathy, and his quite sincere
desire to keep out of it all, were more a distrust of all the warring
factions, dislike and contempt of their leaders, than an altogether
slight estimate of the seriousness of China’s recurrent and present
upheaval. Why fight for any side when all were corrupt?
But, still as undecided as he had been which of all the unworthy
leaders (with the just possible exception of Feng Yu-hsiang) was the
least bad, the least traitor to the ultimate general welfare of China
and her security among the nations, Sên C’hian Fan was sorely troubled
now. Each day some runner, or some camp straggler, brought news to the
Sên gates that added to C’hian’s anxiety without in any way lessening
his perplexity.
C’hi Ng Yelü, with a wider outlook, because of his long years of
travel and of Western sojourn, shared both Sên’s perturbation and his
indecision. C’hi Ng Yelü, not yet an old man, was as ready to fight
as the next, and as indifferent to death as almost every Chinese man
is, but he had no stomach to enroll himself under any leadership he
despised--and he saw no other.
Long and low were the counsels that Sên C’hian and C’hi Ng Yelü took
together, all the other adult Sên men gathered with them, listening to
them eagerly, contributing now and then something to the consultation
of the two headmen--all the adult Sên men but Jo Hiêsen and Sên Ruben.
They two were excluded--Jo Hiêsen not suspecting that he was, Ruben
rather more than suspecting it.
By C’hian Fan’s order, all the war news--most of it more rumor than
true news--was minimized to Sên Jo Hiêsen, and when Jo Hiêsen came upon
them as they consulted and argued earnestly together they swung their
talk to lighter, sunnier themes; not difficult to do in a Ho-nan August
where every patch of the great estate was a picture, every vista, every
flower, every concerted bird-trilling a book of love songs, a thesis
for philosophy. C’hian Fan had no mind that the dear old graybeard
should throw his life away upon the field of unworthy battle. Sên
C’hian loved the fierce, half-palsied dotard, and moreover it would be
a great family calamity were the old man’s body lost and not found--and
the burial and bewailing, which alone could secure him immunity from
Hell and entrance into Heaven, be so made impossible. Then the sons and
grandsons of Sên Jo Hiêsen would be deprived of the direct ancestor to
worship that is every Chinese’s most sacred right--even more important,
if that is conceivably possible, than male progeny to bewail and
worship them in their turn.
Sên C’hian Fan’s reluctance that Sên Ruben should become actually
embroiled in the present fighting--fortunately none too near
Sênland--was less uninvolved, perhaps less clear in his own mind.
Sên C’hian Fan had thought ill and bitterly of Sên King-lo’s marriage.
And when she had been among them here C’hian Fan had formed none too
high an opinion of Sên Ruby. He had read her dislike of China, her
disgust at Sên ways, her pity of Sên women, close as Mrs. Sên had
thought that she veiled it from her husband’s kindred, and Sên C’hian
Fan had disliked her for it. He had deemed Sên Ya Tin over indulgent
of the white woman whom Sên King-lo had thrust among them; the only
criticism of mighty Sên Ya Tin that C’hian Fan ever had allowed him.
And never had he voiced it, not even to his favorite wife; though the
favorite wives in China hear all their lords’ secrets--as do favorite
wives in the Occident. Yet--C’hian Fan thought of widowed Sên Ruby
waiting for her son to return to her, and since the woman, despite her
old dislike of Ho-nan, had let Ruben come to them, the Sên felt in
honor bound to her that no damage should come to her son so entrusted
to them. Sên Ruby herself had written to him, asking him to receive
and welcome Sên Ruben. Of course, the Western woman loved her son-one
passionately. It could not occur to Sên C’hian Fan that there was a
mother anywhere that did not dote upon her son and hold him always in
her tenderness; it does not happen in China.
The Pepper Month (Poppy Month is its other name) came nearer and
nearer--already Ruben planned to go, C’hian feared. C’hian was loath to
let him go, but if he went, let him go as he had come to them, whole
of skin and with all his honorable legs and arms and eyes and ears
still with him. Moreover, since the foolish foreign fashion of C’hi Ng
Yelü, and Ruben allowed it, it greatly convenienced C’hian Fan that
Sên Ruben should see that C’hi Yamei their girl guest-one was not dull
or uncompanioned, and took not peril in the wilder woodlands, near the
deep and sudden gorges. Roam them she would, and headstrong No Fee
with her. It was evident that C’hi Yamei preferred the outer gardens
and the wilder reaches beyond them to the harem courtyards. C’hian
Fan sighed heavily to see girlhood so degenerated, but the risk was
C’hi’s, not his, and it was not for him to chide or remonstrate with
a guest who was also his equal, concerning any detail of the other’s
harem discipline. No daughter of Sên C’hian Fan’s could take license
of liberty as C’hi’s girl-one did, but C’hi allowed it cheerfully,
and his host’s part was blind-eyed silence. Nor was C’hian sorry to
have No Fee’s greedy ears no nearer their place of frequent serious
conference than the gold-fish lake, the cypress hill, the distant
fields of fireweed. Where C’hi Yamei went No Fee would follow. It was
a safety, though a terrible infringement, that Sên Ruben obligingly
went with them. On the whole it convenienced Sên C’hian Fan as much as
it displeased him.
It did not inconvenience Sên Ruben.
And among the globe flowers and the pungent velvet roses, the peonies
and the willows, a tiny seed sown on Piccadilly throve and grew like
the magic fruit trees of on-High and made a Ho-nan homestead a mystic
orchard of the golden peaches of immortality, where the first parent
turquoise-birds of all that jewel-feathered tribe mated in the sacred
peach-trees.
Truly Sên Ruben found it Heaven; too deep in love now to condemn C’hi
Ng Yelü for that lord-one’s most un-Chinese laxity.
C’hi Yamei walked among the fragrant-blossomed, fruiting peach-trees
sedately; gracious, maidenly and shyly responsive.
No Fee ran and danced apart, giggling like a laughing brooklet for the
most part; and Sên Ruben and C’hi Yamei, waiting for her patiently,
wiled the waiting with talk. They talked quietly together and forbore
to chide her for how long she had kept them when she danced romping
back to them.
They talked of flowers and sunrise, of running water and waving
reeds--of the rock-crusted mountains, of anemones and red poppies, of
the wine-cup of Li Po, of the silks of Hsü Hsi, of the story of the
noble Lady of Si-ling, of the lamps-of-mercy that twinkled safety on
the mountain passes--talked together of the things that mean most, are
dearest and nearest, to the Chinese.
Yamei, speaking softly, told Sên Ruben of her mother who had gone
on-High years ago.
Ruben told C’hi Yamei of his mother who was a white rose.
Ruben told her of his sister Sên Ivy, than whom but one maid was
lovelier.
“Why when first you said words to me spoke you them in English?” he
asked her suddenly one day while they waited for No Fee.
He knew now why she had, but he asked to hear how she would tell it--if
she told it.
She did not tell it, but her answer was not untruthful.
“I did not know that you spoke Chinese, Sên Ruben. No one had told me
so. No one had told me of you at all, except Sên No Fee--do you think
she ever is coming?--and she prattled of you so that the deafness of my
ears shut out the sense of most she said--if it _had_ sense.”
“That is improbable,” Sên Ruben remarked gravely.
“It is improbable,” C’hi Yamei agreed as gravely.
“But I wore the garments of our people. Would a man do that who did not
speak our tongue? Or one who did not prefer to use it?”
“But that follows not, Sên Ruben. In courtesy to your kinsmen to whom
you made your visit it might have been that you did that--and a little
for your own convenience; not to be the raree-show in a place where
never has been seen the dress of Europe, as Chinese gentlemen now wear
English tailoreds in Westminster and on the Strand. It is easier to put
on a Chinese brocade and girdle than it is to speak and to understand
Chinese!”
“It is the tongue I love; the tongue of my father’s fathers!”
“That I know now, Sên Ruben; but I did not know it then.--Yah! Listen,
you; the pigeons are coming home. Why do they? I wonder why it is that
they do. It is not the fall of the dew yet, scarcely the mid-time of
the Hour of the Monkey, and rarely do they come till the Hour of the
Hen is passing. But it is they. I hear the music of the silver whistles
under their tails as they fly!”
Yamei was right; in a moment Sên Ruben too heard the soft fluting of
the tiny musical instruments that the harem pet-flock wore; another
moment and the pretty iridescent “feather-ones” came whirring over the
willow trees and bloom-clotted mock-oranges.
Sên Ruben called them with a fluted “coo” not unlike theirs at
mating-time, glad to call them and a little proud that C’hi Yamei
should know that he had that Chinese knack. One little bird settled
itself confidently on his outheld hand, and then another drifted down
on to Yamei’s shoulder, considered the girl gravely with its little
beads of red-rimmed eyes, saw her cheek so peach-like that it pecked
softly at the lovely warm-tinted human fruit, pecked so tenderly with
its tender beak that the girl’s exquisite face felt it a caress--which
in part it was.
C’hi Yamei cuddled it to her face, and it stayed so a moment before it
flew away; the bird on Sên Ruben’s palm rose to it in the air and they
followed the homing flock across the field of wild white roses, flying
towards their cotes on the Heaven’s-wall of the harem courtyard.
“Would you like to be a bird, Sên Ruben?”
“Nay, C’hi Yamei,” Ruben answered, “I like best that I am a man, and
where I am.”
Perhaps he meant in China, perhaps he meant in Ho-nan, in Sênland,
perhaps he meant here with the meadow-flowers and trees abloom--with
her.
Perhaps C’hi Yamei knew which of these it was that Sên Ruben meant.
No more than such was most of their talk.
But it grew; and Ruben knew that what had been a boyish dream--the
dream of a boy, homesick for a home he never had seen, caught,
enmeshed by the loveliness of an unknown face exquisitely painted on a
canvas--had grown the paramount thing in the soul of a man, the one
great need of a man’s life.
Did she answer him at all?
Sên Ruben had no idea.