Sên Ruben had not come here to worship or to keep filial vigil; he
had come to be alone, had come to escape from the house in which he
had heard the shattering news; come for sanctuary. The wounded man
had made for his father’s temple instinctively, scarce knowing where
he went--only knowing _why_, as some wild prey of the chase makes for
forest cover to writhe and die in peace.
He did not ko’tow to Sên King-lo’s tablet, did not kneel at the altar’s
votive table. Sên Ruben huddled down on the lacquer floor, rested his
head in his hands, his elbows dug on his knees.
The end of his world had come.
He had died a space ago at the house-panel of the _kuei_ courtyard.
Life was a husk and a death.
Sên Ruben knew that he was dead; and he wished it even more than he
knew it.
The dream he had dreamed mocked him.
The thought of C’hi Yamei stifled him--exquisite, dainty, a stately
maiden of soft grave eyes and rose-tinted dimpled flesh, as he had seen
her, it seemed but yesterday; Yamei, incomparable, desirable, as he
had walked with her in the great outer gardens, and wandered with her
beside the bubbling woodland brooks.
He did not think of his father he never had seen, but Sên Ruben
suddenly knew that he wanted his mother.
He gave no thought to China, had none of England. Countries, nations,
continents, hemispheres, are nothing in the heart of a man grieving his
one mate as Sên Ruben grieved, huddled down on the tablet prayer-room’s
floor alone through the night.
The desolated heart of the man cried out for the mother whose love
had been the most of his life and world until he had seen a pictured
Chinese maiden on the wall at Burlington House.
A covey of night birds cawed in the lemon trees; Ruben did not heed it.
A bat flapped over his head; Ruben did not hear it. A great trunk of
twisted wistaria swung and creaked against the roof; Sên Ruben heard
but did not hear it.
But he thought of his mother.
His thought of C’hi Yamei, whose bridal veil he never should lift, was
long and intimate, and it knifed him. He felt her in his arms, he saw
his babe on her breast--thinking bridal thoughts of her that he would
not have dared or presumed to think while she lived. Longing and need
wrung him, his very manhood crushing him face-down on the night-chill
lacquer floor.
Yet--in his desolation, desire thwarted and mocked on its own virgin
threshold, the tortured man was not quite without comfort; for the
thought of his mother nursed him and rocked his sorrow in her arms.
He would go to his mother and give the rest of his years--his emptied,
widowed years--to cherishing service of her.
His pain would stay, his longing never would be still or lessen, but a
great and beautiful living sweetness was left him.
His world was not empty while his mother lived.
At dawn he rose to go. And the thought of his mother brought him
thought of Sên King-lo the father of whom he had no memory, but for
whom he always had had much and peculiar love--reverence, fealty,
tenderness, and great pride.
Had his mother suffered as he suffered now?
Less, it must be, because she was a woman; a thousand times less
because she had had her love-life, had tasted and worn marriage in its
fullness. She had her living memories; he had but a shattered dream.
She had had her wifehood, held and lived it still! She had had her
motherhood. For her life had been fulfilled. Life and love had given
her what neither death nor sorrow ever could take away. For time and
time’s eternity her treasure was hers.
He had forever empty hands--nothing but a craving that tore and
tortured, the dream of a shattered dream, a chilledness that never
would go. He had asked for wine and the angered gods had given him
vinegar.
Yamei! Never to see her again, never, never to pour his love a perfume
over her feet, never to hear her voice rise and fall like a song of
golden bells, never even to know that somewhere she walked among the
flowers!
Daybreak slivered the inner temple with pearl and pale silver-gold.
And because he thought of his mother who had loved, and loved in
marriage that had borne her babes as the rose-vine bears its fragrant
satin buds, Sên Ruben made his obeisance at the tablet altar, and lit a
score of prayers for the Heaven-peace of Sên King-lo ... and went out
into the tender, new-come sunlight, and turned towards the house.
His kindred took their parting of him at the great gate--the men of his
house, and Sên No Fee.
The tragedy that had fallen at the mountain nunnery was not mentioned,
nor had it been, in Sên Ruben’s hearing. To speed a parting guest with
talk of ill-tidings would have imperiled the safety of his journey,
made improbable his return, and stained black their hospitality.
They had no thought that it would mean more to Sên Ruben than to any
not stonehearted, to hear of such cruel disaster fallen near those who
had been here but now. Why should they speak of it to their departing
kinsman? He had heard no word of it--so they all thought. Why should
he? It was nothing to Sên Ruben.
And he asked no question. He would keep the name of Yamei forever in
his heart, but it would vex him sorely to hear it spoken by lips that
loved it less than his did.
No Fee lifted her eyes to his pathetically; it might have been in
protest at his going. But she did not bid him “Come back to Ho-nan.”
Perhaps she meant it, wished it, but of them all gathered here to honor
his faring-forth she alone did not speak it.
Her face was scarred with tears, and she touched his hand in
silence--while their kinsmen looked away lest they see that she
did--and Sên No Fee’s hand was as cold as the heart of Sên Ruben.