“Two new friends of mine are dining here to-night,” Mrs. Sên told Ruben
one April afternoon. “I think you will like them. They are particularly
charming.”
“One of your grand crushes, Mother?”
“Who ever heard of a crush at dinner--except in a cheap restaurant!
Don’t be silly, Rue,” Ivy broke in mockingly.
“I apologize, Mrs. Gaylor.”
“A very small dinner,” his mother said, and changed the subject without
saying who her guests at dinner that night were to be.
“You and Tom coming?” Sên asked his sister, as he rose to straighten
about her the fur she took up as she went towards the door almost
abruptly.
“Not me! Too select!” Ivy’s voice was tart. “And we are not invited,”
she added more pleasantly as Ruben opened the door. “Good-by, Mother.
I’ll tell Lucien about the underskirt.”
“And I’ll be back as soon as I have conducted Mrs. Gaylor to her car,”
Sên said over Ivy’s shoulder as he followed her into the hall.
Ruby Sên drew her chair a little nearer the flaming logs. Ivy’s tone
had chilled her, and the English April was cold this year. The woman
sat very still--a trifle huddled--and her dark eyes were shadowed until
Ruben came in again.
“Worried, Mother?” Sên came and laid his hand on her arm.
“No, dear--no,” she answered quickly, almost too quickly.
“You looked it,” the son told her gently. “Pass it over to me, can’t
you? That’s what I’m here for, you know.”
“You are here for everything good and helpful and a joy to your mother,
my Ruben. There is nothing to pass over--truly.”
“Then I’ll pass over mine.” He drew a chair close to the fire too, and
seated himself facing his mother. “What’s up with Ivy? Something hipped
her just now; what was it? She was snappy with me in the hall and
scarcely told me good-by when I had tucked the rug about her. I loved
our old Ivy no end, but I like the new Ivy best. The old Ivy peeped
over the new Ivy’s shoulder just now--the first hint of one of the old
hard moods I’ve seen since I came back. It worried me and I think it
worried you. Isn’t Ivy happy? She and Gaylor hit it off still, don’t
they?”
“Of course they do. Wonderfully happy!” And again Ruben, who knew her
so well, thought that the mother answered almost too quickly.
Not to force her confidence, but because he was determined to share
whatever it was that was vexing her--he was sure that there was
something--he went on questioningly.
“I say, Mater, Ivy wasn’t put out at not being asked to eat here
to-night, was she?”
“What nonsense--of course not. They are dining at the Giffords’--she
and Tom--and going on to two or three places after that. Ivy doesn’t
want to dine here every time I have a few people, any more than she
wants me every time she has guests. They have their own set--Ivy and
Tom. I have thought once or twice lately that Ivy wasn’t feeling quite
up to the mark. I dare say she has overtired herself. She goes and does
so much, and does everything at such a pace.”
“I think it was something about dinner here to-night,” Ruben insisted.
“Well, then--it was,” the mother owned reluctantly, but with something
of the relief of confession in face and voice. “She wouldn’t have dined
here to-night if I had asked her--which I was careful not to. Ivy heard
me tell Jenkins the order for the table cards, and she does not approve
of whom I have asked to-night.”
“But, I say!” Sên blurted out hotly. “That’s a bit _too_ stiff, Mater.
I wish I’d known, and I’d have snapped young Mrs. Gaylor a good bit
sharper than she snapped me out in the hall; and her chauffeur could
have done her tucking in for all of me! Not approve--well, I’m blowed!”
Whether Ruben was blowed or not, he was angry. All his life he had
brooded over his sister and loved her devotedly, but that she should
dare to criticize their mother’s social judgment infuriated Sên Ruben.
A more English son, every bit as devoted to his mother as Ruben was,
would have been disgusted and amused; Sên saw red.
Mrs. Sên laughed.
“She can’t help it, dear. And we mustn’t mind when it breaks out. It
is awfully silly of Ivy--but there it is. It’s her cross still, I’m
afraid, our poor little, foolish Ivy.”
Sên caught the situation instantly. “You have asked a Chinese to dine
here to-night--for me! That was dear of you, Mater. A ’varsity friend
of mine?”
“No one you know. Two Chinese--perfect dears both of them. I met them
only last week at Rachel Sidley’s. And I called the next day--and I
asked them to dine to-night, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I
haven’t had as many of our country people here”--her son’s eyes smiled
worship and gratitude into her eyes--“as I ought to have done, Rue; not
as many as I wanted to--because of Ivy, you know. But she’s got her own
home now and I do not mean to debar myself from the pleasure of having
friends of my husband’s countrymen and women any longer, or to debar
you from having your Chinese friends about you in your own house. I
haven’t always been quite fair to you about it, dear, in the past; it
was difficult, you know.”
“Very,” Ruben said softly.
“Well--it’s different now; Ivy is married; she must gang her ain gait,
socially, and we’ll aye gang ours. Now, I want to tell you all about
these new friends of mine, Rue. I need not ask you to be nice to any
one I have here, but I want you to be particularly nice to these two
Chinese friends of mine to-night. You won’t find it hard. You see,
they are such strangers here; they only left Ho-nan a few weeks ago.
Welcome them, Ruben.”
“Welcome them--just from Ho-nan!” An inscrutable something pulsed in
his eyes. “You bet I will!”
“Order! Order!” Sir Charles exclaimed as the Snows came in unannounced.
“No loose language in the presence of ladies, young cub.”
In the small talk of Lady Snow’s stay no more mention was made of Mrs.
Sên’s Chinese dinner guests, and when Sir Charles, despairing of the
business talk concerning tenants, repairs and investments that he had
come intending to have with Ruby and Ruben, reminded his wife of a
dinner engagement of their own, and they went even more unceremoniously
than they had come, Mrs. Sên had no more than time to dress leisurely
if she were to run no risk of not being in her own drawing-room safely
before the arrival of some first and over-prompt guest.
Who were they, Ruben wondered as he knotted his tie, the two Chinese
who were to dine? From Ho-nan. His face tightened. Ah, well, they
should have warm welcome from him; a Chinese welcome. Ho-nan was a wide
place, and not too well interknit, but perhaps they knew his kindred.
However, it was not probable, for they would have said so to his
mother, and she to him.
Ho-nan--it hurt to think of Ho-nan! But he always did.
Sên Ruben’s wound had not healed.
Still, in woe as in weal, a man is a man, and a Chinese man must have
his laugh. Ruben chuckled as he slipped into his dinner jacket, and
grinned to himself as he gave his well-brushed hair a last survey
in the glass. To think of what those two Ho-nanese men must have
felt when Mrs. Sên King-lo had called upon them! He’d never known
his mother to do that before--call on men. Almost complete strangers
too. It was perfectly right, of course, or his mother could not have
done it--_she_ never blundered--and it was jolly kind of her into the
bargain, bless her! But if, as he thought from what she had said, these
were _Chinese_ Chinese, here in Europe for the first time, and probably
quite unacquainted with Western ways, it must have given them quite a
jolt when an English lady had paid them a visit. Perhaps they did know
something of the West though. Certainly they must speak English, or at
least French, for the Mater to have found them particularly interesting
and charming. She could not speak a dozen words of Chinese, and Ruben
doubted if she understood a score.
It wasn’t worth puzzling over; he’d know before long.
“Come in!”
Kow Li came in. Sên gazed at him in staggered amazement. Kow Li wore
the livery of a Chinese house-servant; the severely plain blue gown,
the humble black-cloth shoes, the servant-crest of the Sêns “chopped”
in white on his shoulder. His long queue was beautifully braided and,
eked out with silk threads, hung down to the hem of his robe.
Kow Li was beaming; Kow Li’s old crinkled yellow face was radiant.
“What the devil’s the joke, Kow?”
“Not so, my eminent lord-one. Your worm that crawls in your perfumed
presence has been permitted by the most noble lady, Sên Ruby, a very
great and desirable honor to-night. I am waiting at table, my lord.”
“The hell you are!”
Kow Li bowed, his hands meekly hidden in his sleeves.
“Look here, do you mean it, Kow?”
Kow Li bowed lower than before.
“Well--you are not! You! It won’t do, Kow! I will not have it. I don’t
know what you are up to, you old monkey-one; but I will not have it;
that is fixed.”
“My lord,” Kow’s voice trembled a little in his eagerness, but Ruben
saw that the old man’s eyes were firm; it was Chinese will against
Chinese will! What did this unprecedented freak mean, anyway?
“My lord, whom always his servant has loved and has served, I was your
celestial lord father’s servant. Many a time his foot has pushed me--”
“I don’t believe it!”
Kow Li smiled, as if affectionately at cherished, happy memories.
“Never unduly, my lord-one. Ever was that noble-one a just and often an
indulgent master. But I was his servant, and he ruled me.”
“Well then, I am going to rule you to-night! What does it mean, Kow?
What are you up to?”
“O lord-one, a very great Chinese gentleman eats your rice to-night--”
“He won’t think much of it, if there is _rice_--English-cooked
rice!--on our menu to-night. I’ll give him a tip to cut out the rice
course.”
Kow Li grinned too. But he continued sedately--Kow Li was very much
in earnest. “Thy servant Kow Li, Kow Li the servant of Sên King-lo,
has often the gnaw of lonesomeness, up in his elegant rooms in the
Bloomsbury. He makes not free with his servants--least of all with
those estimable business subordinates, Mug and Wat. A Chinese master
and servant may be friends, sometimes even comrades, in China, but
it seems not to work to any advantage in this the West. The merchant
who permits the familiarity with his clerks, his business employees,
loses his grip of his warehouse and his coin-pouch; rides indeed a
tiger. I have been too busy and too engrossed amassing wealth for
the son of my master--the son who when a babe-one gave many a smile
of affection to Kow Li, his father’s servant--too occupied so, O Sên
Ruben, to seek friends of my race on the outer side of my house in the
Bloomsbury. And so has it come that this old Chinese, living alone
so far from the garden of Ho-nan, aches sometimes for companionship.
I would stand behind the eat-chair of the noble who comes here
to-night, I would be again, for the short space of time that a brief
and inadequate English-wealth meal occupies, what I was in my younger
years, what I am without its pleasant privileges--the Chinese servant
of a Chinese gentleman. And, I charge you, O Sên Ruben, it is not a
thing respectable that no Chinese servant waits in proper attendance
upon the Chinese guest in the house of Sên King-lo. They are louts--the
serving-men English! Your butler has effrontery of hollow pomposity;
he knows not how to wait with meekness; never he effaces himself, the
butler-one of an establishment of English wealth. The footmen! They are
not servants, the servant-ones of the West. The make-go of the tram-car
they can do, they can pack the travel-box, and make the beer-drink, but
they cannot fill up the wine cup with decorum, or pass the salt-bowl
appropriately with accuracy and civility. Grant that I take my old
place to-night in the rice hall of the Sên. Deny me not, my lord!”
“Does my mother know?”
“She, at my prayer, permitted me the happiness, my lord.”
“By Jove, I must go”--the clock on the mantel was chiming--“or she will
permit me the taste of her stick. You are a rum old bird, Kow!”
Kow Li tidied Sên Ruben’s tousled dressing table lingeringly, set a
flower at a better slant in a vase, altered the place of a chair,
scrutinized the bed, put out the electric lights--one should not waste
of the honorable gods-permitted abundance--and closing Sên Ruben’s door
behind him went gravely down to the dining-room.
He disapproved its appointments--but he had seen many Western
rice-rooms.
As for Mrs. Sên’s irreproachable butler, and all his bevy of spruce,
important and immaculate footmen, Kow Li ignored them. And they left
him alone. Mrs. Sên had given her orders.