Miss C’hi changed their talk to lighter things then, feeling, as Ruben
Sên suspected she did, that further comparison between them of woman’s
welfare and comfort in East and in West was something of a discourtesy
to her English hostess--especially comparison concluded in China’s
favor.
To C’hi Yamei Mrs. Sên was altogether English. No one else ever
had thought of Ruby Sên as anything but English--except as Sên
King-lo’s love and Sên Ruben’s had strained to call and to think
her, arbitrarily, Chinese. Sên King-lo had realized, more fully
after their marriage than before it, that all her easy acceptance of
much that was Chinese--an acceptance that had been proud and sincere
in Washington and London, and even in Hong Kong, but that had been
altogether breached by the really Chinese conditions of their stay in
Ho-nan--had been partly the deep congeniality of her personality and
his, partly her warm and sunny affection for him, partly accidental
and superficial. Ruben their son never had quite realized it; he
believed his mother far more attune with China than she really was;
he attributed her unwillingness to live in China to her reluctance to
leave Ivy; and now that Ivy was so happily married he dreamed again of
a day to come when his mother would be the _doyen_ and regnant-one in
the _kuei_ of his Ho-nan home.
Ruben Sên thought of his mother as Chinese, partly because his mind
could not divorce his ideal woman from his ideal country, partly
because to his intensely Chinese mind a wife _was_ of her husband’s
family, and the descendant of her son’s ancestors--the descendant of
his paternal ancestors. Such is the compulsion and force of absorption
of Chinese character, that every race that ever has conquered the
Chinese has been conquered more vitally and permanently by the
Chinese--has _become_ Chinese. The unanimous history of the long
centuries proves it--of all China’s past; perhaps predicts it of all
China’s future, the greatest alchemy in human history. To Ruben Sên’s
mind in just that way was every woman reborn, recreated, reblooded by
marriage. He could not think it otherwise.
“Your Chinese butler, standing there behind my father, looks as if
he never had left China for a day--not for an hour,” Miss C’hi said
presently, when she and her host each had been duly courteous to their
other table neighbors. “And I seem to know his face--to know it at
home. Have I seen him in China, I wonder?”
“Not unless you are older than you look. Kow Li has not been in
China for nearly half a century. But he was born in Ho-nan, at our
place there. You must have seen brothers and nephews of his among my
kinsmen’s servants.”
Ruben had known as he drew back Miss C’hi’s chair that Kow Li instantly
had recognized her--known that she was the lady of the picture whose
original they had so tried, and so in vain, to trace. Trained to
immobility by sixty years of service, yet Kow Li’s face had betrayed
him to Ruben’s eyes at the threshold of the meal. Kow had not started,
Kow had given no sign, made no gesture; but Ruben had seen joy leap in
the old man’s being. And Sên knew that Kow Li was parching and tingling
to be alone with him and talk it over.
Stickler as old Kow was, staunch conservative concerning all things
Chinese, Ruben wondered how Kow thought of C’hi Yamei’s English dinner
gown. Once, at something he’d said to her, her dimpled shoulder had
shrugged lightly with a very Chinese motion. Ruben Sên had shivered at
the warm loveliness of that naked girlish shoulder, at the unveiled
beauty of her arm; Sên Ruben had disapproved--and longed. How did it
impress Kow Li?
“So!” Miss C’hi said. “I should like to speak to him--your Chinese
servant--some time, if Mrs. Sên would allow me. I must tell my father
that it was a Ho-nanese that filled his glass. Father will like to
hear.”
At that, Sên told her Kow Li’s story and ended by telling her how the
old Chinese who had followed Sên King-lo into Western exile--he a young
man, Sên King-lo not much more than a boy--had been Sên King-lo’s body
servant for many faithful years and now, one of London’s rich men,
stubbornly held himself still the low servant-one of Sên King-lo’s son.
C’hi Yamei’s black eyes misted at the story. It was so Chinese a
story. And as Ruben finished, leaning a trifle forward in her chair,
she looked Kow Li full in the face, gave him a gracious little nod and
smiled at him in cordial and open race friendliness.
Kow Li’s immobility broke up; Kow Li showed emotion now! The mask-like
face crinkled with joy and gratitude; and the old black eyes held
proudly the young black eyes a long instant’s length before Kow Li
tucked his hands within his flowing sleeves, drew back a space and
ko’towed profoundly--colliding as he did so with an outraged footman
and a salver-borne brace of sauce-boats.
C’hi Yamei had gained a serf.