Again it was a Chinese baby.
Ivy gave a cry and turned her face into the pillow.
“I never shall forget that cry, Charlie. It was the bleat of some
little stricken wild thing--the whimper of a baby lamb caught in a
cruel, jagged trap.”
“Very Chinese?”
“It was Ivy over again, as I first saw her.”
Sir Charles Snow sighed dully.
“How did Gaylor take it?”
“Oh--he played the man. I slipped down and warned him. And I told
him what Ivy felt about it--told him straight out all the story of
her own rebellion and misery. And he--yes, he was rather splendid. I
don’t think he quite made head or tail of what it was all about. But I
pounded it in--and he played the man. He was perfect with Ivy. You can
ask the nurse.”
Sir Charles Snow smiled grimly.
“Do you know, Charlie, I don’t believe he’d have minded either--not on
his own account, or Baby’s either. And when you come to think about it,
why should he? He has no doubt that Ivy is the most beautiful woman
in England. Why should he mind having a very lovely daughter that
is--dark--and all the rest of it, any more than a wife like that?”
“Hope he don’t,” Snow muttered uncomfortably.
“But then you see, Baby isn’t pretty yet--that’s the worst of it. Ivy
was a hideous baby, you remember.”
“I remember you thought so.”
“Luckily it is a girl--and that’s the only luck about it that I can
see.”
“It will win its way with her--sure to,” the husband said, but there
was less surety in his voice than in his words. “Ivy isn’t heartless.
She will come to love her baby, won’t she, Emma?”
“Never! I don’t think she can. And perhaps the poor little thing will
grow up to blame Ivy just as Ivy always has blamed _her_ mother--to
dislike her, even. Ivy has been cruel and unjust to Ruby.”
“Cruel, but not unjust, I think,” Charles Snow said sorrowfully.
“Justice can be very cruel--often is.”
“But why should Ivy blame Ruby for having done years ago what she
herself has done now? How dare she!”
“Because Ruby began it; and probably Ivy is blaming herself now, dear,
quite as much as she blames Ruby, or ever has.”
“Well, then, that ought to cancel it!” Lady Snow spoke sharply.
“I don’t think so, Emma. And to my mind--and I suspect I’m
right--Ruby’s fault was far graver than poor little Ivy’s. In the
first place Ruby’s was the initial fault, out of which Ivy’s came
about--was almost sure to. Ruby piled up a debt that her children and
theirs were almost sure to have to pay in lifelong bitterness. Another
thing: Ruby did not have to make a mixed marriage. Ivy had to--or not
marry; for she had no race of her own. Ever thought of that, Em? She
is not English; she is not Chinese. Mixed race is none. We have no
right--can’t have under any possible circumstance--to write for them
our children’s signatures beneath our I. O. U.s. It is a damnable form
of forgery. The law does not penalize us for it, but life always does.
I see Ruby’s misdeed considerably blacker than I see Ivy’s--in several
ways. The quadroon is not quite so sticky a subject as the half-caste
is; and has an appreciable chance of having a less sticky life--and
less thorny. Into whichever of the two races Ivy married, her children
would come into the world with one blood predominant--three-fourths
English or three-fourths Chinese. If Ivy thought about it at
all--wiser and older people than Ivy do most of their thinking
afterwards--probably she banked on that English three-fourths;
believed, or made herself think that she did, that when the babies
came along they’d be English babies right enough. Now, poor girl, she
knows--and Tom will, if he doesn’t grasp it yet. King-lo and Ruby took
a law of nature into their own small hands. In doing it they took a bad
risk for themselves; the debt fell due, and King-lo paid it. But they
took a terribly greater risk for their descendants--condemned their own
children to all the grave inconvenience, to put it no stronger than
that, of mixed marriages, or of loneliness and sterility.”
“How much of this did you say to Ivy?”
“None of it,” Snow replied as he bent from his chair and laid a fresh
log on the fire, “because I knew it was no use. In a way I broke faith
with King-lo in not thrashing it all out with Ivy. But I knew that it
would do no good at all and felt that I was keeping the better faith
with him by not distressing her to no avail. But I said much of it to
Gaylor; and a lot of good it did!”
Presently Snow went on with the troubled theme.
“Well, it’s Ruben’s turn now, and it is up to me to say to him what
I did not say to Ivy. I shall put it all quite specifically to Ruben
and give him his father’s message in so many words. It amounted to a
direct message, what King-lo said to me a few days before he died.”
“Will it do any good--with Ruben?” the wife asked gently.
“God knows! Yes; I think it may. Ruben will listen to me--as far as
letting me say out my say and King-lo’s. And I’ll not put it off. I’ll
have my talk with Ruben before it is too late. I believe I could have
prevented their marriage--King-lo’s and Ruby’s--if I had tackled it
in time, not been pig-headed and blind when you warned me what was
coming years ago in Washington. I’ll not repeat my mistake of more
than twenty-five years ago. I shall speak to Ruben at once, before he
has fallen in love with any one--or thinks he has, which is quite as
dangerous.”
“Quite,” Lady Snow agreed with a laugh.
Tea came in. Emma Snow was glad of that. Charlie liked his cup of tea,
and he would sit down to drink it. She was so sorry for him, walking
up and down in patent discomfort. Poor Charlie, who did not know that
Ruben _had_ fallen in love--very much in love too! Should she tell him?
No--he was fretted enough for one day. Probably she’d better warn him
a little later--or perhaps not, but let him go to his talk with Ruben
with a free mind.
Lady Snow shook her head a little anxiously at the sugar basin, and
frowned too at the unoffending cream jug as she bent over them, and
filled her man’s cup.