Kow Li wept--unashamed.
The old Chinese in his happiness shook like willow leaves in stormtime.
He fell at his master’s feet and blessed them.
Then he bobbed up as if his old body had been provided with very
excellent springs, and began rummaging chests and wardrobes, almost
forgetting and quite ignoring Sên Ruben’s presence, in his tremulous,
tremendous excitement in selecting the costliest and most beautiful
garments he owned, coat, cap and petticoat, shoes, pouch, top coat and
fan for the most important toilet of his lifetime. The servant-crest of
the Sêns would show for all to see on his shoulders and breast when he
waited upon the lady Sên Ruby and when, her _mei jên_, he waited upon
the lord C’hi Ng Yelü. That servant-crest blazoned the proudest fact
of his life, but the raiment it jeweled and ennobled would be fine and
beautiful, as befitted the go-between sent by a Sên to a C’hi.
Ruben spoke, and Kow did not hear him. Kow Li was drenching a singlet
of gossamer silk with costly perfumes.
Ruben stood and watched the old millionaire servant, and Ruben Sên’s
laughing blue eyes were very tender.
Kow Li made a wonderful toilet. A Son of Heaven might have worn it at a
proud palace function. Ruben wondered if any servant would have been
licensed to go abroad so finely clad in China. And he wondered with a
grin how Kow Li proposed to journey so clad across London.
It takes a great deal to astonish London. Victoria Street and Hyde Park
are blasé to extreme sartorial exhibitions that run a gamut from the
unique toilets of ultra-modish ladies to those of Hottentot potentates.
But Sên had no doubt that Kow Li would astonish and stir London to-day
and he grinned again to think what C’hi Ng Yelü’s stolid English
servants would feel at the sight of Kow Li ko’towing at Mr. C’hi’s hall
door.
Kow Li, clad at last, surveyed himself severely in the long
lacquer-framed glass and grunted with satisfaction.
Still trembling with happiness and swelling with importance, he padded
from god to god--and this room of his was full of gods--and lit before
each god as many joss-sticks as he could find receptacles to hold.
Kow Li’s lips were moving in prayer, more filial and respectful, more
leisured and earnest than the god-ones of China always get.
Ruben spoke again; Kow answered at random in a quavering voice, and Sên
slipped quietly away and off on his own good errand--off to tell Sir
Charles Snow, his father’s tried and trusted friend and Ruben’s own.
It was a long way from Kow’s curio shop to the Snows’ home, but Ruben
walked it because he did not think to hail a taxi or see any one of the
many that hailed him.
Ruben Sên need not have been quite so keenly amused at old Kow Li.
Young love can do things as absurd as ever does old love that has loved
a lifetime. Love that has lasted a lifetime has the finer dignity, the
deeper sanctities. Love of kindred, love of lover are not the only
loves. Kow Li’s love of his Sên was older than he; it was lifetime old,
and as old as their old, old race.
Ruben Sên crossed London on a rainbow. All life was a-shimmer. He
cut an intimate acquaintance on Pall Mall, a man he had chummed with
at Eton and Cambridge, and he very nearly lost his life at Hyde Park
Corner--and never knew that he had done either. Why should he? He was
off to Paradise _via_ the Snows’! Half an hour with his Cousin Charles,
perhaps, and then back to wait with his mother until Kow came with C’hi
Ng Yelü’s answer.
There’d be none of the long-drawn-out prematrimonial barter that there
so often was in China. All he had he was willing to give--oh, so
gladly. A Sên who was Sên King-lo’s heir and dear old Kow Li’s needed
no dower with his bride. Not that C’hi Ng Yelü would barter either.
Yamei was the pulse of Ng Yelü’s heart--his only child.
There need be no more delay than their tender care of Yamei’s dignity
necessitated. She should have all the delicacy of approach that was her
Chinese birthright. But he thought that even of that C’hi Ng Yelü would
not prove a stickler.
Dear old Sir Charlie--how pleased he would be!
How soon would he be permitted to see her again?
Would she pale or flush? Both, he thought. Would she blush first, or
laugh a little brokenly, or lose first the lovely cherries painted on
her cheeks? Would she look at him?
No--he was almost sure that she would not look at him at first.
And while Ruben trod the London streets in ecstasy, walking on the
golden air of anticipation, Ruby his mother sat alone and took new
stock of her altered life.
She had gone to her own room when Ruben left her, telling them to
send Kow Li to her when he came, but to disturb her for nothing else
whatsoever.
She sat facing King-lo’s picture, the companion of so many of her
hours, and she thought Lo’s dark eyes regarded her tenderly and
approved her.
She had failed him in their marriage. Little by little she had realized
it as her widowed years had gathered in on her. While he had lived she
had not suspected it. King-lo had not let her suspect it--not even in
Ho-nan where she had slighted his people’s welcome, had shrunk from his
kindred, recoiled from his Chinese home, spurned his Chinese home life
that he had so deeply loved.
She might have been so much more to King-lo; might have rounded out
in perfect harmony his life that she had dwarfed and pricked. She had
repented it, little by little, when it was too late to atone to him at
all. She repented it now--and now she would not fail him. She could not
heal Ivy’s life; only Baby and Tom--and God--could do that. But she
would not stunt their only son’s life, neither maim, nor scorch, nor
chill it.
She would share it as she had not shared King-lo’s.
That atonement she still could make.
She would make it fully, she would make it freely.
What was she to set her judgment, her prejudices and narrow pride of
race, against such a husband’s Chinese judgment and preference--or
Ruben’s! Reading backward with the cleared sight of ripe maturity and
suffering, she saw herself less than dust before the precious stone
of King-lo’s character--less than nothing weighed by his unalterable
manliness; she a peasant whom a king had espoused and cherished; a
pauper in character whose debts he had paid and canceled; she had been
womanish, Sên King-lo had been a man.
One need not repeat mistakes; that was the one good thing about them.
She would not repeat her mistake of long ago. It had been a mistake of
ignorance then; now it would be a mistake of willfulness, a crime of
selfishness.
What right had she to say with which of his two races Ruben should
identify himself--to which he should prepledge his children? None.
She would welcome C’hi Yamei; she would do it sincerely.
She would love Ruben’s wife.
If they made their home in Ho-nan--Ruben in his heart would wish it,
she suspected, as Sên King-lo had longed for it--she would make her
home there, if she found that she could do it without intruding, and
without cramping or discounting their life there.
Or--if that were beyond her compassing--she would live her life out
alone at Ashacres, and here in London in such contentment of loneliness
as she could muster; seeing Ruben sometimes--she was sure she could
count upon that much!--writing to him, hearing from him.
She had lost Ivy. She would not lose Ruben.
And she would stay near him, wherever he lived, if she could do it
without embarrassment to him. What was country? What were customs--the
food one ate, the clothes one wore? Not much to the companionship and
friendship of a widow’s only son and of her grandchildren.
She would _be_ Chinese. It was her right--she the wife of a Sên, the
mother of Sêns.
She had learned to care for China since King-lo had gone. She would
seek out its beauties and wealths and make them hers. His people should
be hers and he would know, and be glad.
She had clung to her Chinese widowhood, had flaunted it even. She had
boasted that she was Chinese. She would make it true now.
But Ruby Sên’s face was drawn as she sat alone by her fire building
her dream of love and sacrifice. She knew that she would miss England
and English ways. She knew that she could but wish that Ruben had loved
and chosen elsewhere. It would have cost her less to have held out
motherly arms and a kind welcome to an English girl.
Her hands clasped on her knee were clenched, and her eyes were pinched
with pain that was stronger than she as she sat there alone waiting for
Kow Li.
She was glad when at last Kow came. The sooner the better now!