Ruben and Ivy Sên

If she were in England it might delay his journeying into China. Most probably she was, since an English artist had painted her for the London Academy. If she were, he would know her before he went “home” to Ho-nan. In the first place it might be more easily accomplished here than there. Western ways, Western freedom for women had transfigured the edge of China, he knew; but he knew, too, that they had not penetrated far beyond the treaty ports. Not all China was transformed yet. And many a Chinese living now in Europe allowed his wife and daughters there with him rather more than a smattering of European freedom; but would insist that they resume Chinese ways, respect Chinese conventions and privacies, on their return to China. He knew several Chinese girls in London whom he felt sure he would not be able to know so, if he too were in China after their return there.

In the second place he had no mind to wait; to postpone until he came back from China the acquaintance from which he hoped so much. China was an old, old country. China would be there when he went to her, no matter when. Love was young; and so was Ruben. Love and Ruben could not wait.

Sir Hugh Lester was in London. Ruben Sên did not find it hard to meet him.

But there it ended.

Neither Ruben nor any other—Sên enlisted several—could get from Sir Hugh the slightest information concerning the painter’s Chinese sitter. That was the adamant condition upon which he had been permitted to exhibit the portrait. He had given his word. And either he could not or would not say when or where he had painted “A Chinese Lady.” He would not even state that it was a portrait. He could not be drawn in any way. No—it was not for sale—emphatically no offer would secure it.

Desperate and baffled, Ruben confided to Kow Li what he would rather have kept to himself. Kow failed, as Sên had, to find any Chinese who recognized the lady in the picture.

Ruben Sên had to let it go at that.

He did not mention “A Chinese Lady” or his quest for her to his mother or to Ivy. Time enough to do that when he found her.

He would find her first and then all would come right—it should!—unless she were wed or betrothed, or would have none of him; she or her father.

Ruben Sên went alone to China. He knew how much Kow Li longed to go with him, though Kow never said so. But Ruben chose to go alone, without companion or friend of any sort, since he could not take his mother with him.

He wished to be alone with China at first; presently Kow probably might join him, since Kow so greatly wished it.

But he would start on his pilgrimage alone.

Ivy was furious that he went. She pleaded with him not to go, before she lost her temper and stormed and clamored. But only one, of all the world, could have kept Ruben Sên from China now: his mother, and she would not.

Only she could have held him in Europe now, unless a Chinese girl had come from her canvas and bade him stay!

That did not happen.

Ruben came down from Cambridge for the last time, spent a week in Surrey at their place in Brent-on-Wold with his mother, and then the long insistent dream of his young lifetime crystallized into initial fact on an ocean liner. England faded in the distance; Sên Ruben had begun his long journey home.

At Ashacres Ruby Sên grieved, but found it no great task to keep from Ruben that she was grieving because he was leaving her for so long. For her grief was not bitter, and moreover, her pride rejoiced that he cared to go. It seemed to her a beautiful loyalty to his father whom she always had striven to keep as real to Ruben, as dominant in Ruben’s life, as the living father must have been. Ruben had said that he would come back to her; he would come. As for his calling Ho-nan “home” and all that, it was nonsense, of course—sweet and boyish nonsense. That Ruben might wish to discard England for China never entered her head. But, though she scarcely knew it, Mrs. Sên was not glad to see Ruben go. Quite aside from the natural wrench of being without him for the first time since his babyhood—Cambridge is not far from London, if you have three cars and a telephone—Ruby Sên regretted Ruben’s going, was a little jealous of it, unconsciously a trifle apprehensive.

He had said, “You wouldn’t care to live in Ho-nan?” but that was just a boy’s idle chatter. Ruben would loathe living in China—because she knew that she should. And he’d know that he would when once he’d been there.

Lady Snow was almost, perhaps quite, as decidedly against it as Ivy was; and Emma Snow never was shy of saying what she thought if she cared to.

“Ruby’s a fool to let him,” she told Sir Charles, “and you have no business to let her let him.”

Snow rarely contradicted his wife. On occasions he could do it flatly.

“Ruben ought to go,” he replied. “Ruby would not have held him back, no matter what I had said to her, I hope and think. She has no right to. But I said ‘Let him go,’ when she spoke to me about it first. He has seen England. He knows what his life here will be if he concludes to throw his lot in with the West. It is only fair—to him, to China, and to King-lo—that he should see his father’s country now, and learn what his life there would be if he threw his lot in with the East. I should have suggested it myself, if he had not—and whether I had believed that Ruby would be willing or not.”

“Oh—would you! He’ll probably come back with a Chinese wife!” Lady Snow snapped.

“The wisest thing he can do—if he must marry at all.”

“Charlie!”

“Beyond all manner of doubt. But I hope that Ruben will not marry at all. And when I feel that the right time has come, I intend to tell him why.”

“Lot of good it will do!”

“I think it may. Ruben is a Chinese son—very.”

“Ruben is the most English thing I ever have known,” Lady Snow contradicted. “Even technically Ruben is half English. King-lo was Chinese—all Chinese. A lot of good it did your telling him!”

“You are wrong, dear. Besides, I said my say to King-lo after the mischief was done. He had fallen in love with Ruby, and had given her his promise. I intend to say my say to Ruben before his mischief is done. But not until he has been in China. He shall go there as untrammeled by what I know must hurt him, as he has been all these years in England. That is only fair; and there is time enough. Ignorant as Ruben is of China, of Chinese ways, manners and customs and all that—but, by the way, Ruben knows more about his father’s country and countrymen than any of us suspect, unless Kow Li does—but ignorant as he seems, and may be, must be indeed, of the real China, Ruben is essentially Chinese. His methods of thought, his tastes, his ideals are Chinese. He looks English, but he is Chinese.”

“All the more reason to keep him out of China! But, mind you, I don’t believe it!”

“All the more reason to send him to China. You may not believe that Ruben Sên is a Chinese, but I know it.”

“All the more danger—but, I tell you, I won’t believe it—of his bringing home a Chinese wife. That would break Ruby’s heart. If you want to do that, why, go ahead!”

“Why should it break Ruby’s heart? She’d have no right to feel that way about it.” Secretly Sir Charles feared that Emma was right there. “She of entirely English blood chose to marry a Chinese. What right has she to expect Ruben not to, who is only half English, and is half Chinese? She preferred King-lo, a Chinese husband, to any other. What right has she to dictate which of his blood-strains Ruben shall choose to strengthen? None.”

“She’d feel rotten over it—if Ruben did.”

“She never regretted her Chinese marriage. And God knows she never had any reason to.”

“Rubbish! How do we know what she felt in China? I grant you Ruby was happy with King-lo here. But King-lo was exceptional. And I tell you she has regretted it with every breath she drew ever since Ivy was born. Oh, you needn’t look at me like that. Ruby hasn’t blabbed it—no fear! She has never said one word to me, not given a look that hinted it. But I know.”

“How?”

“She must!”

Sir Charles Snow smiled.

“And if she hasn’t, she ought to!”

“You are incorrigible!” Snow laughed.

“I can see Ruben bringing a Chinese girl back with him, and I can see Ruby’s face when he does. She’ll look nice with two Chinese daughters—Ivy on one arm and Plum Blossom or Perfumed Dragon Fly on the other arm! Poor, poor Ruby! Oh—I could shake you!”

“Do—by all means, if you’d like to. You have, you know, several times and I always enjoy it. But, Ruben will bring no wife home with him, of any sort or description. He will not marry without his mother’s permission.”

“Rubbish! Won’t he! Ruby didn’t marry without yours, did she?”

“I do not happen to be Ruby’s father.”

“Same thing,” Lady Snow interjected.

“Not quite. And Ruby was not Chinese. My dear child, if only I could get it through your head that Ruben is Chinese! He is a Chinese son. While he lives he will do nothing that his mother asks him not to.”

“And do you think she’ll ask him not to marry a Chinese girl if his heart is set upon it? She’d think it disloyal to King-lo, for one thing.”

“And so it would be; and it would be damnably unfair to Ruben—unless she asked him not to marry at all. And that is what I am going to do and I think that Ruben will yield to me, no matter what it costs him, when he has heard what I have to tell him.”

Emma Snow caught her husband’s hand in hers. “Charlie,” she whispered hoarsely, her eyes wide with fear, “is there insanity in the Sên blood? Tell me! You know that you can trust me.”

“Most certainly not,” Snow answered emphatically. “There is no taint in the Sên blood—unless ours has tainted it with unhappiness, as in poor Ivy. There is almost no insanity among the Chinese now—almost none among those who have stayed at home, and have given the precious treaty ports a wide berth. In the old days there was no insanity in all China. I believe that no well authenticated case can be proved of insanity in purely Chinese blood before the Yang dynasty in the seventh century, and almost none until recently. I don’t know whether that is true of any other race on earth, but I suspect not. Certainly no white race can boast it. Big fact, isn’t it? And it might go farther to rid humanity of its greatest scourge if we could find its true significance, learn its secret. Is it something in the predominance of the white corpuscles in our veins, some abnormal susceptibility in our not sun-tanned skins, or—as I incline to believe—is it Nature’s indignation and scourging of the jangle of Western life? I tell you, Emma, I believe that if fifty of our best alienists would chuck glands and psychic oddments and falderals for a few years and go and live in China among inner-country Chinese who never have seen a European, scarcely heard of Europe, they might get on the right track at last—learn from China how to stamp out the greater of our two most hideous and menacing diseases; learn how to stamp it out in a few generations, by learning its prevention. Insanity in its worst forms may or may not be susceptible of cure, but I suspect it is susceptible of prevention; and that is what science and philanthropy ought to be aiming at. Equally true of all disease, no doubt: lock the stable door before the horse is stolen, say I! No—there is nothing against the Sên blood as it was when King-lo came to Washington.”

“Charles, I believe sometimes that you are crazy!” Lady Snow wearied occasionally of her husband’s reiterated pæans of Chinese superiority. She could not accept them.

“I dare say you do,” Sir Charles Snow told her smoothly. “I suspect that most wives think that of most husbands now and then. And it is just possible that some husbands believe it of their wives occasionally.”

“Tell me then,” Lady Snow demanded—she was not going to be side-tracked—“why you are set on Ruben’s not marrying at all? I could understand if you took that stand about Ivy. Her children may look Chinese. That would be a tragedy. But Ruben! With his yellow hair, blue eyes, skin as white as mine—surely Ruben is safe enough!”

“That’s what you think, is it? My dear one, you are sorely ignorant of the unaccountable vagaries of atavism. Ruben’s children are every bit as apt to revert to Chinese type as Ivy’s—more apt, I believe; because Ruben thinks of his father’s people as his, likes to let his thought dwell upon them, picture them; and Ivy thinks only of her mother’s race as hers. She has barred her soul and, as far as she can, her being, against her Chinese ancestry. But to save the sour conflict, that has spoiled poor little Ivy, from belching up again after several generations, as it may—Nature is like that—I would do any earthly thing I could to prevent Ivy from marrying. But there is nothing I can do—nothing that any one can do. I might hasten Ivy into marriage—the first that offered—but I cannot, in any way, delay it. I will not rasp her to no avail; she is raw enough.”

“Tell me,” his wife repeated, “why are you so opposed to Ruben’s ever marrying?”

“Ruby is not to hear it—nor any one.”

Lady Snow nodded. It was promise enough to the man who knew her.

“When he was dying, Sên King-lo charged me to prevent both Ruben and Ivy from ever marrying, if I could. And I promised him.” Emma Snow made no comment. Voluble as she was, she knew when to save her breath. What Charles had promised he would do. And any promise he had made to Sên King-lo was, she knew, doubly sacrosanct.

But her husband’s confidence had startled her, and in her a new and disconcerting thought.

“Do you mean to tell me that King-lo was not happy with Ruby; that he regretted their marriage?”

“He never told me so. He gave Ruby a great love and it never changed or wavered. When Sên King-lo was dying he loved Ruby as deeply and as tenderly as he did the day he married her—more! But all his life with her was a sacrifice. There must be great sacrifice in every such marriage. In theirs it was King-lo who made it. He paid a terrible price for his wife’s happiness. And he paid it gaily—and to the last farthing.”

“What did he sacrifice?” Lady Snow asked gently.

“China; his own inclination, a love of his that was even stronger than his love for Ruby. Have you never wondered what killed King-lo?”

Lady Snow shook her head. She rarely indulged in idle speculations. Why should she have bothered her head over what, as she knew, had completely baffled the doctors? An opinionated woman, whose mind was as shrewd as it was opinionated, hers was in no way one of the all too prevalent crass lay minds that set their own conclusions against and above the opinion of scientific experts. Emma Snow often argued hotly with her dressmaker, sometimes—but more deferentially—even with her chef, but never with her dentist or her physician.

“Sên King-lo died of homesickness,” Sir Charles told her gravely. “I feared it before their marriage and I feared other things a thousand times worse, which never came, thank God, and thank Sên King-lo! Oh, my wife, Sên King-lo paid! Ruby’s kindred can never pay to his children, or in their service, the debt we owe to Sên King-lo—we and Ruby. I would to God I could. I often torture myself by trying to think of something I ought to have said to King-lo, and didn’t, when they were first engaged. But, I am sure that I need not. For I am sure that there was nothing and no one who could have influenced Sên King-lo then, unless his mother had been alive to do so. He would have refused his mother nothing.”