The servant who let him in one Tuesday in May knew that Whitmore had come to make Mrs. Sên an offer of marriage, and when the man let the peer out half an hour later, Jenkins had no doubt that his mistress had refused the offer.
How he knew, Jenkins could not have told you. It was years since Jenkins had listened at door ajar or keyhole—not since he’d been a very under footman. Mrs. Sên did not hobnob with her maid. Avenues of intimate information open to servants in many households simply did not exist in Mrs. Sên’s homes. But Jenkins knew.
Every one had known that Lord Whitmore was going to propose to Ruby Sên. It had been patent for more than a year. And only three people had been at all doubtful of what Mrs. Sên would answer: the three who knew her best. Sir Charles Snow, his wife, and Ruben—Ruby’s son—had wondered whether or not Mrs. Sên was going to marry Whitmore. Ivy had no doubt that her mother would. Society took it for granted, and, since Whitmore never had shown the slightest inclination to let any other woman lead him to the matrimonial altar, Society approved the prospective arrangement.
The Sên servants had had no doubt of what was coming, not even Tibbs, a recent acquisition below stairs, who had only seen her mistress once and by luck, through the larder window.
When Jenkins had announced Whitmore in the morning-room the man had been as confident as the suitor. Half an hour after, when Jenkins let lord Whitmore out, Jenkins had been as surprised as Whitmore, and very much more disappointed.
Jenkins had served Mrs. Sên for nearly ten years, and it was his uniform experience that when Mrs. Sên said a thing she meant it—and went on meaning it. When Jenkins closed the front door on Lord Whitmore’s departure, Jenkins had given up the match.
John Whitmore had done nothing of the sort. He had never asked a woman to marry him before, and he had no intention of letting this one woman off from doing it. Give her time he’d have to, that was obvious. But he was going to make her marry him, and before very long. A man does not need to delay his wedding day needlessly at fifty. He cared everything for this one woman. He was determined to have her for his wife, and greatly as he wished it for himself, his determination was in no way selfish.
He was sure that their marriage would be almost as much for her happiness as for his own, and even more for her advantage, a satisfactory and comfortable settlement. It was all very well for her now, but she’d grow old some day like the rest of the world. It stood to reason her two children would marry. She’d be far happier with him ten or twenty years from now than she would alone. And in the meantime, whether she knew it or not, it would be a great advantage to Ruben and Ivy and a very great help to their mother, for the boy and girl to have a father—such a father as he’d be to them. He was very fond of little Ivy, and any man would be proud to have Ruben call him father.
When they learned that their mother had refused Lord Whitmore—it was he himself, not Mrs. Sên, who told them and told the Snows that she had done so—Ivy was furious and bitterly disappointed, but Ruben was glad.
Lady Snow was disgusted, but she was not surprised; Ruby Sên never would surprise Emma Snow again. Emma always had known how apt Sir Charles’ cousin was to take life’s bit resolutely in her teeth. Once at least she had bolted with it. And in all their almost lifelong acquaintance, which from the first had been a sisterly intimacy, Emma only once had known Ruby to change her mind. Lady Snow had no hope that Mrs. Sên would change it now.
Sir Charles Snow was not surprised either, and he was glad in spite of his sincere liking and respect for Whitmore. He doubted if any second marriage could satisfy a woman who had been the wife of Sên King-lo. But he saw as clearly as Lady Snow the advantage to his cousin of marriage with Whitmore. He believed that the friendship and support of such a husband as John Whitmore would be a very great advantage and bulwark to Ruby in the difficult times he foresaw when Ruben and Ivy were a little older. He knew how such a marriage and stepfather would soothe Ivy. Sir Charles Snow was very sorry for her, and tried his manliest to love misplaced little Ivy as much as he pitied her. He tried to love her even half as much as he loved Ruben—and failed.
Snow in some half obscure way felt that the sacrifices Sên King-lo had made—the sacrifice of life itself and the heavier sacrifice of bitter exile—were in part justified, a little atoned for, by his wife’s refusal to marry again.
When Ruby Gilbert, living there with them, had convulsed Washington by marrying a Chinese, Sir Charles Snow had disliked it even more than his wife had, and had opposed it strenuously. But he had opposed it from a sense of cousinly duty and not because he had much hope that his opposition would have any effect. He had disliked it most for his girl cousin, but he had dreaded its consequences most for his friend Sên. He had been sure that its consequences would be disaster and that it was Sên who would pay. Lady Snow had not opposed it at all. She was ultra-practical and she had seen no reason to attempt the impossible.
Snow had proved right, as he often did. It was Sên King-lo who had paid and not the English girl whom he had married. Charles Snow and a wise old woman in Ho-nan and Kow Li, Mr. Sên’s servant in Washington, who had a Chinese curio shop now in a side street near the British Museum, knew that Sên the Chinese had paid. No one else knew—unless Sên’s widow did. Charles Snow often wondered whether his cousin Ruby ever had had even an inkling of what the marriage that her husband had kept so happy for her had cost Sên King-lo.
For Sên’s sake Charles Snow, though it grieved him, had not exactly regretted Sên King-lo’s death—fourteen years ago now—in Surrey. Emma Snow had liked Sên cordially; she had had to go on doing so even after the “abominable” marriage; but she had not been able to ignore—in her own cool head, for she never had voiced it—that King-lo’s death had cleansed her kinswoman’s social slate of a regrettable record. In her own way, lighter than Snow’s but as sound, Lady Snow had been staunchly loyal to Ruby and King-lo and to the marriage that never had ceased to rasp her. But she had hated it from first to last. She had always felt it a detriment not only to herself but to her two children, Blanche and Dick, and had felt that it would have injured and compromised any social standing less secure than Charlie’s and hers. And because she felt as she did about their cousin’s Chinese marriage, Emma Snow’s sunny, unflinching loyalty had been a braver thing than Sir Charles Snow’s. Lady Snow felt that Ruby had made a sorry sacrifice and had lost caste, had taken an appalling risk with criminal willfulness. Snow had had no doubt that the sacrifices, the smirch of caste, the ghastly risk, had been Sên’s tenfold more than Baby’s.
Only one detriment remained to Ruby now in Lady Snow’s opinion—Ivy. Mr. and Mrs. Sên had had two children, both living now with their mother in old Kensington. Ruben the elder was Saxon fair, a very charming boy. Ivy, two years younger than Ruben, was intensely Chinese in appearance, and a handful. Lady Snow loved Ruben and was proud of him; but she was ashamed of Ivy Sên, because of what the girl’s unmistakably Chinese face told and emphasized. Emma Snow was clear-eyed enough to see that the Chinese-looking half-English girl was almost incredibly lovely; and the woman was too well experienced in social England to have any doubt that Ivy, rich, accomplished and quick, would be a social sensation and success. But Emma Snow could not forgive the girl her Chinese face, though Heaven knows she tried to. After all, Lady Snow was not responsible for an adamant prejudice that was also a wholesome common sense—something she was unable to shake off because it was stronger than she and part of her own not inconsiderable strength. Even that wise old diplomat, Charles Snow, who made no mistake about the greatness and fineness of the Chinese, who admired and loved them, and who held himself honored in his many Chinese friendships, winced at Ivy’s slant black eyes, yellow skin and the pretty musical lilt of her up-and-down “courtyard” voice.
Whether Mrs. Sên regretted her only daughter’s Chinese appearance, or was gratified that Ruben her son looked and seemed so English, not even her Cousin Charles knew, who knew her better than any one else, not even excepting Ruben.
But both Sir Charles and his wife knew that Mrs. Sên loved her children passionately and they believed, mistakenly, that she gave them an equal love.
Ruben Sên worshiped his mother; he gave her a tendance and fealty that a Western mother rarely wins. And not even Sir Charles Snow—always watching, because of a promise he had given dead Sên King-lo—suspected that there was one thing that Ruben Sên, even now, loved more passionately than he did his mother.
We are so used to ourselves, so accustomed to our own blemishes of mind and body that we carry them tranquilly enough until some sharp knock shows them to us vividly, somewhat as others see them. Little Ivy Sên was self-centered and self-satisfied, even for one of her sex. And though looking in the glass was one of her most favored pastimes at a very early age, she was ten or twelve before she once wondered why she looked so little like her mother, or realized in the least how queerly her face differed from all the other girls’ faces! When she did realize it a looking glass tortured her. But she looked into it more than ever, obsessed by it much as lepers are!
Ivy Sên both loved and hated her mother, and Mrs. Sên knew it. She accepted her child’s love gratefully; suffered her child’s hatred and gave no sign. Ruby Sên did all that she could to lighten the cross that she knew Ivy carried. But there was one thing that she would not do for Ivy; she would not marry Lord Whitmore—or any other man.