CHAPTER XXXI
If No Fee was a resource and a pal, she was a good deal of a nuisance, too, at times. She not only wanted her own way always—Ruben had known many girls and others who were not girls who did that—but invariably No Fee took it; sometimes she took it much to his inconvenience. Often she kept him away from his kinsmen when he wished to be with them. He loved Sên No Fee; he had to, for the girl was sweet and full of charm, and again and again she reminded him of Ivy. But he had not come to China to play cat’s cradle, to chase butterflies, or to do tomboy things with a girl. He had come there to steep himself in its ways—the ways of its manhood, not in the softer ways of a kuei—and to associate with the men of his family, to be a Sên with the Sên men.
Of all his Ho-nan kindred he most loved Sên No Fee, but to love and to like are two quite different things, and it was Sên Toon whom he most liked, with whom he best liked to be, and from whom as a Sên of his own generation and much of his own age he wanted to learn the intimacies of Chinese customs and thought. Toon had spent two years at Yale, and, although Ruben had come to Ho-nan soaked in the history and spirit of China, there was much he longed to learn and to realize that he found easier to grasp through this kinsman, who could give it to him in more or less Western terms as well as in the more intricate and indirect twists and turns of Chinese expression. Sên Toon had liked the West, thought it a jolly nice as well as a jolly queer place; and that also made a quick bond between them. No Fee called and kept Sên Ruben from Sên Toon oftener and longer than Ruben found it easy to forgive.
But the unkindest thing that No Fee did to Ruben was to make him put on one day for her amusement his English clothes; and it took all No’s cajolery and all her persistence to do it. Sên Ruben had no intention of returning to England—and to his mother—wearing Chinese clothes. He liked making himself conspicuous, striking an attitude, as little as all nice Englishmen do. But he had even less intention of wearing Bond Street materials and cuts in Ho-nan. The Chinese garments that he had donned and carried awkwardly and with so much embarrassment in the hill-perched monastery had grown more comfortable, seemed more his own, than English tailorings, naturally and easily as he always had worn them, ever had. He knew that he always should miss his Chinese clothes: their ease, and, more than their ease, their color.
When she made it, Sên Ruben refused her request. No Fee pouted and scolded; then she changed her tactics, discarded shrill peremptoriness and coaxed as only Sên No Fee could coax. “Only once, to give me pleasure, cousin-one who art dear to the heart of this little Chinese girl” was hard to resist, and so was her hand on his sleeve, and so was the wet in her eye. Sên Ruben wavered. Then the whole kuei backed her up, added its pleadings to hers. And when the oldest of his kinswomen, Sên Wed O—a lady of royal lineage, whose vision of the world had been bounded, he knew, by the walls of two courtyards, her father’s and her husband’s—begged with the graciousness of the old aristocrat who had no doubt that she and her white hairs would be obeyed, begged as a kindness to her untraveled self, Sên Ruben yielded.
He chose a day when he knew that his kinsmen had gone hawking, graybeards, youngsters and all. He made excuse not to go with them, and when their gay cavalcade had jingled away he made a wry face and changed into his English clothes.
How ugly they were! How queer his boots felt!
He hated himself in them almost as much as poor little Ivy had for years hated her face in the glass.
But he had promised; and he went, oddly uncomfortable, moving awkwardly, feeling gauche, looking shy.
But because he had promised his kinswomen he did it graciously. He went to them with a smile, and he gave them their way of him. It was their treat; it certainly was not Sên Ruben’s. Ruben Sên was not here.
The kuei buzzed about him.
They pushed and they pulled; they gave him shrill cries and gurgled, tittering; they felt him; they turned him about. They looked him over and over with kindly, critical eyes. And the pet dogs sniffed at his barbarian clothes and barked at him questioningly.
Madame Sên, of Imperial blood, doyenne here and supreme, bade them all leave him alone, bade them draw away to the edges of the courtyard where they belonged. The women obeyed her, the wee dogs did not.
She called him nearer to her that she might examine and look her fill. And she thanked him.
“You find me hideous, venerable, honorable mother-one,” Ruben said when she, having spoken, gave him freedom of speech. “This miserable person finds himself most hideous in these abominable, detestable, foreign-land clothes. Just this once, O queen-one of all the Sêns! Thou wilt not command it of thy slave-one again?”
“No,” Madame Sên nodded. Best Bond Street garments had not found favor in her old, narrow, black-velvet eyes. And the gracious gesture of her hand was a promise.
But No Fee giggled; and he heard it as a threat.
Madame Sên did not dismiss him, but she took up her embroidery frame again, and Ruben read it as a sign that he might stay by her stool or move about as he would.
He drew back a few paces, and the laughing courtyard rabble swooped on him again; at least all the women did; the dogs played apart or snoozed by the flower-wall.
They tottered about him on their richly shod golden-lilies. They looked at him roguishly, screamed they were shocked at his trousers, which some of them were. No demanded his coat then and there, that she might try it on. Probably Sên No Fee would have had her way too, had Madame Sên not glanced up from her needle with a word of protest which not even No the hoyden dare disobey here in the kuei. Sên Ruben had no doubt that, at some other time and place, No Fee would make her demand again.
Ruben began to enjoy himself in their rioting mirth. He declined to take oft his boots, that they might see and probably examine his stockings; he declined to put on his coat the other way about; but he gave up his cuff links and his tie-pin with pleasure; and presently he fell in tune with their frolic mirth, chased No Fee over the flagstones, joined willingly enough in a game of blindman’s buff. And Madame Sên looked grave, kindly approval across her lacquer embroidery frame.
There always is a strain of melancholy, a something, too, of bitterness and rebellion in the Eurasian who is neither brutish nor a dolt. If the strain of melancholy in Ruben Sên had been all but subconscious in Europe, and sternly repressed so far as he had realized it, it had been for that but the sharper. Until he came to China he had not felt (or known that he did) mixed blood a disgrace, for he was incapable of laying any shred of disgrace at the door of his parents; but he always had grieved that the gods had denied him the full of his Chinese birthright: the skin of his people, the set of their bones, the black of their eyes, a home in Ho-nan.
For all that, his life had been happy: pleasantly placed, loved and companioned by the mother he adored and of whom he was proud. Too—there was great natural sunshine in Ruben Sên, the son of Ruby Gilbert, at whose birth a star had danced, and the son of a man whose race is tuned to contentment and gladness. He was young. And before long he was pranking with his young kinswomen as gaily as they.
Suddenly No saw his face darken, saw Ruben stand stock-still, nonplused and perturbed.
Sên Toon had come into the courtyard; stood watching them. Madame Sên had smiled at Sên Toon affectionately when he made his deep salutations to her, and she had smiled softly in her sleeve. She knew why Sên Toon had been downcast and sad-eyed for more than a moon. And she knew how his discomfort would pass, would die in sweetest music in a garden of roses.
Sên Ruben had believed that Sên Toon had gone a-hawking with all the others. And it cost Ruben more than a pang, he felt it a shame, that Toon saw him foreign-land-clad in a Sên courtyard.
Toon made his way to Ruben.
“Come into the woods with me,” Toon asked; “I want to talk to you.” Toon said it in English.
“I will companion you before that white and rose cloudlet has crossed over the day star,” Ruben replied. He said it in Chinese. “Wait but till I change into my own garments again. I will change quickly.”
“Why change?” Sên Toon persisted in speaking English.
Sên Ruben as persistently spoke in Chinese. “I loathe that you have caught me in this masquerade that Sên No Fee extorted.”
“The first sensible thing I can recall that our wild and unpardonably spoilt one has done. I envy you your Western clothes—they are manlier. And I envy you much that they stand for.”
“Rubbish,” Ruben snapped more rudely than Chinese gentlemen, and above all close kinsmen, often speak to each other. “I must change before I come with thee. It would shame me till shame curdled my stomach did our kinsmen returning from the chase see me dressed as I am.”
“Sên King-lo dressed so?” Sên Toon asked.
“In Europe,” Ruben admitted. “Almost one must there now. At least, it seems more convenient, since most of us do. Kow Li does not. I honor him that he does not. But I know no other Chinese living in London, except Kow Li’s own servants, possibly too a few in ‘Chinatown,’ who do not.”
“Come, let us go,” Sên Toon urged. “They are hawking far from here; they will not return until the Hour of the Dog has died in the sky, and more likely the Hour of the Pig. None will see what you wear but me and the leaves on the trees.”
Ruben yielded.
Not again in Ho-nan, not for No Fee, not for the august Sên herself would he wear foreign garments. But now he would not keep Sên Toon waiting. No one would see them, Toon had said; and Ruben, without suspecting the reason, still less suspecting the remedy, had seen for weeks that his favorite kinsman was sorely out of gear. Toon wanted to talk to him, and Toon should do it immediately, purge the troubled stuff of his bothered mind through the confessional of fraternal speech, if he could.
They made obeisance to Madame Sên, who waved them with a tiny withered hand permission to go and gracious parting; tore themselves from the clamoring girls; and Toon led the way out of the “flowery,” across a flower-spangled meadow and into the thick of the walnut grove.
“What troubles you? Bid me what I can do,” Sên Ruben began when he saw how hard Sên Toon found it to begin. Ruben was un-Chinese in his dislike of delay—and in several things else.
“There is nothing you can do for me,” Toon spoke grimly, “unless you can change places with me. I’d commit suicide, if it were not for the grief to my mother. I’d cut and run were it not for the disgrace to the girl.”
Ah! Ruben pricked up his ears, and his face that had been all sympathy was half clouded with fear.
“A maiden you have seen by accident and wish for your bride?” Sên Ruben could understand that. “Can’t it be arranged? Your father and mother both are indulgent. Or is the maiden-one already betrothed? It isn’t a peasant-one, is it, Sên Toon?” The still worse that he feared Ruben did not word.
“I never have seen her in my life, but she is betrothed all right. They are going to marry her to me when the Sky Lantern is at its full.” Sên Toon began in English, then burst into passionate Chinese. His face was twitching and his hands twisted his girdle angrily. “I am caught in the coil of a poison-dragon, Sên Ruben, the creature has slimed me, there is no escape.”
“And there is some one else?” Ruben probed gently.
“Ha?” Toon asked dully; he had not caught Sên Ruben’s meaning.
“Some other maiden you love and long to wed?” Sên Ruben explained.
Sên Toon laughed impatiently. “All the gods, no! Love—what chance has a Chinese to love? Betrothed in our cradles, it may be, thrust into wedlock with some strange girl-thing whom we are sure to hate, and who’s sure to hate us!”
“It seems not to work out so,” Ruben protested. “All the wives in our kuei are happy, Sên Toon.”
“They don’t know any better,” Sên Toon grumbled contemptuously.
“They know a great deal, I have found,” Ruben defended, “and they all are charming. And their husbands love them. Clearly that is so. I have not been in this jewel country of ours many moons, but I have watched even as a hungered child watches the face of his mother; and I have learned, and I know, that marriage success, marriage contentment in China is to success and contentment of Western marriage as Omi is to a hillock of clover.”
“It works here sometimes,” the other owned grudgingly, “but I have traveled, I have seen freedom. My soul cries for its freedom. I want to choose my bride.”
Sên Ruben had no answer to that. He had chosen his bride, and no power on Earth or on-High should dissuade him. He did not speak for a long time. When he did he felt that his words were feeble.
“Since you love no other maiden,” he said, “surely all will be well. Your father is wise. He will have selected a beautiful maid who is as kind and accomplished as she is beautiful. Both your brothers dote on their wives.”
“I swear to the gods that I will hate mine. Her face may be as beautiful as an egg, her voice the voice of a lute in the moonlight, but I will hate her. I spit at the thought of her, because she is thrust upon me. Let her be the most charming maiden that ever came in her red chair from courtyard to courtyard and the kindest, I swear to all the gods that I will loathe her!” Sên Toon’s voice broke in his pain; he was trembling violently. Sên Ruben feared that Sên Toon would keep his terrible oath. Ruben’s heart was sore for his cousin, very sore for the bride that would come when the moon rode at its full.
“Does your father know, Sên Toon? He loves you greatly.”
“No one knows but you. I could hold it no longer,” Sên Toon sobbed and hid a tempest of tears in his sleeve.
Ruben Sên was revolted and ashamed. Ho-nan had gripped him and always would hold him. But Eton and Cambridge held their grip of him too; Ho-nan could not shatter all that they had bred and ingrained. All his being was shamed to see a man cry! And his kinsman, a Sên! Sên Toon was weeping wildly. He wept like a man battered and defeated, a man at bay and exhausted. He wept like a whip-frightened child.
“Is it too late?” Sên Ruben suggested presently, “too late to ask your honorable father’s indulgence, to tell him what you feel?”
“He would not understand,” Sên Toon said surlily. His breast still heaved, but the tempest had passed. Ruben Sên thanked all the stars that it had. “The inevitable will be. I was pledged to it before I tasted the salt of Western freedom. I must go on with it. But, by underworld god himself, no son of mine, still less a daughter of my loins, ever shall go an unwilling victim to wedlock with a stranger. I shall go on with it because I must. I can divorce her afterwards perhaps. But to escape her, I must marry her first. A Chinese betrothal cannot be broken—” Sên Ruben knew that that was true. “After betrothal there is no loophole for the bride, and only one for the bridegroom. A shopkeeper’s son may take it sometimes; I have heard that it has been done in Canton, but no girdle-wearer can take it; for us it is not a loophole.”
Sên Ruben assented. He knew that a dagger was worn conspicuously in one of the groom’s high bridal boots, but that no gentleman, when he lifted the red veil from a trembling girl’s face—and liked it not—could throw that dagger in violence, repudiation and dismissal at her feet. In theory, so could the bridegrooms of several provinces refuse the new-made wife, and Ruben had heard that sometimes ere they sent him to the nuptial chamber anxious parents had been known to ply a boy bridegroom with wine that he might see his bride’s face, through a rosy hue, fairer than it was. He doubted if the cruel custom held in Ho-nan even among the peasant-ones. It was an offense no Sên could offer to a maid who had drunk with him the red-tied marriage cup, worshiped with him at the ancestral tablets.
The cousins walked on in silence. Ruben could think of nothing to say. Sên Toon had said all his words, purged his angry heart as far as he could.
Perhaps the leafy forest healed him: a cathedral sanctuary green and faintly fragrant. For the troubled boyish face slowly cleared. Perhaps the bright-winged birds cheered him as they flew friendly-low from tree to tree and sang to him joyously.
Sên Ruben cried out in dismay when they left the thick-leaved grove and he saw how high the day-star had risen.
Sên Toon read his cousin’s thought. “I will get you to your pavilion unseen, Sên Ruben. Our kinsmen shall not see you, since you shrink it. Just beyond that clump of loquats is a miracle. Also is it one of the loveliest sights in all Ho-nan. I would show it to you. He who has not seen the nourish-old-age of Kow Lôk the witch has not seen Ho-nan.”