CHAPTER XXXIII
Sên Toon stood at the house door, waiting to lift his bride from her flowery-chair and carry her across the flaming threshold. Her cavalcade drew near. They were carrying her through the great outer gate-of-ceremony. Already the bride-test fire was lit at the house door, a low harmless “fire” of perfumed tinsels.
Sên Toon was splendid in a bridegroom’s gorgeous trappings.
The boy’s face was ashen—and looked the more ghastly for the gay raiment he wore.
Close behind him stood gathered the Sêns—even the women—ready to acclaim the bride, to whom no one yet must speak, and to greet her kinsmen who had accompanied her so far to give her to stranger hands—yield her forever to a strange undiscovered home, seal her in a new life that might prove garden, prison or tomb, to tell her good-by, and see her no more.
Sên Toon was not embarrassed; social embarrassment is not a Chinese trait; and his misery and distaste were far past mere embarrassment.
His kindred gathered about him there at the Ting Tzŭ Lang paid him little heed; they were too engrossed in watching for the girl hidden in the slow approaching bride-chair. In China—and where is she not?—the bride on her wedding day is of far more importance than the bridegroom. It is her day; and she predominates it, if all the rest of her life she has nothing to do but be meekly unimportant and obey. Besides, the Sêns had seen Sên Toon most of the days of his life; they had no curiosity about Sên Toon; they had a great deal concerning his bride; especially the Sên women had. He might neglect her, avoid her most of the time, if he chose. But all the kuei would be open to her, be hers. She might spend most of her time with them in their general courtyard. Would she add to its pleasantness or detract? An ill-natured concubine could contrive much discomfort for an entire household, a sour-souled wife could almost disrupt it and make their common courtyard purgatory come to earth instead of a sun-drenched garden of mirth, siesta and song. Truly this coming girl was almost of more importance to them than to Sên Toon, and they knew it. She would have no mother-in-law to fear, for Sên Toon’s mother never had rebuked or crossed any one in her life and never would; she often went into the meadow damp rather than disturb a snail on the path or a lizard sleeping in the sun; and an amah could have ruled her—certainly her daughter-in-law would, if his wife pleased Sên Toon. True Sên Wed O was regnant in the kuei; but Sên Wed O was fat and indolent with years and sweetmeats; was always more apt to raise her eyebrows with an inscrutable glance than to raise her stick; and it was useless to predict which side Madame Sên would champion and triumph in any quarrel or disagreement. She was not fond of complaints; she had no stomach for advice. Always her judgments were her own. And this new-come-one had imperial blood and was greatly endowed, and her kindred were powerful. Small wonder that the Sên ladies craned their necks as far over the shoulders of their men as they could when the bride-bearers set the bride-chair down.
Sên Ruben did not dwell in this or in any other kuei. He had little interest in the girl who had come to be made a Sên, no interest that was not vicarious and indirect. His eyes and his thought were for Sên Toon. Would Sên Toon go through with it? Could he? It was jolly hard lines on his cousin Toon, Ruben Sên thought. His sympathy was with Sên Toon.
Ruben Sên had come to China to learn and to admire. And Sên Ruben had done both. But once or twice the English blood in his blue Chinese veins had revolted at some custom intensely Chinese. Perhaps Ivy Ruby Gilbert’s son was a little less Chinese than he believed himself, a little less Chinese than he earnestly wished to be. But had he never seen the face of a Chinese girl on a canvas at Burlington House, probably he would have condemned Sên Toon’s reluctance and rancor to-day; for his soul was Chinese and he had seen in this home of his kinsmen the preponderant happiness of Chinese marriage. But he had seen a girl in a picture, and—what if he were in Sên Toon’s place to-day? His gorge rose at the thought, and an Englishman’s ire rose—and vowed.
The initial moment of Sên Toon’s ordeal had struck. The bride’s chair rested on the ground at the housedoor, the bearers turned and left it, with their sturdy backs toward it and went through the great gate, rubbing their arms as they walked. What would Sên Toon do?
He behaved like a man and a Sên. Instantly he went to the chair and thrust the clustering bridesmaids aside. He was a grave, dignified figure, in spite of his fantastic bridal brocades and foppery, his bead-dangled, bejeweled, charm-hung love-pouch belching perfume and jangling coins as he moved, wearing right lordly the proud, peacocked mandarin’s hat which even a peasant may ape at his bridal.
Except a Burmese pagoda, newly built, untarnished and richly endowed, there is little in Asia more glittering, more intricately and lavishly ornamented than a Chinese Bride-chair of the first class. This chair was sumptuous—if Sên Toon had sent it reluctantly, he had sent it of great price. The bamboo carrying poles were lacquered with gold. The carrying poles were the least of it. The box (for a bride’s chair is just that, a more or less richly bedizened box) was lacquered with gold-leaf and silver; it was carved and interlaced. Its two roofs rose to an apex of a great ball of topaz; the precious ball wore a jeweled crown. The up-sloping roofs were encrusted with marvelously wrought dragons and with kingfisher feathers. Unlike other Chinese roofs these did not tilt up at their edges. At each corner of both roofs an exquisite “lion” carved and molded of pure gold stood upright and watchful, with out-thrust tongues of coral. The eyes were jewels; the claws were ivory and silver. From the edge of the lower roof hung a deep fringe of alternate garnets, moonstones, turquoise, beryls, jasper and topaz. The box was a riot of arabesques and of crimson silk-lined open-work. At the back a shutter was opened slightly at the lower end, or the girl must have suffocated. In front a taut curtain of embroidered cloth of silver was closely fastened. There was a great deal of red about the chair. It was indescribable. The perfumes it smelt of must have cost a fortune. In her progress to the marriage-rite the Sêns had done their new woman and chattel royally well.
The bridesmaids, a dozen or more tiny maidens, too young to be profaned or lose face from the eyes of men or from gazing at men, as soon as their low litters had been lowered to the ground scrambled out before their amahs could help them, and scampered off on their wee crippled feet to prevent the bridegroom from taking his bride. The maid of honor must have been ten years of age, the youngest looked two. They were dressed all alike in long, silver-edged blue satin tunics and crêpe orange trousers. Their wide sashes were bridal crimson. They wore no veils over their delicately painted baby faces, but they wore high, heavy-looking “maid crowns” of gold, pink and amber artificial roses. Their specks of feet, shod in jeweled brocades, sparkled and glittered. One hopes, more firmly than one believes, that soon the binding of feet may be reformed out of China; but how old eyes will miss them: the little golden lilies that for centuries have scampered over the gardens of China, over the hearts of Chinese men!
The bride’s father descended from his betasseled palfrey’s high saddle, her brothers from theirs, they with comparative agility, he with difficulty and assisted by his servants. Her kinsmen would follow her into the great ch’ih, watch all the ceremonies, bid her good-by in a few days; but neither in ch’ih, hsi hua t’ing nor temple, before the ancestral tablets of the Sêns nor at the marriage feast would one of them glance at the Sên ladies. But many a peep would the Sên women take at them, and the Sên men, seeing their women’s misbehavior, would smile. It did not happen often; there was seldom opportunity.
Fire-crackers still crackled and snapped. Brass instruments still bellowed and screeched; the sweet song of the bamboo flutes was drowned in uglier sounds; but the music of the silver flutes pierced through it all.
Behind chairs, litters and palfreys hundreds of bearers waited to lay down such of the bride’s gifts and furnishings as had not been sent several days before her. These bearers, all lifelong servants of her father’s clan, the clan of Sia, were clad like lords, though in fabrics flimsier and cheaper than real lord-ones wear; but they looked the peasants they were. Nowhere on earth can race be disguised or aped, and least of all in China. A list of what they carried would fill a thick catalogue. Two of the bride-belongings were of super-importance, though compared with much they were of minor cost. The wild geese in their great strong, wire-covered cage Sên Toon had sent to her in betrothal and in presage and promise of lifelong married felicity. The wild geese of China never remate, and once mated never quarrel or forsake. On a great crimson tray four satin-clad coolies carried, in candlesticks of gold and tortoise shell, a pair of gigantic betasseled red-candles, virgin and unlit. They would stand by her bed or in the family temple as she chose, but not even the head of the house of Sên might order them lit until the birth hour of Sên Sia Fûtsin’s first son; and then not even the head of the house of Sên could forbid her midwife to light them. They, too, Sên Toon had given in betrothal, talismans of motherhood.
Behind the red-clad candle-bearers came two others, carrying another immense red tray on which potted in carved silver stood a dwarf orange tree rich with its own golden fruit and fantastically festooned with gold coins, an emblem of continued wealth. Red-clad musicians followed the “flowery” chair and were interspersed and noisy in all the long procession’s length. Behind the bride, before her, and again and again were bride-banner bearers. The bride-banners were indescribable; some were shaped like great wide-winged beetles riding above embroidered and flower-edged squares of silk; some were shaped even more fantastically, resembling great-eyed crustaceans with ridged outspread wings that were jauntily tipped by embossed plaques of gold-crustaceans that rode on stiffer, more irregularly shaped under-devices of silk. The men who held them were imperially and theatrically garbed. The banners’ tall twisted poles were of lacquer, gold or red. On the two most important, the nuptial banners, were beautifully inscribed the names of the fathers of the nuptial pair who still were those fathers’ chattels.
As Sên Toon went towards his bride Sên Ruben saw the flash of the splendid jewels in the hilt of the dagger that Toon wore sheathed in his high red-leather boot.
The bridesmaids dashed on the bridegroom, beat at him with tiny fat rose-leaf yellow baby hands. They were so young that, in defense of their mistress, his bride, they might touch him, beat against his well-clad shoulder, if they could reach it. One of them almost did; two clawed at his sleeve; two pulled at his knees; the others beat and tore at his boots; one dimpled, painted mite tripped up over his foot, found it a good resting place, and lay there face up gurgling and laughing at him affectionately as she scolded and cursed him, calling him a thief, a beast and a coolie.
Sên Toon beat them off tenderly, tossing a handful of sweetmeats a few feet away, to divert and entice them. But they had been well chosen and well drilled; they clung to him but the closer—beat at him and tore at his garments the harder, thrashing him hard with their rosebud hands. Again and again he drove them away; again and again they came back, clung closer, assaulted him harder and buzzed about him like angry, playful, jubilant bees.
Sên Toon routed the pretty infant Amazons at last, or perhaps the chief amah had whispered them to desist. They stood a little apart, breathless but giggling softly, and the tiniest tot of them all sat where she had fallen, sucking her thumb and devouring Lord Sên Toon with wistful, worshiping eyes. The youngest bridesmaid had fallen deeply in love with the bridegroom.
Sên Toon ripped the tinseled crimson curtain away, ripped it aslit and off, bent over the red-veiled motionless figure in the bride-come-box, lifted her up, sprang with her in his arms over the perfumed fire that smoked and flamed on the doorstep, stamped at it contemptuously with a red bridal boot, and carried the bride in his arms through the ting tzŭ lang and lesser langs, through the t’ings ch’ih, roofed and decorated for the bridal ceremony.
Sên Ruben pressed close beside him, and Sên Ruben’s heart was heavy. Little could he see of the crimson bundle in his cousin’s arms, but he thought that the girl swathed and bundled in bridal crimson was dumpy and heavy. One of her bejeweled hands slipped out from the folds of her veil; not at all a pretty hand. And next to her binded feet a lovely hand is the most indispensable attribute of a Chinese lady’s beauty. The matchmaker had swindled Sên Toon, and the heart of Sên Ruben was wroth.
Through the covered passageways and reception halls, her kinsmen and his kindred close behind them, Sên Toon carried her, but he and his bride went hand in hand into the ch’ih—the great marble-paved, roofless courtyard, over-roofed and richly carpeted to-day, and greatly decked and garnished for the nuptial rite of Sên Toon and the girl who walked beside him, still blinded by her veil—walked guided by his hand. He led her to the daïs, helped her up its few steps, and seated her beside him on their throne.
On the marriage daïs the astrologer, who had chosen the propitious bridal day, tied them together with red silk cords, ankle to ankle, waist to waist more loosely. Together they drained a pair of jasper wine cups also knotted together by cords of red. It was then that Sên Ruben saw for an instant the bride’s face; she moved her veil a little to find the rim of the cup her bridegroom held to her lips, and as she did so the jeweled fringe of her crown, another dense veil in itself, slipped aside, just for an instant, and Ruben saw! No one else did; Sên Toon’s eyes were on the cup, careful not to spill the nuptial wine; no one else stood where he could see. Not deformed, and the face of a lady-one, yet Ruben Sên saw it disconcertingly plain. Not a face to win a husband’s love, he thought. And he read her chin too firm, her lips too thin and threateningly willful—an ugly, selfish face. It repelled Sên Ruben, and his heart was sore for Sên Toon. Almost, had it not been impossible so to affront a girl, Ruben could have snatched the nuptial wine cups from Sên Toon’s hand and dashed them down. He had thought, as he followed them through the t’ings and langs, that the girl’s gait was ungainly; but looking down at her red-shod feet, as she sat on the daïs, he started at their loveliness; he had not seen tinier feet in China. There were not golden lilies to match them in all the courtyards of the Sêns. Sên Toon had that to his happiness!
When they left the daïs at long last, bride and groom bowed to each other again and again and bowed low and often to their kindred—three of hers, dozens of his—and their relatives bowed as often, not so low, to them. Sên Toon led her to the ancestral tablets, and there they bent repeatedly and worshiped. That done she was a Sên, no longer a Sia; but she was not yet his wife. Out of the ch’ih, through the inner garden and courtyard into her own room in the kuei, Sên Toon led the girl, closed the panel closely, lifted the red veil from her face, quietly laid his dagger on the veil where it had fallen, a gauzy cloud of silken crimson, and they were man and wife—though their eyes had not met; neither had looked at the other yet. The priests were praying in the great ancestral temple, a gorgeously appareled motley crew of priests, both Buddhist and Taoist. For the Sêns for centuries had kept every road to Heaven open and well tended. If they took all the religions of China somewhat lightly, they trod them all with decorum, if mostly they walked them on hireling priestly feet.
For an hour the now wedded ones were left alone, then her bridesmaids burst in upon them. And Sên Toon left the nuptial chamber. Until the dark came, until the day broke red in the sky, her clamorous maids sported about the new wife-one, joked about her, taunted her, did their utmost to make her speak. She took no notice of them, spoke not, scarcely moved. And rushing from the chamber when the gongs of the house struck the Hour-of-the-Dragon, the troop of laughing girls ran through the house, screaming out exultantly that she had neither laughed nor cried, asked for food nor spoken. She would prove a model wife; for she was not talkative, and she was not gluttonous and ne’er would she ask for tea or rice. Not even mushrooms or melons would tempt her until she had served her lord or heard that he had eaten in the outer quarters.
All night long Sên Toon paced up and down alone in the orchard. No one sought him. Sên Ruben wished to but dared not. Ruben pitied the heavy droop of Sên Toon’s shoulders, the miserable drag of Sên Toon’s feet. The heart of the white Sên rebelled against the proscribed and arbitrary customs of Chinese marriage. Ruben Sên had found one sore thing in China, and Sên Ruben felt it such.
Only those two cousins kept watch and wakefulness until the giggling bridesmaids came trooping through the house with the daylight. One by one the others sought their couches or sleep-mats. Sên Ruben saw Madame Sên yawn long before her departure from the feast-hall licensed the others to follow her; for when a great Chinese lady whose hairs are white, and she rich in years, mingles at such sacred functions with the men-ones she ranks above them all. But when Ruben saw her watching Sên Toon’s unhappy pacing, as she turned away to the kuei, Sên Ruben heard her chuckle.
When the sun was halfway up the bamboos, Sên Toon turned slowly towards the house and went to his wife. And for several days Sên Ruben did not catch sight or hear word of Sên Toon.