CHAPTER XXXVI
One thing that No Fee told him in a burst of happiness rather vexed Sên Ruben, and he grumbled of it to his mother in his next letter.
No had had a deal to tell him of her great girl friend C’hi Yamei and it had not attracted Sên Ruben. C’hi Yamei was “emancipated.” Ruben was not sure that so-called emancipation along Western lines had improved any Chinese man, and he was sure that it had damaged and cheapened Chinese women. C’hi Yamei had lived in Europe, her father often made long stays there. When they were in Europe C’hi Yamei went everywhere and did everything just as English girls did—did the dance with men, went to the drama house with them. No Fee thought that admirable and enviable. Sên Ruben did not. And when No Fee cried out in ecstasy that Yamei was coming with her father to visit them, Sên Ruben was exceedingly sorry to hear it.
Half their “flowery” rules would be relaxed, No asserted, while the C’his were with them; relaxed in hospitality’s courteous veiling of Sên C’hian Fan’s disapproval and detestation of his old friend C’hi Ng Yelü’s dishonorable mistreatment and criminal disregard of old Chinese sanctities. Oh! there would be high jinks while the C’his stayed. No Fee was wildly delighted, half off her sleek little head at the riotous prospect. Ruben foresaw the homestead’s charm of quiet broken and spoiled; and even for little No’s sake he could not be glad that these C’his were coming.
Of course it could not have happened, No prattled on, in the households of many sash-wearers. Many chief-men would not have had it, and few, if any, of their caste women would have brooked it. Sên Ya Tin! Sên Ya Tin their Old-one would have raised the place first! But all his women were tight and flat under C’hian Fan’s thumb, and would do and smile as he bade them. Fortunately there wasn’t a strong woman in Sênland now—unless she, No Fee herself, was one. Certainly she would be a strong woman after her marriage; no being-under-thumb for her. She’d rule her man, as Sên Ya Tin had ruled hers—and thousands of other such wise and skillful women. And no mother-in-law for her. Long ago she had instructed her father that her bridegroom was to be an orphan. A grandmother mother-in-law was many times worse than a mother mother-in-law, except of course that a grandmother-one would not live so long to pester one.
Ruben laughed and told her that she was sinful, a sacrilegious rebel—which she was. He did not add aloud that she was also very lovable.
Sên Ruben might have missed the life and home of Ruben Sên, longed for them, if it had not been for his cousin and playmate No Fee. And she was his refuge as well as playmate.
There were things the Sêns did as a matter of course, some that they took keen delight in doing, that rasped Ruben; a few that revolted him.
That is no small part of the Eurasian’s tragedy—the inevitable revolt of self against self.
The sports of the younger of the Sên men delighted Ruben and disgusted him. He joined in the polo they still played and excelled in as their ancestors had when it was the favorite game of the T’ang Emperors, and the palace ladies played it too, riding on their swift docile donkeys whose saddles were inlaid and bridles jeweled; played polo often at night, when the night-lantern hung full in the sky, or by the illumination of thousands of gigantic candles. But he watched their cock fights and the to-the-death struggles of their crickets with lack-luster eyes and when he had watched one contest of their fighting fish he had contrived not to see its finish, although he kept his place in the excited ring of onlookers. And after that, whether it gave offense or no, whether they laughed at him and scorned him for it or not, he contrived to have something else to do, somewhere to roam far afield with No Fee whenever a fish fight was on.
Sên Jo Hiêsen was greatly concerned, convinced that Sên Ruben’s liver was badly disordered, a sad and dangerous ill to have befallen one so young, and plied Ruben urgently with a parti-colored succession of pills; not nonsensical Western pills, but good Chinese pills the size of small plums and each deeply marked with characters of good omen and restoration. Ruben accepted them meekly, and would have swallowed them too—or attempted to swallow them—rather than have watched again two infuriated little fighting fish gash and disembowel each other for the amusement of men. But he was able to hoard them in his sleeve instead, and up on the Cherry-Tree Hill he and No Fee played jackstones with them until each and all had rolled away and been lost down in the maiden-hair ferns and clumps of rose-colored pampas grass.
But the day of the great fight between the champion fish of Sên Yolu-sun and that of Sên Pling, No refused flatly to scamper off with Sên Ruben and announced to his horror that she intended to watch the fun herself this time.
“No,” she owned, “women-ones and girls don’t as a rule. But I am going to make my honorable father permit me that I do; and if C’hian Fan forbid it, I know where I can hide and see it all. There’ll be room for two in the hollow trunk of the soap tree, and C’hi Yamei shall hide with me and watch too, for the lord C’hi and my dear one Yamei reach us to-morrow in the hour before the dawn hour. Then the fight begins—unless the rain comes. The fish-ones will not fight if the rain-god spits down—but whoever heard of a rain-time in the Magnolia Month! Yamei will love it. She loves all such brave sights, my lion-hearted beautiful Yamei—and, oh, my heart leapt when Lord C’hi’s runner panted in just before the rice-time and told the message that they were nearly here! I adore Yamei; I adore that she comes. It will be my happiness all the time she is here, and when she goes from me again I shall sicken with my grieving. Yamei! My Yamei! Tell me, Sên Ruben, thou thing of silence and frowns, dost think that C’hi Yamei will come clad in her garments of Europe?”
“Probably,” Sên Ruben said glumly. The more he heard of this strident, emancipated Miss C’hi, the more he disapproved her. Little No Fee was merely a rogue and a romp—a wild-flower infinitely dainty and sweet, but his heart was enraged that this Chinese “new” woman was to be permitted to contaminate No. He’d be at the homestead but little while the C’his were here.
“I hope she wears her dress of Europe!” No Fee chattered on. “Never have I seen one of our women in the dress of Europe! A maiden in petticoats! Ya-ya what fun!”
No Fee hid her face in her hands—in mock modesty—and giggled immoderately, winking wickedly at Sên Ruben between her wee slender fingers.
Sên Ruben pleaded a letter to write, and went off to his own pavilion.