Ruben and Ivy Sên

On the surface Mrs. Sên lived pleasantly and calmly, as scores of such Englishwomen do—London, Surrey, moderate travel, ample means, good health, “troops of friends,” not a worry; a radiant, if placid, life, peculiarly free from grave care or petty annoyances. At forty she was much more than good-looking and she had charm, the personal charm that had been hers from childhood, and the deeper charm of the woman who has accepted experience and has assimilated and used it wisely. Sir Charles Snow, probably her most trusted friend as well as her kinsman, often questioned if his cousin lived less smoothly in her hidden depths of being than on the untroubled surface. After fifteen years of identical questioning Snow had found no answer, reached no conclusion.

The rich widow was completely her own mistress; by her husband’s gift wealthy in her own right, her fortune under her sole control, she the only guardian of their two children. To be sure, her husband had died as he had lived, a Chinese subject. By Chinese law—and international equity could not well have disputed it—all that Mr. Sên had left, including even his widow and their children, belonged to his family in Ho-nan. Whether or not those British-born children could have maintained British citizenship as against Chinese allegiance, had the Sêns in Ho-nan raised and pressed the point, Ruby, the dead Chinese man’s widow, was indubitably a Chinese subject. She could only regain the British rights of her birth by remarriage with a British subject, or possibly, in the new dispensation which has given woman so much—and taken from her so very much more—by naturalization. Mrs. Sên had shown no disposition to do either; and the question of her right to the guardianship of her boy and girl, her right to bring them up in England, and as English, had never been raised. The Sêns in China had made no move, expressed no wish, offered no advice. Gifts came to Kensington once in a great while, always gifts of value. But with one exception all those gifts had been sent to Mrs. Sên herself and not to her children. Mr. Sên’s grandmother had sent Ivy Sên some splendid birth-gifts, too priceless to have passed into the girl’s own keeping even yet. Except for that, no Chinese relative of Ruben and Ivy Sên had approached them even indirectly. Chinese minds had enough upheaval to contemplate at home now without reaching across the world for more. Mrs. Sên’s rule of them and her own life was undisputed.

But Snow often wondered.

He knew that Ruby had not forgotten the man she had so willfully married. The woman was no ingrate, nor was she dull. Only an abnormally treacherous woman could have put such a mate out of her life, merely because he had died bodily. And only an inordinately dull soul could have forgotten in the bagatelle of fifteen years the charm and chivalry that had never failed her in the crucible of married intimacy. The heyday of so great a spirit as Sên King-lo’s can know no passing. It cannot die. Ruby Sên was neither treacherous nor dull.

But had she ever realized all that her Chinese husband had been? While he lived had she suspected anything of what he had given her, done for her, sacrificed for her? Snow believed that she had not. But had it come to her, even in part, since Sên’s death, as past truth often does come to us after many years? He could not tell.

How much did Ruby Sên look ahead—how clearly? She gave no sign.

How were the two children of the mixed marriage going to turn out? What would their lives be? Motherhood had lain lightly upon his cousin as yet. Would it press upon her more heavily presently?

When he was dying their Chinese father had insisted to Snow, whom he had trusted peculiarly, that Saxon-fair Ruben in mind and nature was intrinsically and intensely Chinese, but that Chinese-looking Ivy was as intensely English. It was clear that the dead man had been right about his baby daughter. Ruben was keenly interested in all things Chinese and eagerly anxious to learn all he could about Sên King-lo. Was it curiosity, or was it trend? Was it individual, or was it race?

Snow was sure that there were rocks and dangerous shoals ahead for poor little Ivy. Did her mother know it?

Were there rocks or shoals ahead for Ruben? Did his mother suspect that too?

Ivy Sên had been educated chiefly by governesses and they had found it difficult work but never dull. Ruben had gone from public school to his father’s old college in the Cam-side ’Varsity, and both at school and at Cambridge Ruben Sên had grooved into the life with his fellows as easily and neatly as any English one of them all.

Charles Snow suspected a good deal about Ruben; but he knew nothing, except that Ruben Sên was upright, quietly sunny, exceptionally able, tenderly fond of his sister, lover and worshiper of his mother. Many English boys are fond of their sisters, especially an only brother of an only sister; and if love-of-mother is a Chinese characteristic, it is not an un-English trait. Snow understood Ivy perhaps better than he did Ruben. He was not sure that he understood Ruben at all. The old diplomat with years of Anglo-Chinese experience back of him, many Chinese friends, firmly-rooted Chinese sympathies, was sorely sorry for little Ivy Sên. Had he cause, he often asked, to be even sorrier for Ruben? Had blue-eyed, white-skinned Ruben the bitterer, deeper cup to drink?

How could he best serve Ruben and Ivy Sên?

His own children needed little even from him; nothing more than a fatherly and friendly hand on their shoulders now and then. Both Richard and Blanche were true to type and all went well and creditably with them. Snow still felt great interest in national and in international affairs. But he held a watching brief now. He had been out of office for nearly a year. He had served his king and his country truly and well in all four of the globe’s quarters, and in the cabinet as well as at the Foreign Office. But “party” no longer lured him. He thought not too well of either party now. England would “muddle through” of course. Charles Snow was too English to doubt it for a moment. And he hoped to God that old China would “muddle through” too! But keenly as he tried to watch and read all the shifting tangles of East and West, Old and New, the man’s most immediate interest, though he had to veil it carefully, was to serve Ruben and Ivy Sên, and by doing it to keep faith with Sên King-lo, who had trusted him and in dying had bequeathed to Snow a trouble that he could not take with him into the churchyard.