CHAPTER XI
When changing for dinner Ivy—a little cross from an unusually hot schoolroom friction—had thought to herself, “It will be a sort of lantern lecture on China—a lantern lecture with the slides left out, I suppose. I wish Charles hadn’t made a point of my dining. Lucille would have jumped at coming, and Emmeline Hamilton would have groveled to Emma for the chance.”
But China was not mentioned at dinner. And long before the sweets Miss Gilbert had forgotten that her cousin’s guest was not as European as they three. His quiet repose was more English than Reginald Hamilton’s broad vowels—and so were his manners. And she began to realize why Miss Julia so liked Mr. Sên, and why Sir Charles had so welcomed him. He was a sunny, considerate companion, as free from “side” as he was from servility. He talked most to Lady Snow, of course, but he glanced oftener and longer at her cousin; and his hostess saw that he did.
Sên King-lo thought the girl friendlier and more interesting than she had been before, and he thought that tonight she looked almost more Chinese than she had done at Rosehill. The rings of garnet and enamel that dangled in her dark hair, and moved with her head, had more than a look of stick-pins, and her dark eyes almost were almond-shaped. He liked that stick-pin look, and the gentle constant movement in the girl’s dark hair. But he made no mistake. He knew it as accidental as the bride-red dress she wore tonight, or the jade-green and the dangling pepper baubles had been. Of a race that sees little of women who are not belongings, or detrimentals, or peasants, yet Sên made few misjudgments of women. He knew why Miss Hamilton wore peacock feathers and dragon embroideries and Japanese jewelry that she believed Chinese, and—like half the girls in Washington just now—clattered as she walked, with the noise of bangles she believed to be jade. But he sensed that this girl was virginal, had dignity, and thought her own the super-race; all three qualities which he liked. He did not agree with her as to which was the super-race. But he liked her for her own conviction; he thought it a womanliness.
The table-talk was general, of course—only the four at the small round table—and it was most of it impersonal. But it was interesting talk, Ivy thought, and she rose a little reluctantly when Lady Snow rose. Ivy was sorry that dinner was over.
Sir Charles Snow was not. “Don’t expect us in the drawing-room quite as soon as is best politeness,” he told his wife. “I particularly want to pick Mr. Sên King-lo’s brains, and a secret or two, if it can be done.”
Sên King-lo’s eyes sparkled good-humoredly. “I shall try to be picked very swiftly,” he said to the girl as she followed Lady Snow through the door he held. “To Hecuba, Sir Charles,” he bade his host as they reseated themselves. “My brains are at your service, and my secrets too, if I’ve any that are mine only—but I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“I lived in China a number of years,” Snow said, pouring the port, “as you probably did not know.”
Sên laughed. “But, of course, I did. We have a list—a fairly accurate list, I fancy—at the ‘shop’ of every official, and of every one else worth watching, in Washington now, who has been in our country, or has interests there.”
“To be sure! I might have known that. But, I don’t suppose you know anything about what I did in China—it wasn’t much, and you were the merest child then, still smelling of your mother’s milk.”
The Chinese face quickened at the other’s use of a Chinese saying. Then it grew graver, and Sên said a little sadly:
“We have to grow old rapidly now, we Chinese who love our country, and wish to serve her. I know what year you landed in China, what boat you took there, how long you stayed, much of what you did, where you lived and went most of the time, who many of your Chinese friends were. And that was one reason—only one—why I was so particularly pleased when I received Lady Snow’s note, kindly saying that I might dine with her and make your acquaintance—for I don’t suppose we count as acquaintance the few k’o-tow nods we’ve exchanged at your ‘shop’ and mine.”
“No—precisely,” Snow agreed. “Well—as you know then, I must try not to feel too flattered by what is purely a bit of detail work of a painstaking patriotism, you know that I have lived in China all told quite a lump of moons——”
“A year and seven weeks longer than I have myself—all told.”
“By Jove! You have been exiled as much as that?”
“Yes,” the Chinese said gravely.
“Well, Mr. Sên, a man knows his own country better—certainly more naturally—than any foreigner can. But you and I know that the old myth that no European can know anything very vital about China, or the Chinese, or understand either at all, is untrue.”
Sên King-lo nodded and smiled across the cigarette he was lighting. “Tommy-rot,” he said.
“Parkes knew China—quite a good deal about you—and Hart did, and Macartney.”
Sên King-lo nodded again.
“And there have been others.”
“And there have been others,” Sên King-lo said. “And there are now—a few. We need more.”
“I hope you’ll get them,” the host said cordially. “But if you don’t, I expect you’ll make shift without them.”
“I hope so,” Sên replied. “But it will take longer to accomplish what we must.”
“Much longer,” Snow added. “Next to my own country and people, I like and admire and trust yours, Mr. Sên.”
The Chinese lifted his glass. “And next to my own country and my own countrymen, I like and admire and trust yours, sir,” he said, and drank.
“When the Manchu fell,” Snow began when he, too, had tasted his port,—“frankly I wish they had not——”
Sên King-lo smiled. “We all regret—some more, some less—that they had to, all of us who love self less and China more, I think. But it had to come.”
“Possibly,” the other conceded. “I don’t own that I see it. But we need not quarrel over that.”
“We shall not quarrel over anything,” Sên said simply.
“No, I don’t think we shall. Well—I hope that the Manchu may come back.”
“Why?” Sên King-lo asked.
“Best dynasty you ever had. And I don’t like republics. Don’t believe in them. And for an Oriental people—well, in my opinion they smell to heaven.”
Sên King-lo laughed. “Do you think the Manchu was a good dynasty in its last reigns?” he questioned.
“I do,” Snow said stoutly. “It gave you the two finest rulers any country ever had—any country, bar none.”
“You mean K’ang-hi and K’ien-lung.”
“I do.”
Sên King-lo smiled again, but he drained the glass Sir Charles had refilled.
“Twenty Sun-Yat-sens would not out-balance either K’ang-hi or K’ien-lung. And I hope the Manchu will come back. And I don’t like dethronements.”
“We’ve had a good many in China.”
“Not exactly. Conquering princes and warriors have mounted, usurped, if you like, the throne of the Emperor they’ve unseated—but that’s a very different thing from a people voluntarily dismissing their ruler. And when they do it at foreign instigation and chicanery—to my mind it is without excuse.”
“Mencius taught ‘Killing a bad monarch is no murder,’ ” Sên remarked.
“Then Mencius was, to my thinking, a bit of a Bolshevik,” Snow retorted.
Sên King-lo laughed pleasantly. That he did—at such hot derision of the Sage, showed how tight Young China had gripped him, how far Old China had lost him.
“I hate to see China a republic,” Snow insisted. “And I stand by the Manchu. You will dislike my saying that——”
“And that is why you say it.”
“Exactly. I want to start fair.”
“So I thought, Sir Charles. But I do not dislike your saying it, or even your feeling so. I think you are wrong,” Sên King-lo inclined his head courteously towards the older and host, “but if a man himself is thoroughly sound, I don’t think that it matters very desperately what views he holds. I believe that neither an incorruptible man, nor any views he has, will do himself or any one else much harm. For our weal or our woe, the Manchu has gone—for a time, or for ever—and we, we Chinese, must do the best we can for our country, with things as they are. And we can’t very well import an Emperor made in Germany.”
“God forbid! But you could choose one of your own.”
“Would you have us crown Sun-Yat-sen?”
“That’s the last thing I’d have you do,” Snow retorted grimly. “But there are men—good men, in China.”
“Yes,” Sên King-lo agreed, noncommittally. “You have started splendidly fair,” he added with a pleasant grin, “and now you wish to ask me something?”
“Yes; that was why I wouldn’t let my wife have half Washington here tonight. I wanted a chance to talk with you alone—to find out several things from you, if I could. You won’t tell me, of course. Your Minister won’t, and you, of course, cannot and should not; but I might gather something from the way your reticence shaped—I’m an old hand, you know.”
The young Chinese laughed gleefully. He liked this Englishman.
“Shantung?” he asked, gravely.
“No—not Shantung. I know what you and every decent Chinese wish and plan and hope concerning the sacred province. I wish it too, Sên King-lo.”
“Thank you,” Sên said quietly.
“I’d like to know, if I might, how you—you individually—believe that China’s regeneration may best be brought about. You’ll pardon me the word?”
“I use it myself,” Sên said gravely. “I believe that the foundation of China’s new strength and health must be financial. Her greatest and sharpest peril is financial—most specifically from her use of foreign money, and from foreign financiers’ misdealings with her. That is why I am keeping so long an exile, Sir Charles. I am studying European and American banking methods.”
“May I ask to what end?” Snow’s face was aglow.
“We—many who think as I do—are earnestly anxious to see every bank in China entirely in Chinese hands; entirely, adequately, exclusively capitalized by Chinese money and securities.”
“By God!” The table rang under the blow of the Englishman’s hand. “You’ve got the right end of the stick. By the holy Harry, you have! Accomplish that, and you’ll accomplish everything.”
“So we think.”
The two men smoked in silence for several moments. Then Sir Charles spoke quietly.
“I wonder if you know what my Chinese holdings are?”
“Almost to a yen, I fancy. I certainly know that you are a rich man in China. And, too, that you never have parted with a Chinese security, except to buy another, even in our country’s darkest hours.”
“I never have. I never shall. Yes, I’ve a good deal salted down in China—a great deal more than I’d like Lady Snow to know. She has a rare taste in diamonds and no mean liking for lace and other chiffons.”
Sên’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll betray no yâmen secrets, Sir Charles,” he promised.
Snow waved that aside. He knew that. Nor did he think it worth while to remark that no confidence of Sên King-lo’s would ever be even impinged on by him. He was right; it was not necessary. They understood each other.
“You want only Chinese capital in the banks of China, and no control that is not Chinese.”
“None; neither a yen nor a man; Chinese capital and Chinese shareholders only, and Chinese management and service, from the managers to the ‘boys’ at the doors and the coolies who clean.”
“Precisely—but I daresay you’ll accept foreign depositors well accredited and sifted, and foreign customers?”
“Of course. Every civilized banker accepts any good account that is not an enemy account, and buys and sells to any who can pay his charges. We’ve no scheme to run freak banks. The heyday of the freak is waning.”
“I hope so,” Snow said—but with a touch of dubiousness.
“But we—we’ll accept foreign accounts, not court them. It is Chinese money, Chinese-owned, that we shall aim to attract.”
“Such a Rome will not be built in a day,” the Englishman told him.
“Nor in too few years,” Sên agreed.
“I’d like to be among your first depositors,” Snow said slowly. “I’ll tell you what I am going to do, Sên King-lo; I’m going to hold all I have in China at your disposal. I’ll throw it in as securities—I’ll float it into cash, and deposit it en bloc, when your national banks are ready—and I’ll deposit as well the interest you pay me—we’ll call it a ninety days’ deposit—say until Dick, my youngster, is thirty; that gives you a fairly good run, if you get your shutters up pretty soon—and I’ll bind myself and my estate to make no withdrawal, little or big, after that, without giving you very long notice, and, as well, I’ll hedge you well about against my doing so—or my heirs—at any time of special inconvenience to the bank. All I’ve got will be just a drop in the bank bucket, of course, but even drops come in handy in times of drought. My Chinese holdings are at China’s service. And the execution of a good, all-Chinese banking scheme would be the best service of China I can think of. I’ll do a bit more than that: I will sell you—your bankers or your nominee or nominees—any or all holdings of mine in your country, and sell at a minimum price, whenever you feel that you are strong enough to stand alone—and see us get out. I’d like to be one of the first to get in—into your banks, and I’d like to be the last European to get out. But I’ll hold myself pledged to go when you say, ‘Go.’ ”
“I wish you owned Shantung,” Sên King-lo said tersely.
“I wish I did!” Snow replied. “In the meantime,” he continued, “if you care to avail yourself of a little foreign capital, during the expensive and more or less experimental preliminary months or years, I’d be glad to have you use mine. It’s at your service.”
The Chinese are said to be unemotional. It is not true. The upper classes—at least the men—carry self-control to an obsession, and have made it a fine art; but high or low, there are no stolid Chinese. To a man their emotions are quick and extreme.
Sên King-lo made no reply. He looked both imperturbable and nonchalant, sitting easily there in his perfect Western attire, carelessly turning a cigarette in his fine yellow fingers, his eyes on the tiny cylinder with which he toyed. His face did not change in any way. But he did not look up—because his eyes were a trifle humid.
“You offer to take a large risk,” he said at last, “a very unusual risk. You know nothing of me. And what if the Manchu, or some other dynasty, did come back? We are scheming and looking towards a republican national bank. Had you thought of that?”
“Of course I had,” Snow asserted. “It is up to China to decide her own affairs. I’d like to see the Manchu back, but I’m not in any way out for it. If you enjoy your Republic—well, it’s up to you. On the other hand, if the Manchu should come back, they’d destroy no good thing that you or any one else had done for their country. It isn’t their way. They might make you grow a few queues—but their revenge wouldn’t go much further than that, I’m thinking. And, as for my not knowing you, don’t be too sure. We have an Intelligence Department also, however pigmy it may be compared to yours. But, frankly, no, I do not know much of you. You are a youngster. Whitehall has not got its eye on you—yet. May never have. I do not know you. But I claim to know your race and your caste.”
“We have no castes in China.”
“Nonsense; there is caste everywhere—from Patagonia to Greenland. And—I know your family. I knew your father slightly. I knew one of his brothers better. I knew Sên Wang Yat very well indeed—your father’s second cousin, wasn’t he? I do not need to know you. I know the Sêns.”
“Thank you,” the guest said quietly. But he looked up now, and his face was not expressionless. “But—it is extraordinary—what you offer. I wonder why!”
“And you’d like to know! I believe in China’s future. I believe your bank idea is sound—the soundest! I am fond of China. I like your people. Those are four of my reasons. I have one other—a sentimental reason. Some day—just possibly—” He broke off and struck a match.
Sên showed neither surprise nor curiosity. He felt neither. That a diplomat and, as he knew, also a keen politician, should prove to be, too, an idealist, was not very common, but as he knew as well, it was not particularly rare.
He liked Snow none the less for it. All Chinese are idealists.
That this man “wanted something” in return never entered Sên’s mind. He was not a bad judge of men.
“I was anxious to have you here, rather en famille, because I wished to learn, if I could—even a hint or two—several things that I’ve no doubt you know. Well, I am not going to pump you tonight, but I hope you’ll come and see us as often and as informally—just drop in, you know—as often as it does not bore you. I hope it, no matter how completely I fail to make the pump work.”
“It will not bore me,” Sên told him. “It will delight me, if Lady Snow—and Miss Gilbert—will allow me.”
“Oh, that’s all right—shall we go to them now? You’re a great success with the ladies, I’ve heard it whispered.”
Sên King-lo made a merry and contemptuous shrug as he rose. “Yes,” he said, as he opened the door for his host—Old China had not lost him quite!—“Yes—I am quite the fashion.”
“I was almost asleep,” Lady Snow asserted with a pretty combination of yawn and grumble, as the two men came in. “Come, wake me thoroughly up, Mr. Sên.”
“With pleasure,” he told her.
She made a pretty picture, her husband thought, in her draperies of peacock-blue and apple-green—how much had they cost? he wondered indulgently—and a discreet swarm of about half her second best diamonds—he knew perfectly well what they had cost. And Sên King-lo proceeded to amuse her gaily and devotedly. But she saw his eyes sweep the room.
“Where’s Ivy?” Snow demanded.
“Coming back,” his wife told him. “She said so.”
Some time passed before Ivy did. She had a book in her hand then, and she carried it to Sên King-lo.
“Will you write in my confession book, Mr. Sên?” she asked.
“May I?” he said as he rose to take it.
Charles threw his cousin a cordial glance. She was a good girl. She’d thought of that to please him he was sure.
And Sên King-lo thought so too.
They were right—but more wrong than right. For herself Ivy Gilbert had no wish that Sên King-lo should write in her confession book. But she knew how it would excite Lucille and Molly, and how they’d enjoy it and chatter about it. And that chiefly was why she’d trudged upstairs and down to get the vellum-bound volume.
“Shall I write in English or in Chinese?” Sên asked her.
“In both, please—use two places.”
“I shall obey,” he promised. “May I take it away with me? One needs preparation and prayer for a supreme literary effort.”
“Of course,” the girl nodded.
“Is your own in it?” Sên asked her.
“One has to set the ball rolling,” she answered.
“May I look?” He turned to the first page, as she nodded.
“What perfectly soul-scouring queries!” he jibed. “No, I shall not study your revelations of your utmost self until later,” he announced, closing the toy. But the quick Chinese eyes must have caught one question and answer, for he said, “So riding is your favorite pastime, Miss Gilbert. Do you often ride here?”
“Almost never; Sir Charles hasn’t often the time to take me. Lady Snow’s lazy, she hates riding, and I hate riding alone—with only a groom to follow.”
“I wonder,” Sên replied, “if—after we are older friends, Lady Snow would allow me to ride with you some day, Miss Gilbert? And I very much wonder, if you’d let me? Miss Julia Townsend says she’d ride with me, if she were younger, and I have driven her several times in my dog-cart, without a groom.”
“I’ve no doubt Miss Julia would ride with you in a balloon—if you wished it,” Miss Gilbert said severely.
“Happy thought!” Sên retorted. “Shall I ask her?”
“Let me be there when you ask her,” Emma Snow giggled.
“Let me be there when you go up,” was Sir Charles’ request. “She’d go all right, I’ve no doubt of that. She’s a splendid sport.”
“She’s a delightful, wonderful woman,” Sên King-lo added. “Will you let me take you, Miss Gilbert—if Lady Snow will allow me?”
“In a balloon?”
“Not for worlds,” Sên declined; “on a horse. I have one that would carry a lady perfectly, Lady Snow.”
“The chaperon’s as dead as Queen Anne,” the young matron said. “And Miss Gilbert is one of the new dispensations.” She spoke lightly, cordially even—but her husband shot her a puzzled look. He knew—he knew every tone and tint of her voice so well—that for some odd reason Emma was not pleased.
“I am not!” Ivy asserted coldly. “I despise them.”
“Will you—ride—some day?” Sên persisted.
Ivy flushed. “I am teaching most of the time, Mr. Sên, or trying to,” she told him.
“Nonsense! And untrue!” Lady Snow cried. “Don’t dare to pretend you are not at your own perfect liberty all the time. My cousin helps me—when she wishes—with my kiddies. You must see them, at lunch, some day soon. They are dears. But Ivy is as free to junket as I am—freer—and she’s a little cat to pretend she isn’t. It’s one of her affectations—just to tease me. And you need not lend her a mount—we have quite a decent one, she and I, between us, just eating his head off—a groom has to give it enough exercise to keep it on its legs. I never ride except when my husband takes me and makes me, because it’s one of the things I do not care for at all. And Ivy won’t—because she’s contrary. But Wolf carries her perfectly. So——”
“So—perhaps—some day—Miss Gilbert will give me the pleasure,” Sên King-lo said, and dismissed it. For he saw that Miss Gilbert had no wish to ride with him—and he himself cared very little either way. He turned to Sir Charles to speak of something quite else, but Lady Snow spoke before he could.
“Do you ride much?” she asked.
“Fairly often,” he told her.
“Have you ridden with Mrs. Gunter? I think no one here rides as well as she does—no one I’ve seen.”
“No,” Sên said. “I have ridden to hounds in England, but, except for that, I never have ridden with any lady. Here I have a quick canter by myself, sometimes at daybreak.”
“How perfectly awful!” his hostess groaned—quite sincerely. “At daybreak! Mr. Sên, how can you?”
“We are all early risers—we Chinese,” he told her.
The sudden red pulsed into Ivy’s face. She was angry that it did—but she turned to Sên King-lo, and said impulsively, “When will you take me for our ride, Mr. Sên?”
“Whenever you will let me,” he answered quietly, with a slight, grave bow. He showed no surprise. But he was surprised, as her cousins were. They both were gazing at her in almost open blank amazement. Ivy rarely changed her mind.
Again Sên King-lo made no mistake. He could not imagine the cause of her volte face, but he was perfectly sure that it was not that she wished to ride with him. And because she did not wish to, he regretted that he had suggested it—or she consented.
“Next Thursday?” Ivy persisted. “But you won’t ask me to be ready at daybreak?”
“Next Thursday. Thank you so much,” he replied. “The hour you prefer will give me the greatest pleasure.”
“Ten, then; before it is hot,” Ivy decided. Lucille often rode at ten.
“Come to breakfast, Mr. Sên,” Lady Snow said cordially. “We breakfast at nine.”
“You are very kind, Lady Snow,” Sên replied. “I will not be late.” But the invitation had pleased the Chinese man as little as it had the English girl.
“Play to us, Ivy,” Sir Charles asked presently, not because talk was flagging—it wasn’t—but because he particularly liked his young cousin’s music. But Ivy would neither play nor sing.
“You’ll have to put up with mine,” his wife told him. “When Ivy says she won’t, she won’t,” and went to the open piano. Emma Snow played brilliantly, far better than their cousin, if not so sweetly as Ivy did. Dress was not Lady Snow’s only talent. She had several, veiling them serenely under a radiant frou-frou of chiffons—that she did so, not, perhaps, the least of her talents.
“Your turn,” she bade Sên as she rose. “I know you do. You do everything, don’t you, Mr. Sên?”
“Not nearly,” he assured her. “Is Beethoven your favorite composer?” She had played the Moonlight Sonata. “Or what shall I play for you?”
“No,” she answered. “I just happened to play Beethoven—at random. Play something you like best.”
He chose Grieg.
Ivy wondered if he had seen her favorite composer, as well as her favorite pastime. One was just above the other in the confession-book. She wished she’d never brought it downstairs.
He had not. Sên King-lo had as little inclination to initiate a flirtation with Miss Gilbert as she had to with him—even, possibly, a little less. He deemed flirtations even more vulgar than she did—and he had no ambition to excite jealousy in Lucille, or in any one else, and no sore, young desire to prove himself, in spite of poverty and schoolroom bondage, no social failure.
If he had seen, or known, that Grieg was Miss Gilbert’s favorite composer, he would not have played any music of Grieg’s.
Grieg was Sên King-lo’s favorite composer.
Soon after that he told them goodnight. He bowed to his hostess without offering to shake hands. But Lady Snow held out her hand to him, and then Miss Gilbert could but do the same.
Sên King-lo took her hand in his deferentially, but more lightly, less lingering than she was accustomed to have men do. Yet—as he did—from some indefinable thing in his touch—it flashed across her thought that that slim Chinese hand might not after all give a feeble account of itself at fisticuffs.
Sir Charles Snow went to the outer door with Sên.
“The celestial dragon, smoothly as a swan, carry your honorable person on high!” Snow said.
“May lotus flowers grow from the honorable bones of your distinguished ancestors!” Sên King-lo replied. “And may your honorable grave be soaked with the tears of an hundred sons.”
“Heaven forbid!” Snow exclaimed.
Then they both laughed and shook hands, and bade each other an English goodnight.
“Well—cheerio. So glad you could come.”
“Jolly glad I could. Thanks awfully. Cheerio.”
The East and the West get within hailing distance, at least now and then.