CHAPTER XLVI
The Chinese doyenne and autocrat of the Sêns and the young English wife of the house met two days later.
If the meeting was not awkward, it was badly circumscribed. Ya Tin knew not a word of the other’s tongue, and Sên Ruby scarcely a score of Ya Tin’s.
Their meeting was only decently ceremonial, and Madame Sên had made no elaborate and hampering toilet today. She was a sensible old creature and did the little she could to give the younger and so foreign woman a friendly and unembarrassing welcome. Since she had consented to receive Sên Ruby at all and in doing so acknowledge and condone a marriage she strongly deplored—and she had consented in reply to a letter King-lo had sent her from London, her answer reaching them in Hongkong—she, having consented, intended to show Sên Ruby all not too inappropriate kindnesses. But the language barrier was insurmountable. Sên King-lo acted as interpreter, but conversation so spoken cools in the process and grows increasingly difficult. And Sên Ya Tin was by nature and habit unbending and had no knack of assuming an easy congeniality that she never had felt. She had few affections; the few that she had were veritable passions. But between them and icy indifference and vitriolic hate Sên Ya Tin was almost devoid of creature feeling. She was critical and self-indulgent to a degree. She was brutally, and sometimes coarsely, frank. But she had high principles, and she never relaxed in her personal adherence to them—no matter what the cost to her own inclination and convenience. It was largely from this grandmother that Sên King-lo had inherited the uprightness of character and relentless habit of self-analysis that underlay and dominated all his suavity and sunny good nature. He had inherited also from her no little of his manliness, but he had inherited from Ya Tin few of his tastes. Indeed, she had few, and, unlike most women of her years and power, she had no foibles. Her sometimes wearing yellow was not a foible, it was an assertion. China until recently was an empire of innumerable kingdoms—and queendoms—and in her own Sên Ya Tin would brook little control, and still less dictation.
For a Chinese woman she was very untalkative. Nothing escaped her narrow, bead-like eyes; little came free to her tongue. But she always spoke the truth—almost un-Chinese in this, and, too, it must be owned, a little unfeminine. She was capable of almost incredible indifference, but also, though far more rarely, of exquisite sympathy. She was almost devoid of a sense of humor—almost denying her Chinese blood in that. Few had heard her laugh, and no one, but three men who were dead, ever had seen her smile. She cared for few amusements—unless her pipe was one—and she was not industrious. She was intellectual, but read few books—cared little to whet her mind on the minds of others. Argument vexed her. Conference and conversation bored her. The music that King-lo so loved was nothing to her, and the poetry that fed him as the river feeds the verdure and cereals on its banks never nourished and rarely pleased her. She took flowers for granted, but she liked and understood fine stuffs. Ivories interested her, and lacquers enchanted. She liked all animals, and they liked her. She regarded children as belongings and possibilities. She was ruthless to servants. She ate but little and paid little heed to what she ate, or when. She was without religion, except for her personal creed and observance of uprightness and her belief in China and her loyalty to it. Her nepotism was broad but easy-going, more her one milk of human kindness than a cult. She loved the stars and gloried in them and was no mean astronomer. She had few superstitions and no cheap ones. She was not prejudiced. She had a fine and very mathematical mind, though she cared more for color than for form. She had little imagination but great intuition. She was neither a man’s woman nor a woman’s woman. She thought most women dolls or harpies and most men gullible and weak. She liked or disliked, if she did either, at first sight, and she never changed her mind.
During the scant half-hour of their initial visit, Sên Ya Tin repelled Ruby, who thought her ugly, sour, and mediocre. But Sên King-lo saw that Ya Tin liked, and in some odd, strong way approved of, his English wife, and his heart leapt and his courage quickened that she did. He had not expected it, and it seemed to brace and stamp the self-respect of what he had done and the un-Chinese choice he had made.
He wondered why his grandmother did. She could have told him. She, too, had caught a something Chinese in this alien granddaughter-in-law. She liked Ruby’s uncringing manner—to which she was unused in the women her sons and her sons’ sons had married. And she thought the younger woman rather brave than foolish to have made both the marriage and the journey she had. There was nothing that Sên Ya Tin admired more than she did courage.
Sên Ya Tin questioned.
Sên King-lo translated.
Mrs. Sên answered.
Sên King-lo translated.
Over and over again—that and only that.
Then the small bowls of green, smoking tea and the scant sweetmeats came and were given and taken without a word.
Then Sên Ya Tin dismissed them.