CHAPTER XXIII
They rode the next day, and Ivy suggested “a Washington ride,” but Sên laughed and turned Sinbad towards the Potomac, across the bridge, into the icicled country roads.
No mention was made, of course, as none had been made the evening before, of the cancerous rumors with which society’s amiable chit-chat had been teeming for weeks, and the ugliest detail of which Emmeline had retailed shrilly yesterday as Sên stood within unavoidable earshot in Lady Snow’s drawing-room. But they felt a deeper companionship today than they had before; a more basic and secured good-fellowship, absolutely devoid of sentimentality, as little fettered or fed by sex as waxing comradeships between a man and a girl, congenial and heart-free, can be; a good-fellowship not unlike the friendship of Sên and Charles Snow, wholesomely and strongly rooted in a mutual respect which both felt could neither be destroyed nor damaged.
In spite of the cold, they rode slowly now and then. For the winter-kissed waysides were indescribably lovely, and Sên King-lo could not pass that loveliness quickly by. To him it was as if God had painted in silver and white and black the long out-rolled picture of the inimitable landscape’s scroll; painted and limned it, and breathed His high living message into it more supremely, more beautifully, than ever even the master-brush of great Ma Yuen had. They spoke to Sên King-lo and tingled his Chinese soul: the long sweeps of glorious panoramic beauty, with each tiniest black leafless twig softened by cuddling little drift-patches of spotless snow and sparkling with diamond dew-drops of ice. To the English girl it looked just fairyland, exquisitely beautiful, quite unreal—and she heard no message. Such the difference of her Western spirit and eyes and his of the East. She saw it a wonderful spectacle and was glad she’d come; he merged in it, and forgot self—and was silent. And from his silence, the far-look in his eyes, the slight flush on his face, she caught something of his mood, too, perhaps, just a something of his spirit. They never before had been so close—or so far. She echoed his pleasure, but could not share his absorption; she alien here, in the white Virginia woods, with snow and thin gleams of ice where ice and snow come but rarely, the white passion of December rapturously calling Earth its bride. Sên King-lo felt at home; for the hour, no longer afar from China. Not once in many years does winter show so in England. In his Chinese home Sên had seen winter so a thousand times.
They lingered—but as the sun sank, backing the black and gray tree-trunks with royal colors, they turned back towards the city. As they neared it the girl turned her head at the quick clatter of hoofs behind them—gaining upon them, almost, she thought, as if in pursuit.
Again today no groom was with them.
She saw who it was and turned her head back with an impatient frown on her face but said nothing.
Sên King-lo did not see Reginald Hamilton until Hamilton drew his horse neck and neck with Sên’s.
Hamilton did not lift his hat, and King-lo’s slim fingers tightened slightly on his riding-crop.
Reginald was winded, a little. He was no great horseman, and he had been drinking—though not to excess. It was physical inconvenience and personal emotion that quivered and belched him far more than bourbon and bitters.
“I’ll deal with you later, you yellow, opium-sodden chimpanzee,” he cried thickly, with an insulting motion of his whip. “Be off with you now! I’ll not allow you to ride with this lady. Don’t let me catch you so much as speaking to her again, you vermin-fed laundry whelp! Understand?”
Sên smiled slightly, his eyes perfectly quiet, and turned to the girl beside him.
“Please ride on a little, Miss Gilbert,” he asked easily. “I won’t be a moment.”
“No,” Ivy told him. “I stay with you. Are you going to kill him?”
“In your presence? No, not even whip him—merely set him on his feet. Please go. I’ll be with you almost at once.”
Ivy did not answer him. She had grown very white—but not with fear, not even with nervousness, Sên knew. She sat perfectly still, and she did not move or speak again.
Reginald raised his whip, a little unsteadily.
The Chinese man leisurely threw his reins over one arm, the loop of his crop over one finger, leaned lightly a little from his saddle, caught Reginald Hamilton by the arms, and swung him down to the ground—not roughly—setting him square on his feet.
Sên gave the riderless horse an imperative but friendly tap on its flank with his crop, and it started off at a slow trot.
Reginald stood stock-still; purple, spluttering, wordless.
“I hope it’ll find its stable,” Sên said to Ivy lightly. “I daresay it will; they usually do. Shall we walk our horses on, Miss Gilbert?”
They went on in silence, and after a few moments, because he saw how white and cold the girl’s face looked, Sên set a faster pace, and they kept it until, as they passed the Louise Home, Ivy slackened her reins and looked at him with a tinkle and gurgle of girlish laughter, which Sên King-lo, as Sir Charles did, always thought had a sound of China.
He looked at her with a question in his smile.
“I was thinking,” she told him—“I don’t think you’ll mind, we are good friends——”
“The best of friends,” Sên King-lo said gravely, holding his hat in his hand as he spoke.
“I was thinking of your hands, Mr. Sên, and of a silly thing I thought the first time we met—in the summer—at Miss Julia’s——”
“I have not forgotten where I first saw you,” Sên said, with no hint or sound of hidden meaning.
“Your hands—they are different—you know”—Ivy hesitated a little.
“Chinese,” Sên said.
“Yes,” the girl nodded, “and not very thick, and I wondered—that night at Miss Julia’s—how much use they’d be at fisticuffs. I know now, Mr. Sên.”
She let the chamois loop on her riding-crop just fleck the hand on his horse’s bridle as she spoke, her eyes freemason friendly on him.
Sên lay his hand on her pommel for a moment. “Chinese hands,” he told her, “that always will serve to take care of you when you allow me to be your escort.”
“I know that,” the girl said quietly.