CHAPTER XXXII
Sir Charles had meant well, and so had Miss Julia; but the result of their united effort was that they hastened it on. It has happened before.
It was Ivy herself who, though she did not directly say it, showed Sên clearly that she wished it so.
She was unhappy at her cousin’s. Emma Snow was all that was kindest. But Sir Charles could not hide his displeasure and the something too of shame that he felt. He did not blame Sên King-lo as much as he felt that he ought. He saw great excuse for Sên King-lo—for his impulse, if not for his stubborn persistence. Men loved. It came and it went. But it had to come. Shut off from his own people, debarred from the women of his race, it was inevitable that his manhood should turn to some one of the women among whom he lived. And Sir Charles appreciated what Ivy’s appeal and lure had been—appreciated it all. Desdemona, on the stage, usually is golden-haired and tea-rose faced. A finer art would show her Venetian dark. Sir Charles heard the Chinese note in Ivy’s laugh and knew that the colors she oftenest wore and the dangling things she instinctively thrust in dress and hair had a Chinese touch—and how that must be in Sên King-lo’s eyes. Although she did not know a taotai from a compradore, a hong from a pai’fang or a k’o-tang, a tong from a yamên, yet he now and then heard a Chinese sentiment from her English lips, caught a Chinese trend and bias in her mind. Her sensitiveness was as Chinese as it was girlish. Her love of flowers and that she liked one or two or a spray far more than she did a mass of them, her fondness for stringed-instruments—the harp was more to her than the piano or organ—her interest in handwritings, and a dozen traits, small enough singly, were not unlike those of the Chinese. Her horror of debt—he never had known her to owe a farthing—her pride and her quick sense of humor were more general in China than they were in England. He could understand Sên’s madness, even while he steeled his soul not to condone it.
But he saw no excuse for Ivy. To him she seemed the victim of wilful and headstrong infatuation. Sên King-lo was a rich man, and Snow partly realized how the girl loathed her poverty. But he was just enough to know that in this she had given dollars and cents no thought. And there were rich men and to spare here in Washington and at home in England—and Ivy had beauty, personality and charm. Of course she wished—whether she knew so or not—to marry. Every nice girl did—and should. But an English girl as nice as he had believed his cousin to be would have lived forever unwedded and childless, rather than marry an Oriental. He had not forgotten Lotus; but he had been a boy then, and she not much more than a child who never had seen a man of her caste but not of her blood—until she had looked up from his arms into his face. And, too, that had been very different—love’s young dream in a lotus-garden, the dream that all Nature and strange circumstances had conspired to make it. And he had had the sound sense and the stern British good taste to renounce it. And it had been a long time ago.
Ivy had lost caste with her cousin. And, in spite of himself, he showed it. And the girl, sensitive, proud and dependent, felt it intensely. They had been close friends, particular chums until now, and now they were merely a disgusted kinsman and an outraged kins-girl.
Then, too, money was pinching her: the need and lack of it. Lessons were a thing of the past now. Emma Snow good-humoredly had insisted upon that and then regretted that she had, for Ivy flatly refused even a dime of Charles’ money that she had not so much as pretended to earn. Her purse was empty, and she needed new gloves. Emma missed seeing a ring and a brooch of Ivy’s and suspected that she had sold them.
And most of all now the girl longed to get away from the house in which even her cousin’s bread tasted bitter. She refused the dishes she liked best, stole many bits of needlework from Justine, and mutilated almost her last ten dollars to buy stuff she made into a little frock that Blanche didn’t need, and counted how many of the meals she unwillingly ate its shop value would have paid for. She burned her electric light sparingly, bought her own stamps and used as few of them as she could, and walked to save street-car fares.
They were married in August—Sên King-lo was eagerly glad to have it so—and Washington society had no wedding-day treat.
There were neither bridesmaids nor cake. And they left Washington in an hour after. Sên King-lo had had no difficulty in arranging for an official transfer to London; for the semidiplomatic position he held under China’s new Republic was elastic, a roaming brief when he chose, and its itinerary very much at his own discretion.
Earlier than social Washington often stirred from its beds, Sên and Ivy were married in a small quiet church in a small quiet tree-shaded street. And before Washington knew of the ceremony Mr. and Mrs. Sên were on the Atlantic.
Sên King-lo had wished intensely that Sir Charles Snow should give his cousin away and had urged it, jealous for her that she should come to her husband as English girls were accustomed to do. But Snow could not, and Ivy would not have allowed it.
So Abraham Kelly, wearing a flopping gray frock-coat and feeling as if his maiden aunt had caught him at a game of draw-poker in a churchyard, gave Ivy away, while the Chinese Minister looked on with a beam on his face and rage in his heart.
No girl-friend was there. Only Emma Snow and Dr. Ray stood beside her, and, except the clergyman, no one else was there. There was no music. But for the ruby-red bud in Sên King-lo’s lounge coat, there was not a flower, unless the red peppers he himself had bought at dawn at the market—and that Ivy wore in the little gray frock that Elenore Ray had given her—counted for flowers.
There were more old clothes than new in Ivy Gilbert’s trousseau, and those that were new were Dr. Ray’s gift.
From Emma the girl would take nothing, for Emma too had been a penniless bride, and Ivy would accept nothing for which Charles Snow’s money had paid. Lady Snow was greatly hurt, but she understood and forgave.
It sounds a sad wedding and a drear one. But the man and the girl that stood at the altar were radiant-eyed. Neither had a doubt now.
They said goodbye in the vestry—the two women holding Sên King-lo’s wife in their arms lingeringly—and she and he breakfasted alone in his rooms, to be dismantled now. Then Mr. and Mrs. Sên caught the next train for New York.
They dined alone. Ivy still wore her peppers dangling in a gown they matched, a red dress which—he had told her so now—he had thought like the wedding-dress of a Chinese bride, the night she had given him her confession-book.
Three days later they sailed for Liverpool. Mrs. Sên was glad to go; she was going home, and New York had not been entirely comfortable. Washington necessarily is cosmopolitan and race-seasoned. No one had looked at her askance when she had walked its streets beside a Chinese friend or lingered with him in the Corcoran Gallery—unless the darkies who met them did. New York was different. Ivy thought that the man who served their meals was curious, and she had a tingling sense that the shop-discipline deferential courtesy of the clerk at Tiffany’s was all for Sên’s purse—less than none of it for their companionship. She thought that several passersby on Fifth Avenue looked at them odiously; twice she saw a lip curl, and once a woman laughed.
She did not regret Washington. But she was glad to leave New York.
The voyage was smooth, and her cabin was sweet with lilies that kept their waxen freshness and their intoxicating perfume well past-midocean.