Mr. and Mrs. Sên

by Louise Jordan Miln

But if the four hundred and the outer thousand were pleased and palate-tickled, a handful of others, and they more nearly interested, were not.

Julia Calhoun Townsend was ill with rage and disgust. Charles Snow was anxious and bitterly anxious too. The Chinese Minister didn’t like it, but told no one so. Kow Li didn’t like it at all, but only told an opium pipe—a very harmless opium-pipe. Uncle Lysander was enormously shocked and disgusted, and he lost no time and spared no pains in noising it abroad that he was. Elenore Ray and Emma Snow stood by Ivy, and the little they said to outsiders was in approval; but at heart neither approved, and each was sorry, Lady Snow the more so and the more acutely. With Elenore Ray an eager scientific and psychological interest somewhat dulled her personal and friendly anxiety.

Julia Townsend writhed. She closed her doors to Sên King-lo and to Miss Gilbert and told them so in frigidly phrased notes written in the third person. A week later she sent for them both—separately—and pleaded and argued. She stormed and wept at Sên King-lo. Ivy came in for most of the pleading, though Sên had his share, and it was to Ivy that she said the hardest and the more questionable things, for she could not quite break the reticence of generations in speaking of intimate things to any man.

Miss Julia quarreled with Dr. Ray because Elenore Ray would not altogether condemn or at all ostracize, and Sir Charles Snow very nearly quarreled with his wife—and that he did not quite do so was Emma’s fault, not his. He was wretchedly unhappy about it.

Miss Julia hurt Ivy a little and angered her bitterly—but accomplished nothing, lost a friendship and didn’t score a point. Sên King-lo she did not anger at all; venomous speech is a Chinese privilege of old age and of women—and Sên King-lo valued her words, not for what they said, but for the kindness that he knew had forced her to speak them; he remembered all her gracious motherliness of years to him, the exquisite, pathetic motherliness of child-deprived and aging spinsterhood. He was neither hurt nor angered, and his gratitude and his affection held. But some of her words and the truth they spoke troubled him. He could not brush them aside, and he could not forget them. Sên King-lo knew the risk he was taking—far better than Miss Julia could. She guessed it a little, spurred by prejudice to state it sourly. He knew it; both his intelligence and his honesty acknowledged it; his courage accepted it. He accepted it, gladly even, now for himself. But—for Ivy? Was the risk he was going to let her take too cruel, too close a risk? Such a marriage would have its pricks, and sometimes its scourge. He had no doubt of that. Could he keep every prick and scourge for him alone, keep them all from her? He said “Goodbye” to Miss Julia as affectionately as she would permit, more sadly than he would show. And his heart had a heavy ache as the door of Rosehill closed behind him forever, and he went through Rosehill’s gate for the last time.

Every goodbye has its tinge of sadness. We know the ills we have; not the ills to come. The released prisoner throws a long last look at his gaol as the warder locks him out. To say goodbye to old friendship, old kindness, old welcome is hard and sad indeed. It cuts.

Sir Charles took it harder than Julia Townsend did but attacked it more gravely and kindly, more gently. But he did his utmost.

To Emma his wife he showed his rancor and a little his tingling spleen. He went among his colleagues grimly. But to Sên King-lo he showed only his sorrow and anxiety and his friendship, and even more considerately to Ivy.

But he spoke.

He spoke to her with his hand on hers; but for all his cousinly kindness and all his diplomatic care, he angered her even more than he hurt—and he hurt. And he failed. He had expected to fail.