“We lived there for four or five weeks—all of us, your grandfather and his four sons—a runner found them the next day, and they came hot-haste. The service I’d done wasn’t much, just carrying two little things kitten-light, and not much more than kitten-big, from under a roof that was blazing to one that wasn’t—nothing but that and keeping my head while a gang of ‘the babies,’ as your people call their retainers, completely lost theirs; but the father made a mountain of it Omi-high. Chinese gratitude is gigantic—always. We lived there together as one family, I as free of the two girls as their brothers were, and when a new house was run up near where the other had been—your grandfather made ‘the babies’ work like Egyptian slaves—he made me welcome there, and I was as free to go into the ‘flowery’ courtyard and garden as their own brothers were; and I did so very much oftener than they did. He could not have allowed any Chinese man what he allowed me. He held that the race-bar put me as much out of personal bounds—as far as his daughters were concerned—as if I’d been the man in the moon. They might have married a vase or a man dead and cremated; but they could not marry an Englishman, and the thought of such a thing could never arise. He was right, and he was wrong. So I stayed at the mandarin’s home rather more than I did at the monastery—sat in the courtyard with the tulips and musk while Lotus tweaked her lute and Ruby sorted her silks and ‘pulled the flowers up’ in the silk on her loom. They were very alike—so alike that some of the servants, and the brother who saw them least often, could not always tell them apart; but I always could. The lady Ruby had the prettier laugh—a tinkle of silver bells—carried her head the prouder; Lotus had the softer eyes, her hands were a shade the tinier, her mouth had the longer bow—and I had touched her hand by chance, as it lay on my coat the time of the fire, and once again when we’d reached on one impulse to gather narcissus that grew by the brook where the monks caught their breakfast trout. I learned more Chinese in those four weeks than I’d learned in two years. . . . The usual thing happened—to both of us. It was a dream—a courtyard madness. But I planned to keep it. And one day, by the lily-pond, I touched her hand again and told her. And her eyes answered me until they fell from mine, and then their lids answered me—they were trembling, and her fingers fluttered and answered me too. I knew that I should never return to England but stay always in China. . . . When I told her father—I went and found him and told him then, leaving her alone there by the lily-pool. . . . I never saw her again. When I told him, his amazement was terrible. He was kind—very kind. But he convinced me. He shattered my dream. He showed me the thing I contemplated as the monstrous impossibility it was. In my reason, I think, I thanked him even then. He saved two lives from misery and lasting regrets. I know it now. And I never look on my children or hear them at play that I do not thank him. I left Pechilli that same day. And I never have been there again. Two years later when she ‘took the veil’—I forget what it’s called in China—she wrote me a letter—her last day at home—out in the courtyard—a little red letter. Your grandfather gave it to me in Pekin. I have it still. I have not looked at it for years, but I have kept it. I do not know if she lives——”
“Yes,” King-lo said softly—there were tears in his eyes—“an abbess, happy and loved. I saw my aunt the last time I was at home.”
“Thank you. I am glad to know. . . . And your grandfather gave me that miniature. A great portrait-painter—the greatest of that day—a woman—had painted it and one of her sister for him, and they were among the few things that were not burned. An old blind servant had had the wit to snatch them, as he ran, knowing how his master valued them. This is the one your grandfather gave me. The other you have—I have no doubt it is it. Your father showed it to me. After your mother’s marriage, being in Ho-nan, I called on your father—your grandfather had asked me to do it. Sên Wo T’ring made me very welcome, and took me at once to your mother where she sat in her courtyard, working flowers on a tiny coat—her women about her. She sent them away and presently he left us—alone. I was there for an hour, and she gave me her hand and a rose for my coat—I’m afraid I haven’t it now—when your father went with me to the outer gate. He was a very gracious gentleman, your father, Sên King-lo. But he would not have taken me into his wife’s courtyard if I had been Chinese—or your mother have given me her hand and a flower. You were born, the next week. I never saw Sên Ruby again. But Sên Wo T’ring I saw often. Because of what your grandfather had told him, because I had carried your mother from a house that was burning, and, I think, because Sên Ruby had asked it, he held me his friend. And I held him mine and valued it greatly. . . . I want to stand his friend today, and hers, and yours. Sên King-lo, for the love of the dead, for the sake of the unborn, and in pity of them—give it up!”
“I am sorry,” Sên King-lo said earnestly; but his face was set firm, and Sir Charles Snow knew that he had failed.
“Shall we ask Lady Snow to give us some tea now?” was all he said.
“Not today, thanks very much,” was Sên’s answer. And they parted then with a grip of their hands.
Sir Charles Snow sat for a long time with the old miniature in his hand. Then he locked it away and went to romp with his children and chat with his wife until the dressing-bell rang.
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.