“Yes,” he said, “I shall be glad to be in China again—for a time. It hurts to go from this, even for a time. Ruben will cut a tooth—learn to crawl, perhaps to stand. And I shall not be here to see it. And—it means a good deal to me to leave my wife—more than it will to her—and she won’t like it. But she’ll have the boy. But I shall be glad to be in China again. I am glad that I am going back to China, to hear my own tongue spoken everywhere once more—once I’m well away from the polyglot treaty ports—to see the birds I used to know at their breakfast, to eat the old foods in the old way. I haven’t snapped a melon-seed between my teeth for years, or seen a mango that was a mango, or a lychee that wasn’t a petrified mummy—do you remember how the lychees taste when the wine of their ripeness is in them still?”
Snow nodded.
“And the mangosteens?”
“Only too well!”
“To see only Chinese faces once more—to be among my countrymen! Oh, I’ve been in exile, and sometimes I’ve found it bitter—often—until one day Miss Julia ‘gave a party’—and Ruby was there——”
Sir Charles’ face was very grave. He saw writing on the wall.
Sên King-lo went on with his home-going. “To see the silk-worms gorging on the mulberry-trees, to see the red poppies growing—not much use for opium, but you remember the sea of color they make, lakes and oceans of it—and the fire-weed—to hear the sound the mallets make when they strike the bells—the gongs too—in the old temple courtyards that used to be my playground when I was a boy—” He broke off and passed the decanter.
CHAPTER XXXV
Sên King-lo did not sleep that night, torn between two vibrant emotions—sorrow at the impending separation from his wife and joy to go home again.
Perhaps Ruby Sên caught in her sleep something of his double strain, for she woke as the first light filtered through their loose-drawn curtains; and her waking was sharp and instant, wide-eyed at once, which it rarely was. Usually she stirred and dozed, coming back very gradually to the life of brazened day, as the convolvulus sleepily unfurls its twisted spiral to the dawn. She was fast asleep—then, wide awake.