“The Chinese who have taken a wrong turning—if they have—will have a great deal more to answer for,” Sên King-lo said bitterly.
CHAPTER XL
Ruby had not noticed that her husband had avoided going out with her in Hongkong and was avoiding it more and more; but it was so. He was imperatively busy now, crowding into days the work of business drive and finesse that might well have over-crowded weeks, if not months, for a less capable man. He could not well take his wife to hong and to counting-house, to long bank conferences that more often than not ran with a strong political under-current—the very life-blood of young China, if not of China itself—or to more secret and smaller conclaves which took place behind well-barred doors, when only two or three Chinese gathered to speak together in slow, hushed tones and anxious quiet words. But this was not the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Sên so rarely were seen together in Hongkong. The reason lay close and well-guarded in Sên King-lo’s breast: a tiny coiled serpent that lifted its narrow hooded head now and then, meeting Sên’s eyes with sly, cold, wicked eyes, and sometimes at night hissing softly in his ear. There were functions to which he might have taken her, long rambles which invited and beckoned, water-side strolls, leisurely peak-side climbs. And there was Happy Valley, the incessantly recurring Derby Day of all the Anglo-Chinese world and his wife, and there was Church Parade, as smart a function, if more narrowed, as London’s own, and far more picturesque. But Sên avoided and evaded them all whenever he could. Every hour that he could spend with Ruby at the bungalow he did, and he filled them all so full of intimate charm and gay comradeship that they fed her all the happiness and content that even she—greedy of both—could crave or assimilate. And sometimes she chid herself sharply that she could be so happy so far from Ruben. But Sên King-lo had no doubt of her motherliness for he saw the look in her eyes as they turned to the harbor on “home mail” day.
Sên King-lo was doing his utmost, and his English wife did not suspect—not yet, at least—the cancerous price that a Chinese soul already was paying for a bunch of red peppers an English girl had tucked in a jade-green dress once in Virginia.
A few days after Dr. Ray had visited them Mrs. Sên insisted that her husband should go with her to a shop in Victoria City at which she had been tempted the day before by some ivories and a Satsuma gift-jar she did not feel competent to buy without Lo’s endorsement of their value. She knew she admired them and wanted them. Lo would know whether they were admirable or not, and worth half the stiff prices the Chinese curio merchant asked for them. She insisted that King-lo should go with her and decide. He had no way of escape, unless he took the drastic one of telling her frankly why he wished not to go shopping with her in Victoria City. The risk of some discourteous glance or half-smothered word that she might or might not catch or interpret seemed to him less than the risk of making to her the intolerable explanation. So he yielded and went.
At the door of the curio-shop, a famous shop which rich globe-trotters had made a veritable Mecca of the extravagant, Mr. and Mrs. Sên drew a little back to let a woman, or rather a group of three, all parcel-laden, pass out.
Miss Julia Townsend came first, her arms very full—she never carried a parcel less worthy a place in her hands than a prayerbook, a lace-edged handkerchief or a vinaigrette, in Virginia. But the curio-hunter’s fever was on her now, and she came from No Wink’s shop hugging as many bulky and shapeless paper-wrapped burdens as she could clasp in both arms and hands, her long crêpe gown trailing behind her as never a skirt of hers had dragged in the dust the plebeian populace trod, before. Dinah and Lysander came just behind her, each carrying a pack-horse load of bundles and boxes and brown-paper knobs. Lysander looked mulish, and his ebon was a sable pallid. Dinah grimaced as she waddled, throwing friendly, fat, kittenish glances to all and sundry as she came. Miss Julia moved, as she always did, at a queenly pace, with a queenly mien; but her old face glowed with the art-lover’s victory-look. She thought she had found treasure of great price in the curio shop of No Wink.
The doorway was narrow. Sên King-lo drew back and uncovered, as he would to any woman for whom he made way. His wife waited at his elbow noncommittal, neither offering recognition nor advance, nor hinting retreat. Miss Julia neither hurried nor slowed. She looked at Mrs. Sên with unacquainted eyes, then turned them on Sên King-lo and went leisurely on, with a slight inclination of her proud old head, an inclination paid to the small courtesy their drawing aside had been but in no way an inclination to either of them.
Her servants followed after her. Uncle Lysander gave Sên King-lo a vicious glare that would have been insolence had it been less absurd. But Dinah gave them both a caressing giggle, and a wide look of friendship and fealty out of her surprised faithful eyes.
Ivy passed on into the shop, with a proud little laugh that was not cattish. And Sên King-lo stood and watched his old friend until she was out of sight, his hat in his hand, love and respect and regret in his beautiful Chinese eyes.