Mr. and Mrs. Sên

by Louise Jordan Miln

Sên King-lo had not suggested their moving because of any longing he felt for flowers and trees, open spaces, and running water. All such things were one to him now. London meant a great deal to Sên. And his opportunities for the big Anglo-Chinese work he still meant to do, and to do with his might, opportunities for the personal touch and mutual yeasting of friendly minds and foemen’s, which are so much of all international work’s success, were in London tenfold what they could be in any other spot in Europe. But he knew that he was very tired, and that unless he rested certain mental and personal forces of his that had suddenly worn thin, his hand might lax hopelessly and fall away from its helm. There was work to do that needed him for its best doing. Ruby needed him, and would need him more and more as Ruben grew older. For Sên King-lo already knew what no one else suspected, not even Charles Snow, that Ruben’s Saxon body was but the sheath of a mind and spirit and inclination intensely Chinese. Sên saw a coming day when it might be for him to stand between Ruby and their boy; to curb Ruben, to comfort Ruby, to spare her all he could, to save Ruben from mistakes that were the heritage of the father’s son. And the child that was coming in December—how might it not need him, how might not Ruby need him because of it?

It was because of all this that Sên King-lo had turned from the vivid rush and inexorable pull of London life to the haven-quiet of the place he found and bought in Surrey.

Winter was mild that year in England. The drooping weeping-ash trees were naked of their leaves, fires were comfort as well as “company,” of course; but the grass still kept a hint of greenness; the holly was scantily berried; here and there a tiny flower-face peeped up from the rock garden; an heroic, insensitive, old rose-vine was erratic enough to put forth a shivered, puny bud; a japonica-tree at the sunniest stretch of the south wall frankly threatened to flower. There was no demand at all for skates, but there was some for racquets by young and enthusiastic players.

The Snows were staying with Sên and Ruby, and the cook took her orders from Lady Snow, for a time. There was a trained nurse in the house, and the local doctor whom Mrs. Sên had chosen “dropped in” at tea-time fairly often, at Sên King-lo’s request.

Today Ruby had not come down to breakfast, Emma had left the cook to her own devices, and Sir Charles thought that the doctor was upstairs now and had been there a deuce of a time.

Sir Charles Snow was smoking strenuously, not in the big drawing-room, but in the pink-and-white absurdity which the servants called “the downstairs boudoir”—the big drawing-room’s near neighbor, almost annex—and that was worse, for the “boudoir’s” dainty, expensive fripperies were perfect caches for smoke-smell and smudge. But a man, at least an English man, has a right to do what he likes when a whole house is at sevens and sixes, every woman in it looking important, meals late, fires neglected, and men ignored or snubbed.

“It is too damned still,” Snow grumbled irritably to his third cigar.

Suddenly the big man jumped like a nerve-ridden woman—at least his heart did—at a sudden sound.

But it was only a sympathetic tail thumping ingratiatingly at his feet.

“Hello yourself!” Snow replied, glad even of a terrier to speak to. “You’ve no business in here. Wait till my lady wife sees you—only, if you take my advice, Bimbles, you won’t, old boy.”