“I was wondering,” Ivy said slowly, “that Mr. Sên cared to sing darky songs, and wondering if he quite liked borrowing one of the negroes’ banjos, and playing on it?”
Miss Julia laughed. “That color question again! Don’t let how that affects Sên King-lo trouble you. It does not affect him at all. He may or may not realize that a good many people class him and all his countrymen with the blacks—probably he does. He can see through a church door when it is open. But, if he does, he leaves it for what it is worth. Sên King-lo knows what he is.”
CHAPTER VI
And Ivy tried to look convinced, and to do it cordially. She loved Miss Julia. She was not convinced, not even greatly impressed or interested. The ramifications of the color-question—if it had any, that seemed to obsess so much of worried American thought, and monopolized so much of American conversation, did not grip her. The color-question shadowed Europe but lightly as yet. And Ivy Gilbert was self-centered, and did not have a profound mind. At home she rarely read the Times, and never the Spectator, Outlook or National Review. And what if, some time long ago, in the far-off outlandish place where cherry-stones grow outside of the fruit, and even the King—or was he the Emperor?—or the Lama?—dined off puppies and mice, and drowned his wives in hot oil if they displeased him, a man named Sên had saved the life of one of the Townsends?—if he had, how did it credit the Sên now in Washington? She could not see that it, even if true, put the Chinese man she’d met at Miss Julia’s on her own plane, or on one at all approaching it—or that anything ever could or should. But she loved Miss Julia and would not hurt or vex her for a great deal. So she did her girlish best to look what she did not feel.
And Miss Julia appreciated it. She was not deceived. But she was pleased at the girl’s loyal docility and deference. And what did it matter what the raw, not-much-traveled young thing thought of Sên King-lo? Nothing at all. So Miss Julia smiled affectionately at her girl-guest, as she pushed back her chair and said,
“And now, child, if you won’t have just one more pop-over, we’ll go and cut the roses—after I’ve put these beauties in water.”
And two hours later, Ivy Gilbert, her arms full of roses, went back to Washington and her nursery-governess duties in her cousin’s—Lady Snow’s—house in Massachusetts Avenue, and Miss Julia was left alone to put all the fat, heavily-embossed silver, the pearl-handled knives, the precious heirloom glass, and the very thin china back in their wrappings of chamois-leather and lavender.
It was Friday. The garden party at Rosehill had been on a Thursday. On Saturday morning a small thing befell that had not often happened to Ivy Gilbert, and very rarely indeed since she had left England: a man sent her flowers.
Ivy was surprised when a maid brought her the box, dubious even—and she scrutinized the name and address very carefully. But there was no loophole of blunder in either. So she untied the silk cord, and lifted the lid. Violets smiled up at her shyly and fragrantly—and whoever had sent them had had the taste to send them with an abundance of their own leaves—and nothing else—but perhaps that good taste had been the florist’s.
She picked up the card with them and looked at it with curiosity. Then dropped it back with a little sound of disappointment.