Mr. and Mrs. Sên

by Louise Jordan Miln

Though he was dining alone in his own sitting-room, Sên dressed for dinner as scrupulously as if he’d been an English subaltern alone in a remote dâk bungalow about to dine off half-roasted but wholly grown goat and undergrown plantains, washed down by criminal and luke-warm beer. There was not a little of the English gentleman in Sên King-lo, not a few English characteristics, habits and traits that in no way clashed with Chinese—or that were Chinese as well. And there were a number of Western superficialities that he preferred to their Eastern substitutes. He not only liked silver forks better than he did ivory chop-sticks, and glass finger-bowls better than a steaming wet towel, and preferred mattress, blankets, sheets and soft pillows, to a mat and a hard cylinder pillow—though in England, and when well dog-tired after a hunting day, he more than once had sat up all night, in protest against the feather-bed his hostess had assigned to him—but he had grown so accustomed to English clothes that he no longer realized how much more comfortable, and in most ways preferable, were the men’s garments of old Pekin.

With his after-dinner cigarette, Sên remembered the confession he’d promised to make—in a book. Where was it? Kow would know, and when Sên rang, Kow did.

Sên made himself very comfortable in his biggest arm-chair, and leisurely studied the book. In a way, it proved better worth the trouble than confession-books often do. Ivy had passed it about with discrimination. A number of distinguished men, and one or two such women, had written in it; notables whose acquaintance she had owed, no doubt, to Sir Charles. As he read and studied, Sên grew really interested. His “mea culpa” was going into uncommonly good-fellowship. There was not a nobody there! Unless Miss Gilbert herself was “no one.” Certainly Julia Calhoun Townsend was not even remotely a nobody. And almost every other name signatured there was known and reputed beyond both the width and the length of the Potomac.

He smiled reverently at Miss Julia’s spidery tellings—and read them twice for their perfume of a sweet and aromatic personality. Ivy’s own “confession” was naïve and girlish—written several years ago on the birthday the book had been given her. But it surprised even more than it interested him. It interested him even more than he knew. His browsing of it outlasted an entire cigarette; and Sên smoked slowly. Yes, the girl was interesting, and very much more intelligent than he had supposed. He wondered if many English girls of sixteen—the book told him that she’d been sixteen when she received it six years ago—were so intelligent and so out of the ruts. He looked at the date her “confession” gave, and he made a mental note of it. Then he thought better of that, and penciled a note on his cuff. But what surprised him most—and it amused him—was that several of her answers were identical with those he’d write in a few moments—if he wrote quite truly. So Grieg was her favorite composer as well as his own. There were several pastimes that he cared for even more than he did riding. But Velasquez and Turner were his favorite painters—of Western ones. Miss Gilbert could not be expected to have heard of Ma Yuen—much less to have seen even one of his silks. And he too preferred Thackeray to Dickens. Lemon-yellow was the color that too pleased him most. The harp was also his favorite instrument. Spain was not the country he most wished to see—for he had seen Spain, had spent almost a year there. What she most disliked was vulgarity and disloyalty. That was true of him. He thought best of the living reigning monarch of whom she did. Really—the thing was a little ridiculous. She liked prose better than she did poetry—well, that was one escape. And there were other safety-valves.

He rose with a light laugh, and carried the telltale volume to his writing-table—a table of hybrid impedimenta; for Sên King-lo usually brushed the letters he wrote to China; and he had no intention of forgetting to write his own language in the old Chinese way in which Tu Fu and Li T’ai Po and his own father had written it.

He found his vacant pages; a pair that followed a pair, and dipped his brush in the ink. And when he also had written in English and the last page was dry, he closed the book, and strolled to the still-open window. He’d send Kow Li with the book tomorrow. He had kept it long enough.

“What a woman wants, she wants quickly. Only men have the strength to wait.” Which of the philosophers had said that? Odd, he’d forgotten—but he had. Kow should carry the book back tomorrow, and ask for news of Lady Snow’s hurt, and of her children’s colds. He wished he had not sent those tea-roses today. Lilies-of-the-valley were her favorite flowers—a flower she never had seen was his. He’d like to send her valley lilies with her book. But you couldn’t send tea-roses one day and lilies-of-the-valley the next. Bother those roses!

He wondered if Miss Gilbert would ride with him again. He hoped so. But the next time, if there was one, should be fully as much her doing as his. That was only fair to her. Sên King-lo had neither wish nor willingness to push any woman’s inclination—not even Miss Julia’s, whose proved warm friendship gave him some license—least of all that of a girl who had no great liking for him or his company. But he wondered if she would pave the way for him to ask if they might go again. He hoped so. And a very slight and delicate pavement would do.

He strolled back from the window, and sat up till nearly daylight puzzling over a game of chess he was playing with a friend in Siangtan. But first he copied the date on his cuff into a notebook.

Kow Li did not go to Massachusetts Avenue the next day.