CHAPTER XIV
As Ruben turned out of Bond Street into Piccadilly and down it towards home he had no intention of going into Burlington House. He could not remember that he had ever gone into the Academy except under some compulsion of politeness. He never had enjoyed it; and certainly it was one of the last places he would choose to visit alone. Ruben Sên cared more for pictures than Ivy, or even his mother did, and he knew considerably more about them. But he had no liking for human crowds, except as a picture in the distance. He never altogether liked being one of a crowd. In the joyous young hurly-burly of Cambridge life he liked to be alone sometimes and contrived it. And he disliked seeing more than one picture at a time. To him they hurt and cheapened one another.
He strolled on past the wide Burlington House archway quite indifferently, without turning his head. But suddenly something compelled him—compelled him as actually as a hand stronger than he on his shoulder might have done; and he turned back a few steps and went into Burlington House, amused and puzzled that he did so. But he knew that he had to.
This was funny! And it was a bit of a nuisance too. He wanted to get home and write letters before he changed for lunch. Well—he wouldn’t stay here long, that was one thing sure—ten minutes at the longest.
He stayed three hours.
Going from room to room still puzzled and amused, scarcely glancing at the pictures, he came upon a picture that held him.
And Ruben Sên had no wish to escape from the thralldom.
He knew why he had had to come into Burlington House; the boy flushed a little at the knowledge.
He had not bought a catalogue. He went back and got one, and hurried again to his picture.
When he found its number in the catalogue, it told him nothing.
“A Chinese Lady”—he had known that. And he had recognized the famous R.A.’s signature scrawled on the canvas.
He could find out who she was, of course—and easily enough.
But he wanted to know now.
He was going to know that girl. His countrywoman—and dressed as a Chinese girl should be!
She was even lovelier than Ivy!
Ruben Sên was wrong there. But he was not the first brother to make that mistake and he won’t be the last.
And how much lovelier Ivy would look if she dressed like that!
Ruben Sên was right there.
At first Ruben thought that all his delight was in seeing a Chinese girl of his own caste clad in the lovely garments of Chinese wealth.
Then—something throbbing in his veins told him that it was more than that.
Perhaps she was in London even now—or had the English artist been in China, and painted her there?
It didn’t matter. He would find her.
Thank the gods, he was Chinese—and a Sên. There was no maid in China debarred to him by rank or wealth. Thank God and Sên King-lo!
“I wonder which she’ll be—my wife—English or Chinese?” he had said to Kow Li one day. Kow Li’s heart had chilled at Ruben’s words. Kow Li’s heart would have quickened gladly could he have seen his Ruben now—gazing at “A Chinese Lady.”
And Ruben knew that the question he had asked, almost idly, in Bloomsbury, was answered.
Sên King-lo’s son would give Sên King-lo no Western daughter.
At first when he had come upon the portrait of “A Chinese Lady,” and it had caught and held him it had seemed to him that its appeal to him was its Chineseness.
And in large part it had been that at first. There was not a symbol pictured there or hinted—dragon’s claw on curtain, arabesque on carpet, pagoda among the pink flowering almond-trees in the distance, but spoke to him in the old language that his father had learned in a Ho-nan courtyard; their message reached him, and he called them “home.” And he understood them, for Kow Li had taught him well.
Then, as he sat drinking his fill of it, he knew that it was the girl in the picture that lured and called him: a maid’s appeal to a man—personality calling to personality.
Had he thought about it he would have said that he had forgotten China, that there was no China, neither China nor England; only a girl’s proud exquisite face; as years ago in a Potomac woodland another Sên had known neither China nor Virginia but only love for Ruben’s mother.
But Ruben Sên had not forgotten China—the homeland he had never seen.
It was both that called and held him; the Chinese atmosphere and details of her background, and the girl that embodied them. Both had revealed him to himself.
Oh! he would find her. And when he had, he would greet her without hesitation or compunction, as he would have followed her, reverently, though his pulse pounded madly, if he had chanced to meet her on the street or at a function.
For Ruben Sên believed that he had found his life’s meaning and his future.
Boys are like that sometimes.
He was tingling and elated from a new experience as he went briskly home at last; and it did not take him long to plan how to go about the most important thing on earth. Clearly the first thing to do was to make the acquaintance of the R.A. who had painted the portrait of a Chinese lady. That would not be difficult. But he hoped the fellow was in London or somewhere fairly accessible.