CHAPTER XVII
Ruben Sên had no grief at going. He was so filled with anticipation that it left no chink or crevice for regret or sadness.
Sir Charles Snow and Kow Li saw him off; Ivy wouldn’t. Mrs. Sên felt that she could not.
All that mattered nothing to Ruben. His heart was singing—all the way to China.
They three stood together on the great boat’s deck until “All off for the shore!” had been cried twice; Ruben in his English traveling gear, radiant-faced and eager-eyed, Snow trying to look far less grave than he felt; Kow Li a brilliant figure of Oriental splendor, almost broken up by the wrench of parting with his young master, tremulous too with his joy and triumph that at last the Sên was going home to Ho-nan.
Kow Li had made the toilet of his life. No noble of Genghiz Khan’s sumptuous court ever went to the throne-room of his liege more richly attired or more noticeably. And this was not the throne-room in the Forbidden City, but the simple British deck of a P. & O. Old Kow Li was a gorgeous medley of rose and crimson satins, thick-padded embroideries, dangling chain and wallet, many sparkling jewels; snow-white embroidered stockings, purple padded shoes with scarlet heels. He carried a small but very costly blue and green umbrella. Its stick of gold lacquer was a radiance, and its open top was a peril, both to his own hat, and to all less splendid hats that ventured near him. He wore his “pig-tail” almost lacquered with pigments, and lengthened nearly to his heels with plaited crimson silk. He wore his most scholarly spectacles, and his hat beggars description. And Kow Li fanned himself incessantly with an exquisite tiny fan; he bowed low when Sir Charles spoke to him; when Sên Ruben deigned to speak to him Kow Li ko’towed profoundly.
Several people tittered as they watched him. Kow Li heard and saw them, but it did not annoy or disconcert him in the least. He knew that they knew no better. And to Kow Li the best of them were foreign-devils, and the rest were nothings.
Sir Charles Snow and Ruben Sên did not titter at Kow Li, or wish to; nor did they smile or suppress a smile.
And they both knew that the odd signs boldly embroidered across the back of his satin jacket from shoulder to shoulder, was the Sên crest of servitude, the chop that marked Kow Li the servant and thrall of the great clan of Sên—theirs from birth till death—and after.
As the boat pulled slowly out, Ruben Sên leaning uncovered over the rail, Kow Li broke into uncontrollable sobbing. Sir Charles Snow laid his hand softly on the old Chinese’s shaking satin shoulder. Sir Charles Snow was not ashamed of Kow Li.
And Ruben Sên’s eyes misted.
No one stood waiting on the Victoria City pier to welcome him to China.
Ruben had wished it so.
They sighted China in the early morning. Ruben had risen with the sun to look for the first thin line that might be China in the distance.
He stood motionless, immovable, hour after hour, until they sighted China. He neither moved nor spoke until the boat was berthed. But he lifted his eyes to the hills of China. That was what the Peak was to him as he lifted his eyes to its blue-misted green; the hills of China; not the homes-park of Western affluence and comfort. This was his portal to all that lay beyond and to him that one lovely hill meant all the mountain ranges of China, all the flowers that grew at their slopes, all the snows that crowned them, the torrents that poured from them, the tiny laughing rills that slid leaping and singing through the hillside verdures down into the valleys and lakes that nestled at the fragrant feet of the encircling mountains. The bund, the buildings thick behind it, all meant a great deal to Ruben because they spoke of the teeming life at this sea-washed edge of his old, old homeland, but it was the feathered crest of the Peak that claimed and welcomed him, claimed him a prodigal son of Han home-come at last, caught him close in a vice of filial love. Trees, flowers and running water Ruben had loved from his babyhood; he had liked to finger the roses in his mother’s garden in Brent-on-Wold, had liked to lie for hours on the birch-shaded grass, watching the clouds drift, lazy as he, across the blue of the sky; watching the birds busied up in the trees, flying securely through the still summer air. But in their Surrey garden, what leapt in him now had been an enjoyment intense but quiescent, almost unconscious, quite inarticulate, a pleasant personal enjoyment, not an emotion. He had liked the flowers and the leafage, the birds in song and in flight, the drip of the fountain, the sky’s soft pageant, but he had not thought of Nature. He had laved in her bounty, not bowed down to her. This was his baptism at the font of Nature—a hill-cupped font, green with the lace of the slender bamboos that quivered over the Peak, hiding its pathways, veiling its bungalows, cooling and decking it all. His heart leapt to it devoutly. And it baptized him, a Chinese worshiper of Nature, one with his people, of their unalterable fellowship, in their one true religion—the worship of Nature. And he throbbed at the sacrament and was grateful. It was ecstasy.
No boy entirely, or fundamentally, Western could have felt so, or have been so unashamed that he did feel so.
There are only two peoples who so worship Nature, only two who so find her; the Chinese and their neighbors of the Island Kingdom; and it is with the Chinese that it is predominant and intensest.
He lifted his eyes to the bamboo belaced and lacquered green and gold-gray hillside, and was glad!
Then he went slowly across the deck, down the gangway.
And Ruben Sên was in China.
What would he think of China? His mother had wondered, and Lady Snow had, and even Sir Charles a little—though Sir Charles had had but little doubt.
Kow Li had not wondered. Kow Li had known. And when the wireless told him, not an hour later, that Sên Ruben was in China, Kow Li sobbed for joy.
It did not seem strange to Sên as he stepped ashore—neither the place nor its jabbering yellow crowds.
It was a strange and an enormous experience, but there was nothing weird about it; it was a sudden delightful restfulness, uplifting, too big for excitement. Sên Ruben had none of the chilled and baffled feeling, almost a sense of mental apprehension that one so often feels when first reaching a strange city; still more when first stepping on foreign soil.
Ruben stood on the Hong Kong landing stage, waiting for his luggage to find him. He never had been more at ease, never before had felt so entirely, or half so deeply, at home. China had received him.
His was an experience as indescribable as it was enormous. But it is not inexplicable, for it was his by birthright.
But it comes a freer gift—an interracial soul-dole to some—once perhaps in a lifetime. Once (before the Manchu fell) a Western woman standing just where Ruben Sên stood—a woman who had realized no special wish to visit China nor been conscious of any quick interest in the Chinese above other alien peoples—instantly felt at home. She came in after years to believe it a message, and received it gratefully. Places have individuality, mind, soul, character as surely as human creatures do. It is not always our relatives that we like best, are in closest touch with, know soonest or surest. And so it is with countries and places. Home and nativity are not always synonyms. Scott’s popular dictum beginning, “Breathes there the man with soul so dead,” is, one ventures to think, arguable.
Ivy would have writhed at China. China would have bored Emma Snow. Ruben knew that he loved it; knew that he had come home. And he knew that this would have been as true, as instant and direct, if he never had heard of China, or if he had not known in what country he had landed.
Kow Li had labored incessantly, but quite unnecessarily, to make Sên Ruben a Chinese—for a greater craftsman than Kow Li had done it thousands of years before.
Sên made no acquaintances in Hong Kong. He avoided doing so. He did not wish to meet even Chinese, yet; but to be alone with China.
That was friendship and companionship enough.