And by some strength of will and childhood’s splendid resilience he had thrown off (or laid away) his heart-broken apathy with his sea-sickness. He enjoyed the voyage, on the whole.
When they landed at Southampton Wu thought that he had found Bedlam, and wondered, as he had not done before, why his grandfather had condemned him to such hideous exile. Everything he saw revolted him. He thought that nothing could be uglier. He was not even interested. The very novelty had no charm. His little gorge rose. Europe—seen so and so sounding—was a stench in his nostrils and rank offense to his eyes. He held up his heavy embroidered satin skirts and tucked them about him close, as a girl in Sunday-best might pick her way across the malodorous street slime in a low and squalid neighborhood.
It was late afternoon, and as they were not expected at their London destination until the next morning, Muir put up at the hotel of which Southampton was proudest. Wu was measurably accustomed to English food. The mandarin had seen to it. And on the liner the young Chinese, eating tit-bits and prime cuts from the joints at the captain’s table, had found them good. But this was English food with a difference. James Muir was not a selfish man—far from it—but he exulted, for the time at least, at being at home; and he ordered a truly British dinner in a burst of patriotism (not the less deep because its expression took such homely form), forgetting to consult the boy’s tastes, which he knew perfectly. They began with oxtail soup and finished with three kinds of inferior cheese and a brew of “small” coffee which was very small indeed. Wu thought it would have been an unkindness to the palate of a coolie. And in the big, strange bed he lay awake half the night, grieving for his old grandfather, and trying to make up his homesick little mind which was nastiest, apple tart or salt beef and carrots, and wondering why the gods let a people be who made and ate such salad. His tutor had taken two helpings, and had praised the abominable beef.
The train frightened him. The little (first class, reserved) box into which they were locked, appalled and then offended. Waterloo was purgatory. The hansom he liked. They drove to Portland Place, and Wu went up the steps with dignified eagerness. This he knew, was the Chinese Legation—the London yamên of a distant kinsman. This would be better—almost something of home. They expected him here. But it was not better; it was worse—a purgatory and a drab, dull one. Even James Muir was struck that the hall and the drawing-room had been subjected to unhappy furnishing. And instead of the friendly countryman that Wu had expected to greet him at the threshold, a sleek young English attaché, with oiled yellow hair and a lisp, came forward leisurely, saying, “Oh, it’s you. Hello then! Come on in.” A Chinese servant opened the door to them, but he scarcely seemed real to the disappointed lad, and there was nothing else in the least Chinese to be seen.
Why the Chinese Legation in London should have been furnished from the Tottenham Court Road passes respectful understanding; but it had. It was magnificently furnished. It had been done completely and with no stint by a famous firm. Probably that firm would have done the work less crudely if it had been left to its own well-experienced professional devices. But it by no means had. The youngest attaché—he of the fair, sleek locks—suffered from conscience. He suspected that he might never shine at international diplomacy, but he intended to do what he could to earn his “ripping” emolument. And among other self-imposed activities he had elected to direct the great house furnishers and decorators. The red and yellow, about equally proportioned, of the hall and the reception-rooms were not his own first favorites. A nice Cambridge blue with rose trimmings he’d have liked better for himself. But the Chinese Government was paying him, and he meant to play the game by that Imperial Body of an imperial people; and he played it by some hundreds of yards of red silk plush and bright marigold-yellow satin that he considered utterly Chinese. Wu thought it barbaric, demoniac. The Chinese Minister saw both the intended kindness and the joke, and enjoyed the joke very much indeed, laughing slyly and good-naturedly up his long, dove-colored crêpe sleeve.
The Minister was out, the attaché explained: had had to go—“to the F. O., don’t you know?”—Wu had no idea what “F. O.” meant—“sorry not to be here. Back soon,” and he ushered them up into the long, draped and padded barrack of a drawing-room, and said again, “Hello!” but added in a verbose burst, “I say, sit down.”
It was better when the Minister returned at last from the Foreign Office. And after lunch he took Wu into an inner room more like China, less like Hades. But until he died Wu hated the Chinese Legation at Portland Place. And he stayed there for five years. Then he went to Oxford.
London he never learned to like. There was no reason why he should. But he did learn to like the country places all over the kingdom’s two islands. For he and Muir traveled together at Christmas and at Easter and in the summer.
Muir had a British Museum appointment—it was waiting for him when they landed. But his hours and his duties were easy, and he still drew his larger income from the coffers of the mandarin in Sze-chuan, and he gave much of his time and labor to his old pupil. But for the Scot and a few of the Chinese at No. 49 the exiled boy might have gone mad, so shaken and cramped was he by homesickness. But they were an enormous help and refuge. He worked hard and learned prodigiously, as only a Chinese can learn. And, being Chinese, what he once learned he never in the least forgot.
Oxford he liked from the first. Always his soul ached for China, for her people (his people), her ways and her scenes: the smell of her, the sound of her, the heart and soul of her matching to his: the haze of her peaceful atmosphere, pricked by the music of her lutes, and throbbing with the mystic beat, beat of the tom-tom. He thought there were no flowers in Europe, no repose, no balance, no art, no friendship.