The perfume of countless roses, the music of the finest band in Europe, floated through the famous white ballroom of Devenham House. Electric lights sparkled from the ceiling, through the pillared way the ceaseless splashing of water from the fountains in the winter garden seemed like a soft undernote to the murmur of voices, the musical peals of laughter, the swirl of skirts, and the rhythm of flying feet.
Penelope stood upon the edge of the ballroom, her hand resting still upon her partner’s arm. She wore a dress of dull rose-color, a soft, clinging silk, which floated about her as she danced, a creation of Paquin’s, daring but delightful. Her eyes were very full and soft. She was looking her best, and knew it. Nevertheless, she was just at the moment, a littledistrait. She was watching the brilliant scene with a certain air of abstraction, as though her interest in it was, after all, an impersonal thing.
“Jolly well every one looks tonight,” her partner, who was Sir Charles, remarked. “All the women seem to be wearing smart frocks, and some of those foreign uniforms are gorgeous.”
“Even the Prince,” Penelope said thoughtfully, “must find some reflection of the philosophy of his own country in such a scene as this. For the last fortnight we have been surfeited with horrors. We have had to go through all sorts of nameless things,” she added, shivering slightly, “and tonight we dance at Devenham House. We dance, and drink champagne, and marvel at the flowers, as though we had not a care in the world, as though life moved always to music.”
Sir Charles frowned a little.
“The Prince again!” he said, half protesting. “He seems to be a great deal in your thoughts lately, Penelope.”
“Why not?” she answered. “It is something to meet a person whom one is able to dislike. Nowadays the whole world is so amiable.”
“I wonder how much you really do dislike him,” he said.
She looked at him with a mysterious smile.
“Sometimes,” she murmured softly, “I wonder that myself.”
“Leaving the Prince out of the question,” he continued, “what you say is true enough. Only a few days ago, you had to attend that awful inquest, and the last time I saw dear old Dicky Vanderpole, he was looking forward to this very dance.”
“It seems callous of us to have come,” Penelope declared. “And yet, if we hadn’t, what difference would it have made? Every one else would have been here. Our absence would never have been noticed, and we should have sat at home and had the blues. But all the same, life is cruel.”
“Can’t say I find much to grumble at myself,” Sir Charles said cheerfully. “I’m frightfully sorry about poor old Dicky, of course, and every other decent fellow who doesn’t get his show. But, after all, it’s no good being morbid. Sackcloth and ashes benefit no one. Shall we have another turn?”
“Not yet,” Penelope replied. “Wait till the crowd thins a little. Tell me what you have been doing today?”
“Pretty strenuous time,” Sir Charles remarked. “Up at nine, played golf at Ranelagh all morning, lunched down there, back to my rooms and changed, called on my tailor, went round to the club, had one game of billiards and four rubbers of bridge.”
“Is that all?” Penelope asked.
The faint sarcasm which lurked beneath her question passed unnoticed. Sir Charles smiled good-humoredly.
“Not quite,” he answered. “I dined at the Carlton with Bellairs and some men from Woolwich and we had a box at the Empire to see the new ballet. Jolly good it was, too. Will you come one night, if I get up a party?”
“Oh, perhaps!” she answered. “Come and dance.”
They passed into the great ballroom, the finest in London, brilliant with its magnificent decorations of real flowers, its crowd of uniformed men and beautiful women, its soft yet ever-present throbbing of wonderful music. At the further end of the room, on a slightly raised dais, still receiving her guests, stood the Duchess of Devenham. Penelope gave a little start as they saw who was bowing over her hand.
“The Prince!” she exclaimed.
Sir Charles whispered something a little under his breath.
“I wonder,” she remarked with apparent irrelevance, “whether he dances.”
“Shall I go and find out for you?” Sir Charles asked.
She had suddenly grown absent. She had the air of scarcely hearing what he said.
“Let us stop,” she said. “I am out of breath.”
He led her toward the winter garden. They sat by a fountain, listening to the cool play of the water.
“Penelope,” Somerfield said a little awkwardly, “I don’t want to presume, you know, nor to have you think that I am foolishly jealous, but you have changed towards me the last few weeks, haven’t you?”
“The last few weeks,” she answered, “have been enough to change me toward any one. All the same, I wasn’t conscious of anything particular so far as you are concerned.”
“I always thought,” he continued after a moment’s hesitation, “that there was so much prejudice in your country against—against all Asiatic races.”
She looked at him steadfastly for a minute.
“So there is,” she answered. “What of it?”
“Nothing, except that it is a prejudice which you do not seem to share,” he remarked.
“In a way I do share it,” she declared, “but there are exceptions, sometimes very wonderful exceptions.”
“Prince Maiyo, for instance,” he said bitterly. “Yet a fortnight ago I could have sworn that you hated him.”
“I think that I do hate him,” Penelope affirmed. “I try to. I want to. I honestly believe that he deserves my hatred. I have more reason for feeling this way than you know of, Sir Charles.”
“If he has dared—” Somerfield began.
“He has dared nothing that he ought not to,” Penelope interrupted. “His manners are altogether too perfect. It is the chill faultlessness of the man which is so depressing. Can’t you understand,” she added, speaking in a tone of greater intensity, “that that is why I hate him? Hush!”
She gripped his sleeve warningly. There was suddenly the murmur of voices and the trailing of skirts. A little party seemed to have invaded the winter garden—a little party of the principal guests. The Duchess herself came first, and her fingers were resting upon the arm of Prince Maiyo. She stopped to speak to Penelope, and turned afterwards to Somerfield. Prince Maiyo held out his hand for Penelope’s programme.
“You will spare me some dances?” he pleaded. “I come late, but it is not my fault.”
She yielded the programme to him without a word.
“Those with an X,’” she said, “are free. One has to protect oneself.”
He smiled as he wrote his own name, unrebuked, in four places.
“Our first dance, then, is number 10,” he said. “It is the next but one. I shall find you here, perhaps?”
“Here or amongst the chaperons,” she answered, as they passed on.
“You admire Miss Morse?” the Duchess asked him.
“Greatly,” the Prince answered. “She is natural, she has grace, and she has what I do not find so much in this country—would you say charm?”
“It is an excellent word,” the Duchess answered. “I am inclined to agree with you. Her aunt, with whom she lives, is a confirmed invalid, so she is a good deal with me. Her mother was my half-sister.”
The Prince bowed.
“She will marry, I suppose?” he said.
“Naturally,” the Duchess answered. “Sir Charles, poor fellow, is a hopeless victim. I should not be surprised if she married him, some day or other.”
The Prince looked behind for a moment; then he stopped to admire a magnificent orchid.
“It will be great good fortune for Sir Charles Somerfield,” he said.
Somerfield scarcely waited until the little party were out of sight.
“Penelope,” he exclaimed, “you’ve given that man four dances!”
“I am afraid,” she answered, “that I should have given him eight if he had asked for them.”
He rose to his feet.
“Will you allow me to take you back to your aunt?” he asked.
“No!” she answered. “My aunt is quite happy without me, and I should prefer to remain here.”
He sat down, fuming.
“Penelope, what do you mean by it?” he demanded.
“And what do you mean by asking me what I mean by it?” she replied. “You haven’t any especial right that I know of.”
“I wish to Heaven I had!” he answered with a noticeable break in his voice.
There was a short silence. She turned away; she felt that she was suddenly surrounded by a cloud of passion.
“Penelope,” he pleaded,—
She stopped him.
“You must not say another word,” she declared. “I mean it,—you must not.”
“I have waited for some time,” he reminded her.
“All the more reason why you should wait until the right time,” she insisted. “Be patient for a little longer, do. Just now I feel that I need a friend more than I have ever needed one before. Don’t let me lose the one I value most. In a few weeks’ time you shall say whatever you like, and, at any rate, I will listen to you. Will you be content with that?”
“Yes!” he answered.
She laid her fingers upon his arm.
“I am dancing this with Captain Wilmot,” she said. “Will you come and bring me back here afterwards, unless you are engaged?”
The Prince found her alone in the winter garden, for Somerfield, when he had seen him coming, had stolen away. He came towards her quickly, with the smooth yet impetuous step which singled him out at once as un-English. He had the whole room to cross to come to her, and she watched him all the way. The corners of his lips were already curved in a slight smile. His eyes were bright, as one who looks upon something which he greatly desires. Slender though his figure was, his frame was splendidly knit, and he carried himself as one of the aristocrats of the world. As he approached, she scanned his face curiously. She became critical, anxiously but ineffectively. There was not a feature in his face with which a physiognomist could have found fault.
“Dear young lady,” he said, bowing low, “I come to you very humbly, for I am afraid that I am a deceiver. I shall rob you of your pleasure, I fear. I have put my name down for four dances, and, alas! I do not dance.”
She made room for him by her side.
“And I,” she said, “am weary of dancing. One does nothing else, night after night. We will talk.”
“Talk or be silent,” he answered softly. “Myself I believe that you are in need of silence. To be silent together is a proof of great friendship, is it not?”
She nodded.
“It seems to me that I have been through so much the last fortnight.” she said.
“You have suffered where you should not have suffered,” he assented gravely. “I do not like your laws at all. At what they called the inquest your presence was surely not necessary! You were a woman and had no place there. You had,” he added calmly, “so little to tell.”
“Nothing,” she murmured.
“Life to me just now,” he continued, “is so much a matter of comparison. It is for that, indeed, that I am here. You see, I have lived nearly all my life in my own country and only a very short time in Europe. Then my mother was an English lady, and my father a Japanese nobleman. Always I seem to be pulled two different ways, to be struggling to see things from two different points of view. But there is one subject in which I think I am wholly with my own country.”
“And that?” she asked.
“I do not think,” he said, “that the rougher and more strenuous paths of life were meant to be trodden by your sex. Please do not misunderstand me,” he went on earnestly. “I am not thinking of the paths of literature and of art, for there the perceptions of your sex are so marvellously acute that you indeed may often lead where we must follow. I am speaking of the more material things of life.”
She was suddenly conscious of a shiver which seemed to spread from her heart throughout her limbs. She sat quite still, gripping her little lace handkerchief in her fingers.
“I mean,” he continued, “the paths which a man must tread who seeks to serve his country or his household,—the every-day life in which sometimes intrigue or force is necessary. Do you agree with me, Miss Morse?”
“I suppose so,” she faltered.
“That is why,” he added, “it was painful to me to see you stand there before those men, answering their questions,—men whose walk in life was different, of an order removed from yours, who should not even have been permitted to approach you upon bended knees. Do not think that I am suggesting any fault to you—do not think that I am forcing your confidence in any way. But these are the thoughts which came to me only a little time ago.”
She was silent. They listened together to the splashing of the water. What was the special gift, she wondered, which gave this man such insight? She felt her heart beating; she was conscious that he was looking at her. He knew already that it was through her medium that those despatches which never reached London were to have been handed on to their destination! He must know that she was to some extent in the confidence of her country’s Ambassador! Perhaps he knew, too, those other thoughts which were in her mind,—knew that it had been her deliberate intent to deceive him, to pluck those secrets which he carried with him, even from his heart! What a fool she had been to dream, for a moment, of measuring her wits against his!
He began to speak again, and his voice seemed pitched in lighter key.
“After all,” he said, “you must think it strange of me to be so egotistical—to speak all the time so much of my likes and dislikes. To you I have been a little more outspoken than to others.”
“You have found me an interesting subject for investigation perhaps?” she asked, looking up suddenly.
“You possess gifts,” he admitted calmly, “which one does not find amongst the womenfolk of my country, nor can I say that I have found them to any extent amongst the ladies of the English Court.”
“Gifts of which you do not approve when possessed by my sex,” she suggested.
“You are a law to yourself, Miss Morse,” he said. “What one would not admire in others seems natural enough in you. You have brains and you have insight. For that reason I have been with you a little outspoken,—for that reason and another which I think you know of. You see, my time over here grows nearer to an end with every day. Soon I must carry away with me, over the seas, all the delightful memories, the friendships, the affections, which have made this country such a pleasant place for me.”
“You are going soon?” she asked quickly.
“Very soon,” he answered. “My work is nearly finished, if indeed I may dignify it by the name of work. Then I must go back.”
She shrank a little away from him, as though the word were distasteful to her.
“Do you mean that you will go back for always?” she asked.
“There are many chances in life,” he answered. “I am the servant of the Emperor and my country.”
“There is no hope, then,” she continued, “of your settling down here altogether?”
For once the marble immobility of his features seemed disturbed. He looked at her in honest amazement.
“Here!” he exclaimed. “But I am a son of Japan!”
“There are many of your race who do live here,” she reminded him.
He smiled with the air of one who is forced to humor a person of limited vision.
“With them it is, alas! a matter of necessity,” he said. “It is very hard indeed to make you understand over here how we feel about such things,—there seems to be a different spirit amongst you Western races, a different spirit or a lack of spirit—I do not know which I should say. But in Japan the love of our country is a passion which seems to throb with every beat of our hearts. If we leave her, it is for her good. When we go back, it is our reward.”
“Then you are here now for her good?” she asked.
“Assuredly,” he answered.
“Tell me in what way?” she begged. “You have been studying English customs, their methods of education, their political life, perhaps?”
He turned his head slowly and looked into her eyes. She bore the ordeal well, but she never forgot it. It seemed to her afterwards that he must have read every thought which had flashed through her brain. She felt like a little child in the presence of some mysterious being, thoughts of whom had haunted her dreams, now visible in bodily shape for the first time.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “please do not ask me too much, for I love to speak the truth, and there are many things which I may not tell. Only you must understand that the country I love—my own country—must enter soon upon a new phase of her history. We who look into the future can see the great clouds gathering. Some of us must needs be pioneers, must go forward a little to learn our safest, and best course. May I tell you that much?”
“Of course,” she answered softly.
“And now,” he added, leaving his seat as though with reluctance, “the Duchess reminded me, above all things, that directly I found you I was to take you to supper. One of your royal princes has been good enough to signify his desire that we should sit at the same table.”
She rose at once.
“Does the Duchess know that you are taking me?” she asked.
“I arranged it with her,” he answered. “My time draws soon to an end and I am to be spoilt a little.”
They crossed the ballroom together and mounted the great stairs. Something—she never knew quite what it was—prompted her to detain him as they paused on the threshold of the supper room.
“You do not often read the papers, Prince,” she said. “Perhaps you have not seen that, after all, the police have discovered a clue to the Hamilton Fynes murder.”
The Prince looked down upon her for a moment without reply.
“Yes?” he murmured softly.
She understood that she was to go on—that he was anxious for her to go on.
“Some little doctor in a village near Willington, where the line passes, has come forward with a story about attending to a wounded man on the night of the murder,” she said.
He was very silent. It seemed to her that there was something strange about the immovability of his features. She looked at him wonderingly. Then it suddenly flashed upon her that this was his way of showing emotion. Her lips parted. The color seemed drawn from her cheeks. The majordomo of the Duchess stood before them with a bow.
“Her Grace desires me to show your Highness to your seats,” he announced.
Prince Maiyo turned to his companion.
“Will you allow me to precede you through the crush?” he said. “We are to go this way.”
After the supper there were obligations which the Prince, whose sense of etiquette was always strong, could not avoid. He took Penelope back to her aunt, reminding her that the next dance but one belonged to him. Miss Morse, who was an invalid and was making one of her very rare appearances in Society, watched him curiously as he disappeared.
“I wonder what they’d think of your new admirer in New York, Penelope,” she remarked.
“I imagine,” Penelope answered, “that they would envy me very much.”
Miss Morse, who was a New Englander of the old-fashioned type, opened her lips, but something in her niece’s face restrained her.
“Well, at any rate,” she said, “I hope we don’t go to war with them. The Admiral wrote me, a few weeks ago, that he saw no hope for anything else.”
“It would be a terrible complication,” the Duchess sighed, “especially considering our own alliance with Japan. I don’t think we need consider it seriously, however. Over in America you people have too much common sense.”
“The Government have, very likely,” Miss Morse admitted, “but it isn’t always the Government who decide things or who even rule the country. We have an omnipotent Press, you know. All that’s wanted is a weak President, and Heaven knows where we should be!”
“Of course,” the Duchess remarked, “Prince Maiyo is half an Englishman. His mother was a Stretton-Wynne. One of the first intermarriages, I should think. Lord Stretton-Wynne was Ambassador to Japan.”
“I think,” said Penelope, “that if you could look into Prince Maiyo’s heart you would not find him half an Englishman. I think that he is more than seven-eighths a Japanese.”
“I have heard it whispered,” the Duchess remarked, leaning forward, “that he is over here on an exceedingly serious mission. One thing is quite certain. No one from his country, or from any other country, for that matter, has ever been so entirely popular amongst us. He has the most delightful manners of any man I ever knew of any race.”
Sir Charles came up, with gloomy face, to claim a dance. After it was over, he led Penelope back to her aunt almost in silence.
“You are dancing again with the Prince?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she answered. “Here he comes.”
The Prince smiled pleasantly at the young man, who towered like a giant above him, and noticed at once his lack of cordiality.
“I am selfish!” he exclaimed, pausing with Penelope’s hand upon his coat sleeve. “I am taking you too much away from your friends, and spoiling your pleasure, perhaps, because I do not dance. Is it not so? It is your kindness to a stranger, and they do not all appreciate it.”
“We will go into the winter garden and talk it over,” she answered, smiling.
They found their old seats unoccupied. Once more they sat and listened to the fall of the water.
“Prince,” said Penelope, “there is one thing I have learned about you this evening, and that is that you do not love questions. And yet there is one other which I should like to ask you.”
“If you please,” the Prince murmured.
“You spoke, a little time ago,” she continued, “of some great crisis with which your country might soon come face to face. Might I ask you this: were you thinking of war with the United States?”
He looked at her in silence for several moments.
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said,—“may I call you that? Forgive me if I am too forward, but I hear so many of our friends—”
“You may call me that,” she interrupted softly.
“Let me remind you, then, of what we were saying a little time ago,” he went on. “You will not take offence? You will understand, I am sure. Those things that lie nearest to my heart concerning my country are the things of which I cannot speak.”
“Not even to me?” she pleaded. “I am so insignificant. Surely I do not count?”
“Miss Penelope,” he said, “you yourself are a daughter of that country of which we have been speaking.”
She was silent.
“You think, then,” she asked, “that I put my country before everything else in the world?”
“I believe,” he answered, “that you would. Your country is too young to be wholly degenerate. It is true that you are a nation of fused races—a strange medley of people, but still you are a nation. I believe that in time of stress you would place your country before everything else.”
“And therefore?” she murmured.
“And therefore,” he continued with a delightful smile, “I shall not discuss my hopes or fears with you. Or if we do discuss them,” he went on, “let us weave them into a fairy tale. Let us say that you are indeed the Daughter of All America and that I am the Son of All Japan. You know what happens in fairyland when two great nations rise up to fight?”
“Tell me,” she begged.
“Why, the Daughter of All America and the Son of All Japan stand hand in hand before their people, and as they plight their troth, all bitter feelings pass away, the shouts of anger cease, and there is no more talk of war.”
She sighed, and leaned a little towards him. Her eyes were soft and dusky, her red lips a little parted.
“But I,” she whispered, “am not the Daughter of All America.”
“Nor am I,” he answered with a sigh, “the Son of all Japan.”
There was a breathless silence. The water splashed into the basin, the music came throbbing in through the flower-hung doorways. It seemed to Penelope that she could almost hear her heart beat. The blood in her veins was dancing to the one perfect waltz. The moments passed. She drew a little breath and ventured to look at him. His face was still and white, as though, indeed, it had been carved out of marble, but the fire in his eyes was a living thing.
“We have actually been talking nonsense,” she said, “and I thought that you, Prince, were far too serious.”
“We were talking fairy tales,” he answered, “and they are not nonsense. Do not you ever read the history of your country as it was many hundreds of years ago, before this ugly thing they call civilization weakened the sinews of our race and besmirched the very face of duty? Do you not like to read of the times when life was simpler and more natural, and there was space for every man to live and grow and stretch out his hands to the skies,—every man and every woman? They call them, in your literature, the days of romance. They existed, too, in my country. It is not nonsense to imagine for a little time that the ages between have rolled away and that those days are with us?”
“No,” she answered, “it is not nonsense. But if they were?”
He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. The touch of his hand, the absolute delicacy of the salute itself, made it unlike any other caress she had ever known or imagined.
“The world might have been happier for both of us,” he whispered.
Somerfield, sullen and discontented, came and looked at them, moved away, and then hesitatingly returned.
“Willmott is waiting for you,” he said. “The last was my dance, and this is his.”
She rose at once and turned to the Prince.
“I think that we should go back,” she said. “Will you take me to my aunt?”
“If it must be so,” he answered. “Tell me, Miss Penelope,” he added, “may I ask your aunt or the Duchess to bring you one day to my house to see my treasures? I cannot say how long I shall remain in this country. I would like you so much to come before I break up my little home.”
“Of course we will,” she answered. “My aunt goes nowhere, but the Duchess will bring me, I am sure. Ask her when I am there, and we can agree about the day.”
He leaned a little towards her.
“Tomorrow?” he whispered.
She nodded. There were three engagements for the next day of which she took no heed.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Come and let us arrange it with the Duchess.”
Prince Maiyo left Devenham House to find the stars paling in the sky, and the light of an April dawn breaking through the black clouds eastwards. He dismissed his electric brougham with a little wave of the hand, and turned to walk to his house in St. James’s Square. As he walked, he bared his head. After the long hours of artificially heated rooms, there was something particularly soothing about the fresh sweetness of the early spring morning. There was something, it seemed to him, which reminded him, however faintly, of the mornings in his own land,—the perfume of the flowers from the window-boxes, perhaps, the absence of that hideous roar of traffic, or the faint aromatic scent from the lime trees in the Park, heavy from recent rain. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-four,—the hour almost of dawn. The night wayfarers had passed away, the great army of toilers as yet slumbered. One sad-eyed woman stumbled against him as he walked slowly up Piccadilly. He lifted his hat with an involuntary gesture, and her laugh changed into a sob. He turned round, and emptied his pockets of silver into her hand, hurrying away quickly that his eyes might not dwell upon her face.
“A coward always,” he murmured to himself, a little wearily, for he knew where his weakness lay,—an invincible repugnance to the ugly things of life. As he passed on, however, his spirits rose again. He caught a breath of lilac scent from a closed florist’s shop. He looked up to the skies, over the housetops, faintly blue, growing clearer every moment. Almost he fancied that he looked again into the eyes of this strange girl, recalled her unexpected yet delightful frankness, which to him, with his love of abstract truth, was, after all, so fascinating. Oh, there was much to be said for this Western world!—much to be said for those whose part it was to live in it! Yet, never so much as during that brief night walk through the silent streets, did he realize how absolutely unfitted he was to be even a temporary sojourner in this vast city. What would they say of him if they knew,—of him, a breaker of their laws, a guest, and yet a sinner against all their conventions; a guest, and yet one whose hand it was which would strike them, some day or other, the great blow! What would she think of him? He wondered whether she would realize the truth, whether she would understand. Almost as he asked himself the question, he smiled. To him it seemed a strange proof of the danger in which a weaker man would stand of passing under the yoke of this hateful Western civilization. To dream of her—yes! To see her face shining upon him from every beautiful place, to feel the delight of her presence with every delicious sensation,—the warmth of the sunlight, the perfume of the blossoms he loved! There was joy in this, the joy of the artist and the lover. But to find her in his life, a real person, a daughter of this new world, whose every instinct would be at war with his—that way lay slavery! He brushed the very thought from him.
As he reached the door of his house in St. James’ Square, it opened slowly before him. He had brought his own servants from his own country, and in their master’s absence sleep was not for them. His butler spoke to him in his own language. The Prince nodded and passed on. On his study table—a curious note of modernism where everything seemed to belong to a bygone world—was a cablegram. He tore it open. It consisted of one word only. He let the thin paper fall fluttering from his fingers. So the time was fixed!
Then Soto came gliding noiselessly into the room, fully dressed, with tireless eyes but wan face,—Soto, the prototype of his master, the most perfect secretary and servant evolved through all the years.
“Master,” he said, “there has been trouble here. An Englishman came with this card.”
The Prince took it, and read the name of Inspector Jacks.
“Well?” he murmured.
“The man asked questions,” Soto continued. “We spoke English so badly that he was puzzled. He went away, but he will come again.”
The Prince smiled, and laid his hand almost caressingly upon the other’s shoulder.
“It is of no consequence, Soto,” he said,—“no consequence whatever.”
“Your rooms, Prince, are wonderful,” Penelope said to him. “I knew that you were a man of taste, but I did not know that you were also a millionaire.”
He laughed softly.
“In my country,” he answered, “there are no millionaires. The money which we have, however, we spend, perhaps a little differently. But, indeed, none of my treasures here have cost me anything. They have come to me through more generations than I should care to reckon up. The bronze idol, for instance, upon my writing case is four hundred years old, to my certain knowledge, and my tapestries were woven when in this country your walls went bare.”
“What I admire more than anything,” the Duchess declared, “is your beautiful violet tone.”
“I am glad,” he answered, “that you like my coloring. Some people have thought it sombre. To me dark colors indoors are restful.”
“Everything about the whole place is restful,” Penelope said,—“your servants with their quaint dresses and slippered feet, your thick carpets, the smell of those strange burning leaves, and, forgive me if I say so, your closed windows. I suppose in time I should have a headache. For a little while it is delicious.”
The Prince sighed.
“Fresh air is good,” he said, “but the air that comes from your streets does not seem to me to be fresh, nor do I like the roar of your great city always in my ears. Here I cut myself off, and I feel that I can think. Duchess, you must try those preserved fruits. They come to me from my own land. I think that the secret of preserving them is not known here. You see, they are packed with rose leaves and lemon plant. There is a golden fig, Miss Penelope,—the fruit of great knowledge, the magical fruit, too, they say. Eat that and close your eyes and you can look back and tell us all the wonders of the past. That is to say,” he added with a faint smile, “if the magic works.”
“But the magic never does work,” she protested with a little sigh, “and I am not in the least interested in the past. Tell me something about the future?”
“Surely that is easier,” he answered. “Over the past we have lost our control,—what has been must remain to the end of time. The future is ours to do what we will with.”
“That sounds so reasonable,” the Duchess declared, “and it is so absolutely false. No one can do what they will with the future. It is the future which does what it will with us.”
The Prince smiled tolerantly.
“It depends a good deal, does it not,” he said, “upon ourselves? Miss Penelope is the daughter of a country which is still young, which has all its future before it, and which, has proclaimed to the world its fixed intention of controlling its own destinies. She, at any rate, should have imbibed the national spirit. You are looking at my curtains,” he added, turning to Penelope. “Let me show you the figures upon them, and I will tell you the allegory.”
He led her to the window, and explained to her for some moments the story of the faded images which represented one chapter out of the mythology of his country. And then she stopped him.
“Always,” she said, “you and I seem to be talking of things that are dead and past, or of a future which is out of our reach. Isn’t it possible to speak now and then of the present?”
“Of the actual present?” he asked softly. “Of this very moment?”
“Of this very moment, if you will,” she answered. “Your fairy tale the other night was wonderful, but it was a long way off.”
The Prince was summoned away somewhat abruptly to bid farewell to a little stream of departing guests. Today, more than ever, he seemed to belong, indeed to the world of real and actual things, for a cousin of his mother’s, a Lady Stretton-Wynne, was helping him receive his guests—his own aunt, as Penelope told herself more than once, struggling all the time with a vague incredulity. When he was able to rejoin her, she was examining a curious little coffer which stood upon an ivory table.
“Show me the mystery of this lock,” she begged. “I have been trying to open it ever since you went away. One could imagine that the secrets of a nation might be hidden here.”
He smiled, and taking the box from her hands, touched a little spring. Almost at once the lid flew open.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that it is empty.”
She peered in.
“No,” she exclaimed, “there is something there! See!” She thrust in her hand and drew out a small, curiously shaped dagger of fine blue steel and a roll of silken cord. She held them up to him.
“What are these?” she asked. “Are they symbols—the cord and the knife of destiny?”
He took them gently from her hand and replaced them in the box. She heard the lock go with a little click, and looked into his face, surprised at his silence.
“Is there anything the matter?” she asked. “Ought I not to have taken them up?”
Almost as the words left her lips, she understood. His face was inscrutable, but his very silence was ominous. She remembered a drawing in one of the halfpenny papers, the drawing of a dagger found in a horrible place. She remembered the description of that thin silken cord, and she began to tremble.
“I did not know that anything was in the box,” he said calmly. “I am sorry if its contents have alarmed you.”
She scarcely heard his words. The room seemed wheeling round with her, the floor unsteady beneath her feet. The atmosphere of the place had suddenly become horrible,—the faint odor of burning leaves, the pictures, almost like caricatures, which mocked her from the walls, the grinning idols, the strangely shaped weapons in their cases of black oak. She faltered as she crossed the room, but recovered herself.
“Aunt,” she said, “if you are ready, I think that we ought to go.”
The Duchess was more than ready. She rose promptly. The Prince walked with them to the door and handed them over to his majordomo.
“It has been so nice of you,” he said to the Duchess, “to honor my bachelor abode. I shall often think of your visit.”
“My dear Prince,” the Duchess declared, “it has been most interesting. Really, I found it hard to believe, in that charming room of yours, that we had not actually been transported to your wonderful country.”
“You are very gracious,” the Prince answered, bowing low.
Penelope’s hands were within her muff. She was talking some nonsense—she scarcely knew what, but her eyes rested everywhere save on the face of her host. Somehow or other she reached the door, ran down the steps and threw herself into a corner of the brougham. Then, for the first time, she allowed herself to look behind. The door was already closed, but between the curtains which his hands had drawn apart, Prince Maiyo was standing in the room which they had just quitted, and there was something in the calm impassivity of his white, stern face which seemed to madden her. She clenched her hands and looked away.
“Really, I was not so much bored as I had feared,” the Duchess remarked composedly. “That Stretton-Wynne woman generally gets on my nerves, but her nephew seemed to have a restraining effect upon her. She didn’t tell me more than once about her husband’s bad luck in not getting Canada, and she never even mentioned her girls. But I do think, Penelope,” she continued, “that I shall have to talk to you a little seriously. There’s the best-looking and richest young bachelor in London dying to marry you, and you won’t have a word to say to him. On the other hand, after starting by disliking him heartily, you are making yourself almost conspicuous with this fascinating young Oriental. I admit that he is delightful, my dear Penelope, but I think you should ask yourself whether it is quite worth while. Prince Maiyo may take home with him many Western treasures, but I do not think that he will take home a wife.”
“If you say another word to me, aunt,” Penelope exclaimed, “I shall shriek!”
The Duchess, being a woman of tact, laughed the subject away and pretended not to notice Penelope’s real distress. But when they had reached Devenham House, she went to the telephone and called up Somerfield.
“Charlie,” she said,—
“Right o’!” he interrupted. “Who is it?”
“Be careful what you are saying,” she continued, “because it isn’t any one who wants you to take them out to supper.”
“I only wish you did,” he answered. “It’s the Duchess, isn’t it?”
“The worst of having a distinctive voice,” she sighed. “Listen. I want to speak to you.”
“I am listening hard,” Somerfield answered. “Hold the instrument a little further away from you,—that’s better.”
“We have been to the Prince’s for tea this afternoon—Penelope and I,” she said.
“I know,” he assented. “I was asked, but I didn’t see the fun of it. It puts my back up to see Penelope monopolized by that fellow,” he added gloomily.
“Well, listen to what I have to say,” the Duchess went on. “Something happened there—I don’t know what—to upset Penelope very much. She never spoke a word coming home, and she has gone straight up to her room and locked herself in. Somehow or other the Prince managed to offend her. I am sure of that, Charlie!”
“I’m beastly sorry,” Somerfield answered. “I meant to say that I was jolly glad to hear it.”
The Duchess coughed.
“I didn’t quite hear what you said before,” she said severely. “Perhaps it is just as well. I rang up to say that you had better come round and dine with us tonight. You will probably find Penelope in a more reasonable frame of mind.”
“Awfully good of you,” Somerfield declared heartily. “I’ll come with pleasure.”
Dinner at Devenham House that evening was certainly a domestic meal. Even the Duke was away, attending a political gathering. Penelope was pale, but otherwise entirely her accustomed self. She talked even more than usual, and though she spoke of a headache, she declined all remedies. To Somerfield’s surprise, she made not the slightest objection when he followed her into the library after dinner.
“Penelope,” he said, “something has gone wrong. Won’t you tell me what it is? You look worried.”
She returned his anxious gaze, dry-eyed but speechless.
“Has that fellow, Prince Maiyo, done or said anything—”
She interrupted him.
“No!” she cried. “No! don’t mention his name, please! I don’t want to hear his name again just now.”
“For my part,” Somerfield said bitterly, “I never want to hear it again as long as I live!”
There was a short silence. Suddenly she turned towards him.
“Charlie,” she said, “you have asked me to marry you six times.”
“Seven,” he corrected. “I ask you again now—that makes eight.”
“Very well,” she answered, “I accept—on one condition.”
“On any,” he exclaimed, his voice trembling with joy. “Penelope, it sounds too good to be true. You can’t be in earnest.”
“I am,” she declared. “I will marry you if you will see that our engagement is announced everywhere tomorrow, and that you do not ask me for anything at all, mind, not even—not anything—for three months’ time, at least. Promise that until then you will not let me hear the sound of the word marriage?”
“I promise,” he said firmly. “Penelope, you mean it? You mean this seriously?”
She gave him her hands and a very sad little smile.
“I mean it, Charlie,” she answered. “I will keep my word.”