The Prince on his return from the library intercepted Penelope on her way across the hall.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I could not help overhearing some sentences of your conversation with Sir Charles Somerfield as we sat at dinner. You are going to talk with him now, is it not so?”
“As soon as he comes out from the dining room.”
He saw the hardening of her lips, the flash in her eyes at the mention of Somerfield’s name.
“Yes!” she continued, “Sir Charles and I are going to have a little understanding.”
“Are you sure,” he asked softly, “that it will not be a misunderstanding?”
She looked into his face.
“What does it matter to you?” she asked. “What do you care?”
“Come into the conservatory for a few minutes,” he begged. “You know that I take no wine and I prefer not to return into the dining room. I would like so much instead to talk to you before you see Sir Charles.”
She hesitated. He stood by her side patiently waiting.
“Remember,” he said, “that I am a somewhat privileged person just now. My days here are numbered, you see.”
She turned toward the conservatories.
“Very well,” she said, “I must be like every one else, I suppose, and spoil you. How dare you come and make us all so fond of you that we look upon your departure almost as a tragedy!”
He smiled.
“Indeed,” he declared, “there is a note of tragedy even in these simplest accidents of life. I have been very happy amongst you all, Miss Penelope. You have been so much kinder to me than I have deserved. You have thrown a bridge across the gulf which separates us people of alien tongues and alien manners. Life has been a pleasant thing for me here.”
“Why do you go so soon?” she whispered.
“Miss Penelope,” he answered, “to those others who ask me that question, I shall say that my mission is over, that my report has been sent to my Emperor, and that there is nothing left for me to do but to follow it home. I could add, and it would be true, that there is very much work for me still to accomplish in my own country. To you alone I am going to say something else.”
She was no longer pale. Her eyes were filled with an exceedingly soft light. She leaned towards him, and her face shone as the face of a woman who prays that she may hear the one thing in life a woman craves to hear from the lips she loves best.
“Go on,” she murmured.
“I want to ask you, Miss Penelope,” he continued, “whether you remember the day when you paid a visit to my house?”
“Very well,” she answered.
“I was showing you a casket,” he went on.
She gripped his arm.
“Don’t!” she begged. “Don’t, I can’t bear any more of that. You don’t know how horrible it seems to me! You don’t know—what fears I have had!”
He looked away from her.
“I have sometimes wondered,” he said, “what your thoughts were at that moment, what you have thought of me since.”
She shivered a little, but did not answer him.
“Very soon,” he reminded her, “I shall have passed out of your life.”
He heard the sudden, half-stifled exclamation. He felt rather than saw the eyes which pleaded with him, and he hastened on.
“You understand what is meant by the inevitable,” he continued. “Whatever has happened in the matters with which I have been concerned has been inevitable. I have had no choice—sometimes no choice in such events is possible. Do not think,” he went on, “that I tell you this to beg for your sympathy. I would not have a thing other than as it is. But when we have said goodbye, I want you to believe the best of me, to think as kindly as you can of the things which you may not be able to comprehend. Remember that we are not so emotional a nation as that to which you belong. Our affections are but seldom touched. We live without feeling for many days, sometimes for longer, even, than many days. It has not been so altogether with me. I have felt more than I dare, at this moment, to speak of.”
“Yet you go,” she murmured.
“Yet I go,” he assented. “Nothing in the world is more certain than that I must say farewell to you and all of my good friends here. In a sense I want this to be our farewell. Leaving out of the question just now the more serious dangers which threaten me, the result of my mission here alone will make me unpopular in this country. As the years pass, I fear that nothing can draw your own land and mine into any sort of accord. That is why I asked you to come here with me and listen while I said these few words to you, why I ask you now that, whatever the future may bring, you will sometimes spare me a kindly thought.”
“I think you know,” she answered, “that you need not ask that.”
“You will marry Sir Charles Somerfield,” he continued, “and you will be happy. In this country men develop late. Somerfield, too, will develop, I am sure. He will become worthy even, I trust, to be your husband, Miss Penelope. Something was said of his going into Parliament. When he is Foreign Minister and I am the Counsellor of the Emperor, we may perhaps send messages to one another, if not across the seas, through the clouds.”
A man’s footstep approached them. Somerfield himself drew near and hesitated. The Prince rose at once.
“Sir Charles,” he said, “I have been bidding farewell to Miss Penelope. I have had news tonight over the telephone and I find that I must curtail my visit.”
“The Duke will be disappointed,” Somerfield said. “Are you off at once?”
“Probably tomorrow,” the Prince answered. “May I leave Miss Penelope in your charge?” he added with a little bow. “The Duke, I believe, is awaiting me.”
He passed out of the conservatory. Penelope sat quite still.
“Well,” Somerfield said, “if he is really going—”
“Charlie,” she interrupted, “if ever you expect me to marry you, I make one condition, and that is that you never say a single word against Prince Maiyo.”
“The man whom a month ago,” he remarked curiously, “you hated!”
She shook her head.
“I was an idiot,” she said. “I did not understand him and I was prejudiced against his country.”
“Well, as he actually is going away,” Sir Charles remarked with a sigh of content, “I suppose it’s no use being jealous.”
“You haven’t any reason to be,” Penelope answered just a little wistfully. “Prince Maiyo has no room in his life for such frivolous creatures as women.”
The Prince found the rest of the party dispersed in various directions. Lady Grace was playing billiards with Captain Wilmot. She showed every disposition to lay down her cue when he entered the room.
“Do come and talk to us, Prince,” she begged. “I am so tired of this stupid game, and I am sure Captain Wilmot is bored to tears.”
The Prince shook his head.
“Thank you,” he said, “but I must find the Duke. I have just received a telephone message and I fear that I may have to leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” she cried in dismay.
The Prince sighed.
“If not tomorrow, the next day,” he answered. “I have had a summons—a summons which I cannot disobey. Shall I find your father in the library, Lady Grace?”
“Yes!” she answered. “He is there with Mr. Haviland and Sir Edward. Are you really going to waste your last evening in talking about treaties and such trifles?”
“I am afraid I must,” he answered regretfully.
“You are a hopelessly disappointing person,” she declared a little pitifully.
“It is because you are all much too kind to me that you think so,” he answered. “You make me welcome amongst you even as one of yourselves. You forget—you would almost teach me to forget that I am only a wayfarer here.”
“That is your own choice,” she said, coming a little nearer to him.
“Ah, no,” he answered. “There is no choice! I serve a great mistress, and when she calls I come. There are no other voices in the world for one of my race and faith. The library you said, Lady Grace? I must go and find your father.”
He passed out, closing the door behind him. Captain Wilmot chalked his cue carefully.
“That’s the queerest fellow I ever knew in my life,” he said. “He seems all the time as though his head were in the clouds.”
Lady Grace sighed. She too was chalking her cue.
“I wonder,” she said, “what it would be like to live in the clouds.”
The library at Devenham Castle was a large and sombre apartment, with high oriel windows and bookcases reaching to the ceiling. It had an unused and somewhat austere air. Tonight especially an atmosphere of gloom seemed to pervade it. The Prince, when he opened the door, found the three men who were awaiting him seated at an oval table at the further end of the room.
“I do not intrude, I trust?” the Prince said. “I understood that you wished me to come here.”
“Certainly,” the Duke answered, “we were sitting here awaiting your arrival. Will you take this easy chair? The cigarettes are at your elbow.”
The Prince declined the easy chair and leaned for a moment against the table.
“Perhaps later,” he said. “Just now I feel that you have something to say to me. Is it not so? I talk better when I am standing.”
It was the Prime Minister who made the first plunge. He spoke without circumlocution, and his tone was graver than usual.
“Prince,” he said, “this is perhaps the last time that we shall all meet together in this way. You go from us direct to the seat of your Government. So far there has been very little plain speaking between us. It would perhaps be more in accord with etiquette if we let you go without a word, and waited for a formal interchange of communications between your Ambassador and ourselves. But we have a feeling, Sir Edward and I, that we should like to talk to you directly. Before we go any further, however, let me ask you this question. Have you any objection, Prince, to discussing a certain matter here with us?”
The Prince for several moments made no reply. He was still standing facing the fireplace, leaning slightly against the table behind him. On his right was the Duke, seated in a library chair. On his left the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Bransome. The Prince seemed somehow to have become the central figure of the little group.
“Perhaps,” he said, “if you had asked me that question a month ago, Mr. Haviland, I might have replied to you differently. Circumstances, however, since then have changed. My departure will take place so soon, and the kindness I have met here from all of you has been so overwhelming, that if you will let me I should like to speak of certain things concerning which no written communication could ever pass between our two countries.”
“I can assure you, my dear Prince, that we shall very much appreciate your doing so,” Mr. Haviland declared.
“I think,” the Prince continued, “that the greatest and the most subtle of all policies is the policy of perfect truthfulness. Listen to me, then. The thing which you have in your mind concerning me is true. Two years I have spent in this country and in other countries of Europe. These two years have not been spent in purposeless travel. On the contrary, I have carried with me always a definite and very fixed purpose.”
The Prime Minister and Bransome exchanged rapid glances.
“That has been our belief from the first,” Bransome remarked.
“I came to Europe,” the Prince continued gravely, “to make a report to my cousin the Emperor of Japan as to whether I believed that a renewal of our alliance with you would be advantageous to my country. I need not shrink from discussing this matter with you now, for my report is made. It is, even now, on its way to the Emperor.”
There was a moment’s silence, a silence which in this corner of the great room seemed marked with a certain poignancy. It was the Prime Minister who broke it.
“The report,” he said, “is out of your hands. The official decision of your Government will reach us before long. Is there any reason why you should not anticipate that decision, why you should not tell us frankly what your advice was?”
“There is no reason,” the Prince answered. “I will tell you. I owe that to you at least. I have advised the Emperor not to renew the treaty.”
“Not to renew,” the Prime Minister echoed.
This time the silence was portentous. It was a blow, and there was not one of the three men who attempted to hide his dismay.
“I am afraid,” the Prince continued earnestly, “that to you I must seem something of an ingrate. I have been treated by every one in this country as the son of a dear friend. The way has been made smooth for me everywhere. Nothing has been hidden. From all quarters I have received hospitality which I shall never forget. But you are three just men. I know you will realize that my duty was to my country and to my country alone. No one else has any claims upon me. What I have seen I have written of. What I believe I have spoken.”
“Prince,” Mr. Haviland said, “there is no one here who will gainsay your honesty. You came to judge us as a nation and you have found us wanting. At least we can ask you why?”
The Prince sighed.
“It is hard,” he said. “It is very hard. When I tell you of the things which I have seen, remember, if you please, that I have seen them with other eyes than yours. The conditions which you have grown up amongst and lived amongst all your days pass almost outside the possibility of your impartial judgment. You have lived with them too long. They have become a part of you. Then, too, your national weakness bids your eyes see what you would have them see.”
“Go on,” Mr. Haviland said, drumming idly with his fingers upon the table.
“I have had to ask myself,” the Prince continued,—“it has been my business to ask myself what is your position as a great military power, and the answer I have found is that as a great military power it does not exist. I have had to ask myself what would happen to your country in the case of a European war, where your fleet was distributed to guard your vast possessions in every quarter of the world, and the answer to that is that you are, to all practical purposes, defenceless. In almost any combination which could arrange itself, your country is at the mercy of the invader.”
Bransome leaned forward in his chair.
“I can disprove it,” he declared firmly. “Come with me to Aldershot next week, and I will show you that those who say that we have no army are ignorant alarmists. The Secretary for War shall show you our new scheme for defensive forces. You have gone to the wrong authorities for information on these matters, Prince. You have been entirely and totally misled.”
The Prince drew a little breath.
“Sir Edward,” he said, “I do not speak to you rashly. I have not looked into these affairs as an amateur. You forget that I have spent a week at Aldershot, that your Secretary for War gave me two days of his valuable time. Every figure with which you could furnish me I am already possessed of. I will be frank with you. What I saw at Aldershot counted for nothing with me in my decision. Your standing army is good, beyond a doubt,—a well-trained machine, an excellent plaything for a General to move across the chessboard. It might even win battles, and yet your standing army are mercenaries, and no great nation, from the days of Babylon, has resisted invasion or held an empire by her mercenaries.”
“They are English soldiers,” Mr. Haviland declared. “I do not recognize your use of the word.”
“They are paid soldiers,” the Prince said, “men who have adopted soldiering as a profession. Come, I will not pause half-way. I will tell you what is wrong with your country. You will not believe it. Some day you will see the truth, and you will remember my words. It may be that you will realize it a little sooner, or I would not have dared to speak as I am speaking. This, then, is the curse which is eating the heart out of your very existence. The love of his Motherland is no longer a religion with your young man. Let me repeat that,—I will alter one word only. The love of his Motherland is no longerthereligion or even part of the religion of your young man. Soldiering is a profession for those who embrace it. It is so that mercenaries are made. I have been to every one of your great cities in the North. I have been there on a Saturday afternoon, the national holiday. That is the day in Japan on which our young men march and learn to shoot, form companies and attend their drill. Feast days and holidays it is always the same. They do what tradition has made a necessity for them. They do it without grumbling, whole-heartedly, with an enthusiasm which has in it something almost of passion. How do I find the youth of your country engaged? I have discovered. It is for that purpose that I have toured through England. They go to see a game played called football. They sit on seats and smoke and shout. They watch a score of performers—one score, mind—and the numbers who watch them are millions. From town to town I went, and it was always the same. I see their white faces in a huge amphitheatre, fifteen thousand here, twenty thousand there, thirty thousand at another place. They watch and they shout while these men in the arena play with great skill this wonderful game. When the match is over, they stream into public houses. Their afternoon has been spent. They talk it over. Again they smoke and drink. So it is in one town and another,—so it is everywhere,—the strangest sight of all that I have seen in Europe. These are your young men, the material out of which the coming generation must be fashioned? How many of them can shoot? How many of them can ride? How many of them have any sort of uniform in which they could prepare to meet the enemy of their country? What do they know or care for anything outside their little lives and what they call their love of sport,—they who spend five days in your grim factories toiling before machines,—their one afternoon, content to sit and watch the prowess of others! I speak to these footballers themselves. They are strong men and swift. They are paid to play this game. I do not find that even one of them is competent to strike a blow for his country if she needs him. It is because of your young men, then, Mr. Haviland, that I cannot advise Japan to form a new alliance with you. It is because you are not a serious people. It is because the units of your nation have ceased to understand that behind the life of every great nation stands the love of God, whatever god it may be, and the love of Motherland. These things may not be your fault. They may, indeed, be the terrible penalty of success. But no one who lives for ever so short a time amongst you can fail to see the truth. You are commercialized out of all the greatness of life. Forgive me, all of you, that I say it so plainly, but you are a race who are on the downward grade, and Japan seeks for no alliance save with those whose faces are lifted to the skies.”
The pause which followed was in itself significant. The Duke alone remained impassive. Bransome’s face was dark with anger. Even the Prime Minister was annoyed. Bransome would have spoken, but the former held out his hand to check him.
“If that is really your opinion of us, Prince,” he said, “it is useless to enter into argument with you, especially as you have already acted upon your convictions. I should like to ask you this question, though. A few weeks ago an appeal was made to our young men to bring up to its full strength certain forces which have been organized for the defence of the country. Do you know how many recruits we obtained in less than a month?”
“Fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy-five,” the Prince answered promptly, “out of nearly seven millions who were eligible. This pitiful result of itself might have been included amongst my arguments if I had felt that arguments were necessary. Mr. Haviland, you may drive some of these young men to arms by persuasion, by appealing to them through their womankind or their employers, but you cannot create a national spirit. And I tell you, and I have proved it, that the national spirit is not there. I will go further,” the Prince continued with increased earnestness, “if you still are not weary of the subject. I will point out to you how little encouragement the youth of this country receive from those who are above them in social station. In every one of your counties there is a hunt, cricket clubs, golf clubs in such numbers that their statistics absolutely overwhelm me. Everywhere one meets young men of leisure, well off, calmly proposing to settle down and spend the best part of their lives in what they call country life. They will look after their estates; they will hunt a little, shoot a little, go abroad for two months in the winter, play golf a little, lawn tennis, perhaps, or cricket. I tell you that there are hundreds and thousands of these young men, with money to spare, who have no uniform which they could wear,—no, I want to change that!” the Prince cried with an impressive gesture,—“who have no uniform which they will be able to wear when the evil time comes! How will they feel then, these young men of family, whose life has been given to sports and to idle amusements, when their womankind come shrieking to them for protection and they dare not even handle a gun or strike a blow! They must stand by and see their lands laid waste, their womankind insulted. They must see the land run red with the blood of those who offer a futile resistance, but they themselves must stand by inactive. They are not trained to fight as soldiers,—they cannot fight as civilians.”
“The Prince forgets,” Bransome remarked dryly, “that an invasion of this country—a practical invasion—is very nearly an impossible thing.”
The Prince laughed softly.
“My friend,” he said, “if I thought that you believed that, although you are a Cabinet Minister of England I should think that you were the biggest fool who ever breathed. Today, in warfare, nothing is impossible. I will guarantee, I who have had only ten years of soldiering, that if Japan were where Holland is today, I would halve my strength in ships and I would halve my strength in men, and I would overrun your country with ease at any time I chose. You need not agree with me, of course. It is not a subject which we need discuss. It is, perhaps, out of my province to allude to it. The feeling which I have in my heart is this. The laws of history are incontrovertible. So surely as a great nation has weakened with prosperity, so that her limbs have lost their suppleness and her finger joints have stiffened, so surely does the plunderer come in good time. The nation which loses its citizen army drives the first nail into its own coffin. I do not say who will invade you, or when, although, to my thinking, any one could do it. I simply say that in your present state invasion from some one or other is a sure thing.”
“Without admitting the truth of a single word you have said, my dear Prince,” the Prime Minister remarked, “there is another aspect of the whole subject which I think that you should consider. If you find us in so parlous a state, it is surely scarcely dignified or gracious, on the part of a great nation like yours, to leave us so abruptly to our fate. Supposing it were true that we were suffering a little from a period of too lengthened prosperity, from an attack of over-confidence. Still think of the part we have played in the past. We kept the world at bay while you fought with Russia.”
“That,” the Prince replied, “was one of the conditions of a treaty which has expired. If by that treaty our country profited more than yours, that is still no reason why we should renew it under altered conditions. Gratitude is an admirable sentiment, but it has nothing to do with the making of treaties.”
“We are, nevertheless,” Bransome declared, “justified in pointing out to you some of the advantages which you have gained from your alliance with us. You realize, I suppose, that save for our intervention the United States would have declared war against you four months ago?”
“Your good offices were duly acknowledged by my Government,” the Prince admitted. “Yet what you did was in itself of no consequence. It is as sure as north is north and south is south that you and America would never quarrel for the sake of Japan. That is another reason, if another reason is needed, why a treaty between us would be valueless. You and I—the whole world knows that before a cycle of years have passed Japan and America must fight. When that time comes, it will not be you who will help us.”
“An alliance duly concluded between this country—”
The Prince held out both his hands.
“Listen,” he said. “A fortnight ago a certain person in America wrote and asked you in plain terms what your position would be if war between Japan and America were declared. What was your reply?”
Bransome was on the point of exclaiming, but the Prime Minister intervened.
“You appear to be a perfect Secret Service to yourself, Prince,” he said smoothly. “Perhaps you can also tell us our reply?”
“I can tell you this much,” the Prince answered. “You did not send word back to Washington that your alliance was a sacred charge upon your honor and that its terms must be fulfilled to the uttermost letter. Your reply, I fancy, was more in the nature of a compromise.”
“How do you know what our reply was?” Mr. Haviland asked.
“To tell you the truth, I do not,” the Prince answered, smiling. “I have simply told you what I am assured that your answer must have been. Let us leave this matter. We gain nothing by discussing it.”
“You have been very candid with us, Prince,” Mr. Haviland remarked. “We gather that you are opposed to a renewal of our alliance chiefly for two reasons,—first, that you have formed an unfavorable opinion of our resources and capacity as a nation; and secondly, because you are seeking an ally who would be of service to you in one particular eventuality, namely, a war with the United States. You have spent some time upon the Continent. May we inquire whether your present attitude is the result of advances made to you by any other Power? If I am asking too much, leave my question unanswered.”
The Prince shook his head slowly.
“Tonight,” he said, “I am speaking to you as one who is willing to show everything that is in his heart. I will tell you, then. I have been to Germany, and I can assure you of my own knowledge that Germany possesses the mightiest fighting machine ever known in the world’s history. That I do truthfully and honestly believe. Yet listen to me. I have talked to the men and I have talked to the officers. I have seen them in barracks and on the parade ground, and I tell you this. When the time arrives for that machine to be set in motion, it is my profound conviction that the result will be one of the greatest surprises of modern times. I say no more, nor must you ask me any questions, but I tell you that we do not need Germany as an ally. I have been to Russia, and although our hands have crossed, there can be no real friendship between our countries till time has wiped out the memory of our recent conflict. France hates us because it does not understand us. The future of Japan is just as clear as the disaster which hangs over Great Britain. There is only one possible ally for us, only one possible combination. That is what I have written home to my cousin the Emperor. That is what I pray that our young professors will teach throughout Japan.. That is what it will be my mission to teach my country people if the Fates will that I return safely home. East and West are too far apart. We are well outside the coming European struggle. Our strength will come to us from nearer home.”
“China!” the Prime Minister exclaimed.
“The China of our own making,” the Prince declared, a note of tense enthusiasm creeping into his tone,—“China recreated after its great lapse of a thousand years. You and I in our lifetime shall not see it, but there will come a day when the ancient conquests of Persia and Greece and Rome will seem as nothing before the all-conquering armies of China and Japan. Until those days we need no allies. We will have none. We must accept the insults of America and the rough hand of Germany. We must be strong enough to wait!”
A footman entered the room and made his way to the Duke’s chair.
“Your Grace,” he said, “a gentleman is ringing up from Downing Street who says he is speaking from the Home Office.”
“Whom does he want?” the Duke asked.
“Both Your Grace and Mr. Haviland,” the man replied. “He wished me to say that the matter was of the utmost importance.”
The Duke rose at once and glanced at the clock.
“It is an extraordinary hour,” he remarked, “for Heseltine to be wanting us. Shall we go and see what it means, Haviland? You will excuse us, Prince?”
The Prince bowed.
“I think that we have talked enough of serious affairs tonight,” he said. “I shall challenge Sir Edward to a game of billiards.”
The Prince, still fully attired, save that in place of his dress coat he wore a loose smoking jacket, stood at the windows of his sitting room at Devenham Castle, looking across the park. In the somewhat fitful moonlight the trees had taken to themselves grotesque shapes. Away in the distance the glimmer of the sea shone like a thin belt of quicksilver. The stable clock had struck two. The whole place seemed at rest. Only one light was gleaming from a long low building which had been added to the coach houses of recent years for a motor garage. That one light, the Prince knew, was on his account. There his chauffeur waited, untiring and sleepless, with his car always ready for that last rush to the coast, the advisability of which the Prince had considered more than once during the last twenty-four hours. The excitement of the evening, the excitement of his unwonted outburst, was still troubling him. It was not often that he had so far overstepped the bounds which his natural caution, his ever-present self-restraint, imposed upon him. He paced restlessly to and fro from the sitting room to the bedroom and back again. He had told the truth,—the bare, simple truth. He had seen the letters of fire in the sky, and he had read them to these people because of their kindness, because of a certain affection which he bore them. To them it must have sounded like a man speaking in a strange tongue. They had not understood. Perhaps, even, they would not believe in the absolute sincerity of his motives. Again he paused at the window and looked over the park to that narrow, glittering stretch of sea. Why should he not for once forget the traditions of his race, the pride which kept him there to face the end! There was still time. The cruiser which the Emperor had sent was waiting for him in Southampton Harbor. In twenty-four hours he would be in foreign waters. He thought of these things earnestly, even wistfully, and yet he knew that he could not go. Perhaps they would be glad of an opportunity of getting rid of him now that he had spoken his mind. In any case, right was on their side. The end, if it must come, was simple enough!
He turned away from the window with a little shrug of the shoulders. Even as he did so, there came a faint knocking at the door. His servant had already retired. For a moment it seemed to him that it could mean but one thing. While he hesitated, the handle was softly turned and the door opened. To his amazement, it was Penelope who stood upon the threshold.
“Miss Morse!” he exclaimed breathlessly.
She held out her hand as though to bid him remain silent. For several seconds she seemed to be listening. Then very softly she closed the door behind her.
“Miss Penelope,” he cried softly, “you must not come in here! Please!”
She ignored his outstretched hand, advancing a little further into the room. There was tragedy in her white face. She seemed to be shaking in every limb, but not with nervousness. Directly he looked into her eyes, he knew very well that the thing was close at hand!
“Listen!” she whispered. “I had to come! You don’t know what is going on! For the last half hour the telephone has been ringing continuously. It is about you! The Home Office has been ringing up to speak to the Prime Minister. The Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard has been to see them. One of their detectives has collected evidence which justifies them in issuing a warrant for your arrest.”
“For my arrest,” the Prince repeated.
“Don’t you understand?” she continued breathlessly. “Don’t you see how horrible it is? They mean to arrest you for the murder of Hamilton Fynes and Dicky Vanderpole!”
“If this must be so,” the Prince answered, “why do they not come? I am here.”
“But you must not stay here!” she exclaimed. “You must escape! It is too terrible to think that you should—oh, I can’t say it!—that you should have to face these charges. If you are guilty, well, Heaven help you!—If you are guilty, I want you to escape all the same!”
He looked at her with the puzzled air of one who tries to reason with a child.
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “this is kind of you, but, after all, remember that I am a man, and I must not run away.”
“But you cannot meet these charges!” she interrupted. “You cannot meet them! You know it! Oh, don’t think I can’t appreciate your point of view! If you killed those men, you killed them to obtain papers which you believed were necessary for the welfare of your country. Oh, it is not I who judge you! You did not do it, I know, for your own gain. You did it because you are, heart and soul, a patriot. But here, alas! they do not understand. Their whole standpoint is different. They will judge you as they would a common criminal. You must fly,—you must, indeed!”
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “I cannot do that! I cannot run away like a thief in the dark. If this thing is to come, it must come.”
“But you don’t understand!” she continued, wringing her hands. “You think because you are a great prince and a prince of a friendly nation that the law will treat you differently. It will not! They have talked of it downstairs. You are not formally attached to any one in this country. You are not even upon the staff of the Embassy. You are here on a private mission as a private person, and there is no way in which the Government can intervene, even if it would. You are subject to its laws and you have broken them. For Heaven’s sake, fly! You have your motor car here. Let your man drive you to Southampton and get on board the Japanese cruiser. You mustn’t wait a single moment. I believe that tomorrow morning will be too late!”
He took her hands in his very tenderly and yet with something of reverence in his gesture. He looked into her eyes and he spoke very earnestly. Every word seemed to come from his heart.
“Dear Miss Penelope,” he said, “it is very, very kind of you to have come here and warned me. Only you cannot quite understand what this thing means to me. Remember what I told you once. Life and death to your people in this country seem to be the greatest things which the mind of man can hold. It is not so with us. We are brought up differently. In a worthy cause a true Japanese is ready to take death by the hand at any moment. So it is with me now. I have no regret. Even if I had, even if life were a garden of roses for me, what is ordained must come. A little sooner or a little later, it makes no matter.”
She sank on her knees before him.
“Can’t you understand why I am here?” she cried passionately. “It was I who told of the silken cord and knife!”
He was wholly unmoved. He even smiled, as though the thing were of no moment.
“It was right that you should do so,” he declared. “You must not reproach yourself with that.”
“But I do! I do!” she cried again. “I always shall! Don’t you understand that if you stay here they will treat you—”
He interrupted, laying his hand gently upon her shoulder.
“Dear young lady,” he said, “you need never fear that I shall wait for the touch of your men of law. Death is too easily won for that. If the end which you have spoken of comes, there is another way—another house of rest which I can reach.”
She rose slowly to her feet. The absolute serenity of his manner bespoke an impregnability of purpose before which the words died away on her lips. She realized that she might as well plead with the dead!
“You do not mind,” he whispered, “if I tell you that you must not stay here any longer?”
He led her toward the door. Upon the threshold he took her cold fingers into his hand and kissed them reverently.
“Do not be too despondent,” he said. “I have a star somewhere which burns for me. Tonight I have been looking for it. It is there still,” he added, pointing to the wide open window. “It is there, undimmed, clearer and brighter than ever. I have no fear.”
She passed away without looking up again. The Prince listened to her footsteps dying away in the corridor. Then he closed the door, and, entering his bedroom, undressed himself and slept...
When Prince Maiyo awoke on the following morning, the sunshine was streaming into the room, and his grave-faced valet was standing over his bed.
“His Highness’ bath is ready,” he announced.
The Prince dressed quickly and was first in the pleasant morning room, with its open windows leading on to the terrace. He strolled outside and wandered amongst the flower beds. Here he was found, soon afterwards, by the Duke’s valet.
“Your Highness,” the latter said, “His Grace has sent me to look for you. He would be glad if you could spare him a moment or two in the library.”
The Prince followed the man to the room where his host was waiting for him. The Duke, with his hands behind his back, was pacing restlessly up and down the apartment.
“Good morning, Duke,” the Prince said cheerfully. “Another of your wonderful spring mornings. Upon the terrace the sun is almost hot. Soon I shall begin to fancy that the perfume of your spring flowers is the perfume of almond and cherry blossom.”
“Prince,” the Duke said quietly, “I have sent for you as your host. I speak to you now unofficially, as an Englishman to his guest. I have been besieged through the night, and even this morning, with incomprehensible messages which come to me from those who administer the law in this country. Prince, I want you to remember that however effete you may find us as a nation from your somewhat romantic point of view, we have at least realized the highest ideals any nation has ever conceived in the administration of the law. Nobleman and pauper here are judged alike. If their crime is the same, their punishment is the same. There is no man in this country who is strong enough to arrest the hand of justice.”
The Prince bowed.
“My dear Duke,” he said, “it has given me very much pleasure, in the course of my investigations, to realize the truth of what you have just said. I agree with you entirely. You could teach us in Japan a great lesson on the fearless administration of the law. Now in some other countries—”
“Never mind those other countries,” the Duke interrupted gravely. “I did not send for you to enter into an academic discussion. I want you clearly to understand how I am placed, supposing a distinguished member of my household—supposing even you, Prince Maiyo—were to come within the arm of the law. Even the great claims of hospitality would leave me powerless.”
“This,” the Prince admitted, “I fully apprehend. It is surely reasonable that the stranger in your country should be subject to your laws.”
“Very well, then,” the Duke continued. “Listen to me, Prince. This morning a London magistrate will grant what is called a search warrant which will enable the police to search, from attic to cellar, your house in St. James’ Square. An Inspector from Scotland Yard will be there this afternoon awaiting your return, and he believes that he has witnesses who will be able to identify you as one who has broken the laws of this country. I ask you no questions. There is the telephone on the table. My eighty-horse-power Daimler is at the door and at your service. I understand that your cruiser in Southampton Harbor is always under steam. If there is anything more, in reason, that I can do, you have only to speak.” The Prince shook his head slowly.
“Duke,” he said, “please send away your car, unless it will take me to London quicker than my own. What I have done I have done, and for what I have done I will pay.”
The Duke laid his hands upon the young man’s shoulders and looked down into his face. The Duke was over six feet high, and broad in proportion. Before him the Prince seemed almost like a boy.
“Maiyo,” he said, “we have grown fond of you,—my wife, my daughter, all of us. We don’t want harm to come to you, but there is the American Ambassador watching all the time. Already he more than half suspects. For our sakes, Prince,—come, I will say for the sake of those who are grateful to you for your candor and truthfulness, for the lessons you have tried to teach us,—make use of my car. You will reach Southampton in half an hour.”
The Prince shook his head. His lips had parted in what was certainly a smile. At the corners they quivered, a little tremulous.
“My dear friend,” he said, and his voice had softened almost to affection, “you do not quite understand. You look upon the things which may come from your point of view and not from mine. Remember that, to your philosophy, life itself is the greatest thing born into the world. To us it is the least. If you would do me a service, please see that I am able to start for London in half an hour.”