Maggie, very cool and neat, a vision of soft blue, a wealth of colouring
in the deep brown of her closely braided hair, her lips slightly parted
in a smile of welcome, felt, notwithstanding her apparent composure, a
strange disturbance of outlook and senses as Prince Shan was ushered
into her flower-bedecked little sitting room that afternoon. The unusual
formality of his entrance seemed somehow to suit the man and his manner.
He bowed low as soon as he had crossed the threshold and bowed again
over her fingers as she rose from her easy-chair.
"It makes me very happy that you receive me like this," he told her
simply. "It makes it so much easier for me to say the things that are in
my heart."
"Won't you sit down, please?" Maggie invited. "You are so tall, and I
hate to be completely dominated."
He obeyed at once, but he continued to talk with grave and purposeful
seriousness.
"I wish," he said, "to bring myself entirely into accord, for these few
minutes, with your western methods and customs. I address you,
therefore, Lady Maggie, with formal words, while I keep back in my
heart much that is struggling to express itself. I have come to ask you
to do me the great honour of becoming my wife."
Maggie sat for a few moments speechless. The thing which she had half
dreaded and half longed for--the low timbre of his caressing voice--was
entirely absent. Yet, somehow or other, his simple, formal words were at
least as disturbing. He leaned towards her, a quiet, dignified figure,
anxious yet in a sense confident. He had the air of a man who has
offered to share a kingdom.
"Your wife," Maggie repeated tremulously.
"The thought is new to you, perhaps," he went on, with gentle tolerance.
"You have believed the stories people tell that in my youth I was vowed
to celibacy and the priesthood. That is not true. I have always been
free to marry, but although to-day we figure as a great progressive
nation, many of the thousand-year-old ideas of ancient China have dwelt
in my brain and still sit enshrined in my heart. The aristocracy of
China has passed through evil times. There is no princess of my own
country whom I could meet on equal terms. So, you see, although it
develops differently, there is something of the snobbishness of your
western countries reflected in our own ideas."
"But I am not a princess," Maggie murmured.
"You are the princess of my soul," he answered, lowering his eyes for a
moment almost reverently. "I cannot quite hope to make you understand,
but if I took for my wife a Chinese lady of unequal mundane rank, I
should commit a serious offence against those who watch me from the
other side of the grave, and to whom I am accountable for every action
of my life. A lady of another country is a different matter."
"But I am an Englishwoman," Maggie said, "and I love my country. You
know what that means."
"I know very well," he admitted. "I had not meant to speak of those
things until later, but, for your country's sake, what greater alliance
could you seek to-day than to become the wife of him who is destined to
be the Ruler of Asia?"
Maggie caught hold of her courage. She looked into his eyes
unflinchingly, though she felt the hot colour rise into her cheeks.
"You did not speak to me of these things, Prince Shan, when I came to
your house last night," she reminded him.
His smile was full of composure. It was as though the truth which sat
enshrined in the man's soul lifted him above all the ordinary emotions
of fear of misunderstandings.
"For those few minutes," he confessed, "I was very angry. It brings
great pain to a man to see the thing he loves droop her wings, flutter
down to earth, and walk the common highway. It is not for you, dear one,
to mingle with that crowd who scheme and cheat, hide and deceive, for
any reward in the world, whether it be money, fame, or the love of
country. You were not made for those things, and when I saw you there,
so utterly in my power, having deliberately taken your risk, I was
angry. For a single moment I meant that you should realise the danger of
the path you were treading. I think that I did make you realise it."
Her eyes fell. He seemed to have established some compelling power over
her. He had met her thoughts before they were uttered, and answered even
her unspoken question.
"I wish you didn't make life so much like a kindergarten," she
complained, with an almost pathetic smile at the corners of her lips.
"It is a very different place," he rejoined fervently, "that I desire to
make of life for you. Listen, please. I have spoken to you first the
formal words which make all things possible between us, and now, if I
may, I let my heart speak. Somewhere not far from Pekin I have a palace,
where my lands slope to the river. For five months in the year my
gardens are starred with blue and yellow flowers, sweet-smelling as the
almond blossom, and there are little pagodas which look down on the blue
water, pagodas hung with creepers, not like your English evergreens, but
with blossoms, pink and waxen, which open as one looks at them and send
out sweet perfumes. When you are there with me, dear one, then I shall
speak to you in the language of my ancestors, which some day you will
understand, and you shall know that love has its cradle in the East, you
shall feel the flame of its birth, the furnace of its accomplishment.
Here my tongue moves slowly, yet I stoop my knee to you, I show you my
heart, and my lips tell you that I love. What that love is you shall
learn some day, if you have the will and the confidence and the soul.
Will you come back to China with me, Maggie?"
She rested her fingers on his hand.
"You are a magician," she confessed. "I am very English, and yet I want
to go."
He stood for a moment looking into her eyes. Then he stooped down and
raised her hesitating fingers to his lips.
"I believe that you will come," he said simply. "I believe that you will
ride over the clouds with me, back to the country of beautiful places.
So now I speak to you of serious things. Of money there shall be what
you wish, more than any woman even of your rank possesses in this
country. I shall give you, too, the sister of my great _Black Dragon_ so
that in five days, if you wish, you can pass from any of my palaces to
London. And further than that, behold!"
He drew from his pocket a roll of papers. Maggie recognised it, and her
heart beat faster. Curiously enough, just then she scarcely thought of
its world importance. She remembered only those few moments of strange
thrills, the wonder at finding him in that room, as he stood watching
her, the horror and yet the thrill of his measured words. He laid the
papers upon the table.
"Read them," he invited. "You will understand then the net that has been
closing around your country. You will understand the better if I tell
you this. China and Japan are one. It was my first triumph when
patriotism urged me into the field of politics. We have a single motto,
and upon that is based all that you may read there,--'_Europe for the
Europeans, Asia for us_.'"
Maggie was conscious of a sudden sense of escape from her almost
mesmeric state. The change in his tone, his calm references to things
belonging to another and altogether different world, had dissolved a
situation against the charm of which she had found herself powerless,
even unwilling to struggle. Once more she was back in the world where
for the last two years had lain her chief interests. She took the papers
in her hand and began reading them quickly through. Every now and then a
little exclamation broke from her lips.
"You will observe," her companion pointed out, looking over her
shoulder, "that on paper, at any rate, Japan is the great gainer. She
takes Australia, New Zealand and India. China absorbs Thibet and
reëstablishes her empire of forty years ago. The arrangement is based
very largely on racial conditions. China is a self-centered country. We
have not the power of fusion of the Japanese. You will observe further,
as an interesting circumstance, that the American foothold in Asia
disappears as completely as the British."
"But tell me," she demanded, "how are these things to be brought about,
and where does Immelan come in?"
Prince Shan smiled.
"Immelan's position," he explained, "is largely a sentimental one, yet
on the other hand he saves his country from what might be a grave
calamity. The commercial advantages he gains under this treaty might
seem to be inadequate, although in effect they are very considerable.
The point is this. He soothes his country of the pain which groans day
by day in her limbs. He gratifies her lust for vengeance against Great
Britain without plunging her into any desperate enterprise."
"And France escapes," she murmured.
"France escapes," he assented. "Rightly or wrongly, the whole of
Germany's post-war animosity was directed against England. She
considered herself deceived by certain British statesmen. She may have
been right or wrong. I myself find the evidence conflicting. At this
moment the matter does not concern us."
"And is Great Britain, then," Maggie asked, "believed to be so helpless
that she can be stripped of the greater part of her possessions at the
will of China and Japan?"
Prince Shan smiled.
"Great Britain," he reminded her, "has taken the League of Nations to
her heart. It was a very dangerous thing to do."
"Still," Maggie persisted, "there remains the great thing which you have
not told me. These proposals, I admit, would strike a blow at the heart
of the British Empire, but how are they to be carried into effect?"
"If I had signed the agreement," he replied, "they could very easily
have been carried into effect. You have heard already, have you not,
through some of your agents, of the three secret cities? In the
eastern-most of them is the answer to your question."
She smiled.
"Is that a challenge to me to come out and discover for myself all that
I want to know?"
"If you come," he answered, "you shall certainly know everything. There
is another little matter, too, which waits for your decision."
"Tell me of it at once, please," she begged, with a sudden conviction of
his meaning.
He obeyed without hesitation.
"I spoke just now," he reminded her, "of the three secret cities. They
are secret because we have taken pains to keep them so. One is in
Germany, one in Russia, and one in China. A casual traveller could
discover little in the German one, and little more, perhaps, in the
Russian one. Enough to whet his curiosity, and no more. But in China
there is the whole secret at the mercy of a successful spy. A man named
Jesson, Lady Maggie--"
"I telephoned you about him before luncheon to-day," she interrupted.
"I had your message," he replied, "and the man is safe for the moment.
At the same time, Lady Maggie, let me remind you that this is a game the
rules of which are known the world over. Jesson has now in his
possession the secret on which I might build, if I chose, plans to
conquer the world. He knew the penalty if he was discovered, and he was
discovered. To spare his life is sentimentalism pure and simple, yet if
it is your will, so be it."
"You are very good to me," she declared gratefully, "all the more good
because half the time I can see that you scarcely understand."
"That I do not admit," he protested. "I understand even where I do not
sympathise. You make of life the greatest boon on earth. We of my race
and way of thinking are taught to take it up or lay it down, if not with
indifference, at any rate with a very large share of resignation.
However, Jesson's life is spared. From what I have heard of the man, I
imagine he will be very much surprised."
She gave a little sigh of relief.
"You have given me a great deal of your confidence," she said
thoughtfully.
"Is it not clear," he answered, "why I have done so? I ask of you the
greatest boon a woman has to give. I do not seek to bribe, but if you
can give me the love that will make my life a dream of happiness, then
will it not be my duty to see that no shadow of misfortune shall come to
you or yours? China stands between Japan and Russia, and I am China."
She gave him her hands.
"You are very wonderful," she declared. "Remember that at a time like
this, it is not a woman's will alone that speaks. It is her soul which
lights the way. Prince Shan, I do not know."
He smiled gravely.
"I leave," he told her, "on Friday, soon after dawn."
She found herself trembling.
"It is a very short time," she faltered.
They had both risen to their feet. He was close to her now, and she felt
herself caught up in a passionate wave of inertia, an absolute inability
to protest or resist. His arms were clasped around her lightly and with
exceeding gentleness. He leaned down. She found herself wondering, even
in that tumultuous moment, at the strange clearness of his complexion,
the whiteness of his firm, strong teeth, the soft brilliance of his
eyes, which caressed her even before his lips rested upon hers.
"I think that you will come," he whispered. "I think that you will be
very happy."