They were talking of the Prince during those few minutes before they
separated to dress for dinner. The whole of the house-party, with the
exception of the Prince himself, were gathered around the great open
fireplace at the north end of the hall. The weather had changed during
the afternoon, and a cold wind had blown in their faces on the homeward
drive. Every one had found comfortable seats here, watching the huge
logs burn, and there seemed to be a general indisposition to move. A
couple of young men from the neighborhood had joined the house-party,
and the conversation, naturally enough, was chiefly concerned with the
day’s sport. The young men, Somerfield especially, were inclined to
regard the Prince’s achievement from a somewhat critical standpoint.
“He rode the race well enough,” Somerfield admitted, “but the mare is
a topper, and no mistake. He had nothing to do but to sit tight and let
her do the work.”
“Of course, he hadn’t to finish either,” one of the newcomers, a Captain
Everard Wilmot, remarked. “That’s where you can tell if a fellow really
can ride or not. Anyhow, his style was rotten. To me he seemed to sit
his horse exactly like a groom.”
“You will, perhaps, not deny him,” the Duke remarked mildly, “a certain
amount of courage in riding a strange horse of uncertain temper, over a
strange country, in an enterprise which was entirely new to him.”
“I call it one of the most sporting things I ever heard of in my life,”
Lady Grace declared warmly.
Somerfield shrugged his shoulders.
“One must admit that he has pluck,” he remarked critically. “At the same
time I cannot see that a single effort of this sort entitles a man to be
considered a sportsman. He doesn’t shoot, nor does he ever ride except
when he is on military service. He neither plays games nor has he the
instinct for them. A man without the instinct for games is a fellow
I cannot understand. He’d never get along in this country, would he,
Wilmot?”
“No, I’m shot if he would!” that young man replied. “There must be
something wrong about a man who hasn’t any taste whatever for sport.”
Penelope suddenly intervened--intervened, too, in somewhat startling
fashion.
“Charlie,” she said, “you are talking like a baby! I am ashamed of you!
I am ashamed of you all! You are talking like narrow-minded, ignorant
little squireens.”
Somerfield went slowly white. He looked across at Penelope, but the
angry flash in his eyes was met by an even brighter light in her own.
“I will tell you what I think!” she exclaimed. “I think that you are all
guilty of the most ridiculous presumption in criticising such a man as
the Prince. You would dare--you, Captain Wilmot, and you, Charlie, and
you, Mr. Hannaway,” she added, turning to the third young man, “to stand
there and tell us all in a lordly way that the Prince is no sportsman,
as though that mysterious phrase disposed of him altogether as a
creature inferior to you and your kind! If only you could realize the
absolute absurdity of any of you attempting to depreciate a person so
immeasurably above you! Prince Maiyo is a man, not an overgrown boy to
go through life shooting birds, playing games which belong properly to
your schooldays, and hanging round the stage doors of half the theatres
in London. You are satisfied with your lives and the Prince is satisfied
with his. He belongs to a race whom you do not understand. Let him
alone. Don’t presume to imagine yourselves his superior because he does
not conform to your pygmy standard of life.”
Penelope was standing now, her slim, elegant form throbbing with the
earnestness of her words, a spot of angry color burning in her cheeks.
During the moment’s silence which followed, Lady Grace too rose to her
feet and came to her friend’s side.
“I agree with every word Penelope has said,” she declared.
The Duchess smiled.
“Come,” she said soothingly, “we mustn’t take this little affair too
seriously. You are all right, all of you. Every one must live according
to his bringing up. The Prince, no doubt, is as faithful to his
training and instincts as the young men of our own country. It is more
interesting to compare than to criticise.”
Somerfield, who for a moment had been too angry to speak, had now
recovered himself.
“I think,” he said stiffly, “that we had better drop the subject. I had
no idea that Miss Morse felt so strongly about it or I should not have
presumed, even here and amongst ourselves, to criticise a person who
holds such a high place in her esteem. Everard, I’ll play you a game of
billiards before we go upstairs. There’s just time.”
Captain Wilmot hesitated. He was a peace-loving man, and, after all,
Penelope and his friend were engaged.
“Perhaps Miss Morse--” he began.
Penelope turned upon him.
“I should like you all to understand,” she declared, “that every word I
said came from my heart, and that I would say it again, and more, with
the same provocation.”
There was a finality about Penelope’s words which left no room for
further discussion. The little group was broken up. She and Lady Grace
went to their rooms together.
“Penelope, you’re a dear!” the latter said, as they mounted the stairs.
“I am afraid you’ve made Charlie very angry, though.”
“I hope I have,” Penelope answered. “I meant to make him angry. I think
that such self-sufficiency is absolutely stifling. It makes me sometimes
almost loathe young Englishmen of his class.”
“And you don’t dislike the Prince so much nowadays?” Lady Grace remarked
with transparent indifference.
“No!” Penelope answered. “That is finished. I misunderstood him at
first. It was entirely my own fault. I was prejudiced, and I hated to
feel that I was in the wrong. I do not see how any one could dislike him
unless they were enemies of his country. Then I fancy that they might
have cause.”
Lady Grace sighed.
“To tell you the truth, Penelope,” she said, “I almost wish that he were
not quite so devotedly attached to his country.”
Penelope was silent. They had reached Lady Grace’s room now, and were
standing together on the hearthrug in front of the fire.
“I am afraid he is like that,” Penelope said gently. “He seems to have
none of the ordinary weaknesses of men. I, too, wish sometimes that he
were a little different. One would like to think of him, for his own
sake, as being happy some day. He reminds me somehow of the men who
build and build, toiling always through youth unto old age. There seems
no limit to their strength, nor any respite. They build a palace which
those who come after them must inhabit.”
Once more Lady Grace sighed. She was looking into the heart of the fire.
Penelope took her hands.
“It is hard sometimes, dear,” she said, “to realize that a thing is
impossible, that it is absolutely out of our reach. Yet it is better to
bring one’s mind to it than to suffer all the days.”
Lady Grace looked up. At that moment she was more than pretty. Her eyes
were soft and bright, the color had flooded her cheeks.
“But I don’t see _why_ it should be impossible, Penelope,” she
protested. “We are equals in every way. Alliances between our two
countries are greatly to be desired. I have heard my father say so, and
Mr. Haviland. The trouble is, Pen,” she added with trembling lips, “that
he does not care for me.”
“You cannot tell,” Penelope answered. “He has never shown any signs of
caring for any woman. Remember, though, that he would want you to live
in Japan.”
“I’d live in Thibet if he asked me to,” Lady Grace declared, raising
her handkerchief to her eyes, “but he never will. He doesn’t care. He
doesn’t understand. I am very foolish, Penelope.”
Penelope kissed her gently.
“Dear,” she said, “you are not the only foolish woman in the world.”...
Conversation amongst the younger members of the house-party at Devenham
Castle was a little disjointed that evening. Perhaps Penelope, who came
down in a wonderful black velveteen gown, with a bunch of scarlet roses
in her corsage, was the only one who seemed successfully to ignore the
passage of arms which had taken place so short a while ago. She talked
pleasantly to Somerfield, who tried to be dignified and succeeded only
in remaining sulky. Chance had placed her at some distance from the
Prince, to whom Lady Grace was talking with a subdued softness in her
manner which puzzled Captain Wilmot, her neighbor on the other side.
“I saw you with all the evening papers as usual, Bransome,” the Prime
Minister remarked during the service of dinner. “Was there any news?”
“Nothing much,” the Foreign Secretary replied. “Consuls are down another
point and the Daily Comet says that you are like a drowning man clinging
to the raft of your majority. Excellent cartoon of you, by the bye. You
shall see it after dinner.”
“Thank you,” the Prime Minister said. “Was there anything about you in
the same paper by any chance?”
“Nothing particularly abusive,” Sir Edward answered blandly. “By the
bye, the police declare that they have a definite clue this time,
and are going to arrest the murderer of Hamilton Fynes and poor dicky
Vanderpole tonight or tomorrow.”
“Excellent!” the Duke declared. “It would have been a perfect disgrace
to our police system to have left two such crimes undetected. Our
respected friend at the Home Office will have a little peace now.”
“How about me?” Bransome grumbled. “Haven’t I been worried to death,
too?”
The Prince, who had just finished describing to Lady Grace a typical
landscape of his country, turned toward Bransome.
“I think that I heard you say something about a discovery in connection
with those wonderful murder cases,” he said. “Has any one actually been
arrested?”
“My paper was an early edition,” Bransome answered, “but it spoke of a
sensational denouement within the next few hours. I should imagine that
it is all over by now. At the same time it’s absurd how the Press give
these things away. It seems that some fellow who was bicycling saw a man
get in and out of poor Dicky’s taxi and is quite prepared to swear to
him.”
“Has he not been rather a long time in coming forward with his
evidence?” the Prince remarked. “I do not remember to have seen any
mention of such a person in the papers before.”
“He watched so well,” Bransome answered, “and was so startled that he
was knocked down and run over. The detective in charge of the case found
him in a hospital.”
“These things always come out sooner or later,” the Prime Minister
remarked. “As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that our police
wait too long before they make an arrest. They play with their victim so
deliberately that sometimes he slips through their fingers. Very often,
too, they let a man go who would give himself away from sheer fright if
he felt the touch of a policeman upon his shoulder.”
“As a nation,” Bransome remarked, helping himself to the entree, “we
handle life amongst ourselves with perpetual kid gloves. We are always
afraid of molesting the liberty of the subject. A trifle more brutality
sometimes would make for strength. We are like a dentist whose work
suffers because he is afraid of hurting his patient.”
Somerfield was watching his fiancee curiously.
“Are you really very pale tonight, Penelope,” he asked, “or is it those
red flowers which have drawn all the color from your cheeks?”
“I believe that I am pale,” Penelope answered. “I am always pale when I
wear black and when people have disagreed with me. As a matter of fact,
I am trying to make the Prince feel homesick. Tell me,” she asked him
across the round table, “don’t you think that I remind you a little
tonight of the women of your country?”
The Prince returned her gaze as though, indeed, something were passing
between them of greater significance than that half-bantering question.
“Indeed,” he said, “I think that you do. You remind me of my country
itself--of the things that wait for me across the ocean.”
The Prince’s servant had entered the dining room and whispered in the
ear of the butler who was superintending the service of dinner. The
latter came over at once to the Prince.
“Your Highness,” he said, “some one is on the telephone, speaking from
London. They ask if you could spare half a minute.”
The Prince rose with an interrogative glance at his hostess, and the
Duchess smilingly motioned him to go. Even after he had left the room,
when he was altogether unobserved, his composed demeanor showed no signs
of any change. He took up the receiver almost blithely. It was Soto, his
secretary, who spoke to him.
“Highness,” he said, “the man Jacks with a policeman is here in the hall
at the present moment. He asks permission to search this house.”
“For what purpose?” the Prince asked.
“To discover some person whom he believes to be in hiding here,” the
secretary answered. “He explains that in any ordinary case he would have
applied for what they call a search warrant. Owing to your Highness’
position, however, he has attended here, hoping for your gracious
consent without having made any formal application.”
“I must think!” the Prince answered. “Tell me, Soto. You are sure that
the English doctor has had no opportunity of communicating with any
one?”
“He has had no opportunity,” was the firm reply. “If your Highness says
the word, he shall pass.”
“Let him alone,” the Prince answered. “Refuse this man Jacks permission
to search my house during my absence. Tell him that I shall be there at
three o’clock tomorrow afternoon and that at that hour he is welcome to
return.”
“It shall be done, Highness,” was the answer.
The Prince set down the receiver upon the instrument and stood for a
moment deep in thought. It was a strange country, this,--a strange end
which it seemed that he must prepare to face. He felt like the man who
had gone out to shoot lions and returning with great spoil had died of
the bite of a poisonous ant!