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.”