The Great Prince Shan - E. Phillips Oppenheim (top books of all time .txt) 📗

of its contents. It suggested, did it not, that the principal movers against us would be Russian and China and—a country which you prefer just now not to mention?"

"But that country is our ally!" Mr. Mervin Brown exclaimed.

Nigel smiled a little sadly.

"She has been," he admitted. "Still, if you had been au fait with diplomatic history thirty years ago, Mr. Mervin Brown, you would know that she was on the point of ending her alliance with us and establishing one with Germany. It was only owing to the genius of one English statesman that at the last moment she almost reluctantly renewed her alliance with us. She is in the same state of doubt concerning our destiny to-day. She has seen our last two Governments forget that we are an Imperial Power and endeavour to apply the principles of sheer commercialism to the conduct of a great nation. She may have opened her eyes a thousand years later than we did, but she is awake enough now to know that this will not do. There is little enough of generosity amongst the nations; none amongst the Orientals. I have a conviction myself that there is a secret alliance between China and this other Power, a secret and quite possibly an aggressive alliance."

Mr. Mervin Brown sat for a few moments deep in thought. Somehow or other his face had gained in dignity since the beginning of the conversation. The nervous fear in his eyes had been replaced by a look of deep and solemn anxiety.

"If you are right, Lord Dorminster," he pronounced presently, "the world has rolled backwards these last ten years, and we who have failed to mark its retrogression may have a terrible responsibility thrust upon us."

"Politically, I am afraid I agree with you," Nigel replied. "Only the idealist, and the prejudiced idealist, can ignore the primal elements in human nature and believe that a few lofty sentiments can keep the nations behind their frontiers. War is a terrible thing, but human life itself is a terrible thing. Its principles are the same, and force will never be restrained except by force. If the League of Nations had been established upon a firmer and less selfish basis, it certainly might have kept the peace for another thirty or forty years. As it is, I believe that we are on the verge of a serious crisis."

"War for us is an impossibility," Mr. Mervin Brown declared frankly, "simply because we cannot fight. Our army consists of policemen; science has defeated the battleship; and practically the same conditions exist in the air."

"You sent for me, I presume, to ask for my advice," Nigel said. "At any rate, let me offer it. I have reason to believe that the negotiations between Prince Shan and Oscar Immelan have not been entirely successful. Send for Prince Shan and question him in a friendly fashion."

"Will you be my ambassador?" the Prime Minister asked.

Nigel hesitated for a moment.

"If you wish it," he promised. "Prince Shan is in some respects a strangely inaccessible person, but just at present he seems well disposed towards my household."

"Arrange, if you can," Mr. Mervin Brown begged, "to bring him here to-morrow morning. I will try to have available a copy of the dispatch from Jesson. It refers to matters which I trust Prince Shan will be able to explain."

Nigel lingered for a moment over his farewell.

"If I might venture upon a suggestion, sir," he said, "do not forget that Prince Shan is to all intents and purposes the autocrat of Asia. He has taught the people of the world to remodel their ideas of China and all that China stands for. And further than this, he is, according to his principles, a man of the strictest honour. I would treat him, sir, as a valued confrère and equal."

The Prime Minister smiled.

"Don't look upon me as being too intensely parochial, Dorminster," he said. "I know quite well that Prince Shan is a man of genius, and that he is a representative of one of the world's greatest families. I am only the servant of a great Power. He is a great Power in himself."

"And believe me," Nigel concluded fervently, as he made his adieux, "the greatest autocrat that ever breathed. If, when you exchange farewells with him, he says—'There will be no war'—we are saved, at any rate for the moment."

CHAPTER XXVIII

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