The Great Prince Shan by E. Phillips Oppenheim (red seas under red skies .TXT) 📕

"Am I a prisoner?" she sobbed.

"You came of your own free will," he replied. "You will stay for my pleasure and for the joy of my being. As for these things," he went on, moving slowly to the cabinet, picking up the pile of papers and throwing them on one side contemptuously, "these are only one's amusements. I pass my lighter hours with them. They interest me in the same manner as a chess problem. We do not care, we in the mighty East, which of you holds your head highest this side of Suez. All you western nations are to us a peck of dust outside our palace gates. Listen, dear one. We can leave, if you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these sordid lands into the everlasting sunshine of the East, you will not care any longer about these people who go about the world on all fours. Day by day you will know what life and love mean. You will find the cloying weight of material things pass from your brain and body, and the joy of holy and wonderful living take their place."

Her whole being was in a turmoil. She drew nearer to the papers upon the table. She was now within a yard of Prince Shan himself. He made no effort to intercept her, no movement of any sort to stop her. Only his eyes never left her face, and she felt a madness which seemed to be choking the life out of her, a pounding of her heart against her ribs, a strange and wonderful joy, a joy in which there was no fear, a joy of new things and new hopes. With the papers for which she had come only a few yards away, she forgot them. She turned her head slowly. His arms seemed to steal out from those long, silken sleeves. She suddenly felt herself held in a wonderful embrace.

"Dear lady of all my desires," he whispered in her ear, "you shall make me happy and find the secret of happiness yourself in giving, in suffering, in love."

For a long and wonderful moment she lay in his arms. She felt the soft burning of his kisses, the call of the room with its intoxicating, yet strangely ascetic perfume, the room to which all the time he seemed to be gently leading her. And then a flood of strange, alien recollections and realisations seemed to bring her from a better place back to a worse,—the sound of a passing taxicab, the distant booming of Big Ben, sounds of the world outside, the actual day-by-day world, with its day-by-day code of morals, the world in which she lived, and her friends, and all that had made life for her. She drew away, and he watched the change in her.

"I want to go!" she cried. "Let me go!"

"You are no prisoner," he assured her sadly.

He clapped his hands. She had reached the door by now and found the handle yield to her fingers. Outside in the hall, the front door stood open, and a heavy rain was beating in on the white flags. She looked around. She was in her own atmosphere here. Their eyes met, and his were very sorrowful.

"My servants are assembling," he said. "You will find a car at your service."

Even then she hesitated. There was a strange return of the wonderful emotion of a few minutes ago. She hoped almost painfully that he would call. Instead, he lifted the silk hangings and passed out of sight. Somehow or other, she made her way down the hall. A butler stood upon the steps, another servant was holding open the door of a limousine just drawn up. She had no distinct recollection of giving any address. She simply threw herself back amongst the cushions. It was not until they were in Piccadilly that she suddenly remembered that she had left upon the table the papers he had scornfully offered her. Then she began to laugh.

It chanced that the box was empty when Maggie, with flying footsteps, hastened down the corridor and pushed open the door. She sank into a chair, her knees trembling, her senses still dazed. Deliberately, although with hot and trembling fingers, she folded over and tore into small pieces a programme of the dances, which she had picked up from an adjoining chair. The action, insignificant though it was, seemed to bring her back into touch with the real and actual world, the world of music and wild gayety, of swiftly moving feet, of laughter and languorous voices. For a brief space of time she had escaped, she had wandered a little way into an unknown country, a country from whose thrilling dangers she had emerged with a curious feeling that life would never be altogether the same again. She glanced at the clock at the back of the box. She had been absent from the Hall altogether only about an hour and twenty minutes. There was still at least an hour before it would be possible for her to plead weariness and escape. And opposite, in the shadows of the distant box, the mock Prince Shan seemed always to be gazing at her with that cryptic smile upon his lips.

Presently the door was stealthily opened. A face as pale as death, with black eyes like pieces of coal, was framed for a moment in the shadowed slit. A little waft of familiar perfume stole in. La Belle Nita, her flaming lips widely parted, as soon as she recognised the sole occupant of the box, crept through the opening and closed the door again.

"You are here?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Your courage failed you? You did not go?"

"I have been and returned," Maggie answered. "Now tell me what I have done that you should have plotted this thing against me?"

The girl sat on the edge of a chair and for a moment hummed the refrain of a sad chant, as she rocked slowly backwards and forwards.

"'What have you done?' the rose asked the butterfly. 'What have you done?' the mimosa blossom asked the little blue bird, whose wings fluttered amongst her leaves. 'You have taken love from me, love which is the blossom of life.'"

"It sounds very picturesque," Maggie said coldly, "but I do not follow your allegory. What I want to know is why you lied to me, why you sent me to that house to meet Prince Shan?"

"How did I lie to you?" Nita demanded. "The papers you sought were there. Were they not yours for the asking, or was the price too great?"

"The papers were there, certainly," Maggie acquiesced, "but you knew very well—"

She stopped short. Slowly the Oriental idea of it all was beginning to frame itself in her mind. She dimly understood the bewilderment in the other's face.

"The papers were there, and he, the most wonderful of all men, was there," Nita murmured, "yet you leave him while the night is yet young, you return here without them!"

Maggie rose from her chair, moved to the side table and poured herself out a glass of wine, which she drank hastily. Anything to escape from the scornful wonder of those questioning eyes!

"I did not go there," she said, "to make bargains with Prince Shan. I believed as you wished me to believe, that he was here in that box. I believed that I should have found the house empty, should have found what I wanted and have escaped with it. Why did you do this thing? Why did you send me on that errand when you knew that Prince Shan was there?"

"It was my desire that he should know that you are no different from other women," was the calm reply. "I was a spy for him. You are a spy—against him."

"It was a deliberate plot, then!" Maggie exclaimed, trying to feel the anger which she imparted to her tone.

La Belle Nita suddenly laughed, softly and like a bird.

"You very, very foolish Englishwoman," she said. "A hand leaned down from Heaven, and you liked better to stay where you were, but I am glad."

"And why?"

"Because I have been his slave," the girl continued. "At odd, strange moments he has shown me a little love, he has let me creep into a small corner of his heart. Now I am cast out, and there is no more life for me because there is no more love, and there is no more love because, having felt his, no other can come after. Here have I sat with all the tortures of Hell burning in my blood because I knew that you and he were there alone, because I was never sure that, after all, I was not doing my lord's will. And now I know that I suffered in vain. You did not understand."

Maggie looked across at her visitor reflectively. She was beginning to regain her poise.

"Listen," she said, "did you seriously expect me to accept Prince Shan as a lover?"

The girl's eyes were round with wonder.

"It would be your great good fortune," she murmured, "if he should offer you so wonderful a thing."

Maggie laughed,—persisted in her laugh, although it sounded a little hard and the mirth a little forced.

"I cannot reason with you," she declared, "because you would not understand. If you love him so much, why not go back to him? You will find him quite alone. I dare say you know the secrets of his lockless doors and hordes of unseen servants."

La Belle Nita rose to her feet. About her lips there flickered the faintest smile.

"Young English lady," she said, "I shall not go, because I am shut for ever out of his heart. But listen; would you have me go?"

For a moment Maggie's poise was gone again. A strange uncertainty was once more upon her. She was terrified at her own feelings. The smile on the other's lips deepened and then passed away.

"Ah," she murmured, as with a little bow she turned towards the door, "you are not all snow and ice, then! There is something of the woman in you. He must have known that. I am better content."

Alone in the box, Maggie was confronted once more with spectres. She felt all the fear and the sweetness of this new awakening. The old dangers and problems, the danger of life and death, the problem of her well-ordered days, fell away from her as trifles. There was wilder music in the world than any to which she had yet listened,—music which seemed to be awakening vibrant melodies in her terrified heart. The curtain which hung about the forbidden world had been suddenly lifted. Little shivers of fear convulsed her. Her standards were confused, her whole sense of values disturbed. Her primal virginity, left to itself because it had never needed a guard, had suddenly become a questioning thing. She sat there face to face with this new phase in her life. She was not even conscious of the abrupt pause in the music, the agitated murmur of voices, the sudden cessation of that rhythmical sweep of footsteps on the floor below.

The door of the box was once more opened. Naida, attired as a lady of the Russian Court, entered, followed by Nigel. Both were obviously disturbed. Nigel, who was in ordinary evening dress, carrying his discarded mask in his hand, was paler than usual and exceedingly grave. Naida's dark eyes, too, seemed filled with a sense of awesome things. Almost at the same moment, Maggie realised for the first time that the music had ceased, that there was a hush outside, curiously perceptible, almost audible.

"What has happened?" she asked breathlessly.

Nigel had poured out a glass of wine and was holding it to Naida's lips.

"Something very terrible," he said quietly. "Prince Shan was murdered in his box there a few minutes ago."

Maggie half rose to her feet. The