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

"I have read what is known of the history of most of the countries of the world," he admitted.

"There have been men," she persisted, "who have dealt in empires for the price of a woman's smile."

"Such men have loved," he said, "as I love."

"Yet for you life has always been a great and lofty thing," she reminded him. "You could not stand where you do if you had not realised the beauty and wonder of sacrifice. Fate has given the peace of the world into your keeping. You will not juggle with the trust?"

He rose to his feet. A servant stood almost immediately at the open door.

"Fate and an American engineer," he remarked with a smile. "I thank you, dear lady, for your visit. You will hear my news before I leave."

She looked into his eyes for a moment.

"It is a great decision," she said, "which rests with you!"

An hour or so later, Prince Shan left his house in Curzon Street and, followed at a discreet distance by two members of his household, strolled into the Park. It had pleased him that morning to conform rigorously to the mode of dress adopted by the fashionable citizens of the country which he was visiting. Few people, without the closest observation, would have taken him for anything but a well-turned-out, exceedingly handsome and distinguished-looking Englishman. He carried himself with a faint air of aloofness, as though he moved amongst scenes in which he had no actual concern, as though he were living, in thought at any rate, in some other world. The morning was brilliantly sunny, and both the promenade and the Row were crowded. Slightly hidden behind a tree, he stood and watched. A gay crowd of promenaders passed along the broad path, and the air was filled with the echo of laughter, the jargon of the day, intimate references to a common world, invitations lightly given and lightly accepted. It was Sunday morning, in a season when colour was the craze of the moment, and the women who swept by seemed to his rather mystical fancy like the flowers in some of the great open spaces he knew so well, stirred into movement by a soft wind. They were very beautiful, these western women; handsome, too, the men with whom they talked and flirted. Always they had that air, however, of absolute complacency, as though they felt nothing of the quest which lay like a thread of torture amongst the nerves of Prince Shan's being. There was no more distinguished figure among the men there than he himself, and yet the sense of alienation grew in his heart as he watched. There were many familiar faces, many to whom he could have spoken, no one who would not have greeted him with interest, even with gratification. And yet he had never been so deeply conscious of the gulf which lay between the oriental fatalism of his life and ways and the placid self-assurance of these westerners, so well-content with the earth upon which their feet fell. He had judged with perfect accuracy the place which he held in their thoughts and estimation. He was something of a curiosity, his title half a joke, the splendour of his long race a thing unrealisable by these scions of a more recent aristocracy. Yet supposing that this new wonder had not come into his life, that Immelan had been a shade more eloquent, had pleaded his cause upon a higher level, that Naida Karetsky also had formed a different impression of the world which he was studying so earnestly,—what a transformation he could have brought upon this light-hearted and joyous scene! The scales had so nearly balanced; at the bottom of his heart he was conscious of a certain faint contempt for the almost bovine self-satisfaction of a nation without eyes. Literature and painting, art in all its far-flung branches, even science, were suffering in these days from a general and paralysing inertia. Life which demanded no sacrifice of anybody was destructive of everything in the nature of aspiration. Sport seemed to be the only incentive to sobriety, the desire to live long in this fat land the only brake upon an era of self-indulgence. He looked eastwards to where his own millions were toiling, with his day-by-day maxims in their ears, and it seemed to his elastic fancy that he was inhaling a long breath of cooler and more vigorous life.

The current of his reflections was broken. He had moved a little towards the rails, and he was instantly aware of the girl cantering towards him,—a slight, frail figure, she seemed, upon a great bay horse. She wore a simple brown habit and bowler hat, and she sat her horse with that complete lack of self-consciousness which is the heritage of a born horsewoman. She was looking up at the sky as she cantered towards him, with no thought of the crowds passing along the promenade. Yet, as she drew nearer, she suddenly glanced down, and their eyes met. As though obeying his unspoken wish, she reined in her horse and came close to the rails behind which he stood for a moment bareheaded. There was the faintest smile upon her lips. She was amazingly composed. She had asked herself repeatedly, almost in terror, how they should meet when the time came. Now that it had happened, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. She was scarcely conscious even of embarrassment.

"You are demonstrating to the world," she remarked, "that the reports of your death this morning were exaggerated?"

"I had forgotten the incident," he assured her calmly.

His callousness was so unaffected that she shivered a little.

"Yet this Sen Lu, this man for whom you were mistaken, was an intimate member of your household, was he not?"

"Sen Lu was a very good friend," Prince Shan answered. "He did his duty for many years. If he knows now that his life was taken for mine, he is happy to have made such atonement."

She manœuvred her horse a little to be nearer to him.

"Why was Sen Lu murdered?" she asked.

"There are those," he replied, "of whom I myself shall ask that question before the day is over."

"You have an idea, then?" she persisted.

"If," he said, "you desire my whole confidence, it is yours."

She sat looking between her horse's ears.

"To tell you the truth," she confessed, "I do not know what I desire. Your philosophy, I suppose, does not tolerate moods. I shall escape from them some time, I expect, but just now I seem to have found my way into a maze. The faces of these people don't even seem real to me, and as for you, I am perfectly certain that you have never been in China in your life."

"Tell me the stimulant that is needed to raise you from your apathy," he asked. "Will you find it in the rapid motion of your horse—a very noble animal—in the joy of this morning's sunshine and breeze, or in the toyland where these puppets move and walk?" he added, glancing down the promenade. "Dear Lady Maggie, I beg permission to pay you a visit of ceremony. Will you receive me this afternoon?"

She knew then what it was that she had been hoping for. She looked down at him and smiled.

"At four o'clock," she invited.

She nodded, touched her horse lightly with the whip, and cantered off. Prince Shan found himself suddenly accosted by a dozen acquaintances, all plying him with questions. He listened to them with an amused smile.

"The whole affair is a very simple one," he said. "A member of my household was assassinated last night. It was probably a plot against my own life. Those things are more common with us, perhaps, than over here."

"Jolly country, China, I should think," one of the younger members of the group remarked. "You can buy a man's conscience there for ninepence."

Prince Shan looked across at the speaker gravely.

"The market value here," he observed, "seems a little higher, but the supply greater."

"Touché!" Karschoff laughed. "There is another point of view, too. The further east you go, the less value life has. Westwards, it becomes an absolute craze to preserve and coddle it, to drag it out to its furthermost span. The American millionaire, for example, has a resident physician attached to his household and is likely to spend the aftermath of his life in a semi-drugged and comatose condition. And in the East, who cares? If not to-day—to-morrow! Inevitability, which is the nightmare of the West, is the philosophy of the East. By the by, Prince," he added, "have you any theory as to last night's attempt?"

"That is just the question," Prince Shan replied, "which two very intelligent gentlemen from Scotland Yard asked me this morning. Theory? Why should I have a theory?"

"The attempt was without a doubt directed against you," Karschoff observed. "Do you imagine that it was personal or political?"

"How can I tell?" the Prince rejoined carelessly. "Why should any one desire my death? These things are riddles. Ah! Here comes my friend Immelan!" he went on. "Immelan, help us in this discussion. You are not one of those who place the gift of life above all other things in the world!"

"My own or another's?" Immelan asked, with blunt cynicism.

"I trust," was the bland reply, "that you are, as I have always esteemed you, an altruist."

"And why?"

Prince Shan shrugged his shoulders. He was a very agreeable figure in the centre of the little group of men, the hands which held his malacca cane behind his back, the smile which parted his lips benign yet cryptic.

"Because," he explained, "it is a great thing to have more regard for the lives of others than for one's own, and there are times," he added, "when it is certainly one's own life which is in the more precarious state."

There was a little dispersal of the crowd, a chorus of congratulations and farewells. Immelan and Prince Shan were left alone. The former seemed to have turned paler. The sun was warm, and yet he shivered.

"Just what do you mean by that, Prince?" he asked.

"You shall walk with me to my house, and I will tell you," was the quiet reply.

"I suppose," Immelan suggested, as the two men reached the house in Curzon Street, "it would be useless to ask you to break your custom and lunch with me at the Ritz or at the club?"

His companion smiled deprecatingly.

"I have adopted so many of your western customs," he said apologetically. "To this lunching or dining in public, however, I shall never accustom myself."

Immelan laughed good-naturedly. The conversation of the two men on their way from the Park had been without significance, and some part of his earlier nervousness seemed to be leaving him.

"We all have our foibles," he admitted. "One of mine is to have a pretty woman opposite me when I lunch or dine, music somewhere in the distance, a little sentiment, a little promise, perhaps."

"It is not artistic," Prince Shan pronounced calmly. "It is not when the wine mounts to the head, and the sense of feeding fills the body, that men speak best of the things that lie near their hearts. Still, we will let that pass. Each of us is made differently. There is another thing, Immelan, which I have to say to you."

They passed into the reception room, with its shining floor, its marvellous rugs, its silken hangings, and its great vases of flowers. Prince Shan led his companion into a recess, where the light failed to penetrate so completely as into the rest of the apartment. A wide settee, piled with cushions, protruded from the wall in semicircular shape. In front of it was a round ebony table, upon which stood a great yellow bowl filled with lilies. Prince Shan gave an order to one of the servants who had followed them into the room and threw himself at full length among