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The Great Prince Shan, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 14 |
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_ CHAPTER XIV The introduction which Prince Shan had requested came about very naturally. The lounge of the hotel was more than usually crowded that evening, and the table towards which an attentive _maitre d'hotel_ conducted Immelan and his companion was next to the one reserved by Nigel. The transference of a chair opened up conversation. Immelan was bland and ingenuous as usual, introducing every one, glad, apparently, to make one common party. Prince Shan remained by Maggie's side after the introduction had been effected. A chair which Immelan schemed to offer him elsewhere he calmly refused. "This is my first evening in London, Lady Maggie," he said. "I am fortunate." "Why?" she asked. He looked at her meditatively. Then he accepted her unspoken invitation and seated himself on the lounge by her side. "We who come from the self-contained countries of the world," he explained, "and China is one of them, come always with the desire and longing for new experiences, new sensations. My own appetite for these is insatiable." "And am I a new sensation?" Maggie asked, glancing up at him innocently enough, but with a faint gleam of mockery in her eyes. "You are," he answered placidly. "You reveal--or rather you suggest--the things of which in my country we know nothing." "But I thought you were all so hyper-civilised over there," Maggie observed. "Please tell me at once what it is that I possess which your womenkind do not." "If I answered all that your question implies," he said, "I should make use of speech too direct for the conventions of the world in which you live. I would simply remind you that whereas we men in China may claim, I think, to have reached the same standard of culture and civilisation as Europeans, we have left our womenkind far behind in that respect. The Chinese woman, even the noble lady, does not care for serious affairs. The God of the Mountains, as they call him, made her a flower to pluck, a beautiful plaything for her chosen mate. She remains primitive. That is why, in time, man wearies of her, why the person of imagination looks sometimes westward, finds a new joy and a strange new fascination in a wholly different type of femininity." "But you have many European women now living in China," Maggie reminded him,--"American women, too, and they are so much admired everywhere." "The Chinese, especially we of the nobility," Prince Shan replied, "are born with racial prejudices. An individual may forgive an affront, a nation never. The days of retaliation by force of arms may indeed have passed, but the gentleman of China, even of these days, is not likely to take to his heart the woman of America." "Dear me," Maggie murmured, "isn't it rather out of date to persevere in these ancient feuds?" "Feeling of all sorts is out of date," he admitted patiently, "yet there are some things which endure. I should be honoured by your friendship, Lady Maggie." "This is very sudden," she laughed. "I am very flattered--but what does it mean?" "Permission to call upon you--and your aunt," he added, glancing around the little circle. "We shall be delighted," Maggie replied, "but you won't like my aunt. She is a little deaf, and she has no sense of humour. She has come to live with us because Lord Dorminster and I are not really related, although we call ourselves cousins, and I should hate to leave Belgrave Square. You shall take me out to tea to-morrow afternoon instead, if you like." A smouldering fire burned for a moment in his eyes. "That will make me very happy," he said. "I shall attend you at four o'clock." Thenceforward, conversation became general. Prince Shan, with the air of one who has achieved his immediate object, left his place by Maggie's side and talked with grave courtesy to her aunt. Presently the little party broke up, bound, it seemed, for the same theatre. Nigel had become a little serious. "Well, you've made a good start, Maggie," he remarked, leaning forward in his place in the limousine. "Have I?" Maggie answered thoughtfully. "I wonder!" "I wish we could get at him in some different fashion," her companion observed uneasily. "My dear man, I'm hardened to these enterprises," Maggie assured him. "I even let the President of the German Republic hold my hand once when his wife wasn't looking. Nothing came of it," she added, with a little sigh. "These Germans are terribly sentimental when it doesn't cost them anything. They've no idea of a fair exchange." "By a 'fair exchange' you mean," her aunt suggested, a little censoriously, "that you expected him to barter his country's secrets for a touch of your fingers?" "Or my lips, perhaps," Maggie added, with a little grimace. "Please don't look so serious, Aunt. I'm not really in love with Prince Shan, you know, and to-night I rather feel like marrying Nigel, if I can get him back again. I like his waistcoat buttons, and the way he has tied his tie." "Too late, my dear," Nigel warned her. "I give you formal notice. I have transferred my affections." "That decides me," Maggie declared firmly. "I shall collect you back again. I hate to lose an admirer." "The nonsense you young people talk!" Mrs. Bollington Smith observed, as they reached the theatre. Chalmers joined them soon after they had reached their box. He sank into the empty place by Maggie's side which Nigel had just vacated and leaned forward confidentially. "So you've started the campaign," he whispered. "How do you know?" she enquired. "I was at the Ritz to-night," he told her, "at the far end of the room with my Chief and two other men. We were behind you in the lounge afterwards." "I was so engrossed," Maggie murmured. Chalmers paused for a moment to watch the performance. When he spoke again, his voice, was, for him, unusually serious. "Young lady," he said, "I told you on our first meeting my idea of diplomacy. Truth! No beating about the bush--just the plain, unvarnished truth! I have conceived an affection for you." "Goodness gracious!" Maggie exclaimed softly. "Are you going to propose?" "Nothing," he assured her, "is farther from my thoughts. Lest I should be misunderstood, let me substitute the term 'affectionate interest' for 'affection.' I have felt uneasy ever since I saw Prince Shan watching you across the restaurant to-night." "Did he really watch me?" Maggie asked complacently. "He not only watched you," Chalmers assured her, "but he thought about you--and very little else." "Congratulate me, then," she replied. "I am on the way to success." Chalmers frowned. "I'm not quite so sure," he said. "You'll think I'm an illogical sort of person, but I've changed my mind about your role in this little affair." "Why?" "Because I am afraid of Prince Shan," he answered deliberately. She looked at him from behind her fan. Her eyes sparkled with interest. If there were any other feeling underneath, she showed no trace of it. "What a queer word for you to use!" He nodded. "I know it. I would back you, Lady Maggie, to hold your own against any male creature breathing, of your own order and your own race, but Prince Shan plays the game differently. He possesses every gift which women and men both admire, but he hasn't our standards. Life for him means power. A wish for him entails its fulfilment." "You are afraid," Maggie suggested, still with the laughter in her eyes, "that he will trifle with my affections?" "Something like that," he admitted bluntly. "Prince Shan will be here for a week--perhaps a fortnight. When he goes, he goes a very long distance away." "I may decide to marry him," Maggie said. "One gets rather tired here of the regular St. George's, Hanover Square, business, and all that comes afterwards." "Dear Lady Maggie," Chalmers replied, "that is the trouble. Prince Shan would never marry you." "Why not?" she asked simply. "First of all," Chalmers went on, after a moment's hesitation, "because Prince Shan, broad-minded though he seems to be and is on all the great questions of the world, still preserves something of what we should call the superstition of his country and order. I believe, in his own mind, he looks upon himself as being one of the few elect of the earth. He travels, he is gracious everywhere, but though his manner is the perfection of form, in his heart he is still aloof. He rides through the clouds from Asia, and he leaves always something of himself over there on the other side. Let me tell you this, Lady Maggie. I have never forgotten it. He was at Harvard in my year, and so far as he unbent to any one, he sometimes unbent to me. I asked him once whether he were ever going to marry. He shook his head and sighed. 'I can never marry,' he replied. 'Why not?' I asked him. 'Because there are no women of the Shan line alive,' he answered. Later, he took pity on my bewilderment. He let me understand. For two thousand years, no Shan has married, save one of his own line. To ally himself with a princess of the royal house of England would be a mesalliance which would disturb his ancestors in their graves. Of course, this sounds to us very ridiculous, but to him it isn't. It is part of the religion of his life." "You are not very encouraging, are you?" Maggie remarked. "Perhaps he has changed since those days." Her companion shook his head. "I should say not," he replied, "the Prince is not of the order of those who change." "Is it matrimony alone," she asked, "which he denies himself?" Chalmers glanced towards Mrs. Bollington Smith, whose eyes were closed. Then he nodded towards the stage. "You see the woman who has just come upon the stage?" Maggie glanced downwards. A very wonderful little figure in white satin, lithe and sinuous as a cat, Chinese in the subtlety of her looks, European in her almost sinister over-civilisation, stood smiling blandly at the applauding audience. "La Belle Nita," Maggie murmured. "I thought she was in Paris. Well, what of her?" "She is reputed to be a protegee of Prince Shan. You see how she looks up at his box." Maggie was conscious of a queer and almost incomprehensible stab at the heart. She answered without hesitation or change of expression, however. "The Prince must be kind to a fellow countrywoman," she declared indulgently. "You are talking terrible scandal." La Belle Nita danced wonderfully, sang like a linnet, danced again and disappeared, notwithstanding the almost wild calls for an encore. With the end of her turn came a selection from the orchestra and a general emptying of the boxes. Presently Chalmers went in search of Nigel. A few moments later there was a knock at the door. Maggie gripped the sides of her chair tightly. She was moved almost to fury by the turmoil in which she found herself. Her invitation to enter was almost inaudible. "I am deserted," Prince Shan explained, as he made his bow and took the chair to which Maggie pointed. "My friend Immelan has left me to visit acquaintances, and I chance to be unattended this evening. I trust that I do not intrude." "You are very welcome here," Maggie replied. "Will you listen to the orchestra, or talk to me?" "I will talk, if I may," he answered. "Lord Dorminster is not with you?" "Nigel went to look up a friend whom he wants to bring to supper. He is one of those people who seem to discover friends and acquaintances in every quarter of the globe." "And to that fortunate chance," her visitor continued, dropping his voice a little, "I owe the happiness of finding you alone." Maggie glanced towards her aunt, who was leaning back in her seat. "Aunt seems to be asleep, but she isn't," she declared. "She is really a very efficient chaperon. Talk to me about China, please, and tell me about your _Dragon_ airship. Is it true that you have silver baths, and that Gauteron painted the walls of your dining salon?" "One is in the air five days on the way over," he answered indifferently. "It is necessary that one's surroundings should be agreeable. Perhaps some day I may have the honour of showing it to you. In the darkness, and when she is docked, there is little to be seen." She looked at him curiously. "You knew that I was there, then?" "Yours was the first face I saw when I descended from the car," he told her. "You stood apart, watching, and I wondered why. I knew, too, that you would be at the Ritz to-night. That is why I came there. As a rule, I do not dine in public." "How could you possibly know that I was going to be there?" Maggie asked curiously. "I sent a gentleman of my suite to look through the names of those who had booked tables," he answered. "It was very simple." "It was only a chance that the table was reserved in my name," she reminded him. "It was chance which brought us together," he rejoined. "It is chance under another name to which I trust in life." For the first time in her life, in her relations with the other sex, Maggie felt a queer sensation which was almost fear. She felt herself losing poise, her will governed, her whole self dominated. Unconsciously she drew herself a little away. Her eyes travelled around the crowded house and suddenly rested on the box which her visitor had just vacated. Seated behind the curtains, but leaning slightly forward, her eyes fixed intently upon Prince Shan, was La Belle Nita, a green opera cloak thrown around her dancing costume, a curious, striking little figure in the semi-obscurity. "You have some one waiting for you in your box," Maggie told him. He glanced across the auditorium and rose to his feet. She gave him credit for the adroitness of mind which rejected the obvious explanation of her presence there. "I must go," he said simply, "but I have many things which I desire to say to you. You will not forget to-morrow afternoon?" "I shall not forget," she answered, in a low tone. _ |
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