The Great Prince Shan, E. Phillips Oppenheim [positive books to read TXT] 📗

void of space.

"Tell me about Naida," the former begged, a little abruptly.

"Naida is a wonderful woman," Nigel declared enthusiastically. "We lunched at Ciro's. She wore a black and white muslin gown which arrived this morning from Paris. Afterwards we went down to Ranelagh and sat under the trees."

"Throwing yourself thoroughly into your little job, aren't you!" Maggie sniffed.

"You'll have a chance to catch me up before long," he replied. "Naida has promised that she will arrange a meeting with the Prince."

"I wonder what Oscar Immelan will have to say about it," Maggie reflected.

"To tell you the truth," Nigel said hopefully, "I believe that Immelan is losing ground. His whole scheme is too selfish. Of course, Naida won't discuss these things with me in plain words, but she gives me a hint now and then. Amongst her gifts, she has a marvellous sense of justice and a hatred of any form of bribery. That is where I feel convinced that she and Immelan will never come together. Immelan could never see more than the selfish side, even of a world upheaval. Naida searches everywhere for motive. She has the altruistic instinct. I wonder no longer at Matinsky. She is a born ruler herself."

"I'm glad you are getting along with her," Maggie remarked. "Look!" she broke off, catching at his arm. "The violet lights!"

High up in the sky outside, two violet specks of light suddenly rose and fell like airballs. A crowd of mechanics appeared through subterranean doors and stood about in the vast arena. Very soon the airship came into sight, her cars brilliantly illuminated. She circled slowly round and came noiselessly to the ground, and with the mechanics running by her side, and her engines now scarcely audible, came slowly into the shed and to a standstill by the side of the platform. Maggie and her companion stood well in the background.

"There he is," the latter whispered.

Immelan, suddenly appeared as though from the bowels of the earth, was shaking hands warmly with a tall, slender man who was one of the first to descend from the airship. They talked rapidly together for a few minutes. Then they disappeared, walking down towards the luggage-clearing station. Maggie watched the retreating figures earnestly.

"He doesn't look in the least Chinese," she declared.

"I told you he didn't," Nigel replied. "He was considered the best-looking man of his year up at Oxford."

Maggie was unusually silent on their way back.

"It was perhaps scarcely worth our while, this little expedition of ours," Maggie said thoughtfully.

"You're not sorry that we came?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think not," she replied.

"Why only 'think'?"

She roused herself with an effort.

"I don't know, Nigel," she confessed. "I can't imagine what is wrong with me. I feel shivery—nervous—as though something were going to happen."

He looked at her curiously. This was a Maggie whom he scarcely recognised.

"Presentiments?" he asked.

"Absurd, isn't it!" she replied, with a weak smile. "I'll get over it directly. I don't think I am going to like Prince Shan, Nigel."

"Well, you haven't been long making up your mind," he observed. "I shouldn't have thought you had been able even to see his face."

"I had a queer, lightning-like glimpse of it," she reflected. "To me it seemed as though it were carved out of granite, and as though all that was human about him were the mouth and the eyes. I wish he hadn't been looking."

"Are you flattering yourself that he will recognise you?" Nigel asked.

"I know that he will," she answered simply.

In a corner of the white-and-gold restaurant at the Ritz on the following evening, Prince Shan and Immelan dined tête-à-tête, Immelan in the best of spirits, talking of the pleasant trifles of the world, drinking champagne and pointing out notabilities; Prince Shan, his features and expression unchanging, and his face as white as the perfectly fitting shirt he wore. His clothes were fashionable and distinctive, his black pearls unobtrusive but wonderful, his smoothly brushed dark hair, his immaculate finger nails, his skilfully tied tie all indicative of his close touch with western civilization. There was nothing, in fact, except his sphinx-like expression, the slightly unusual shape of his brilliant eyes, and his queer air of personal detachment, to denote the Oriental. He drank water, he ate sparingly, he preserved an almost unbroken silence, yet he had the air of one giving courteous attention to everything which his companion said and finding interest in it. Only once he asked a question.

"You are well acquainted here, my host," he said. "You know the trio at the table just behind the entrance—the attractive young lady with her chaperon, and a gentleman who I rather fancy must be an old college acquaintance whose name I have forgotten. Tell me some more about them in their private capacity, and not as saviours of their country."

Immelan frowned slightly as he glanced across the room.

"There is not much to tell," he answered, without enthusiasm. "The young lady is, as you know, Lady Maggie Trent. The older lady, with the white hair, is, I believe, her aunt. The name of their escort is Lord Dorminster. You would probably know him by the name of Kingley—he has only just succeeded to the title."

Prince Shan was looking straight across the room, his eyes travelling over the heads of the many brilliant little groups of diners to rest apparently upon an empty space in the white-and-gold walls. He had been a great traveller, but always his first evening, when he came once more into touch with a civilisation more meretricious but more poignant than his own, resulted in this disturbing cloud of sensations. His companion's voice sounded emptily in his ears.

"They say that the young lady is engaged to Lord Dorminster. That is only gossip, however."

For the second time Prince Shan looked directly at the little group. His eyes rested upon Maggie, simply dressed but wonderfully soignée, very alluring, laughing up into the face of her escort. Their eyes did not actually meet, but each was conscious of the other's regard. Once more he felt the disturbance of the West.

"If we should chance to come together naturally," he said, "it would gratify me to make the acquaintance of Lady Maggie Trent."

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 maître d'hôtel 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