Part 27 (1/2)
”You are no prisoner,” he a.s.sured 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 a.s.sembling,” 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 pa.s.sed 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 cus.h.i.+ons. 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.
CHAPTER XXI
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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.u.t.terfly. '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 gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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.”