Part 35 (2/2)
”War for us is an impossibility,” Mr. Mervin Brown declared frankly, ”simply because we cannot fight. Our army consists of policemen; science has defeated the battles.h.i.+p; and practically the same conditions exist in the air.”
”You sent for me, I presume, to ask for my advice,” Nigel said. ”At any rate, let me offer it. I have reason to believe that the negotiations between Prince Shan and Oscar Immelan have not been entirely successful.
Send for Prince Shan and question him in a friendly fas.h.i.+on.”
”Will you be my amba.s.sador?” the Prime Minister asked.
Nigel hesitated for a moment.
”If you wish it,” he promised. ”Prince Shan is in some respects a strangely inaccessible person, but just at present he seems well disposed towards my household.”
”Arrange, if you can,” Mr. Mervin Brown begged, ”to bring him here to-morrow morning. I will try to have available a copy of the dispatch from Jesson. It refers to matters which I trust Prince Shan will be able to explain.”
Nigel lingered for a moment over his farewell.
”If I might venture upon a suggestion, sir,” he said, ”do not forget that Prince Shan is to all intents and purposes the autocrat of Asia. He has taught the people of the world to remodel their ideas of China and all that China stands for. And further than this, he is, according to his principles, a man of the strictest honour. I would treat him, sir, as a valued _confrere_ and equal.”
The Prime Minister smiled.
”Don't look upon me as being too intensely parochial, Dorminster,” he said. ”I know quite well that Prince Shan is a man of genius, and that he is a representative of one of the world's greatest families. I am only the servant of a great Power. He is a great Power in himself.”
”And believe me,” Nigel concluded fervently, as he made his adieux, ”the greatest autocrat that ever breathed. If, when you exchange farewells with him, he says--'There will be no war'--we are saved, at any rate for the moment.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Maggie, very cool and neat, a vision of soft blue, a wealth of colouring in the deep brown of her closely braided hair, her lips slightly parted in a smile of welcome, felt, notwithstanding her apparent composure, a strange disturbance of outlook and senses as Prince Shan was ushered into her flower-bedecked little sitting room that afternoon. The unusual formality of his entrance seemed somehow to suit the man and his manner.
He bowed low as soon as he had crossed the threshold and bowed again over her fingers as she rose from her easy-chair.
”It makes me very happy that you receive me like this,” he told her simply. ”It makes it so much easier for me to say the things that are in my heart.”
”Won't you sit down, please?” Maggie invited. ”You are so tall, and I hate to be completely dominated.”
He obeyed at once, but he continued to talk with grave and purposeful seriousness.
”I wish,” he said, ”to bring myself entirely into accord, for these few minutes, with your western methods and customs. I address you, therefore, Lady Maggie, with formal words, while I keep back in my heart much that is struggling to express itself. I have come to ask you to do me the great honour of becoming my wife.”
Maggie sat for a few moments speechless. The thing which she had half dreaded and half longed for--the low timbre of his caressing voice--was entirely absent. Yet, somehow or other, his simple, formal words were at least as disturbing. He leaned towards her, a quiet, dignified figure, anxious yet in a sense confident. He had the air of a man who has offered to share a kingdom.
”Your wife,” Maggie repeated tremulously.
”The thought is new to you, perhaps,” he went on, with gentle tolerance.
”You have believed the stories people tell that in my youth I was vowed to celibacy and the priesthood. That is not true. I have always been free to marry, but although to-day we figure as a great progressive nation, many of the thousand-year-old ideas of ancient China have dwelt in my brain and still sit enshrined in my heart. The aristocracy of China has pa.s.sed through evil times. There is no princess of my own country whom I could meet on equal terms. So, you see, although it develops differently, there is something of the sn.o.bbishness of your western countries reflected in our own ideas.”
”But I am not a princess,” Maggie murmured.
”You are the princess of my soul,” he answered, lowering his eyes for a moment almost reverently. ”I cannot quite hope to make you understand, but if I took for my wife a Chinese lady of unequal mundane rank, I should commit a serious offence against those who watch me from the other side of the grave, and to whom I am accountable for every action of my life. A lady of another country is a different matter.”
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