The Illustrious Prince [78]
"When my work is finished, I return home," he answered. "I fancy that it will not be very long now."
"When you do leave England," she asked after a moment's pause, "do you go straight to Japan?"
He bowed.
"With the Continent I have finished," he said. "The cruiser which His Majesty has sent to fetch me waits even now at Southampton."
"You speak of your work," she remarked, "as though you had been collecting material for a book."
He smiled.
"I have been busy collecting information in many ways," he said,--"trying to live your life and feel as you feel, trying to understand those things in your country, and in other countries too, which seem at first so strange to us who come from the other side of the East."
"And the end of it all?" she asked.
His eyes gleamed for a moment with a light which she did not understand. His smile was tolerant, even genial, but his face remained like the face of a sphinx.
"It is for the good of Japan I came," he said, "for her good that I have stayed here so long. At the same time it has been very pleasant. I have met with great kindness."
She leaned a little forward so as to look into his face. The impassivity of his features was like a wall before her.
"After all," she said, "I suppose it is a period of probation. You are like a schoolboy already who is looking forward to his holidays. You will be very happy when you return."
"I shall be very happy indeed," he admitted simply. "Why not?" I am a true son of Japan, and, for every true son of his country, absence from her is as hard a thing to be borne as absence from one's own family."
Somerfield, who was sitting on her other side, insisted at last upon diverting her attention.
"Penelope," he declared, lowering his voice a little, "it isn't fair. You never have a word to say to me when the Prince is here."
She smiled.
"You must remember that he is going away very soon, Charlie," she reminded him.
"Good job, too!" Somerfield muttered, sotto voce.
"And then," Penelope continued, with the air of not having heard her companion's last remark, "he possesses also a very great attraction. He is absolutely unlike any other human being I ever met or heard of."
Somerfield glanced across at his rival with lowering brows.
"I've nothing to say against the fellow," he remarked, "except that it seems queer nowadays to run up against a man of his birth who is not a sportsman,--in the sense of being fond of sport, I mean," he corrected himself quickly.
"Sometimes I wonder," Penelope said thoughtfully, "whether such speeches as the one which you have just made do not indicate something totally wrong in our modern life. You, for instance, have no profession, Charlie, and you devote your life to a systematic course of what is nothing more or less than pleasure-seeking. You hunt or you shoot, you play polo or golf, you come to town or you live in the country, entirely according to the seasons. If any one asked you why you had not chosen a profession, you would as good as tell them that it was because you were a rich man and had no need to work for your living. That is practically what it comes to. You Englishmen work only if you need money. If you do not need money, you play. The Prince is wealthy, but his profession was ordained for him from the moment when he left the cradle. The end and aim of his life is to serve his country, and I believe that he would consider it sacrilege if he allowed any slighter things to divert at any time his mind from its main purpose. He would feel like a priest who has broken his ordination vows."
"That's all very well," Somerfield said coolly, "but there's nothing in life nowadays to make us quite so strenuous as that."
"Isn't there?" Penelope answered. "You are an Englishman, and you should know. Are you convinced, then, that your country today is at the height of her prosperity, safe and sound, bound to go on triumphant, prosperous, without the constant care of her men?"
Somerfield looked up at her in growing amazement.
"What on earth's got hold of you, Penelope?"