The Illustrious Prince Part 42

"Sir Charles," he said, "I shall not forget that question. I think that of all the Englishmen whom I have met you are the most English of all.

When I think of your great country, as I often shall do, of her sons and her daughters, I will promise you that to me you shall always represent the typical man of your race and fortune."

The Prince left his companion loitering along Pall Mall, still a little puzzled. He called a taxi and drove to Devenham House. The great drawing rooms were almost empty. Lady Grace was just saying goodbye to some parting guests. She welcomed the Prince with a little flush of pleasure.

"I find you alone?" he remarked.

"My mother is opening a bazaar somewhere," Lady Grace said. "She will be home very soon. Do let me give you some tea."

"It is my excuse for coming," the Prince admitted.

She called back the footman who had shown him in.

"China tea, very weak, in a china teapot with lemon and no sugar. Isn't that it?" she asked, smiling.

"Lady Grace," he declared, "you spoil me. Perhaps it is because I am going away. Every one is kind to the people who go away."

She looked at him anxiously.

"Going away!" she exclaimed. "When? Do you mean back to j.a.pan?"

"Back to my own country," he answered. "Perhaps in two weeks, perhaps three--who can tell?"

"But you are coming to Devenham first?" she asked eagerly.

"I am coming to Devenham first," he a.s.sented. "I called this afternoon to let your father know the date on which I could come. I promised that he should hear from me today. He was good enough to say either Thursday or Friday. Thursday, I find, will suit me admirably."

She drew a little sigh.

"So you are going back," she said softly. "I wonder why so many people seem to have taken it for granted that you would settle down here. Even I had begun to hope so."

He smiled.

"Lady Grace," he said, "I am not what you call a cosmopolitan. To live over here in any of these Western countries would seem to denote that one may change one's dwelling place as easily as one changes one's clothes. The further east you go, the more reluctant one is, I think, to leave the shadow of one's own trees. The man who leaves my country leaves it to go into exile. The man who returns, returns home."

She was a little perplexed.

"I should have imagined," she said, "that the people who leave your country as emigrants to settle in American or even over here might have felt like that. But you of the educated cla.s.ses I should have thought would have found more over here to attract you, more to induce you to choose a new home."

He shook his head.

"Lady Grace," he said, "believe me that is not so. The traditions of our race--the call of the blood, as you put it over here--is as powerful a thing with our aristocratics as with our peasants. We find much here to wonder at and admire, much that, however unwillingly, we are forced to take back and adopt in our own country, but it is a strange atmosphere for us, this. For my country-people there is but one real home, but one motherland."

"Yet you have seemed so contented over here," she remarked. "You have entered so easily into all our ways."

He set down his teacup and smiled at her for a moment gravely.

"I came with a purpose," he said. "I came in order to observe and to study certain features of your life, but, believe me, I have felt the strain--I have felt it sometimes very badly. These countries, yours especially, are like what one of your great poets called the Lotus-Lands for us. Much of your life here is given to pursuits which we do not understand, to sports and games, to various forms of what we should call idleness. In my country we know little of that. In one way or another, from the Emperor to the poor runner in the streets, we work."

"Is there nothing which you will regret?" she asked.

"I shall regret the friends I have made,--the very dear friends," he repeated, "who have been so very much kinder to me than I have deserved.

Life is a sad pilgrimage sometimes, because one may not linger for a moment at any one spot, nor may one ever look back. But I know quite well that when I leave here there will be many whom I would gladly see again."

"There will be many, Prince," she said softly, "who will be sorry to see you go."

The Prince rose to his feet. Another little stream of callers had come into the room. Presently he drank his tea and departed. When he reached St. James' Square, his majordomo came hurrying up and whispered something in his own language.

The Prince smiled.

"I go to see him," he said. "I will go at once."

CHAPTER XXVII. A PRISONER

Dr. Spencer Whiles was sitting in a very comfortable easy chair, smoking a particularly good cigar, with a pile of newspapers by his side. His appearance certainly showed no signs of hardship. His linen, and the details of his toilet generally, supplied from some mysterious source into which he had not inquired, were much improved. Notwithstanding his increased comfort, however, he was looking perplexed, even a little worried, and the cause of it was there in front of him, in the advertis.e.m.e.nt sheets of the various newspapers which had been duly laid upon his table.

The Prince came in quietly and closed the door behind him.

"Good afternoon, my friend!" he said. "I understood that you wished to see me."

The doctor had made up his mind to adopt a firm att.i.tude. Nevertheless the genial courtesy of the Prince's tone and manner had the same effect upon him as it had upon most people. He half rose to his feet and became at once apologetic.

"I hope that I have not disturbed you, Prince," he said. "I thought that I should like to have a word or two with you concerning something which I have come across in these journals."

He tapped them with his forefinger, and the Prince nodded thoughtfully.

"Your wonderful Press!" he exclaimed. "How much it is responsible for!

Well, Dr. Whiles, what have the newspapers to say to you?"

The doctor handed across a carefully folded journal and pointed to a certain paragraph.

"Will you kindly read this?" he begged.

The Prince accepted the sheet and read the paragraph aloud:

"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD! Disappeared from his home in Long Whatton on Wednesday morning last, Herbert Spencer Whiles, Surgeon. The above reward will be paid to any one giving information which will lead to the discovery of his present whereabouts. Was last seen in a motor car, Limousine body, painted dark green, leaving Long Whatton in the direction of London."

The Prince laid down the paper, smiling.

"Well?" he asked. "That seems clear enough. Some one is willing to give fifty pounds to know where you are."

The doctor tapped the advertis.e.m.e.nt with his forefinger impressively.

"Fifty pounds!" he repeated. "There isn't a person in the world to whom the knowledge of my movements is worth fifty pounds--except--"

"Except?" the Prince murmured.