"Your rooms, Prince, are wonderful," Penelope said to him. "Iknew that you were a man of taste, but I did not know that you were also a millionaire."He laughed softly.
"In my country," he answered, "there are no millionaires. The money which we have, however, we spend, perhaps a little differently. But, indeed, none of my treasures here have cost me anything. They have come to me through more generations than Ishould care to reckon up. The bronze idol, for instance, upon my writing case is four hundred years old, to my certain knowledge, and my tapestries were woven when in this country your walls went bare.""What I admire more than anything," the Duchess declared, "is your beautiful violet tone.""I am glad," he answered, "that you like my coloring. Some people have thought it sombre. To me dark colors indoors are restful.""Everything about the whole place is restful," Penelope said,--"your servants with their quaint dresses and slippered feet, your thick carpets, the smell of those strange burning leaves, and, forgive me if I say so, your closed windows. Isuppose in time I should have a headache. For a little while it is delicious."The Prince sighed.
"Fresh air is good," he said, "but the air that comes from your streets does not seem to me to be fresh, nor do I like the roar of your great city always in my ears. Here I cut myself off, and I feel that I can think. Duchess, you must try those preserved fruits. They come to me from my own land. I think that the secret of preserving them is not known here. You see, they are packed with rose leaves and lemon plant. There is a golden fig, Miss Penelope,--the fruit of great knowledge, the magical fruit, too, they say. Eat that and close your eyes and you can look back and tell us all the wonders of the past. That is to say," he added with a faint smile, "if the magic works.""But the magic never does work," she protested with a little sigh, "and I am not in the least interested in the past. Tell me something about the future?""Surely that is easier," he answered. "Over the past we have lost our control,--what has been must remain to the end of time. The future is ours to do what we will with.""That sounds so reasonable," the Duchess declared, "and it is so absolutely false. No one can do what they will with the future.
It is the future which does what it will with us."The Prince smiled tolerantly.
"It depends a good deal, does it not," he said, "upon ourselves?
Miss Penelope is the daughter of a country which is still young, which has all its future before it, and which, has proclaimed to the world its fixed intention of controlling its own destinies.
She, at any rate, should have imbibed the national spirit. You are looking at my curtains," he added, turning to Penelope. "Let me show you the figures upon them, and I will tell you the allegory."He led her to the window, and explained to her for some moments the story of the faded images which represented one chapter out of the mythology of his country. And then she stopped him.
"Always," she said, "you and I seem to be talking of things that are dead and past, or of a future which is out of our reach.
Isn't it possible to speak now and then of the present?""Of the actual present?" he asked softly. "Of this very moment?""Of this very moment, if you will," she answered. "Your fairy tale the other night was wonderful, but it was a long way off."The Prince was summoned away somewhat abruptly to bid farewell to a little stream of departing guests. Today, more than ever, he seemed to belong, indeed to the world of real and actual things, for a cousin of his mother's, a Lady Stretton-Wynne, was helping him receive his guests--his own aunt, as Penelope told herself more than once, struggling all the time with a vague incredulity.
When he was able to rejoin her, she was examining a curious little coffer which stood upon an ivory table.
"Show me the mystery of this lock," she begged. "I have been trying to open it ever since you went away. One could imagine that the secrets of a nation might be hidden here."He smiled, and taking the box from her hands, touched a little spring. Almost at once the lid flew open.
"I am afraid," he said, "that it is empty."
She peered in.
"No," she exclaimed, "there is something there! See!" She thrust in her hand and drew out a small, curiously shaped dagger of fine blue steel and a roll of silken cord. She held them up to him.
"What are these?" she asked. "Are they symbols--the cord and the knife of destiny?"He took them gently from her hand and replaced them in the box.
She heard the lock go with a little click, and looked into his face, surprised at his silence.
"Is there anything the matter?" she asked. "Ought I not to have taken them up?"Almost as the words left her lips, she understood. His face was inscrutable, but his very silence was ominous. She remembered a drawing in one of the halfpenny papers, the drawing of a dagger found in a horrible place. She remembered the description of that thin silken cord, and she began to tremble.
"I did not know that anything was in the box," he said calmly. "Iam sorry if its contents have alarmed you."
