"Sir Charles," the Prince said, "I hope that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you at Devenham?""I am not sure," Somerfield answered. "I have been asked, but Ipromised some time ago to go up to Scotland. I have a third share in a river there, and the season for salmon is getting on.""I am sorry," the Prince declared. "I have no doubt, however, but that Miss Morse will induce you to change your mind. I should regret your absence the more," he continued, "because this, Ifear, is the last visit which I shall be paying in this country."Somerfield was genuinely interested.
"You are really going home?" he asked eagerly.
"Almost at once," the Prince answered.
"Only for a time, I suppose?" Somerfield continued.
The Prince shook his head.
"On the contrary," he said, "I imagine that this will be a long goodbye. I think I can promise you that if ever I reach Japan Ishall remain there. My work in this hemisphere will be accomplished."Somerfield looked at him with the puzzled air of a man who is face to face with a problem which he cannot solve.
"You'll forgive my putting it so plainly, Prince," he remarked, "but do you mean to say that after having lived over here you could possibly settle down again in Japan?"The Prince returned for a moment his companion's perplexed gaze.
Then his lips parted, his eyes shone. He laughed softly, gracefully, with genuine mirth.
"Sir Charles," he said, "I shall not forget that question. Ithink 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 Iam 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 Japan?""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 assented. "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 classes Ishould 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."
