The library at Devenham Castle was a large and sombre apartment, with high oriel windows and bookcases reaching to the ceiling. It had an unused and somewhat austere air. Tonight especially an atmosphere of gloom seemed to pervade it. The Prince, when he opened the door, found the three men who were awaiting him seated at an oval table at the further end of the room.
"I do not intrude, I trust?" the Prince said. "I understood that you wished me to come here.""Certainly," the Duke answered, "we were sitting here awaiting your arrival. Will you take this easy chair? The cigarettes are at your elbow."The Prince declined the easy chair and leaned for a moment against the table.
"Perhaps later," he said. "Just now I feel that you have something to say to me. Is it not so? I talk better when I am standing."It was the Prime Minister who made the first plunge. He spoke without circumlocution, and his tone was graver than usual.
"Prince," he said, "this is perhaps the last time that we shall all meet together in this way. You go from us direct to the seat of your Government. So far there has been very little plain speaking between us. It would perhaps be more in accord with etiquette if we let you go without a word, and waited for a formal interchange of communications between your Ambassador and ourselves. But we have a feeling, Sir Edward and I, that we should like to talk to you directly. Before we go any further, however, let me ask you this question. Have you any objection, Prince, to discussing a certain matter here with us?"The Prince for several moments made no reply. He was still standing facing the fireplace, leaning slightly against the table behind him. On his right was the Duke, seated in a library chair.
On his left the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Bransome. The Prince seemed somehow to have become the central figure of the little group.
"Perhaps," he said, "if you had asked me that question a month ago, Mr. Haviland, I might have replied to you differently.
Circumstances, however, since then have changed. My departure will take place so soon, and the kindness I have met here from all of you has been so overwhelming, that if you will let me Ishould like to speak of certain things concerning which no written communication could ever pass between our two countries.""I can assure you, my dear Prince, that we shall very much appreciate your doing so," Mr. Haviland declared.
"I think," the Prince continued, "that the greatest and the most subtle of all policies is the policy of perfect truthfulness.
Listen to me, then. The thing which you have in your mind concerning me is true. Two years I have spent in this country and in other countries of Europe. These two years have not been spent in purposeless travel. On the contrary, I have carried with me always a definite and very fixed purpose."The Prime Minister and Bransome exchanged rapid glances.
"That has been our belief from the first," Bransome remarked.
"I came to Europe," the Prince continued gravely, "to make a report to my cousin the Emperor of Japan as to whether I believed that a renewal of our alliance with you would be advantageous to my country. I need not shrink from discussing this matter with you now, for my report is made. It is, even now, on its way to the Emperor."There was a moment's silence, a silence which in this corner of the great room seemed marked with a certain poignancy. It was the Prime Minister who broke it.
"The report," he said, "is out of your hands. The official decision of your Government will reach us before long. Is there any reason why you should not anticipate that decision, why you should not tell us frankly what your advice was?""There is no reason," the Prince answered. "I will tell you. Iowe that to you at least. I have advised the Emperor not to renew the treaty.""Not to renew," the Prime Minister echoed.
This time the silence was portentous. It was a blow, and there was not one of the three men who attempted to hide his dismay.
"I am afraid," the Prince continued earnestly, "that to you Imust seem something of an ingrate. I have been treated by every one in this country as the son of a dear friend. The way has been made smooth for me everywhere. Nothing has been hidden. From all quarters I have received hospitality which I shall never forget.
But you are three just men. I know you will realize that my duty was to my country and to my country alone. No one else has any claims upon me. What I have seen I have written of. What Ibelieve I have spoken."
"Prince," Mr. Haviland said, "there is no one here who will gainsay your honesty. You came to judge us as a nation and you have found us wanting. At least we can ask you why?"The Prince sighed.
"It is hard," he said. "It is very hard. When I tell you of the things which I have seen, remember, if you please, that I have seen them with other eyes than yours. The conditions which you have grown up amongst and lived amongst all your days pass almost outside the possibility of your impartial judgment. You have lived with them too long. They have become a part of you. Then, too, your national weakness bids your eyes see what you would have them see.""Go on," Mr. Haviland said, drumming idly with his fingers upon the table.
"I have had to ask myself," the Prince continued,--"it has been my business to ask myself what is your position as a great military power, and the answer I have found is that as a great military power it does not exist. I have had to ask myself what would happen to your country in the case of a European war, where your fleet was distributed to guard your vast possessions in every quarter of the world, and the answer to that is that you are, to all practical purposes, defenceless. In almost any combination which could arrange itself, your country is at the mercy of the invader."Bransome leaned forward in his chair.
