"But, my dear Max," said the King, "how do you expect me to judge of such things? I should only make mistakes."

"You have for your advisers," answered his son, "some twenty men drawn from all departments of life; ought you not to be able to rely on them? When you came to the throne one of our greatest literary men lay bed-ridden, dying quietly of old age. He had received a State pension, for he was poor; he was a giant whose work was done; and he had never in all his life been to Court. Did it occur to you to go and pay this old man reverence? Did it occur to any of your advisers to suggest that you should? Yet in the past kings have done these things, and history has remembered to praise them for doing it. No, sir, we are out of touch with all the really great things that are going on around us in literature and art; for whenever anything new is really great it inevitably divides opinion; and wherever opinion is sharply or at all evenly divided we are out of place. You are under exactly the same orders as those which Charlotte received from my mother—you must not go down into the garden while the gardeners are actually at work; only when they have finished you may come and gather the results. You are run by the State merely to give prestige to the established order, and you must not support things that are not already popular."

"You are mistaken, Max," said his father, in despondent protest. "Nothing whatever prevents me; only I haven't anything to take hold of."

"Yet I have been credibly informed," replied Max, "that when you go to see a so-called problem play of the more intellectual kind, it is arranged for you to go in Lent, for the simple reason that during that period of fasting it is against etiquette for the papers to make any announcement of the fact."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed the King.

"You were not aware of it, then? Yet it is all arranged for you by the Comptroller-General. Tell him that you wish to go and see The Gaudy Girl presently, on its five hundredth performance, and he will raise no difficulty whatever. Tell him that you intend to be present at a performance of Law and Order, a piece that has managed to hold on through thirty performances in spite of the many interests opposed to it, and difficulties will immediately occur to him. Your going would revive the fortunes of that play; and as it makes a very direct attack upon our present judicial system, you can have nothing to do with it. Yet I hear that as a result of its production modifications in our criminal procedure have already been discussed."

"Max," said the King, "you are quite unfair! Our last State performance was of a play that attacked the very things you are always talking about, money-lending, gambling, commercial greed, and the rest of it; and it was the Comptroller-General himself who selected it."

"There!" exulted Max, "now you have given me an example, and I will tell you what happened. You had as your guest the king of a country possessing a real school of drama which is affecting the whole of the European stage. What did we do in his honor and for the honor of our dramatic literature? We chose a play of sixty years ago—our worst period—a piece of clever bombastic fustian mildewed with age; and we chose it merely because it contained the greatest possible number of small 'effective' parts in which 'star' actors could strut across the stage, make their bow before an extremely distinguished audience, and speak their lines in the ears of royalty as the accepted representatives of modern drama. And how they did speak them! How they clung to their entries and exits, how they gassed, and gagged, and threw in fresh 'business' to extend the all too brief time of their appearing; and what an abysmally boring performance the whole thing was! Over a score of these leading actors and actresses had appeared in a similar gala performance on the occasion of your coronation, twenty-five years ago. Most of them are now living on their past reputations, but they have become established; and so that woeful exhibition of utterly used-up material was royalty's public recognition of drama in this country! There, then, you have our connection with art! What good do you suppose we do by countenancing performances like that? We are merely employed to flatter the popular choice and to fatten out the drama in its most commercial connection. All that was done to suit the managers. It gave a pleasant little fillip to the star-system on which most of our theaters are now run; every theater contributed its quota and secured its proportion of reward."

"I was under the impression that they all gave their services."

"Just as you gave yours. You were all busily engaged in making each other popular, and in maintaining your prestige; and you were all very well paid for your trouble."

"But what else do you expect me to do?" exclaimed the unhappy monarch irritably. "All this destructive criticism of yours is so easy; but what does it lead to? Nothing!"

"Revolution," declared Max, "peaceful, bloodless revolution! Whenever any matter is submitted to you over which you have control and a deciding voice, do the unexpected, and you will nearly always be right! That is the biggest revolution in this unwritten Constitution of ours that I can suggest. Do it, and then watch the results."

"But, for instance, do what?"

"Well, go for a beginning to the very plays your Comptroller refrains from recommending or tries to dissuade you from. Oh, you won't come upon anything shocking; quite the reverse. That play, The Gaudy Girl, which I spoke of just now, is about to be revived in a new form—with additions. No doubt it will draw enormously; and as a fortune has been spent on it you would do a popular thing by attending the first performance. It is a risky and indecent piece, but no one will object, on that score, to its receiving the royal patronage."

"How possibly can it be indecent," protested the King, "when it has already run for five hundred nights at one of our leading theaters?"

Max smiled. "Father," he said, "in all your life have you ever once been in a crowd—formed part of it, I mean? Well, then, how can you tell? I have. There is plenty of indecency in a Jingalese crowd—especially indecent suggestion; and it is crowds the theaters have to cater for."

"Still, they have the Censor to reckon with."

"The Censor!" exclaimed Max. "Have you ever asked the Lord Functionary, who controls him, to show you the text of the plays he passes?—or gone further in order to compare them with those he does not pass? Till you have, you know nothing about the Censor's protective powers. He merely protects the existing order of things, like yourself; whatever is paying and popular it becomes his duty to countenance. Well, all that is strictly within your own department, for the supervision of the morals of the stage is still a royal prerogative outside parliamentary control. And I tell you this—that if you were to begin exercising your prerogative conscientiously you would get into more intimate touch with the popular will than would suit the calculations of your ministers. As for the Lord Functionary, he would probably resign. He might be glad of the excuse. Just now there is a considerable row on, and he finds himself in hot water. When you see him you had better ask him about it; and as he is technically the keeper of your conscience you really have a concern in the matter. What has he been doing? Oh, merely drawing the usual invidious distinction between adultery treated seriously and adultery treated as a joke. Under this latter and more popular form it is now occupying with success half the theaters in Jingalo. And if you want to see the deeps open, and understand what they contain,—well, there you have your cue: follow it! Only do that, and you will light such a candle—Ah! now I am quoting from English history; and as I am only concerned with that of Jingalo—I perceive that my present chapter has come to an end. May I take another cigar?"

III

All this time the King had sat cautiously imbibing the stimulus of his son's words. They sent a curious glow through his system; for they touched on the very point which was now daily engaging his thoughts—how, in connection with his own ministerial problem, to do the thing which Brasshay did not expect without thereby involving the prestige of the monarchy in ruin. He looked at his son, so full of self-confidence, so easy and unconcerned in the opinions of others, and very greatly he envied him.

"Max," he said slowly, "you are a very dangerous character."

And Max was flattered, as your man of words and not of deeds always is flattered when the attributes which belong by rights to his betters are ascribed to him.

Nevertheless, in this instance the epithet was well earned, for these secret potations of Max were having their effect upon the King's brain; they reproduced in facsimile the cerebral excitement which had followed upon his fall, and touching the same spot kindled in him a curious mental ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay did not know. And then, night after night, came Max with his tangle of words and whipped him into fresh revolt.

He still carried the memory of that last conversation—that chapter which Max had composed into the echoing cavities of his brain—when he next encountered the Lord Functionary.

Certain questions of court etiquette and procedure having been disposed of: "By the way," said his Majesty, "I was told yesterday that you are being criticised—in the play department, I mean."

The Lord Functionary had been spending sleepless nights in a scrambling attempt to acquire a literary education; but his own royal master was the last person to whom he would give himself away; so he only smiled with that air of deference and self-complacence which all court officials know how to combine. "I have heard rumors of it, sir," he replied, in a tone of easy detachment.

"Who are making the complaints?"

"Certain members of Parliament, I believe. They have constituents to satisfy; and under a democracy, of course, autocrats can never do right."

"Are you the autocrat?" inquired the King.

"At your Majesty's disposal," returned the Lord Functionary with a bow.

"Then you are not responsible to Parliament?"

The Lord Functionary smiled, with a touch of disdain. "I should not be holding office if I were," said he.

"Then you are not under the Prime Minister, either?"

"No more than your Majesty," said the magnificent one blandly. "In the order of precedence I am, indeed, several degrees above him. It is, of course, a Government appointment; but while I hold it my discretionary powers are unlimited."

This seemed a very great person, and the King looked on him with envy.

"To whom, then, are you actually responsible?" he inquired.

"To you, sir."

"To me alone?"

"My official title would make it indecent for me to consult any one but your Majesty."

"Ah, yes, you keep my conscience for me, don't you?" said the King. Max was right, then; here was something still left for him to do. He addressed himself to the previous question.

"What exactly is the trouble?"

"A self-advertising minority, sir, has been persistently submitting plays which it was quite out of the question to pass. Being annoyed, they are now attacking the plays which have passed."

"I should like," said the King, "to see some of these plays; to be in touch, if I may so put it, with my own conscience. Would you be good enough to send me three of those you have not passed, and three of the others which are now being attacked. I would like also," he added, "to see The Gaudy Girl in its new version."

The Lord Functionary raised his pale eyebrows.

"May I be allowed to know why, sir?" he inquired.

"Just curiosity," said the King. "I thought of going to see it, and I wanted first to be sure that there was nothing—nothing, you know——"

The Lord Functionary's face became wreathed in smiles.

"Why, certainly, sir. I will see that a copy is sent to your Majesty at once. It is, of course, work of a very light and frivolous kind—but it is popular and it does no harm." Then, as by an after-thought, the official countenance grew grave. "Was her Majesty also intending to be present?" he inquired.

The King, discerning that a negative was invited, gave the required assurance. "As a matter of fact," said he, "it was the Prince who asked me to go—suggested it, that is to say." And immediately official confidence was restored, for to the Lord Functionary Max as a reformer was still unknown, while his taste for frivolous diversion was more easily assumed. And so in due course a copy of the play reached the King's hands.

Perhaps it was through mere inadvertence that the other six did not accompany it. The King noted the omission; but when once he started to read the single play which had reached him he forgot all about the others, for he found that his hands were full. At one stroke of the scythe he had reaped a plentiful harvest.

Here was a play on the very eve of production, reeking with the sniggering improprieties which the keeper of the King's conscience had permitted to become the popular vogue. Suggestions and innuendoes to which the ordinary theater-going public had now grown accustomed, struck his inexperienced Majesty as bold and glaring novelties. The mere cheapness of the wit he passed uncritically by, but the indecencies were so bare and bald that even he, with all his innocence and inexperience, could not fail to understand them. The explanation, of course, was easy; this new version of an old and accepted play had received the official sanction through oversight. Providence had sent him to the rescue in the nick of time; and delighted to have found something which his hand really could do, he took up the blue pencil and set to work.

Snatches of dialogue, half lines of lyric—especially when it came to the last verse—here, there, and everywhere he scored them through with a ruthless hand; and with a renewed sense of usefulness, and a conscience well at ease, he returned the much deleted copy to the Lord Functionary.

Before long that official visited him, presenting a grave countenance. He was by no means enthusiastic over the royal handiwork; the production was about to take place; the play had already practically been licensed—silence up to so late a moment having virtually given consent; and—most difficult point of all—these things which the King was now ruling out had almost all of them been in the previously accepted version.

"Then I suppose," said his Majesty, "that nobody really reads the plays?"

"Oh, yes, sir, they are always read," corrected the Lord Functionary, "but our readers have necessarily to go upon certain lines. They are guided by precedent and custom, which it would be highly inadvisable to disturb."

So he pleaded that the status quo ante might prevail; and yet, man to man, he could not defend what the King showed him.

"Could you," inquired his Majesty indignantly, "read such things aloud to your own family? Could you comfortably, if I called upon you to do so, read them aloud to me?"

"The drama," explained the Lord Functionary, "is so different from anything else; it has not to observe the same conventions. In light comedy, especially, these things really do not count. People never trouble to think about them—they mean nothing."

"In that case," said the King, "no one will mind your cutting them out."

The Lord Functionary seemed not so sure,—his assurance went, in fact, in quite an opposite direction. He pleaded hard for the trade interests which he stood to represent. The play was in an advanced state of rehearsal; many thousands had been spent upon it; and, seeing that it was but a revival, no doubt about the new version passing had existed anywhere.

But to all his entreaties the King remained adamant.

"In this matter," said he, "you have to consult my conscience."

The point could not be further argued.

"It is very unfortunate," said the Lord Functionary in acid tones.

"I must insist," said his Majesty, "that you see to these omissions being made." And the Lord Functionary bowed his pained body over the hand which the King graciously extended.

"Your Majesty must be obeyed," said he.

It was a phrase that the King very seldom heard; it gave him a taste of power.

"Max," said he to his son, upon their next meeting, "I have been doing as you advised. And I do believe you are right."

"What did I advise?" inquired Max, assuming forgetfulness.

"That I should 'do a bust' was, I think, your expression; something unexpected."

"And how have you done it?"

"I have censored The Gaudy Girl."

Max whistled.

IV

The sibilations of that whistle were prophetic of atmospheric disturbance to come. In a week the storm broke.

The King happened to be away, paying a visit of complimentary inspection to frontier fortresses and heard nothing about it. But on his return Max came to him charged with tidings.

He stood over his father and looked at him with a note of satirical approval in his eye, which did not inspire the King with any confidence.

"Sir, do you know what you have done?"

His Majesty denied the impeachment. "I haven't done anything. Not yet."

"You have revolutionized the drama! Even now, at this very moment, the great heart of Jingalo is throbbing from plushed stalls to gallery stair-rail. Because of you The Gaudy Girl is playing its third night to an accompaniment of hilarious riot and uproar such as have not been known in our dramatic world since the public was forced to give up its right to free sittings."

The King was startled; some alarm crept into his voice. "Do you mean that I have done harm?"

"Not in the least; no, quite the reverse. But you have certainly doubled the play's fortune. The run is going to be tremendous."

His Majesty felt flattered; had he not reason? For this surely must mean that he had rightly interpreted the public taste, and that what the popular will really wanted was a pure and carefully expurgated drama.

But Max speedily undeceived him.

"What happened," said he, "is this. The Lord Functionary obeyed your orders, and less than a week ago word went to the management, happily engaged with its finishing touches to the play. Your share in the business, of course, was not mentioned; your cuttings had become the official act of the department. What that meant, you can perhaps hardly conceive. Here was popular musical comedy censored as it had never been censored before. Time was too short for negotiation; besides the whole thing was too drastic for half measures to be of any avail. Dullness, decorum, and disaster stared the management in the face. Suddenly perceiving that its strength lay in submission, it accepted the situation like a man, and in all Jingalo to-day, no hand is raised for the censorship. You have given it the coup de grace—it will have to go; for you have enlisted the managers—the trade interest against it."

"I?" exclaimed the King.

"Its moral position, as I told you," went on his son, "had recently been shaken by the attacks of the intellectuals—a camp, however, so much in the minority that hitherto its hostility has not been seriously regarded. But now Jingalese drama, as a great commercial enterprise, an interest wherein hundreds of thousands of pounds are yearly invested, has been touched on the raw, and Jingalese drama has risen and shaken itself in wrath. The press, which depends on it for advertisement, has, of course, rushed to its assistance, and condemnation of the censorship now figures in stupendous headlines on all the posters. Leading articles, interviews, and indignation meetings are the order of the day; I wonder you can have missed them."

"I have been busy with other things," explained the King.

"Well, if you are not too busy to-night, I invite you to come and see your handiwork."

"I can hardly do that," said the King, "under the circumstances—if, as you say, there is disturbance going on."

"It is disturbance of a very unanimous kind," said the Prince; "the public is enjoying itself thoroughly. Did I not the other day advise you to reach out a fearless hand to democracy? Well, you have done so; and the dear, good beast has given you its paw."

"I don't think I can go."

"Then you will never understand. But, indeed, sir, I think that you should. I have taken a box under a private name and we can go unobserved; the play has already begun; and if you will keep to the back no one will know that you are there. Besides it is Lent, a season when the incognito of your visits becomes a recognized rule. Do you think you are justified in missing so vivid an interpretation of the popular will?"

The King's hesitation ended. "I suppose I must go on doing the unexpected," said he, "now that I have once begun."

"You could not make a better rule," said Max.

And so, quite unexpectedly, and to the extreme bewilderment of a detective force taken suddenly by surprise, the King found himself in the theater where performance number three of The Gaudy Girl was going on.

The house was packed, tumultuous, and excited. As he entered the sheltering gloom of the box his Majesty recognized the words of the play, remembered, too, that a censored passage lay close ahead. It came.

A sumptuously bosomed figure stepped into the limelight and sang. In the second verse she threw out a rhyme that seemed to clamor for its pair—threw it out as the angler throws out his fly for the fish that is sure to rise. The King held his breath as the blue-penciled passage drew near. The voice quavered and broke; singer and orchestra stopped dead. The house roared. "Go on!" cried encouraging voices from gallery and pit. "Go on! Go on!" And the singer thus emboldened, and accompanied by one small piping flute, a ridiculous starveling of sound after all the blare that had preceded it, sang with a modest and deprecating air a line which fell very flat indeed—a mere nothing tagged from a nursery rhyme—obviously an importation. Stalls, pit, and gallery rocked and shouted with laughter. "Try again!" roared the crowd; and with small, frightened mimminy-pimminy tones the singer tried again. This time a snippet from the national anthem served her turn—but it was no good, the audience would have none of it; in a crescendo of uproarious demand it invited her to try again. Patient as a cat waiting for its chin to be stroked the conductor sat with extended baton. Down to the footlights she minced, delicately as Agag to the downfall of his hopes, thrust out an impudent face, and waggled it. "I can't! You know I can't!" she remonstrated in a shrill cockney wail. And straight on the anticipated word the house roared its applause. Off pranced the singer to her encore on cavorting toes, down flourished the conductor's baton in a crash of chords, and away to its fortunes sailed the play, more than ever a confirmed triumph in the popular favor.

"You see," whispered Max in the parental ear, "you see now what you have done."

"It's a perfect scandal!" exclaimed the King, much put out, for he could not but feel that he was being mocked.

"Not at all," said Max. "All the scandal has been eliminated."

"It ought to be put a stop to!"

"A law doesn't exist."

"This holding authority up to ridicule!"

"When authority has made itself absurd, could you wish it a better fate? To my mind, you have done a noble work."

"But this," said the King, "this is not what I intended at all."

Max smiled indulgently.

"So much the better," said he. "The unexpected is just as good for you, sir, as for others."

Then the King drew back again into his corner, to prepare himself for fresh shocks as the play went on.

The managerial device was simple, effective, and very easy to understand; and from start to finish it was played with little variation, though with ever-increasing success. Here and there, where for a long period no blue-penciled passage occurred, imaginary censorings had been inserted merely to whip curiosity, with the result that the atmosphere of innuendo and suggestion was greatly increased. Indeed, the whole piece reeked of it, new situations had been evolved which the play had not previously contained; and a stimulated audience sat metaphorically with its eye to an eye-hole from which the key had been accommodatingly withdrawn.

And then came the sensation of the evening.

Whether in the course of the performance the King had become so interested as to forget his caution, or whether between the acts too much light had penetrated the box at the back of which he had been sitting, it is now impossible to say. Just before the fall of the curtain he and the Prince got up and left, and traversing the still empty corridors unrecognized, returned to their carriage and the care of the anxiously waiting detectives. But somehow, as the play ended, a whisper got round from the stage and, like an electric flash, through the whole theater the fact of the royal visit became known.

Instantly, with cheer upon cheer, the audience broke into loyal and excited plaudits. The orchestra struck up the national anthem. Hands down popular opinion had won; for in this matter of "the new censorship" as it was called—in this attack upon the interests and liberties, not of a foolish minority, but of a sacred and freedom-loving public, Jingalo and its monarch had joined forces, and bureaucracy was dethroned.

The next day it was on all the posters; newspapers celebrated the event in flaring headlines—"THE KING CONDEMNS THE CENSOR!" And before the week was over, the Lord Functionary had resigned his high office on grounds of health.

The King was much puzzled over the whole affair; and his advisers did their best to keep him mystified. Both the Prime Minister and the late Lord Functionary himself earnestly assured him that his conscientious interference had had nothing whatever to do with the latter's retirement; for at this juncture it would never have done for the monarch to suppose that he held so much power over the official lives of his ministers. Quite by accident he had come in contact with that great unknown quantity "the popular will," and, without in the least realizing what he was about, had first touched it on the raw, and then tickled it; and the "dear good beast," as Max phrased it, recognizing only the second part of his performance, had turned rapturously round and given him its paw.

The King had his scruples; he did not like thus to win popularity by accident, and yet, the more he looked into it, the more he saw this for a fact, that by committing a popular faux pas he had secured far more consideration from his ministers than by doing the correct thing.

John of Jingalo did not yet understand that his correctness of conduct was one of the chief factors relied on by a bureaucratic government for reducing him to political insignificance. He had yet to learn that a submissive and well-behaved monarchy was essential to its very existence.



CHAPTER VII

THE OLD ORDER



I

All this, the reader will remember, had taken place in Lent. The King had done something which according to the accepted canons was quite incorrect; he had been to a frivolous but popular play during the penitential season and it had got into the papers. But instead of being blamed for it he had gained enormously in popularity.

Now had his Majesty been merely aiming for this, as politicians aim for it (deserting principles for party, or party when its principles become a hindrance), he might have followed the lead given him by the people of Jingalo, and, recognizing that the Church Calendar had lost its hold upon the popular imagination, might thenceforward have secularized his conduct, and paved the way in Court circles for that separation of Church and State which his ministers were itching to bring about but did not yet dare.

But John of Jingalo had all the defects which belong to a conscientious character. He had not gone to the play for amusement, it had not amused him, he did not at all agree with the public's attitude towards it, and yet he was reaping the benefit; he was standing in a glow of popular approbation under false pretenses; and the more he thought about it the less he liked it—it gave him a bad conscience.

Yet, in spite of that, he could not but recognize that he had touched power; under a misapprehension the people had responded to him as never before; he had done what they regarded as a sporting thing in sending unpopular officialdom to the right-about; it was even possible that among theatrical circles when the exploit was talked of he was now known as "good old King Jack." All the same he did not feel that he had been good, and he wanted to make amends.

The highly colored conversations of Max, the talk about whipping-boys and Court jesters, and all those ancient divinities which had once hedged a King but were now mere barbed wire entanglements, had turned his attention toward certain medieval institutions the practice of which had lapsed, or had become reduced to a mere shadow of their former selves. And with a conscience ill at ease over the damage he had wrought to a season which he still regarded with a certain conventional reverence, his thoughts lighted upon Maundy Thursday, then less than a fortnight off.

He remembered having once watched from a private gallery in the royal chapel the impoverished ceremony which now did shabby duty for the old symbol of kingly humility and service. He had seen the vicarious sacrifice of silver pennies doled out by his almoners to a duplicated dozen of old men and women who had lost their better days in circumstances of the utmost respectability; and shocked at the poverty of the display he had been glad to learn that a more Christian gift of tea, clothes, snuff, and tobacco was added outside the Church door when the ceremony was over. But even so its ritual had not attracted him: it had lost its human values, and seemed to have been kept in life merely for archeological association.

Now on looking into the matter once more (the Encyclopedia Appendica gave him the required information) he was astonished to find that the old foot-washing ceremony of Holy Thursday was originally the chief function at which every year the Knights of the Holy Thorn were bound, if not unavoidably prevented, to appear and do service. Nay, when he turned to it, he found that it still stood so expressed in the Charter of the Order, and that each new Knight, upon admission thereto, swore solemnly to keep and observe the same—so help him God—faithfully unto his life's end.

If he had had any doubt before, the terms of that oath, which he himself had taken—probably without understanding it since it had been read to him in Latin—were sufficient to decide him. Without loss of time he sent word by his Comptroller-General to the Prime Minister that he intended in the following week to revive the full ceremony and to recall the Knights of the Thorn to the duties they had so long neglected. The ceremony, as of old, was to take place in public at noon outside the doors of the metropolitan cathedral.

"The King is going off his head," said the Comptroller-General by way of preface to the announcement with which he was charged; and the Prime Minister was ready to agree with him when he heard it.

"Preposterous!" he exclaimed.

"He has got chapter and verse for it," lamented the Comptroller-General.

"Can't you persuade him that it's a forgery?"

"It's in the oath," replied the other; "you yourself have taken it."

"Oh, yes, the form; but the ceremony—the accompanying service, I mean—was cut out of the Church Prayers at the time of the Reformation. It has become illegal."

"Inside a church, yes; not outside. At least that is his contention. Oh, I have already done my best! He got quite excited when I ventured to discuss the matter,—asked me if I understood the nature of an oath, and whether I had ever taken one."

"Is he much set on it?"

"I have had to write to the Archbishop."

"What do you think he'll say about it?"

"Ordinarily he would oppose it as savoring of Rome; under present circumstances my impression is that he will welcome it as giving the Church an added importance. You don't like it?"

"Of course, I don't."

"Then you had better see the King yourself. You have only a week left; and he has already begun looking at the weather-glass and wondering if it's going to be fine."

"That's just like him!" said the Prime Minister.

"Yes, and he's getting more like himself every day. My part is not a sinecure, I can assure you."

Accordingly the Prime Minister went over to the Palace and saw the King. Informed as to what line of argument had already been tried and failed, he approached the matter from a new standpoint: he spoke in the name of Protestantism. This ceremony had only survived in Catholic countries; in Jingalo the Reformation had killed it, and it had gone with graven images, the invocation of saints, and the worship of relics to the limbo of forgotten foolishnesses.

"The Charter of the Holy Thorn has not gone," said the King.

"Nor has your Majesty's title to the Crown of Jerusalem; but who ever thinks of enforcing it?"

"I am willing to resign it any day," replied his Majesty. "I can also, if you think it advisable, abolish the Charter of the Holy Thorn and the Knighthood with it. But I don't think the Knights would quite like that."

"If it comes to a question of liking," said the Prime Minister, "I do not think they will quite like washing beggars' feet in public."

"Oh, I do the washing and the drying," said the King. "They only carry the basins and put on the boots. I have looked up the whole ceremony; it's very impressive. You have only to read it and you will become converted: it is so symbolical."

The Prime Minister objected that though in its origin the ceremony might have had symbolic meaning and beauty, its performance now-a-days would be looked upon as a mere form and superstition, contrary to the spirit of the age.

This reminded the King of a certain "maxim."

"'The spirit of the age,'" he quoted, "'is the industrious collection of bric-a-brac—good, bad, and indifferent': this one happens to be good, and has been neglected. And talk about forms and ceremonies!—what can be more formal, superstitious, and idiotic than the procession of Court functionaries and King's Musketeers (with the Dean of the Chapels Royal carrying a candle) which, on every ninth of November—the anniversary of the Bed-Chamber Plot—comes to look under my bed to see whether assassins are not lurking there? On one occasion I was laid up with influenza, but I had to submit to that form and superstition because it had become traditional. And all the papers gloated over the fact, and called it 'a link in the chain of monarchy,' though as a matter of fact the conspiracy in question had been got up against that branch of the succession which we afterwards succeeded in dethroning. All the personal inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr. Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom, and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear me now!")

Failing in his personal appeal the Prime Minister turned on the Departments, and the King fought them one by one: the Board of Works which wanted to have the roads up; the Clerk of the Weather who said that a depression unsuitable for open-air gatherings was crossing Europe; the Chief of the Police who said that so large an open space was bad for a crowd; the Minister of Public Worship who wished everything to be done—if done at all—indoors and unobtrusively, by preference in one of the Royal Chapels: the effect, he said, would be more reverent. And when all these in turn had failed, the Prime Minister asked for a Council on the subject, and was told it was none of the Council's business.

"I am Grand Master in my own Order," said the King, "and you, as one of its Knights, in any matter pertaining to the Order owe me your unquestioning obedience."

That was unanswerable; he did. And so the King got his way.

II

The revival proved a tremendous success, although it did not reproduce the medieval conditions in their entirety.

The twelve old women were left out; it was not considered decent for the King to wash their feet in public and the Queen absolutely refused to do so. Instead they were invited to take tea at the Palace, and afterwards were all presented with foot-warmers.

In other directions also invidious distinctions were attempted, and a certain amount of controversy was raised. The Bishops made a scrambling and desultory fight for it that, as the steps of the Cathedral were to be used, all the washen beggars should be actual communicants of the Established Church; but the demand died down when it was found that such a breed did not exist; and a rush of undesirables to the altar in order to qualify could hardly be welcomed as a tolerable solution.

There was a tussle, too, among the Knights of the Thorn as to how many towel-bearers there should be (the towels remaining perquisites afterwards); but the King and his Master of Ceremonies—the delighted Max helping them—were able to settle matters to the general satisfaction, and, by allowing a towel to each foot and twelve cakes of soap, provided a sufficient number of souvenirs to go round.

And so the day came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled from within, bands played without, and massed choirs sang like angels from the parapets and galleries above the west doors of the Cathedral.

And when their ordeal by water was over, then the twelve beggars—all of guaranteed good character although not actual communicants—received with delight each a new pair of shoes and stockings, which they were able to sell at fabulous prices, immediately the ceremony was over, to collectors of curiosities, chiefly Americans. And that same night twelve very happy beggars, all more or less drunk, made their appearance on the largest music-hall stage in the metropolis, where the whole scene was elaborately re-enacted in facsimile, followed by a cinematograph record of the actual event.

The King was a little disappointed at these modern developments, they seemed to take away from the penitential character of the performance, and rather to weaken than restore in the public conscience the due observance of Lent.

Max, however, assured his father that he had made the greatest hit of his life; his personal popularity had been greatly enhanced. What pleased him better was that in feeling for the public pulse, by the light of his own conscience, he had proved that he was right and the Prime Minister wrong.

Yet, though ostensibly in the wrong, the Prime Minister had really been right. He had reckoned that the move might prove a popular one—for the monarchy; and though a dull average of popularity for that ancient institution suited his book for the present, he did not wish, in view of certain eventualities, to see it greatly increased, and still less did he wish the King to discover that by acting in opposition to his ministers he might gain in popular esteem.

As one of the Knights of the Thorn he himself had been obliged to attend the ceremony; and by some it was noticed that, as he stood holding a golden ewer in his two hands, he looked very cross. But all the other Knights of the Thorn—those who had towels and soap as perquisites—enjoyed themselves thoroughly and were already looking forward to a repetition of the performance next year. Even in their case, then, the King had proved to be right,—forms and ceremonies accompanied by fine clothes were still popular things; the Order of the New Broom would not be yet.

III

And then, with blare of trumpet and clash of drum, with troopings and marchings, with garlanded streets and miles upon miles of cheering people, came the great Jubilee festivities. Silver was the note of the decorations—silver in the midst of green spring. The Queen herself wore silver gowns and bonnets of heliotrope, and the King a uniform wherein silver braid formed the becoming substitute for gold. Corporations came carrying silver caskets; army pensioners and school-children, feted at the public expense, received white metal mementoes which, while new at any rate, looked as real as any coin of the realm. For a whole week the piebald ponies really worked for their living, grumbling loudly between whiles in their stalls; for a whole week "loyalty" was the note on which the press harped its seraphic praises of monarchy and nation; and for a whole week people actually did drop politics, reduce their hours of labor, and run about enjoying themselves.

The poet laureate published an ode for the occasion; he remarked on the passing of time, said that the King had acquired wisdom and understanding, but that the Queen did not look a day older; said that the trees were green on that day twenty-five years ago when the King ascended the throne, and that they were green still; said that cows ate grass then, and were eating it now without any decrease of appetite; said, in fact, that nothing sweet, reasonable, or beautiful had really changed at all, and that the monarchy, taking its constitutional day by day, was the national expression of that unchangeableness.

The day after the appearance of his poem he received that titular recognition for lack of which a poet laureate must feel that he has lived in vain. And then, all this unchangeableness of things having been thus ratified and sealed with the official seal, the King, his ministers, and the whole political world advanced to the edge of changes such as the country had not seen the like of for the last hundred years.



CHAPTER VIII

PACE-MAKING IN POLITICS



I

Inside the Council, meanwhile, curious and uncomfortable things had been happening. The King's talkativeness had steadily increased; no one could reduce him to reason.

"He reminds me," said one of his ministers irritably, "of the school-boy's story of the tea-kettle which discovered locomotion. Off boiled the lid: 'Why!' cries the observant inventor, 'put that upon wheels and it would go!' So he put it upon wheels and it went. He is exactly like that tea-kettle on wheels, miraculously set going without any inside reason to guide him! In my opinion before long there will have to be a regency." He tapped his skull meaningly, but in the wrong place: he should have tapped the back of it.

"What? Prince Max!" ejaculated his auditor; "I should hardly call that a remedy!"

"Nothing can be worse," declared the other, "than things as they are!"

In that he made a mistake; they were going to be much worse. The King's new mental activities were only just getting into their stride; and from a very unexpected quarter he was about to receive aid.

At the Council board, where the King had now found voice, one alone sat humorously interested and amused—the Minister of Fine Arts. He was not an artist himself—had he been he would never have been allowed to occupy that position; he was a Professor of History, Teller by name, and more than any of his fellow-ministers he studied life. Nothing interested him so much as the human machine; and to see this rather humdrum monarch suddenly developing into a tea-kettle on wheels, as his colleague had so happily phrased it, filled him with profound interest and an underlying sympathy.

Dimly the King had become aware that somewhere in that body of adroit shufflers who were supposed to minister to his constitutional needs the confused cry of his conscience had evoked an echo. He saw under a high bald forehead kindly eyes watching him; and it was a kindly voice charged with considerateness which one day, over a matter in which time pressed, begged for a further interview.

International exhibitions had become the vogue; and in putting on its peace paint for the Jubilee, Jingalo had determined to maintain its prestige among the nations by holding a conversazione of the Arts. In matters of that sort his Majesty had no particular taste; but in an art exhibition it was his duty to be interested. If need be he would open it, and would say of art and of its relations to the national life anything that the commissioners required of him. He would also lend any pictures from the royal collection which did not leave too obvious a gap upon the walls. All this was a mere matter of course; but the occasion being important—one of the great events indeed of the Jubilee festivities—it was expected of him that he should give a rather special consideration to the final plans.

Though wearied by the circumlocutions of his Council which had lasted throughout the morning, he named an hour, and at six o'clock received his minister in private audience.

The Professor began to explain matters in the usual official tone, but before long perceived that the attention paid to him was merely formal. The King sat depressed, listless, and cold. This renewal of the official routine found him mentally fagged out; it was evident that his thoughts were elsewhere.

Making the matter as short as he could in decency, the Professor folded his memoranda and returned them to his pocket.

Recalled to himself by the ensuing silence the King spoke—

"I really don't know enough about it to say anything," he murmured. "No doubt you have arranged everything for the best." But still he remained seated as though the interview were not ended, and the minister had perforce to remain seated also.

"I fear that to-day we have wearied your Majesty," he said at last to fill up the pause. "The Council is sometimes very trying."

The King lifted forlorn eyes in a sort of gratitude upon this, the least troublesome of all his ministers. "You, at least," he answered, "have not to reproach yourself, for I noticed that you did not speak."

"I was listening," answered the Professor; "I was much struck by your Majesty's line of argument."

"You agreed?"

"I cannot separate myself from my colleagues," returned the minister cautiously; "but I recognized the strength of your Majesty's case. On its own premises, if well put, it becomes unanswerable."

"I hardly thought that I had put it well." The King's voice showed despondency.

"To be perfectly frank, sir," said the Professor, tempering the amiable twinkle of his gaze with a deferential movement of the head, "you did not. The historical argument requires a knowledge of history."

"You remind me of another of my deficiencies, Professor."

"It is shared, your Majesty, by nearly the whole of the Cabinet. Very few of us, sir, knew anything more of it than you; and those of us who did were intent on concealing our knowledge."

"Very considerate, I am sure."

"Not at all, sir: our knowledge would have given strength to your argument."

The King sat up a little at this confirmation of his suspicions. "Do you mean, then, that my ministers make it a part of their duty to conceal from me the truth?"

"Some truths, sir," submitted the Professor, "may have undue weight given to them, which it then becomes a councilor's duty to correct. After all, history is only history; if at times we cannot break from it we shall never get anywhere."

"Yet all to-day," protested the King, "history, precedent, and the Constitution are the words that have been drummed into my ears, for all the world as though I, and not you, were the preacher of subversive doctrine."

"Your Majesty will remember that in this country we have had three successful revolutions against the Constitution. In one the monarchy was successful, in two the people."

"Is that said as a warning?"

"By no means, sir; merely to show that precedents lie on both sides like dry bones in the wilderness. But it requires the power of a prophet to call those dry bones to life. At present I see no prophet in Israel."

"Yet every member of the Government prophesies."

"I noticed, sir, that you did not. Never once did you pretend to know what the future would bring forth: you only pointed to the past, deducing therefrom your duty, as you conceived it, to the Constitution. Conditionally that commanded my respect."

"Surely," said the King, "I am bound, whatever the conditions, to hold sacred a trust which has been committed to me by inheritance."

The Professor bowed. "With your Majesty," he assented, "the hereditary principle must naturally be strong: it is implanted in your blood. I have no such impulse in mine. My father was born in a workhouse."

"That is very remarkable," said the King. "To have attained to your present position, your life must have been full of interest and adventure."

"Full of interest—yes. Adventure—no. Very plodding, very uneventful, almost monotonous apart from mental happenings. Now and then an unsought stroke of fortune. That is all."

"How did you ever get into the Cabinet?" inquired the King, in a tone that betrayed a sort of puzzled respect.

"Merely to fill a gap in a ministry whose days were numbered. Then an unexpected turn of the wheel kept us in power, and I remained. It was an inglorious arrival, but I found I could be of use: a sort of connecting line between incompatibles. I am not unpopular with my colleagues, and left alone in my department, I go my own way."

"And what is your way?" inquired the King, still searching for guidance.

"I do nearly everything as my permanent officials tell me, recognizing that while ministers come and go permanent officials remain and acquire experience from both sides. On the other hand, I use my own discretion in the hastening or suspension of the superannuation clause; I promote by results and not by seniority. My department, in consequence, is the most efficient in the whole Civil Service, and I have less work to do than any other minister. Thus I am left with more leisure and energy to devote to the consideration of policy, and affairs in general."

"And do you approve," inquired the King, "of the present policy?"

The minister paused. "I think the pace is about right," he said reflectively.

"The pace?"

"Yes; government to-day, sir, is largely a matter of pace, the actual measures do not so much matter. Modern democracy is making for something of which we are all really—the governing classes I mean—profoundly apprehensive: and the problem now is to let it come about without actual catastrophe. When I used the word 'pace,' I had a certain graphic illustration in my mind—an incident I once heard from the manager of a railway—the recountal of which will show your Majesty what I mean.

"A passenger train, before arriving at the head of a long, evenly graded declivity, had taken on three or four good trucks heavily laden. Owing to some carelessness in the coupling these wagons became detached on the very crest of the descent, and falling to the rear came almost to a halt. Not quite: sluggishly at first they began to move, and gathering impetus from sheer weight followed in the track of the proceeding train. Halfway down the declivity, the engine-driver discovered his loss and the danger that threatened him. Looking back, he saw in the distance the wagons weighted by the labor of men's hands drawing nearer with a speed that grew ever more formidable. His one chance, therefore, of avoiding a catastrophe was to put on pace in the hope of arriving at more level conditions before the impact took place. Yet he must still limit himself to a speed which enabled the train to keep to the rails on a certain sharp curve which lay ahead. That was the problem which the engine-driver set himself to solve: up to a certain point the more pace he could allow the greater his chance of safety, beyond that point a new danger arising out of pace lay ahead of him."

The minister paused.

"What happened?" inquired the King.

"He negotiated the curve with success, and had got so far ahead that when the wagons finally overtook him their impetus had been diminished by the more level conditions of the road, and the impact was but slight. Only the guard's van was smashed, and the guard himself rather badly disabled."

"And what happened afterwards to the guard and the engine-driver?" inquired his Majesty, much interested.

"The guard was pensioned for life: the engine-driver was promoted."

"And whose fault was it—the guard's?"

"Well, not exactly," replied the Professor; "the careless coupling was done by others, but the guard had the right, which he had not chosen to exercise, to refuse to accompany any train in which his van was not put last—so as to embrace the whole combination. At least, he had the technical right."

"I suppose he did not wish to give trouble," said the King meditatively.

"Very likely; for, of course, had he exercised his right the whole train would have been delayed by the extra shunting."

"And he in consequence a less acceptable servant to his employers."

"No one could have blamed him."

"Not for excess of caution?" queried the King. "Did you not yourself say that on those lines government would become impossible? You have to run your railway system, it seems, with a certain risk of accidents—otherwise you would never be up to time."

"That is so," said the Professor. "In every political crisis it is pace more than principle that I find one has to consider. If it is solved in such and such a way, our pace will be so and so, and the question—will it take us safely over the curve? If it is solved in another way so that the pace slackens, those wagons in the rear may be down upon us."

"And the guard, whose control, while the train makes its running, is but nominal, is then the first to suffer!" He saw himself in the man's place. "Poor glow-worm!" he cried, "he may change the green light in his tail to red—or was it red to begin with? but it is no use! Those proletarian forces descending upon him from the rear are quite blind in their purpose: it is merely dead weight and impetus that send them along." And then he pulled up abruptly, astonished to find that he was talking in Max's manner. Was it so catching?

"Not wholly blind, sir," said the Professor; "believe me, they mean well—mainly to themselves, no doubt: that is only human nature. Every body in the community, whether energized or sluggish, has some weight attached to it; and the more that bodies can agree to combine the greater is their weight politically. One has to recognize that consensus of opinion carries with it a certain moral as well as physical force. Out of that springs the evolution of our governing system."

"Only I," said the King, "in the nature of things have always to stand alone."

"Sir, you have all history!" said the Professor.

"Which, as you have reminded me, I do not know."

"May I inquire, sir, whether you have a real wish to know?"

"Why, naturally!" exclaimed the King. Whereupon the Professor, as though laying aside something of his officialdom, took up an easier attitude and addressed himself to the point.

"It would, I think, sir, be quite compatible with my duty to my colleagues were I to send your Majesty a few volumes of constitutional history with certain appropriate passages marked. It would interest me very greatly to hear the argument developed on the lines you have already laid down. The history I would venture to send is a thoroughly reliable and standard authority, written by an eminent jurist to whose words we later historians still bow. As I said, sir, pace is to-day the thing which really matters; beyond a given pace we, certainly, are not able to go. Luckily for our present plans there is no source from which any forcing of the pace seems probable. I do not think this or any other ministry dare attempt it. Speaking for ourselves any increase of the present pace would, I conceive, become a grave embarrassment. If, therefore, your Majesty has been apprehensive of our adopting any increase of speed, I think you may be reassured. After the constitutional readjustment our pace is scarcely likely to grow dangerous."

The Professor had managed to indicate that these were—if so it might be allowed—his last words. The King rose.

"I shall be much obliged, Professor," said he, "if you will lend me the books you have mentioned. When may I look for them?"

"Sir," said the Professor, in smooth matter-of-fact tones, "it so happens that I have them with me in my carriage. I will have them conveyed to your Majesty immediately."

And therewith he bowed over the King's hand and departed.

II

Left to himself the King stood considering for a while. He was pleased, but puzzled. What had this man, wise and kindly, been telling him? What advice were his words intended to convey? He was quite sure now that this minister had come and talked to him for a purpose: and what he had mainly talked about was "pace." It was "pace" that mattered. That was all very well, but with pace he himself had nothing to do—except in a negative sort of way. He, occupying the position of guard with brakes to his hand but no steam-power, could only cause delay; he had no means, and no object that he could see, for accelerating matters. Besides, had not the Professor said that in his estimation the pace was about right? All his efforts to secure delay would—he was already aware of it—fail of their effect; ministerial resignation threatening, he would have to give in. The alternative, the mad alternative that had for a moment occurred to him—no, it would not do! The results might be too tremendous, might lead even to revolution and a republic, and so he gave the problem up. And then a pile of six large volumes "with Professor Teller's humble duty" was brought in and set down before him; and John of Jingalo sat down to read the marked passages.

It was a reading that for its completion extended over many days.

What first attracted his attention, however, was a chronological series of plates, showing the map of Europe in all its political changes from the tenth to the twentieth century. This was, in fact, a key to the whole work, for as the author rightly pointed out in his opening paragraph the history of Europe was inextricably bound up in the history of Jingalo, and the one could not be properly studied without some understanding of the other.

These maps of Europe he turned from century to century; and there, as he marked their many variations, there always to be recognized was Jingalo occupying its proud historical position—so often challenged, yet still on the whole unchanged. It had found room to live and breathe, not by its own strength, but by a careful adjustment of the political balance between others, and a neutralization artfully and sometimes treacherously contrived of greater forces than its own. It had for neighbors two great military states and several smaller ones; and had at some time or another been at war with nearly all of them. Often—generally in fact—it had come out of those wars more vanquished than victorious (though Jingalese school-books carefully concealed the fact): it had lost, for proof, more territory than any other power in the world except England, and yet, like England, cherished the curious conviction that it had won all the really important battles and dictated each peace upon its own terms. Having been wholesomely driven out of France in the fifteenth century, it had captured and carried away with it as trophy the order of the White Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y suis, j'y reste." In the eighteenth century it had adopted by compulsion from Germany an alteration in its law of regal inheritance, and had marked its adhesion to the new formula by the institution of the order of the Dachshund, with the obsequious motto, "Das ist mir ganz Wurst," popularly mistranslated by the wags of the day into, "That is the worst for me." Beaten by the infidel in the Crusades it had joined thenceforth to its regalia the holy crown of Jerusalem; and having thrown over the Papacy at the time of the Reformation, had added to its armorial bearings the Keys of St. Peter, and to its royal claims and titles the Kingship of Rome. A frequent and murderous deposition of its kings had but accentuated its devotion to the monarchic system: while its solemn confirmation of each fresh breach of continuity had stood to reaffirm its general belief in the hereditary principle, and in divine providence as controlled by Act of Parliament. The only other country in the world which had acted with such scrupulous inconsistency, unrepentant and unashamed, was England. It was no wonder, therefore, that in their history the two countries had much in common; and it must have been through sheer inadvertence, in view of their rival claims to be the constitutional pace-makers of Europe, that while they had often stood badly in the way of each other's interests they had never yet fallen to blows.

International politics, however, were not for the moment the King's chief concern, and he turned back from the pages of Europe to study in detail the constitutional history of his own country and the powers it still reserved for its kings.

While he pursued these studies, many things new and strange presented themselves to his gaze. There were, he discovered, powers of the Crown still extant, though lapsing through gradual desuetude, of which he had never dreamt, and as to the existence of which no one had made it his duty to inform him. Some of them had been in regular practice less than forty years ago; they were becoming obsolete merely because the advisers of the Crown wished it. Just as the House of the Laity was now falling more and more under the control of a Cabinet whose powers waxed as the other's waned, so the King himself was in the hands of those whose interests were to conceal from him the powers he possessed.

He came on a page where the right of royal initiative in Council had been thoughtfully underlined by the Professor; and he discovered with astonishment that a whole series of constitutional questions lay altogether outside the competence of ministers to deal with until they had been first formally submitted to the King himself. Under this heading he found that no financial proposal touching on Crown lands, or on grants to the royal family, could become a matter of ministerial discussion without his consent first given; no proposal to alter the royal line of succession or the oath taken by the King at his coronation; no change of definition in the articles or creed of the Established Church; no alienation of Church lands; no fresh institution of any rank, title, order, or degree, nor the abolition thereof; no alteration in the laws governing the right of the voteless to petition the King against the acts of his ministers; no subsidy or treaty of war, and no surrender, barter, or exchange to a foreign power of any part whatsoever of the King's dominions; no appointment to a foreign embassy; no elevation of a commoner to rank or title; no issue of royal patents; no free pardons for criminals, and no change in the composition of either of the two Houses of Parliament. All these things must be formally submitted to the will of the Crown before being entered as items of the ministerial policy.

"My word!" cried the King, perceiving for the first time how unconstitutionally that word had been set at naught. He could hardly believe his senses. Here under his nose, all these weeks lese majeste had been rampantly disporting itself; and he knew nothing of it! Possibly the Prime Minister knew nothing of it either; had not the Professor said that many of his colleagues were as ignorant of constitutional history as the sovereign himself? But some knew—some must know! And the King, who but a few hours before had believed himself the most helpless of emblems, a mere ornamental topknot to the constitutional edifice, now found himself armed with weapons of far-reaching precision that would enable him to carry war into the enemy's country. Metaphorically he clapped his wings and crowed. Yes, it was as though that weathercock, to which hitherto he had likened himself, that toy of chance, swung this way and that upon a pivot with no will of its own, had suddenly taken to itself life and wing and power, and quitting its stake had descended into the arena with beak and claw stiffened for the fray. That board of tormenting ministers was now in his power—for a time at any rate.

In his excitement he got upon his feet and trotted about the room, and pausing now and again he gazed ahead with a gloating eye on a whole series of ministerial councils to come. For this monarch, you must remember, had been departmentalized all his life, and to that extent dehumanized; and it was only in a departmental way that he recognized his opportunity. The power to strike which he now visualized came through no intellectual enlargement, no opening up of moral vistas, but only through the discovery that he had on his side a mass of red tape the existence of which he had not previously suspected. In similar trammels to those which had so long hampered and restricted his own movements it was now possible for him to entangle the goings of his ministers. A hundred and one things had been done which were not merely out of order but—oh, blessed word!—unconstitutional; and in consequence the poor dear man's mind was in a welter of delight. At last he had a weapon to his hand whose reach and mechanism he could manipulate. "Oh, dear me, yes!" he said to himself, and said it several times.

When a character of childlike simplicity has got hold of a loaded gun, it has a natural instinct to let it off. The actual direction, and what the target is to be, are not so important as the delightful sense of hearing the gun go off,—of proving by actual demonstration that it really was a loaded and dangerous thing, capable of causing consternation. John of Jingalo was simple, and when he got up from his first solid reading of the Professor's volumes he felt that he was well primed; and his instinct was to let himself go, to spread himself, to attack his enemy with extended front so that they would not know where to have him. Half-a-dozen small tags of red tape gave him a far greater sense of resource and opportunity for aggression than any one good piece of measurable length capable of being well wound and knotted. His powers, such as they were, were largely imitative; and now for some weeks the wordy Max had been coaching him. The Professor had supplied him with the material, Max with the method for applying it; the Professor had given him his head, Max had given him his tongue. Looking forward to the exercise of his new-found powers he meant, in a word, to be voluble; and when in later chapters he becomes yet more surprising, let the reader remember that fortuitous crack at the back of his skull through which the windows of his head were open and his brain-pan a place of draughts wherein any winds of doctrine might blow. A word of opposition, a mere gust of excitement, were now quite enough to set him going, and once started he was very difficult to stop.

For much the same reason, having once started to prance up and down the carpet—that carpet so variegated and Maxian in its pattern—he found it very difficult to sit down again; and would not have done so had not the measured striking of the clock upon the chimney-piece reminded him that he was expecting a visit from Max. Then a curious change came over his deportment; he stood considering, glancing from the telltale volumes upon the table to the door through which he was presently expecting his son to enter. Then with a secretive look and a shake of the head, "Oh, dear me, no," he murmured very softly; and taking up the books he put them away in a drawer and locked it, and, when presently Max came in, said nothing of his new discovery, but sat docile and listened, while the other drew out the shining length of his vocabulary, making words sound like deeds.

Not for nothing was John of Jingalo the son of his father, not for nothing a descendant of kings who so far as they consciously achieved power had always held it possessively and exclusively, withholding the key from their heirs. Post obits were not popular in that royal House of Ganz-Wurst which for two hundred years had ruled over Jingalo.



CHAPTER IX

THE NEW ENDYMION



I

Readers who have hearts will remember that while these things were taking place in the political world, something of more intimate and personal concern had happened to Prince Max. That young man, whose head was so crowded with ideals for others, had discovered—or glimpsed, it would be more correct to say—an ideal of his own, in the shaping of which he had nothing whatever to do. Goddess-like she had descended upon him from skies in which previously he had held no faith at all; and even yet it was a tussle for his conscience to accept anything coming from that quarter as really divine. He was agnostic; he did not like the Church, and he rather despised that attitude of mind which accepted miracle as a directing power in human affairs, and looked to an unseen world for the inspirations of life. It was as though some modern Endymion gazing up at the round and prosaic surface of the moon, and refusing to admit that there entered into its composition anything even of so low a vitality as green cheese—it was as though such an one had seen the affirmed negation suddenly take to itself life and form, and disclose from afar a whole heaven of thoughts, beauties, and aspirations which he had not believed existent. And then, having seen that gracious form so well defined that it must for ever remain imprinted upon his consciousness, he had watched it steal from him into obscurity, wilfully concealing its whereabouts, though ever since the silver haze of that hidden presence had permeated his world.

Concealment and flight are, we know, the very arrows of love when directed with subtle intent against the hunter's heart in man; and they are scarcely less powerful to kindle his ardor when undirected and without purpose, or, as in this case, of a purpose wholly negative and without lure.

His lady had disappeared, because in very truth parting was her intent; and in haunting for a while the dark and crooked ways which her feet had blessed, he had but the poor satisfaction of knowing that he was depriving of her ministrations lives inconceivably more miserable than his own. That consciousness when it came touched him in a point of honor, and forced him to relinquish the quest; but there remained with him thenceforth a maddening sense that if, accepting his withdrawal, she had resumed her avocations, he now knew daily where she was, and had only to break with his scruples in order to find her.

They had met less than half-a-dozen times; and he, driven by his mental pugnacity to test so unreasonable an apparition, had spared neither himself nor her. The sincerity of her faith had angered him, though anything else, had he detected it, would have destroyed his dream; and when he had scoffed she had not troubled to rebuke him, had only glanced at him amused, not with pity or condescension or kind Christian charity, but with a very friendly understanding and often with what seemed agreement. He was astonished to find that a rippling sense of humor could go hand in hand with a blind gift of faith, and to hear sayings as bold as his own uttered as though they were the merest common-sense. "Why yes, of course," she admitted, in answer to one of his tirades, "if you want envy, hatred, and uncharitableness in a concentrated form you will find them in the Church; that stands to reason." And when he inquired why, she answered, quite simply, "Because a bad Christian is Satan's best material."

Nor had she any illusions about that particular branch of the Church militant for which she labored; she regarded it rather as a half-baked body of territorials than a regular army equipped for the field. Still it served a purpose, gave useful occupation to many, and stood for the time being against unreasoning panic or callous desertion of duty; nor would she surrender its few poor healing virtues for any of the nostrums he sought to set in their place. "It does more than you with all your talking," she said quietly, and, as they passed by, took him into a mission church where he might see—a small corrugated iron hut, set down in the midst of slums. Under the scent of incense the smell of disinfectants was strong; near a stove sat a lay reader, and about her a dozen poor weary women plying needle and thread. Two or three of them held children at the breast; in a pen near by lay half-a-dozen others asleep. Over the stove was a large boiler supplying hot water to poor parishioners; away by a small side altar knelt a single figure in prayer. Brightly colored "stations of the Cross," and something upon the altar that looked like a large tea-cozy, before which burned a light, told how here the law was systematically broken, and that the "nonsense" inveighed against by the old Queen Regent had not yet been put down.

"That is the bit of Christianity I work for," she said as she led him out again, "a sort of mother-hen whose cluckings, scratchings, and incubations are run in a parish of five thousand half-starved people on less than L300 a year. Have you anything better to show?"

"I want revolution," he said.

"Choose your own time," she answered mildly. "Here every day we are facing a far worse thing."

"Making it endurable," he objected. "These people are patient because of you and your like."

"Impatience would only make it harder for them," she returned. "You can't argue with them; they haven't the brains."

"Not in working order, I admit."

"Meanwhile they have to live."

"And when you help them to that end—are they at all grateful?"

"A few; yes, that is one of the hardest things we have to bear,—we who are living stolen lives; for whether we will it or not our vitality comes from them; daily we drain it from their blood, and nothing we can do will stop it."

"Are you in need of money?"

"Always; but five million pounds given us to-morrow would not go to the root of this."

"What would?"

"Nothing but true worship."

"You worship an alibi," said Max.

"What nearer divinity has brought you here?" she inquired. And he, too conscious of the personal motive, forbore to explain.

At their fifth meeting she told him quite frankly that he was interfering with her work, that she could not have him accompanying her, waiting for her, picking her up as if by chance.

"If you want to do work you must find it for yourself; you will if you are sincere," she said in answer to his request that she would commission him.

"But may I not be your follower?" he pleaded, choosing the word for its double sense.

"Lay sisters don't have followers," she replied. "They don't go with the costume."

"Then why wear it? Will you turn away a disciple for a mere matter of dress?"

"My dress," she said, "is of more use and protection to me than anything you can do or than money can buy. You have politicians who say that society is built upon force. My dress is the work of women; thousands of lives have made it what it is, and it will take me safely into slums where no policeman dare go alone. When your politicians can come here in coats of a similar make, then they will have begun to solve the problems which they are so fond of talking about. Now, will you please to walk on the other side of the road?"

He took her hand, saying earnestly, "When are we to meet again?"

She shook her head at him, smiling. "Truthfully I haven't time for you," she said, "and I can't make promises."

And then, just for once—for it seemed his last chance—Max fell into sentiment.

"One I want you to make," he insisted.

"What is that?"

"That you will pray for me!"

"Now you are asking for luxuries," she smiled; "you don't believe in prayer. But I will." Then, nodding confidently, she added, "And it will do you good."

And then, as he still lingered, with quiet business-like demeanor she crossed the street and disappeared.

It was true that in thus seeking her intercession Max had asked for a luxury. He did not believe in prayer any more than he had ever done; but he did very much like the idea of being prayed for by the woman he loved. Once, for a brief moment, he had seen her kneel before an altar empty to him of meaning; and as he then watched the serene joy and beauty of her face had realized with a jealous envy how in an instant all thought of him had passed from her mind. So in asking her to pray for him he had merely sought to penetrate by subtlety the unbelievable world of her dreams. And then, even as he reveled in the vision, the odd thought occurred in what terms would he obtain introduction? Once, when for the repayment of a borrowed cab fare she had asked his name and address, he had told her who he was, and she had not believed him; had, indeed, herself tantalized him in return with an address as little probable as his own. If, therefore, she prayed for him in words how would they run, or, if in thought, what character would it assume? "That man," "that nice man," "that talkative man," "that person who called himself Prince Max," "the tall stranger," "the man whom I sent away," "the man who emptied my bucket," "the man who brought in the bed," "the man who waited for me at corners," "the man who wanted to be my follower." All these variant products of a brief acquaintance, though he dwelt on them as luxuries, failed to give him satisfaction, they formed a fretful and at times a tormenting accompaniment to his unapportioned days. At his hours of rising and setting the thought would insistently recur to him: "Now, perhaps even now, she is praying for me." And straightway he would return to the task of trying to realize the nature of her prayer and with what label she pigeoned him in the columbarium of her soul.

Whether or no it could be said that this was "doing him good," he had certainly begun to apprehend the power of prayer; that dove-like spirit with overshadowing wing had found means to ruffle very considerably the even current of his existence. Even had he wished to he could not get her out of his thoughts. Fantastic and prosaic statements of his identity kept leaping into his mind. "The man with his trousers turned up" was one of them. Yes, he had done that in order to make their immaculate cut less noticeable; he had dressed as badly as he knew how, and yet—she might possibly be praying for him as "that well-dressed person." It was a ghastly thought, and he had brought all this purgatory upon himself merely by asking for a "luxury," for something in which he did not really believe. And then, at the thought of her deep sincerity, his mind revolted from all these bywords and subterfuges. "Oh!" he cried to himself, "she knows, she knows, she must know!"

And, of course, as a matter of fact she did. She knew that she had a lover, a young man who had nicknamed himself,—clever and handsome, evidently with time and money to spare, probably of some social position, and with an undeniable likeness to a Prince whom she only knew by his photographs. And for this young man, who on five or six separate occasions had so hindered her with his attentions, she had a deep and impulsive liking which, as it ran counter to her plan of life, she did not choose to encourage.

But if Max could only have known he would have been comforted: she prayed for him every day, morning and night, and taking him at his word, though not in the least believing it, it was as "my Prince Max" that she begged heaven to look after him. And when in her orisons that nymph remembered him she smiled a little more than was her usual wont—for truly he had amused her. In spite of dignified air and polished speeches and a belief in himself that never failed, she had discerned the stripling character of his soul; and greatly would Max have been surprised, and perhaps also a little shocked, could he have learned that he ranked in her mental affections as "rather a dear boy"; for it is woman's way to claim the privilege of a motherly regard without any seniority in age, and with a good deal of feeling that mere "mothering" will not satisfy.

II

Another lady, as to whose movements and plans Prince Max could not yet be indifferent, had meanwhile returned home, and he had been to see her.

The Countess Hilda von Schweniger had sent word that she had serious things to say to him; it was only thus that he received notice of her return. She had a tender weakness for talking seriously at intervals, for the periodic workings of her conscience were ever open to view. But whatever special seriousness of purpose was now perturbing her, this matter-of-fact return to the roof they shared seemed to give it contradiction,—did not at least suggest that any immediate breach in their present relations was to be looked for from her.

And so Max went to the interview wondering how he was going to behave over this new fact which had so largely entered his life; whether he was going to "behave well"—whether indeed it were possible at the same time to behave well and be honest and above-board. He was, in fact, up against the usual difficulty of the man who, having run domesticity on a temporary basis, has discovered grounds for wishing to exchange it for a more permanent one. And as he put his latch-key into the garden door of the quiet tree-shadowed house which for five years he had regarded as his second home, he uttered to himself a kind of a prayer that his relations with a good woman would not now have to be less honest than formerly.

It was evident that she had been on the lookout for him; a French-window in a creeper-covered veranda opened as he advanced, and gracious domesticity stood smiling in the green-lighted shade.

She laid her hands on his shoulders as she kissed him. "Well, mon Prince," she said, "are you glad to see me again?"

He took in all the pleasant and familiar appeal of her face before answering. "Yes, I am," he said, "very."

"That's true—really true?"

And at that challenge he gave a funny little duck of the head, known to her of old, and kissed her again.

She turned quietly and walked away into the room.

"I came back just to hear you say that," she murmured in a moved tone, and stood waiting with her face away from him.

The heart of Max was wonderfully relieved: gladdened also, for as he looked at her he realized that she remained dear to him. With her old simple directness she had let him know what was in her mind, and by her clean brevity of speech had already, in this their first moment together, saved him from the trap into which he might have fallen. Not that the ordinary male temptation to let her resolution stand as cover to his own did not for a moment occur to him. Nay, he could even suggest good reasons; for was not this the kindest reward now left within his power—to let her think that the wish was not shared—to show even a little resentment and reproach? Max, the satirical critic of human nature, could see clearly the attractiveness of such a course,—knew himself a sufficiently good actor to play the game at least well enough to satisfy his artistic taste. But he did not yield to the temptation; had he done so he would have formed a more moral emblem for the edification of my readers than I am now able to provide; and they must face instead the uncomfortable fact that out of this long and immoral liaison between a prince and his mistress certain moral values held good, and that being in need of a sincere friend and confidante he found it in the woman from whom he was about to separate.

He crossed to her side, and taking her hand kissed it with more frequency and fervor than he had kissed her face, and heard then her breath struggling against tears. She reached up her other hand and began stroking his head; and it is life's truth that these two still found attraction and comfort the one in the other.

"Then you are going back again?" whispered Max.

She nodded, saying "yes" afterwards on a catch of breath.

"When?"

She looked at him wistfully. "I didn't want to go—yet."

"Why should you?"

"It wouldn't worry you?"

"Not at all. Very much the reverse."

"I should want to see you, though."

Max smiled. "You mean, then, shouldn't I worry you——"

"I suppose I did mean that," she said, viewing him speculatively.

Then Max was tempted to show off. "Who gave me my first lesson in not worrying?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," she admitted, "but then, you see, I was yours. It has to be different now."

"I want it to be different too," he said; and as by that statement he wished to convey important inner meanings, he spoke solemnly.

She looked at him radiant, half incredulous—the pious wish shining in her eyes. "Oh, Max!" she cried amazed, "has it come to you too, then? Has Our Lady——"

But Max shook his head. "Your Lady is not my lady," he gently confessed.

"Oh!" her voice went down into the deeps of despondency. "Oh! is that what you mean?"

A solemn nod from Max informed her that it was.

"You always told me that it would happen some day."

"I hoped I should have gone."

"And I," said Max, "am glad that you have not. Selfish of me, isn't it?" Then he kissed her hand again.

She began a homely mopping of her face.

"Then it doesn't matter how I look now?" she commented, and paused. "How am I looking?"

"Well, and as dear as ever," he replied.

"That isn't what I wanted to know. You know it isn't."

"You are looking," he said, "just two evening moons older than when I saw you last."

"What have evening moons got to do with it?"

"They are your most becoming time."

She took the compliment with a sigh and a smile; then with an air of resignation sat down.

"Who is she?" she asked abruptly.

"I haven't a ghost of a notion. We haven't been properly introduced, she hasn't encouraged me, I haven't said a word, and I'm not to go near her any more."