"Very enthusiastic," murmured the Queen appreciatively.

"Yes; I wonder if presently they will be as enthusiastic about Max."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. I was only thinking ahead, in quite a general sort of way. We seem lately to have become quite popular."

"I think we have always been."

"Yes, you have, my dear; about myself I was not so sure. Well, it's very gratifying to come upon it just now."

His Majesty felt a little guilty, for he had not yet told the Queen of what lay ahead; it was so much better that she should not know beforehand what she would never be able to understand.

Then for a while they relapsed into silence, each attending to what Charlotte would have described as their "business"—a carefully regulated succession of bows accompanied by a smile which never quite left off.

Presently the King spoke again. "By the way, where has Charlotte gone to?"

"Well, I hardly know," said the Queen. "She wrote to me from her first address—that college place; but said she was going on elsewhere, and I thought you settled that we were to leave her alone."

"I think she ought to have waited till to-morrow. As Max is away, she at least should have been here."

"So I told her; but she said she had a very particular engagement which she must keep; and I could see that, relying upon your promise, she meant to have her own way, so I said nothing."

"I hope they are going to like each other," said the King, his thoughts carrying on to the meeting which was now near.

"She and the Prince? Oh, yes, I think there's no doubt about it. Strange, wasn't it, that her running away actually pleased him?"

"I suppose it was so very unusual. We don't as a rule get people to run away from us. It's generally all the other way. Look at this crowd! I wonder how the police manage to keep them back."

Smiling and bowing, the Queen replied: "They are so well behaved; and see, how patient. Many, I daresay, have been here for hours. Doesn't that show loyalty?"

"It isn't all loyalty, my dear; they like the whole spectacle, the troops, the coach, the piebald ponies. Last night I went to look at them; four of them have been left out."

"What a strange thing to do."

"But some have to be."

"No; going to see them, I mean."

"Well, I don't know; they play a very important part in the proceedings, and in a way they are heroes, for wherever they go with us they share our danger. I heard quite a lot of interesting things about them."

At this moment they were approaching a part of the route which separated them for a while from the popular plaudits. In the forefront was a deep archway, and beyond it was a brief stretch of road shut in by hoardings and dominated by high masts of scaffolding, behind which new Government buildings were in process of erection. Across each front to left and right a few strings of bunting fluttered to give festive relief; for here there were no stands filled with spectators, no pavements lined with shouting crowds; and behind the palisades work had been knocked off for the day. The cry of the populace lulled down to a mere murmur, and the trampling of the hoofs echoed strangely as they passed under the vaulted arch and along the walled-in track with its huge baulks of timber on both sides supporting the growth of stone walls.

Ahead stood a wide gateway opening by a sharp turn into Regency Row, whose broad thoroughfare of cream-tinted facades, now bright with flags, formed an ideal rallying-ground for the sightseeing multitude.

"Now there," said the King, pointing ahead to a high triangular building facing the gates through which they were about to emerge, "there is the place that I always think a bomb might be thrown from with much certainty and effect, plump into the middle of us, just as we are turning the corner."

"I do wish you would leave off talking about such things," said the Queen reproachfully, "or wait till we are safe home again. How can I keep on smiling, if you go putting bombs into my head?"

"I was only saying, my dear——"

Suddenly, from behind, an amazing detonation seemed to strike at the smalls of their backs, throwing them half out of their seats. The glass slide upon the Queen's side of the coach ran down with a crash, and one of the large gilt baubles from its roof toppled and fell into the road. At the same instant a great blast and swirl of smoke blew by, shutting for a moment the outer world from view. Then loud cries, hullabalooings, shoutings—a scramble and clatter of hoofs as though three or four horses had gone down and were up again—a capering flash of pink silk calves—as the six footmen exploded upon from the rear sought safety in front where the eight piebald ponies were all standing on end with men hanging on to their noses. And then further disorder of a less violent kind, runnings to and fro, and from the crowd waiting ahead a vast and tumultuous cry rather jovial in its sound.

The King had risen from his seat, and trying to look out and see what was going on behind had put his head through the glass, his crown acting as a safe and effective battering ram.

"I do believe there has been an attempt," he said, drawing his head in again. "That certainly sounded like a bomb; not that I have had much experience of such things."

Then he did what he should have done at first, and let down the glass.

"I am going to faint," sighed the Queen, sinking back in her seat.

"Nonsense!" said the King sharply. "Pull yourself together, Alicia! You are not hurt."

"I think I am," she said. But the sharp tone acted as a tonic, and she settled herself comfortably in her corner and began quietly to cry.

There was still plenty of confusion going on. The piebald ponies had been brought to a standstill, and some of them were now showing temper. A voluble and excited crowd was trying to break through the police lines and grasp the whole situation at a run. Troops were coming to the rescue; horsemen from the rear dashed by. Then a staff officer galloped up to the coach window, and reining a jiggetty steed saluted with agitated air and a rather white face.

"The danger is over, your Majesty," he gasped, a little out of breath, "only a few horses are down; no one is killed."

The King nodded acceptance of the news; and as he did so noticed a tiny fleck of blood upon the officer's cheek—no more than if he had cut himself in shaving. It seemed to give the correct measure of the catastrophe, and to assure him more than words could have done that the damage was really small.

Except for that one moment when he had impulsively put his head through glass, the King had kept his wits and remained calm; and now his royal instinct told him the right thing to be done.

"If you want to manage that crowd," he said, "we had much better drive on. Until we do they may think that anything has happened. Tell them to start, and not to drive fast."

The officer went forward bearing the royal order.

"Alicia," said the King, "there really is nothing to cry about; the most important thing is to show the people that we are not hurt. Pull yourself together, my dear. There! now we are starting again. And if you think you can manage it, stand right up at your window and I will stand at mine; then nobody can have any doubt at all."

He removed some shattered glass from her lap as he spoke, and gave an encouraging squeeze to her hand; and as the coach moved forward they stood up and confidently presented themselves to the public gaze.

Sure enough that sight had a magical effect equal to the controlling force of a thousand police. The crowd recovered its wits and allowed itself to be shoved back into place. Out through the gates sallied the piebald ponies; and from end to end all Regency Row broke into a roar. Ahead went the troops and the police, pressing back the once more amenable crowd; men and women were weeping, moist handkerchiefs were ecstatically waved, quite new and reputable hats were thrown up into air, and allowed to fall unreclaimed and unregarded. And truly it was a sight well calculated to stir the blood, for there, emerging unhurt from dust and smoke, from rumor and sound of terror, came the monarch and his Queen standing upon their feet and bowing undaunted to a furore of cries.

Through all that vast multitude word of the outrage had sped, like a black raven flapping its wings, charged ominously with tidings of death; and as confusion had spread wide nothing more could be heard, till once more a resumption of the processional movement was seen. Then came white-faced footmen quaking at the knees; after them eight piebald ponies rather badly behaved and requiring a good deal of holding in; and then Royalty, itself smiling and quite unharmed. And straightway the ordinary loyalty of a sightseeing Jingalese crowd was merged in a passionate and tumultuous cry of jubilant humanity; and the royal procession became a triumphal progress.

II

The Queen was still crying a little when they reached their destination; but she was very happy all the same, for she felt that between them they had risen to the occasion and had passed exceedingly well through an ordeal that falls only to few.

And now at the House of Legislature itself a strangely informal reception awaited them. Word of what had happened had gone in to the two Chambers, and human nature proving too strong, rules and regulations of ceremony had been dispensed with, and out had streamed judges, prelates, and laity in full force, to attend upon their own front door-step the belated arrival of their mercifully preserved Sovereign and his Queen.

And when they did arrive, the whole House of Laity there assembled broke into cheers; and not to be behindhand in demonstrations of loyalty, the Judges and the Bishops cheered too—a thing that none of them had done individually for years; and in their official and corporate capacity, judicial and ecclesiastical, never in their lives before.

Then as spokesmen for their respective parties, for Ministerialists and for Opposition, came the Prime Minister and the Archbishop, giving voice to the thankfulness that was felt by all.

The Archbishop performed his part the better of the two; for between him and his sovereign there were no strained relations; he was also on closer terms of reference to the Powers above; and so, while giving earthly circumstances their due, he rendered grateful thanks to a Beneficence which had guided and directed all. The Prime Minister did not.

The King, in recalling afterwards the happy impromptus of that scene when Prelates and Laity were vying with each other in the expression of their relief, remembered how once or twice the Prime Minister had halted and gone back to the repetition of a former phrase, like one who having learned a lesson had momentarily lost the hang of it.

The circumstance did not greatly impress him at the time, he was ready to make allowances, for between him and his minister the situation was somewhat embarrassing. They had parted with unreconciled views, and by no stretch of terms could their relationship any longer be regarded as friendly. All the same, on such an occasion it was incumbent upon the Prime Minister to say the correct thing, and he had said it: he had described the outrage as "a dastardly attempt," and the immunity of his sovereign as "a happy and almost miraculous escape" for which none had more reason to be thankful than himself and his colleagues; he had also said that the passionate attachment of the people of Jingalo to the person of their ruler had now been made abundantly evident, and he trusted might ever so continue.

Later in the day, when the short ceremony of Parliament's closing was over (for it was impossible under the circumstances to return to stiff formality, no one being in the mood for it), later in the day, he again presented himself, and besought a private audience. And then—while once more repeating what he had said previously, almost in the same words,—he showed that he had something very serious of which to deliver himself.

He began with a great parade of leaving the matter to the King's decision only; his duty was merely to state the case as it would strike the world.

"We are in your Majesty's hands," he said, "and I have no wish to revive a discussion in which your Majesty has by right the last word. I have only to ask whether the circumstances of the last few hours have in any way affected your Majesty's decision."

As usual this formal insistence upon his "majesty" aroused the King's distrust; with his ministers in privacy he always disliked it. But all he said was: "Why should it?"

The Prime Minister pursed his lips and elaborately paused, as though finding it difficult to express himself. Then he said—

"After an attempted assassination so nearly successful, abdication would have a different effect to what your Majesty presumably intended."

"How?" inquired the King. But though he asked he already knew; and mentally his jaw dropped, as a new apparition of failure rose up and confronted him.

"It might seem to reflect upon your Majesty's personal courage: about which, I need hardly say, I myself have no doubt whatever."

"I see," said the King. His voice sounded the depression which had again begun to overwhelm him.

"I have no wish to press your Majesty," the Premier went on; "but at the present moment we are still under orders that to-morrow the definite and irrevocable announcement is to be made public."

Again he paused; and the King did not answer him.

"I wish to ask, therefore, whether it is your Majesty's wish that the announcement of the abdication shall be postponed?"

"Yes," said the King, and his words came slow, "I suppose that it must be—as you say—postponed."

"Does your Majesty wish to suggest any later date?"

The King thought for a while before answering.

"Is there any reason that I should?" But though he thus spoke to temporize over the position in which he now found himself, he knew that his opportunity was gone never to recur.

"Merely for our own guidance," explained the Prime Minister. "There is to be a special Cabinet meeting to-night."

"What are you going to discuss?"

"Should your Majesty remain, it will be our duty to present an address of loyal congratulation immediately on the reassembling of Parliament; and that, under the new circumstances, must take place almost at once. In any event some address will, of course, have to be moved; but if what has happened to-day is followed by an abdication, then regrets and deep gratitude for all the gracious benefits of the past would have to be added, and the whole form of it most carefully weighed and considered. I may say, therefore, that we are even now awaiting your Majesty's instructions."

"And you can do nothing till I decide?"

"Nothing practical, sir."

Their eyes met with a lurking watchfulness; and it was not difficult for each to read something of the other's thought. The King knew that behind all that aspect of deference and humility lay a sense of triumph, almost malignant in its intensity. He knew that circumstances had beaten him; and that the bomb of some wretched assassin had made his abdication impossible. The Prime Minister had said that he had no wish to press him; but what a pretense and hypocrisy that was, when that very night the Cabinet would have to meet and register its decision in one of two alternative forms totally distinct. Yes; the Ministry had him now in a cleft stick; and no pressure was to be put upon him only because there was no possibility for his decision to be delayed.

Defeat, following upon the terrific events of the day, filled his brain with weariness. At the moment when he had hoped to be free of his persecutors he had come once again to a blank wall. Further progress was barred, further thinking had become useless, events must take their course; once more he felt himself the sport of fate—a mere chip floating with the stream.

"Very well, Mr. Prime Minister," he said with resignation, "the Abdication is withdrawn."

He sighed deeply; and then (when left alone to his cogitations), for such weak comfort as the mere saving of his face could lend, this thought occurred to him,—"What a good thing that I told nobody about it." Even Max did not know.

And so in the year of his Jubilee, and the plenitude of his popularity, John of Jingalo continued to reign; and was, in consequence, the most saddened and humiliated monarch who ever bowed his head under a crown and resigned his freedom to a mixed sense of duty and a fear of what people might say.



CHAPTER XVI

CONCEALMENT AND DISCOVERY



I

There was plenty of hue and cry to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, but nothing came of it. From somewhere in that labyrinth of unfinished building and scaffolding fenced in by high hoardings a bomb had been thrown of insufficient power to do much damage to anybody. The Prefect of Police, riding in close attendance on the royal carriage, had himself vaulted the barrier, on the side whence it had seemed to come, and reported that he had found no trace of any one. Pieces of the shell had been collected upon the spot, they had not flown very far, nor were they much broken; and experts of the detective department had been busy putting together the bits.

The whole performance turned out on investigation to have been so feeble and amateurish that suspicion rapidly descended from the more experienced practitioners of anarchy, imported from other countries, to home-products of later growth—strikers made desperate and savage by the recent sentences upon their leaders, or, as some would have it, the Women Chartists, hoping by an attack upon royalty to bring a neglectful ministry to its senses. As there were no real clues except those which industriously led nowhere and which the police seemed delightedly to follow, everybody was free to lay the charge against any agitating section of the community which they happened to regard with special disfavor; and for that reason the Women Chartists did, in fact, get most of the blame.

But in the process they also reaped a certain advantage; the mere suspicion, though malice directed it, was good for them. Had it been possible to convict them, their cause would have gone down for another generation; but there was really nothing to catch hold of, and the power of any organization to commit such an outrage without being detected—to break the glass of the King's coach and make the eight piebald ponies rise up on end in horror—was a power which raised them greatly in the eyes of all law-abiding people; it suggested an unknown potency for mischief far more ominous than had discovery and conviction followed. And so, while squibs and crackers were being thrown at them and sham bombs hurled into their meetings to show how greatly the law-abiding people of Jingalo disapproved of them for incurring such suspicion—politically, the unjustly suspected ones moved a little nearer to their goal.

As for the King and Queen, they were simply inundated with telegrams and letters of congratulation. In many instances the loyalty shown was extraordinarily touching: one instance will suffice. Every schoolboy in every public school in Jingalo contributed a penny from his pocket money to a congratulatory telegram sent in the name of the school; and when, as sometimes happened, the school numbered over six hundred boys the telegram had necessarily to be lengthy, and proved a severe tax upon the literary ability of its senders.

Amid all this influx—this passionate outpouring of loyalty to a King who had stood only a few days before within an ace of abdication, there were of course messages of a more intimate and personal kind. Every crowned head in Europe had written with that fellow-feeling which on such occasions royalty is bound to express. "I know what it is like myself," wrote one who had had six attempts made on him; "but I have never had it done to me from behind. How very devastating to the nerves that must be!" The Prince of Schnapps-Wasser wired that he could find no language to express himself, but hoped in a few weeks' time to come and show all that he felt. Max after a brief wire had flown back to town; and his obvious perturbation and demonstrative affection had made it a happy meeting.

But, while all these messages flowed, there was one inexplicable silence. Charlotte neither wrote nor telegraphed; nor did she return home. That portent dawned upon their Majesties as they breakfasted late the next morning with correspondence and telegrams piled up beside them.

"What can have become of Charlotte?" cried the Queen. "She must know!"

"If she knew, she would be here," said the King, confident in his daughter's affection.

They stared at each other in a surmise which turned gradually to dismay. This unfilial silence upon their escape from the bomb of the assassin told them with staggering certainty that Charlotte was missing.

"She has run away!" cried the Queen.

"But she must be somewhere," objected the King; "and wherever she is she would surely have heard the news."

"She may be quite out in the country," suggested the Queen, picking up hope.

"Still she has friends who must know where she has gone."

"It's incredible!" cried her Majesty; "heartless, I call it."

"No, no, she simply doesn't know!" said the King; of that he was quite certain. "We are sure to hear from her in the course of the day," he continued reassuringly, "meanwhile we shall have to make inquiries."

But the day went on, and no sign from Charlotte; nor did inquiries bring definite news up to date. She had arrived with her expectant hostess on the day appointed; but after staying only one night had gone elsewhere, and from that point in place and time no trace of her was to be found.

Before the day was over the King and Queen had become terribly anxious, and by the end of the week they were almost at their wits' end.

And here we get yet another instance of the drawbacks and dangers which attend upon royalty. Had Charlotte belonged to any ordinary rank of life, it could have been announced that she was missing; her description could have been issued to the press, and search for her made reasonably effective. But, as things were, this could not be done, Charlotte was impulsive and did indiscreet things; and until one knew exactly what it portended, to publish her disappearance to all the world would have been too rash and sudden a proceeding. Once that was done there could be no hushing up of the matter; all Jingalo, nay, all Europe, would have to hear of it, including, of course, the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser; and so, at all costs of private strain and anxiety, it was necessary to conceal as long as possible that the Princess was not where she ought to be, and was perhaps where she ought not to be.

Now please, do not let my readers at this point think that it was Charlotte who had thrown the bomb. Even for the sake of literary effect, I would not for one moment deceive them. It was not Charlotte; Charlotte had nothing to do with it, and did not even know of it. And yet—I will give them for a while this small problem to grapple with—Charlotte was quite well, was in possession of all her senses, was thoroughly enjoying herself, and was not outside the land of her inheritance. Most emphatically she had not run away.

And there for the moment we will leave the matter, and attend to things more important.

II

The King had caught sight in the newspaper of something which annoyed him very much; annoyed him all the more because it seemed to betoken that the moment his abdication was withdrawn the old ministerial encroachments on the royal prerogative had begun again.

"We are officially informed," so ran the paragraph, "that the Minister of the Interior has advised his Majesty to grant a reprieve to the three strike leaders now lying under sentence of death for their part in the recent riots and police murders. It is understood that the sentences will be commuted to penal servitude for life."

And this was the first the King had heard of it!

He sent at once for the Home Minister; and within an hour that great official stood before him.

"Mr. Secretary," said the King sharply, as he laid the offending paragraph before him, "since when, may I ask, has the Crown's prerogative of mercy become the perquisite of the Home Office?"

"I do not think, sir," submitted the Secretary with all outward humility, "that any such change has come about. In this case the circumstances were special and very urgent."

"Why, then, was I not consulted?"

"There was hardly time, your Majesty."

"I was here."

"I apprehended that the recent event—so very upsetting to your Majesty——"

"Come, come," interjected the King, "if I was able to read my speech immediately after it—as I did—I was quite able to attend to other business as well; and you ought to have known it."

The King did not thus usually speak to one of his ministers; but, having just had to face so heavy a defeat of his plans for honorable retirement, he was the more bent on asserting himself.

"Your Majesty will pardon me, it had to be issued to the press without a moment's delay. We had received information which made the matter of great urgency."

"I will hear your explanation," said the King coldly; and the Secretary went on.

"You are doubtless aware, sir, that about these sentences there has been a very considerable agitation among the workers; and the utter failure of the strike has not improved matters."

"I am aware of that," said the King.

"It had always been my intention, as soon as the march of strikers had been dispersed in an orderly manner, to recommend the exercise of the royal clemency. It was in fact merely a matter of hours, when circumstances forestalled us. The session closed before any of the strike marchers could arrive upon the scene; and then came the event which diverted popular attention. It was for that reason, I presume, that only yesterday certain of the men's leaders made very inflammatory speeches—of a kind which it would be extremely difficult for the authorities to overlook or make any appearance of yielding to. One speech in particular, calling upon the hangman to refuse to perform his duty and threatening his life if he did so, was of a peculiarly seditious character; for I need hardly point out that if that functionary is not protected in the fulfilment of his official duties the downfall of law and order has begun. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, to forestall any reports of that speech in the metropolitan press. For a few hours we were able to keep back the news; your Majesty's clemency was announced in the late issues of all the evening papers, and the 'Don't Hang' speech was not reported till this morning; and thus, coming after the event, has fallen comparatively flat. I think that now your Majesty will understand the position."

The Secretary had finished.

"And that is your explanation?" queried the King.

The minister bowed.

"I have to say that it does not satisfy me."

The minister lifted sad eyebrows, but did not speak.

"You tell me that for many days this recommendation of mercy has been your fixed intention. Why, then, did you not consult me? Why did you assume that, at a moment's notice, I should be able to fall in with your suggestion; why, even, that I should think the dispersal of certain riotous assemblies a convenient signal for the exercise of the royal prerogative?"

"I have merely followed, sir, the ordinary course of procedure observed in my department."

"Until, being unexpectedly pressed for time, you departed from it. After all the telephone was between us; I was here. I might not have agreed: but at least I should have been consulted!"

The minister pursed his lips; to this sort of hectoring he had really nothing to say. It did not comport with his official dignity.

The King rose. "Mr. Secretary, as I have already said, your explanation does not satisfy me. I shall communicate my sentiments to the Prime Minister."

His Majesty did not extend his hand; but by a motion of the head showed that the interview was over; and there was nothing left for the Minister of the Interior to do but retire from the room.

And the next day he retired from office; for though the Prime Minister urged many things in his defense, and more particularly the misapprehension which his present retirement might cause, the King remained obdurate; he was bent upon making an example. In the great political game he had miscalculated and lamentably failed, but red-tape was still his cherished possession; and you can do a good deal with red-tape when you have an unquestioned authority to fall back upon. Professor Teller's volumes of Constitutional History still lay upon a retired shelf in the royal library (indeed it was from one of them that he had extracted with slight changes his formal pronouncement of abdication); and if he could not get anything else out of his ministers he was determined to secure official correctness. Though they slighted his opinion, they should recognize his authority; punctiliousness at least they should render him as his one remaining due.

And so when the Prime Minister urged how small and accidental was the omission, his Majesty remarked that it was one of many; and when he argued how any delay might have proved dangerous, the point at which delay had begun was again icily indicated. More pressingly still did he invite the King to consider in what light, if unexplained, this resignation would be popularly regarded; would it not be taken as an admission of blame by the head of the Home Department for the occurrence of the late outrage?

"Very likely," assented the King; "after all it took place on Government premises." Whereat the Prime Minister, looking somewhat startled and distressed, inquired whether any such imputation of blame had been his Majesty's ulterior motive for his present action.

"I have no motives left," said the King wearily; "I am merely doing my duty."

In which aspect he was proving himself a very difficult person to deal with. "I am not arguing, I am only telling you," was an attitude which put him in a much stronger position with his intellectual superiors than any attempt at converting them to his views. From this day on he stood forth to his ministers as a rigid constitutional reminder; and with six volumes of the minutiae of constitutional usage at his fingers' ends the amount of time he was able to waste and the amount of trouble he was able to give were simply amazing.

The Prime Minister had been quite right; the resignation of the Home Secretary caused just that flutter of unfavorable suspicion which he had expected. For some reason or another he was extremely distressed by it, and begged from his Majesty the grant of a full State pension to the retired minister. But the King would not hear of it. "It is not my duty," he said, "to grant full pensions to those who fail in their official obligations. Where I am more personally concerned I have not pressed you; I have not asked for the resignation of the Prefect of Police, though I think I might have some reason to show for it. He prevented nothing, and he has discovered nothing. Do you expect me to open Parliament for you again next week, with the same ceremony, along the same route, and at the same risk?"

He was assured that every precaution would be taken.

"I hope so," he said in the tone of one who very much doubted whether the ministerial word was now worth anything.

Under this harassing and unhandsome treatment the Prime Minister was beginning to show age; and the coming session gave no promise that his cares in other respects would be less heavy than before; the Women Chartists were threatening a bigger outbreak in the near future, and Labor was now claiming to be freely supported from the rates either when out of work or when on strike. And when the Address to the Throne was being moved Labor and the Women Chartists would be in renewed agitation, asking for things which would make party politics quite impossible, and which it was therefore quite impossible for party politics to grant. If the Government had not still got that thoroughly unpopular House of Bishops to sit upon and coerce, things would be looking very black indeed.

III

And meanwhile where was the Princess Charlotte? Seven horrible days had gone by; and the inner circle of the detective force had been running about in padded slippers, so to speak, giving an accurate description of a lady whose name nobody knew, and who had been last seen in the vicinity of a college for women. Very privately and confidentially the titled lady who was the head of that institution had been interviewed; but her information was limited.

"She came to me only for one day," said the Principal, "though I thought she was intending to stay a week. I hardly know when I missed her; she had laid it down so very emphatically that she was to be left free and treated without ceremony, that really I did not trouble to look after her. Whenever she was here her Highness always mixed quite freely with the students; I know that with some of them she had made friends. They are far more likely to know what her plans were than I am."

Further inquiry in the direction thus indicated had to be carried on elsewhere, since the students had now separated for the vacation; and wherever inquiry was made the same stealthy secrecy had to be adopted; nobody must be allowed to suppose that the Princess Royal of Jingalo was missing. And so—on a sort of all-fours not at all conducive to speed—the quest went on.

On the fifth day, however, some relief had arrived to reduce the parental anxiety to bearable proportions. A letter, dropped from nowhere, bearing the metropolitan postmark, came to the King's hands. It gave only the barest, yet very essential information.

"Dearest papa," it ran, "I am quite well, and enjoying myself. I shall be back in a fortnight."

News of the arrival of this letter was immediately conveyed to the Constabulary Chief; and after three days of deep cogitation the absence of all reference to the outrage and to the risk run by those near and dear to her seemed to strike him as peculiar, and supplied him with what hitherto the police had lacked—a clue. And after two more days of strenuously directed search it bore fruit.

Late one afternoon the King was sitting at work in his study when his Comptroller-General entered hastily and in evident excitement; for though the King was then busily engaged in writing he presumed to interrupt, not waiting for the royal interrogating glance to give him his permission.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, in a tone of very urgent apology.

"Well, well?" said the King rather testily, for he did not like his writing-hour to be thus disturbed, "what is it?"

"The Prime Minister wishes to see you, sir, on a matter of extreme urgency."

The King had so long been pestered by ministers on matters which they considered urgent and which he did not, that he had little patience for such pleas, coming at the wrong time.

"What about?" he inquired curtly.

The Comptroller-General, who was supposed not to know, replied discreetly but in a tone of veiled meaning, "Something in the Home Department I believe, sir. Just now, while there is no chief secretary, the Prime Minister himself is seeing to matters."

"Dear, dear!" sighed his Majesty, "I do wish he would manage to get his urgent business done at the proper time!"

"I think, sir," said the General, "that this matter is one of sufficient importance to justify a suspension of the ordinary rules." He paused, as though about to say more, but thought better of it; after all the matter did not lie within his department.

"Very well," said the King, "let him come in, then!" And in due course the Premier entered.

It was evident at a glance that he was the bearer of important, nay, even alarming, intelligence; his eye was startled and anxious, his manner full of discomposure, and without waste of a moment he opened abruptly upon the business which had brought him.

"I have come to inform your Majesty," said he, "that we have at last discovered the Princess Charlotte's whereabouts."

"Oh?" said the King, excluding from his tone any indication of gratitude over the too long delayed discovery. "And pray, where is she?"

"I regret to say, sir, that her Royal Highness is at this moment in Stonewall Jail."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the King, startled out of his coldness. "Whatever took her there?"

"She was taken, sir, in a 'Molly Hold-all'[1] along with several others. And she has been there for the last ten days."

[Footnote 1: Jingalese equivalent for "Black Maria."]

"Yes, yes; but what I want to know is what has she been doing? In this country one doesn't get put into prison for nothing, I should hope."

"The charge, sir, was for assaulting the police. No doubt there has been a very regrettable mistake; there was, unquestionably, in the magistrate's court, some conflict of evidence."

"Assaulting the police!" exclaimed the King petulantly.

"But what else are the police there for?—when there's trouble, I mean. And how many of them did she assault, pray?"

"I believe only one, sir," replied the Prime Minister; "at least only one of them gave any evidence against her, and there were five witnesses to say that she did not assault him. The magistrate who convicted, however, accepted the constable's evidence; he is, I believe, rather hard of hearing; and I am told that he thought the witnesses in her favor were all giving evidence against her. If that is so, it sufficiently accounts for the conviction. On the other hand there can be no doubt that the Princess did intend to get arrested."

"When did all this take place?"

"In the course of the last Chartist disturbances, three days before the rising of Parliament. Some sixty or seventy women then caused themselves to be arrested, and it seems that the Princess was one of them."

"She must be mad!" exclaimed the King in bewilderment. "Whatever could have induced her?"

"Was your Majesty aware that she had any leanings towards politics?"

"She has ideas," said the King, "like other young people; but she is generally very busy changing them; and, beyond a notion that a woman ought always to have her own way, and never be asked to do what she doesn't want to do, she——" And then it began to dawn upon him—though only darkly—what Charlotte was really after: she was demonstrating madly, extravagantly, her claim to personal freedom. And to prove how much she meant it she had gone to these wild lengths. Well might her father, in his essentially middle-aged mind, wonder what the younger generation was coming to.

"Poor dear silly child!" he exclaimed in fond irritation. "Why ever could she not have waited?"

That was a question the Prime Minister could not answer.

"Well, well," he went on, endeavoring to be philosophical over the business, "she has had her lesson now; and after all there is no real harm done."

"Your Majesty must pardon me; it has become a very serious matter," said the Prime Minister gravely.

"Why? Who knows anything about it? Who need know? She wasn't sentenced in her own name, I suppose?"

"Certainly not, sir; had she been recognized the thing could never have happened. She must to some extent have altered her dress and her appearance: as to that I have no particulars. The name she actually went in under was Ann Juggins."

"Preposterous!" exclaimed the King. "And supposing that were to come out!"

"That is the trouble, sir. Without the full and immediate exercise of your authority, I fear it may. As a matter of fact, that is why she still remains where we found her."

"Oh! Stuff and nonsense!" cried the King. "You don't come for my authority in cases of this kind. Let her out, let her out! and say nothing more about it!"

"The Prefect, sir, has already been to see her, and she refuses to be let out; that is to say, declares that if she is not allowed to serve her full sentence she will make the whole of the affair public."

"Public?"

"Name and all. There was her ultimatum; she made a special point of it. Her Highness seems somehow to be aware that the name is an impossible one, a weapon against which no Government department could stand. The word 'Juggins,'—only think, sir, what it means! Here we have a ridiculous, a most lamentable blunder committed by the police, sufficient of itself to cause us the gravest embarrassment; and then to have on the top of it all this name with its ridiculous association rising up to confound us. We should go down as 'the Juggins Cabinet'; the word would be cried after us by every errand-boy in the street—the Government would become impossible."

The King did his best to conceal his delight at the predicament in which Charlotte's escapade had, by the confession of its Chief, placed the Cabinet. This tyrannical Government, in spite of its large majority, its strong party organization, and its bureaucratic powers, was unable to stand up against ridicule; a mere breath, and all its false pretensions to dignity would be exposed, and its dry bones, speciously clad in strong armor, would rattle down into the dust.

And if he chose to use this knowledge suddenly gained, what a power it would give him! Yes; he had only to send for Charlotte and bid her cry 'Juggins,' and that which, with so many months of anxious toil and with threat of abdication, he had failed to bring about, would immediately accomplish itself in other ways. But unfortunately the King was a man of scrupulous conscience, and was bound by his ideas of what became a monarch and a gentleman. He may have been quite mistaken in regarding as unclean the weapon with which Heaven had supplied him; but as he did so regard it, one must reluctantly admit that he was right to throw it aside.

"Well," he said, when the Prime Minister had finished, "she must be made not to tell, that's all!"

"I fear, sir, she is very determined."

"Determined to do what?"

"To serve out her sentence."

The King sat and thought for a while. He knew his Charlotte better than the police did; and, besides that, during the past week he had quite made up his mind that the Prefect of Police was in some matters a blunderer. "I wonder how he tried to get her out," he meditated aloud. "Did she send me any message?"

"Nothing direct, sir, that I know of; but I take it that her ultimatum was also directed against any possible action on the part of your Majesty. She was quite determined to do her full time; said indeed that you had promised her a fortnight. What that may mean, I do not know."

"Oh, really!" cried the King, "the folly of the official mind is past all believing,—especially when it concentrates itself in the police force! Let somebody go to that poor child and tell her that her father and mother have had a bomb thrown at them, and are trying to recover themselves in the grief caused by her absence! And then unchain her (you keep them in chains, I suppose?), open the door of her prison, and see how she'll run! And tell the Prefect," he added, "that I cannot present him with my compliments."

The King was quite right. In case Charlotte should refuse to believe the official word, she was shown a newspaper with lurid illustrations; and within an hour's time she was back at the palace, weeping, holding her father and mother alternately in her arms, and scolding them for all the world as though they had been guilty of outrageous behavior, and not she.

And, after all, it was a very good way of getting over the preliminaries of a rather awkward meeting.

IV

But when the first transports of joy at that reunion were over, they had to settle down to naughty facts and talk with serious disapproval to Charlotte of her past doings. And as they did so, though she still wept a little, the Princess observed with secret satisfaction that she had at any rate cured her mother of one thing—of knitting, namely, while a daughter's fate was being dangled in the parental balance.

From that day on when Charlotte showed that she was really in earnest the Queen put down her knitting; and those who have lived under certain domestic conditions where tyranny is always, as though by divine right, benevolent, wise, self-confident, and self-satisfied to the verge of conceit, will recognize that this in itself was no inconsiderable triumph.

Charlotte was quite straightforward as to why she had done the thing; she had done it partly out of generous enthusiasm for a cause which she did not very well understand, but to which certain friends of hers had attached themselves with a blind and dogged obstinacy (two of those friends she had left in prison behind her); but more because she wished to supply an object lesson of what she was really like to the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser.

She insisted that he was to be told all about it. And the Queen was in despair.

"Tell him that you have been in jail like a common criminal for assaulting the police? I couldn't, it would break my heart! I should die of the shame of it."

"Very well," said Charlotte, "I will tell him myself, then; you can't prevent me doing that! No, I'm not going to be headstrong, or foolish, or obstinate, or any of the things you said I was: now I've made the exhibition of myself that I intended making, I'll be a lamb. If I like him enough, and if he likes me enough, I'll marry him. But I shall have to like him a great deal more than I do at present; and he will have to want me very much more than it's possible for him to do until he has seen me——"

"Oh, don't be so conceited, my dear!" said the Queen, her good-humor and confidence beginning to be restored as she watched the fair flushed face, and those queer attractive little gestures which made her daughter's charm so irresistible.

"Before anything will induce me to say 'yes,'" concluded Charlotte.

And then, as though that finished the matter, and as though her own naughty doings were of no further interest, she cried: "And now tell me about the bomb!" And the Queen, who still liked to dwell upon that episode of sights, sounds, and sensations, strangely mingled and triumphantly concluded by a popular ovation such as she had never met with in her life before, started off at once on a detailed narrative, corrected now and then by the King's more sober commentary, and aided by the eager questions of her daughter, who sat in close and fond contact with both of them, mopping her eyes alternately with her mother's handkerchief and her own.

"Oh! why wasn't I there?" she cried incautiously, when word came of the great popular reception crowning all.

"Ah! why weren't you?" inquired the King waggishly. And when he had made that little joke at her, Charlotte knew that all her naughty goings off and goings on were comfortably forgiven and done with.

"But you know, papa," she said later, when for the first time they were alone together, "I have found out quite a lot of things that you know nothing about: quite dreadful things! And they are going on behind your back, and women are being put into prison for it."

All this was said very excitedly, and with great earnestness and conviction.

"My dear," said the King, "it's no use your talking about those Women Chartists to me."

"But I'm one of them," said Charlotte.

"Nonsense; you are not."

"I am. I signed on. I couldn't have gone to prison for them if I hadn't."

"Do any of them know who you are?" cried the King, aghast. It was a disturbing thought, for what a power it would be in their hands, and he had always heard how unscrupulous they were.

"Only one or two," declared Charlotte, "and they won't tell unless I tell them to. They are wonderful people, papa!"

The King sighed; for the very name of them had become a weariness to him. The whole agitation, with its dim confused scufflings against law and order, and its demonstrations idiotically recurring at the most inopportune moments, had profoundly vexed him. Years ago he had received the bland assurance of his ministers that the whole thing would soon die down and cease; but it was still going on, and was now taking to itself worse forms than ever.

"What is it that they want?" he exclaimed, not quite meaning it as a question; rather as expressing the opinion that the subject was a hopeless one.

"They want a great many things," said his daughter; "they've got what they call 'grievances'; I know very little about them; they may be right or wrong—that isn't the point. The only thing that concerns you, papa, is that they want to come and see you; and they are not allowed to."

"Come and see me?"

"Yes; bring you a petition."

"What about?"

"To have their grievances looked into."

"I can't look into their grievances."

"No; but you can say that they shall be."

The King shook his head. Charlotte did not know what she was talking about.

"Yes, papa, that is the position. Of course you haven't the right to make laws or levy taxes, but you can send word to Parliament to say something has got to be considered and decided. And about this, Parliament won't consider and won't decide. And that is why they are trying to get to you with a petition; so that you shall say that it is to be looked into."

"But I can't say that sort of thing, my dear."

"Yes, you can, papa! It's an old right; the right of unrepresented people to come direct to their sovereign and tell him that his ministers are refusing to do things for them. And your ministers are trying to keep you from knowing about it, to keep you from knowing even that you have such a power; and by not knowing it they are making you break your Coronation oath. Oh, papa, isn't that dreadful to think of?"

"My dear, if that were true——"

"But it is true, papa! These women are trying to bring you their petition, and they are prevented. The ministers say that you have nothing to do with it; so they go to the ministers—they take their petition to the ministers, and ask them to bring it to you, so that you may give them an answer. Have any of them brought you the petition, papa?"

The King shook his head.

"You see, they do nothing! And so the women go again, and again, and again, taking their petition with them; and because they are trying to get to you—to say that their grievances shall be looked into, and something done about them—because of that they are being beaten and bruised in the streets; and when they won't turn back then they are arrested and sent to prison."

By this time Charlotte was weeping.

"They may be quite wrong," she cried, "foolish and impossible in their demands; they may have no grievances worth troubling about—though if so, why are they troubling as they do?—but they have the right, under the old law, for those grievances to be inquired into and considered and decided about. And Parliament won't do it; it is too busy about other things, grievances that aren't a bit more real, and about which people haven't been petitioning at all. But you, papa (if that petition came to you), would have the right to make them attend to it. And they know it; and that's why they won't let you hear anything about it."

The King's conscience was beginning to be troubled. He had no confidence either in the good sense or the uprightness of his ministers to fall back upon; and he saw that his daughter, though she knew so little about the merits of the case, was very much in earnest. She had caught his hand and was holding it; she kissed it, and he could feel the dropping of warm tears.

"Very well, my dear," he said, "very well; I promise that this shall be looked into."

"Oh, papa!" she cried joyfully. "It was partly for that—just a little, not all, of course—that I went to prison."

"Then you ought not to have been so foolish. Why could you not have come to me?"

"I don't think you would have attended; not so much as you do now."

And the King had to admit how, perhaps, that was true.

"Well, my dear," he said again, "I promise that it shall be seen to. No, I shan't forget."

And then she kissed him and thanked him, and went away comforted. And when he was alone he got down the index volume of Professor Teller's Constitutional History, and after some search under the heading of "Petitions" found indeed that Charlotte was right, and that the power to send messages to Parliament for the remedying of abuses was still his own.



CHAPTER XVII

THE INCREDIBLE THING HAPPENS



I

Since the break-up of his plans the King had been finding consolation in his son's book, an advance copy of which had reached him while Max was still abroad. Consolation is, perhaps, hardly the right word; it had distracted him in more ways than one; partly, and in a good sense, from his own personal depression over things gone wrong, but more with a scared apprehension of the terrible hubbub that would arise when its contents became known. The title, Government and the Governed, was sober enough, and the post-diluvian motto once threatened by Max had been omitted; but the contents were of a highly revolutionary character, and the bland "take-or-leave me" attitude of the author toward the public he would some day be called upon to rule was on a par with that statement of her prison doings which Charlotte was preparing for the delectation of Hans Fritz Otto, Prince of Schnapps-Wasser. In neither case did it seem likely that such a confession would draw parties together.

And so before the King had even finished reading he felt it his duty to write imploring his son not to publish.

Before an answer could reach him important events supervened. The reverberations of the bomb brought Max flying back to the bosom of his family; and then the Charlotte episode had followed, over which Max had not been at all sympathetic, for in spite of his emancipated views about things in general, he had still the particular notion that revolution belonged only to men, and that women, incapable of conducting it efficiently, had far better leave it alone.

And so it was that only when things had begun to resettle themselves was any fresh reference made to the book's forthcoming publication.

As soon as the subject was broached Max presented a face of polite astonishment.

"I thought you knew, sir," he said.

"Knew what?"

"The most important event in recent history; I even thought you might have instigated it."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Then I must break the news. My book has been burned to the ground." He spoke as though it had been an edifice. "I am told, for my consolation, that it burned extremely well—'fiercely,' the papers said—and gave the firemen a lot of trouble. Your letter and the news reached me almost simultaneously; I knew, therefore, that you would be glad."

"No, no, don't say 'glad,'" protested the King; "in a way I am sorry, even. I only wanted it to be anonymous. One can do things anonymously. How did it come about?"

"It was the work of an incendiary."

"How do you know that?"

"There was absolute proof,—something which refused to burn,—a box of matches made in Jingalo, or some other fire-resistant of a similar kind. The perpetrator got off. Yes—the House of Ganz-Wurst certainly seems at the present moment particularly to attract the attentions of these obscurantists in politics. Who knows whether the hand which threw the bomb at you had not already been dipped in the petrol which had given so flaming an account of my claims to authorship?"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Reprint, I suppose, as soon as I can afford it, or do you still wish me not to? You hold almost the only copy that is left."

The King shook his head. "As I told you, Max, I think publication would be very unwise; you would be sure to regret it afterwards. Remember that some day you will come to the throne; and what you think you can do now you can't do then. All at once it becomes impossible."

And then the King gave a queer consternated gasp, for he himself remembered something—something he had conditionally promised, believing that the conditions would never be fulfilled; and now fate had brought them about; and if Max so willed it a thing would presently be taking place much more disturbing to the institution of royalty than the publication of a mere book.

To the King's last remark Max merely replied: "At present, sir, it is you who are upon the throne and not I—a circumstance over which I have very particular reasons for being glad. And now, sir, something has just occurred to me: do not think that I am going to anticipate the date you fixed, that is not till next week, but when all is settled, as it so soon will be if I remain of sane mind, then I will present all the preserved copies of my book to the lady whom you so disapprove of, and she shall do with them exactly as she wishes—order a new edition, or put them on the fire to help her make soup for the poor. That is a little device of mine, sir, for bringing her into your good graces; for if I know anything of her mind she will maintain that to publish such a book without a full intention of putting its principles into practice is a mere parade of insincerity and foolishness. And so—from your point of view—she will be saving the monarchy from a danger which no one else can avert; for I am not prepared to surrender my power to do mischief into any hands but hers. A copy of the book, you may be interested to hear, has already gone to her; and her silence about it warns me that the epoch it so strenuously makes for is not the one that she desires."

"You are still talking like a book, Max," said the King sarcastically, wishing to divert discussion for the time being from that which he was referring to.

"Ah, yes," said Max; "as a bird who mourns his mate. Why, for a while, should I not indulge my grief? I shall never write another; all I had it in me to say was said there. In future—though you may hear in my voice an echo of that lost romance—I am going to be a man not of words but of deeds."

The King smiled.

"You look incredulous, sir; but I have already startled that Commission you put me on, and compelled it to include in the scope of its inquiry things which it did not want to inquire into at all. Believe me, sir; if we get before us all the evidence that I intend we shall find ourselves forced into making a very unpopular report—far more unpopular than my book would have been, and far more subversive of the established order of things than at present you can have any idea. Even your coats, sir—exorbitant though their price now is—are going to cost you more as a result of this Commission, unless we can so arrange that in future a little less shall be paid for the 'cut' and a little more for the needle and thread that join the cuttings together. I am going to have it said in this report of ours—for I have discovered it to be a fact—that the very clothes which are your daily wear (and mine) are put together by men and women paid at something less than twopence-half-penny an hour. And I am going to get it put in that scandalously personal way (your clothes and mine—the clothes we go to open Parliament in, and set the fashions in, and when we have worn them some half-dozen times hand on to charity), I am going to have it thus put that all may be conscious and ashamed when they see us so exhibiting ourselves, and no longer think a well-cut coat under modern commercial conditions a fit adjunct for royalty. That, sir, will do a great deal more harm to 'trade' than my book would have done. The public conscience does not like to have these things brought home to royalty itself; we and the 'social evil' are in no way to be connected with each other, lest it should be seen that we help to make its ways easy. Only the other day I was credibly informed that a man who headed with twenty thousand pounds the list of a charity bearing my mother's name, has been allowed by the police to get out of this country scot free—though guilty of infamous conduct,—merely because the contribution of that tainted donation to a royal fund would not have 'looked well.'"

"Oh, stop talking to me, Max!" cried the King, made irritable by his increased sense of helplessness. "Go and do what you like, say what you like, report what you like; you've got the Commission to play with; run it for all it is worth; but for Heaven's sake let me have peace for a while! Why should you trouble me? You know that I can do nothing."

"You have done a great deal," said Max, whose admiration for his father had grown very considerably during the past year.

"I have missed doing a great deal; but of that you know nothing, and I'm not going to tell you." And then he could stand it no more. "Do you imagine I should have made you that idiotic promise," he cried, "if I had supposed for a moment that I should still be here when you came to claim it?" And so saying he got up and, diplomatic in retreat, hurried out of the room.

Max, left to his own surmisings, opened wide and wondering eyes. "Did he throw that bomb at himself?" he murmured in astonishment. "It looks very much as if he did."

II

Parliament opened again without any difficulty in the middle of December; and the enormous popularity of the King and Queen was greatly enhanced by the circumstance of their reappearance within so short a time for an occasion so closely similar. Only another bomb could have increased the favorable impression made upon the populace by their affable return to the charge—if a slow walking-pace may be so described—within three weeks of the attempted outrage.

As the Prime Minister had promised the police spared no pains to insure their safety, and behind the hoardings of the new Government offices detectives were packed like herrings in a barrel, with special eye-holes bored through so that they might note the actual passing of the royal carriage, and have it well under observation at the point of danger which was, presumably, that at which the last explosion had occurred. Then the whole police force held its breath, and the coach got past without any difficulty; and immediately the waiting multitude in Regency Row became violently demonstrative as though some great acrobatic feat had been achieved. And the piebald ponies came stepping like rope-dancers each held by a groom; and everything—except the fresh bomb for which so many stage preparations had been made—went off with all the success imaginable.

The King did not read his own speech: he had a sore throat for the occasion, and only with his ears did he swallow the bitter pill of that foreshadowed scheme which he had so long and vainly resisted; for now he was bound by his own promise, and could no longer "stand in the way."

And so, by the mouth of the Lord High Commissioner, the Bishops heard under its smooth-sounding title the plan for their approaching doom read out from the steps of the Throne, and as soon as the King and the Queen had retired, budding members on the ministerial side in both Houses rose up to congratulate the Cabinet and the country on those wise and statesmanlike proposals, and hardened veterans upon the other, the Archbishop included, rose up to condemn them. And after that, for three or four days a general wrangling—all leading to nothing—went on.

But while Parliament talked vacuously within, outside came rumblings of storm; the discontent of certain sections of the community with conditions unsettled or unattended to was gathering to a head. And on the third day after the session had opened, Charlotte said to her father with rather a tragic look, "Papa, do you know what is going to happen to-night?" And then she told him.

It was those Women Chartists again.

The King had been true to his word, he had made inquiries; in a way he had even "looked into the matter," and had received from the right and official quarter bland assurances that there was nothing in it—merely a general obstreperousness and a wish to cause trouble to the police. But his conscience, which so often ran away with him, was still troubled; and so when the evening came he sent once again for the newly appointed Home Minister; and in reply to rather anxious questions was given confidently to understand that the police arrangements were quite adequate for the occasion, that everything would be done as quietly and as leniently as possible; and that no edge of the disturbance would in any case be allowed to overflow in the direction of the royal palace. As he listened to the cocksure tone of this new minister, and the almost patronizing air with which he exposed his official fitness for the post so recently conferred on him, the King ceased to ask questions—let the man talk himself out,—and then, when silence seemed to give consent, got rid of him.

It was now time that he should go to dress for dinner, but the motive force was absent. He stood for a while considering, then went to the window, and opening it let in the distant hum of the city traffic.

All sounded as usual, pleasant, busy, peaceable. Yet if what his daughter told him was true, within half-an-hour those quietly-sounding streets would be thronged with thousands upon thousands waiting for the arrival of the women to claim their old historical right of petition; and serried lines of police—thousands of them also—would be standing to bar their way, whatever direction they might go in quest of the governing authority. And in the hands of these women would be petitions personally addressed to himself; yet never had any minister put to him the question whether he would be willing to receive them and hear what they had to say; such an idea seemed not to have entered their heads—or was it the fear lest such a reception might give the cause too great an importance in the public eye? Here, once again, then, proof met him of the conspiracy of modern government constantly going on to bring about disconnection between the Crown and the real life-needs and aspirations of the people. Suffocating traditions closed him round making a cypher of him—to himself a scorn and a derision, and a monster unto many—just as much, by this denial of petition, a breaker of his Crown oath as those who in the past had paid penalty for it with their lives!

There outside, in the nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps below, and emergent like a full moon on a misty sky the face of the great Parliament clock dawned luminous to his gaze.

So long he stood, and listened, and waited, that before he closed the window again the clock had told the three-quarters to eight. Then he hesitated no more; passing out of his study and down to a lower corridor he came presently to the cloak lobby, and selecting a rough full-length overcoat, a motor cap, and from a drawer a pair of clouded snow-glasses, arrayed himself in these, and with flaps drawn down and coat collar turned high, passed out by a small side-entrance which led on to the terrace.

Chill air and a bosom of darkness received him; through the thick barrier of trees skirting the walled precincts scarcely a light winked; only the large domed conservatory behind him threw a pale radiance before his feet as he crossed the terrace and moved off by a winding path in the direction of a small postern concealed in shrubbery.

As he quitted the grass, the sound of his own footfalls upon firm gravel made him guiltily afraid; and it was not without some moral effort that he, a king in his own domain, kept himself from stepping back secretively to the turfed edge. Suppressing the inclination, he proceeded at a smart pace, and coming presently to the door with a slip-latch on its inner side he opened it and passed through.

At the sound of opening a policeman stationed outside turned and stood passively regarding him; his muffled appearance seemed sufficiently in keeping with the uses to which this particular exit was put by others to awaken neither suspicion nor surprise. With a half-waggish air of respect the man touched his helmet. "Good-evening, sir," said he, as though there subsisted between the habitues of that door and himself a sort of understanding.

To make a quicker escape from the man's scrutiny and the glare of the lamp commanding the entrance, the King crossed the road, and took up his course along the more dimly lighted footway on the further side. At this hour the park row in which he found himself was almost deserted; now and again single pedestrians went by, and as he received from none of these more than a cursory and inattentive glance, his sense of incognito increased, and he stepped out more confidently to the task that lay ahead.

Presently he was passing along the palace front and under the eyes of sentries standing motionless at their posts; and again he had satisfaction in perceiving that as he went by there was no inclination on the part of any one of them to present arms. He glanced up at the palace facade, with its windows softly lighted through blinds. He could pick out his own sitting-room, and the Queen's, where probably she was now reading the note he had sent to inform her that urgent business called him away. There were the lights of the smaller dining-hall, within which a table richly adorned with gold and silver plate stood even now waiting its twenty accustomed guests—the minister-in-attendance and the higher permanent officials of the Court. No one else from outside was coming to-night except Prince Max. That was fortunate, Max would take his place.

As soon as he was outside the borders of the park the King quitted the main thoroughfare for narrow and dimly lit alleys, avoiding the streets of wide pavements and shops which had scarcely yet begun to close; and before long found that he had lost his way.

The fact was sufficiently absurd; here within a stone's throw of his own palace, and stretching almost to the doors of the House of Legislature whereto he went in so much state every year, lay an unknown territory which he had never thought to explore. The intricacy of back streets was quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn back again. In a short time all sense of the points of the compass was gone.

A small ragged urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch—it was already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour and he had not heard it. Away scurried the urchin as though already late for something, excitedly calling on others to follow; and the King, with the presumption that these running feet would be sure to lead him in the direction where he wished to go, followed them round two corners. After that all trace of them was gone.

A sound of shrill singing now struck his ear. He was in a narrow asphalted way surrounded by workmen's tenements. Right in the middle, occupying the place of the non-existent traffic, ten or a dozen children were dancing a sort of figure, and singing the while. As he drew near he caught snatches of the words.

Of an elder child, who stood looking on, he stopped and asked the way. She told him, gesticulating as to which corners he was to pass, pointing all the time to the promised goal. Incautiously he dropped a coin into her hand; and, as kings do not carry coppers, immediately there was a cry. The singers stopped and surrounded him, stretching up clamorous palms; a whole dozen were now feverishly anxious to show him every step of the way.

"It's the 'Chartises' as you want to see, arn't it, mister?" inquired one. "I'll show you where they go; I know all of 'em."

The King pressed hurriedly on, hoping to get rid of them; but his flustered air appealed to the tormenting instincts of youth, and told them that here they had got some one capable of being worried into surrender. Still clamoring and thrusting up hands for backsheesh they kept pace with him. A few of them started singing again, and the rest joined in: perhaps singing was what the gentleman liked best—and so a better way for gaining their end. The shrill voices fell into chorus; and to a queer lilting tune the words rang clear.

"Come to me Quietlee, Do not do me an injuree! Gently, Johnnie of Jingalo."

"What's that?" cried the King, stopping short in his amazement; "what's that you say?" A new bewilderment seized on him. It was impossible—quite impossible that the children should know who he really was, yet there were the words with their implied accusation, as though personally directed at him, and at him alone.

The small street singers, taking the inquiry for an encore, sang it again; and this time the words had a curious flirtatious meaning which made them even worse. What was he being charged with?

"Where did you get that from?" he inquired, hot of face.

"One of the Chartises taught it us," said a child more ready of speech than the rest. "They all sings it now. It's one of their songs, that is!" So with reduplicating speech she conveyed intelligence to his mind.

Never before had any word of poetry struck him a blow like this. He had said that he did not understand poetry, but here was meaning only too clear; in this song—so gentle, pleading, and pathetic in character, he, John of Jingalo, stood publicly accused of all the injuries that were being done to women in that necessary defense of law and order against which, petition in hand, they were so obstinately setting themselves. What was all his popularity worth, if by the mouths of little children his name was to be thus cried in the streets? It was scandalous, indecent; and yet—was it altogether without justification?

To be rid of his small tormentors and free for his own meditations, he took the most practical means that suggested itself.

"There, there!" he cried. "Run away, run away, all of you!" and throwing a random coin into their midst moved hastily away. Behind him as he went he heard battle royal being waged; liberal though the donation, and sufficient to distribute sustenance to all, each was now claiming it as her own perquisite.

And so at his back the shrill sounds of wrath and contention went on till they became merged in a louder roar, the origin of which was presently made apparent.

He turned a corner and saw before him a huge crowd, and Regency Row packed with seething humanity from end to end.

III

For the first time in his life the King formed part of a crowd, and knew what it was like to feel his body and limbs packed in by the bodies and limbs of others and to have the breath squeezed out of him. In this crowd the proportion of men to women was as ten to one; from the physical point of view, therefore, the chances for these conflicting women were nil. All the same they were there in large numbers, and not for the first time; many of them were already sufficiently well known to the police.

A curiously corporate movement possessed this crowd; when it shifted at all it shifted in large sections—three or four hundred at once; a whole street-width of men driving forward at a lunge, before which the strongest barrier of police momentarily gave way. And wherever this kind of movement went on a few women formed the center of it.

Small bundles of humanity, they shot by in the grip of that huge force, mischievous and uncontrolled; tossed, tousled, and squeezed, shedding as they went small fragments of their outer raiment, lost momentarily to view in the surging mass of men, cornered, crushed back, held down as within a vise—emerging again like popped corks followed by a foaming rush of shouting youths, jeering or cheering them on; and still through all that pressure obstinately retaining their human form, and enduring with a strange silence what was being done to them by this great roaring mob which had come out "for fun."

Some went their way wide-eyed, with terror in their looks, yet still set to their end; some with rigid faces and eyes shut fast, as though scarcely conscious—their souls elsewhere, submitting passively to the buffetings of fate; and a few—strangest sight of all—smiling to themselves, almost with a look of peace, as though in the very violence by which they were assailed they discerned a triumph for their cause.

And with all the screwing, pushing, and wrenching, the driving forward and the hurling back, scarcely one woman's arm was raised, except now and again to protect her breast from the lewd or wanton assaults of the crowd. Some held, tight clasped in their hands, crumpled bits of paper—the petition, presumably, over which all this trouble arose—stained, torn, almost illegible now, useless, yet still a symbol of the fight that was being waged. Now and then above the turmoil, in the dimness that lay between the lighted streets and the crowning darkness of night, went sudden flashes like sheet-lightning in storm; and at the stroke horses plunged, and youths screamed, facetiously imitating the voice of women. It was the work of photographers, securing, from some point of vantage overhead, flashlight records for the delectation of the music halls. Again and again, with pistol-like report, the monstrous dose was administered, the night took it at a gulp, and the rabble responded with noise and shoutings.

The genial voice of a mounted policeman working his way through the crowd sounded humanly above the din.

"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" There was a touch of humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness mingled itself with the crowd.

"Oh! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" Away he went on his disciplined errand of mercy, a man of kindliness, good counsel, and understanding, carrying out his orders in as human a way as was possible.

"Now then! Now then! Now then! I'm coming. Oh, I'm coming!"

The roaring multitude swallowed him; his cry grew faint, merged in the general din.

By the gradual compression and movement of the multitude toward some fancied center the King had been borne a good many hundred yards from his original point. Presently he found himself in a large open space, with its low-railed inclosure guarded by police. Here the crowd was denser than ever and its sway harder to withstand. A woman's form was driven sharply against him. To avoid elbowing her off he offered the shelter of his arm; and she, finding herself up against something not immediately repellent, stayed to breathe. He saw the sweat pour from her skin, and as she panted in his arms she had the rank scent of a creature when it is hunted. Yet in her face there was no fear at all, only the white strain of physical exhaustion nearing its last point.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"The police; are they treating you properly?"

"I have nothing to complain of," she said.

"Won't you go home? You must see it is no use."

She turned away as though she had not heard him, and threw herself once more against the barrier she was unable to overcome. Into the shock of it she went, with "nothing to complain of," forgetful of self, forgetful of all but her blind unreasoning determination to gain her end. Her passive yet battling form was borne away from him in the huge eddies of the crowd.

"Hot work!" said a voice at his side; a little man, with keen, appetized face, ferreting this way and that, was hurriedly taking notes as though his life depended on it. The King looked at him in surprise, and wondered what it meant.

"Got any news?" inquired the man, still scribbling at his notebook.

"What kind of news?"

"I'm not particular; anything suits me. I'm the Press."

"The Press?"

"Yes, reporter." And, as one proud of his great connection, he named the King's favorite journal.

Never it is to be hoped to his dying day did that poor penny-a-liner know what a piece of news he allowed in that moment to slip by—news which to him would have meant almost a fortune; and here he was actually rubbing shoulders with it; and making no profit.

"How many arrested?" he inquired.

"I don't know."

"Any of the leaders yet?"

"I have not heard."

Unprofitable company; the man moved away. They were separated by a fresh movement of the crowd.

A royal mail-van drove through the square, the police with difficulty making way for it. And the crowd, mistaking it for something else, rushed off to gaze and cheer excitedly at the prisoners within. The postman who sat mounting guard over the netted window at the rear smiled wittily at the popular error which made him for a few brief moments so conspicuous a figure. No doubt the incident gave the newspaper-man some copy, and the van, having contributed its share to the general amusement, rolled on its way.

Again the crowd made a rush; on the other side of the square a woman had managed to get arrested, and a strong body of constables was escorting her across to the police-station. Captors and captive walked quickly, anxious to get the thing through. The woman had a scared yet triumphant look in her eyes: she had succeeded in making the police do what they did not want to do; and now for a fortnight, or a month, or for two months—according to what these men might swear to, or the magistrate think—she and a few score of others would find in a criminal cell that temporary goal at which they had aimed; and the press would quiet the public conscience by saying that they had done it "for notoriety."

Always friendliest when it saw a woman actually under arrest, the crowd broke into applause—dividing its cheers impartially between prisoner and police. For this was what it had come out to see: this was why it had paid tram-fares from distant slums, sacrificing its evening at the "pub" and its pot of beer. These men of hard toiling lives and dull imagination were there to see women of a class and education superior to their own break the law and get "copped" for it, just like one of themselves.

"Quite right too! teach them to be'ave as they ought to," was the comment passed here and there—though as a matter of fact it had already been abundantly proved that it taught them nothing of the kind. But that, after all, is "Government" as understood by the man in the street; he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who, smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of prisoner and escort passed on its way.

"Three cheers for the Women's Charter!" cried a voice somewhere in the crowd; and there went up in response a genial roar, half of derision, half of sympathy.

"Give 'em hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" he cried.

"They're getting it!" laughed a pale youth with an underhung jaw.

Wherever the eye turned hell could be seen having its will, and deriving a curious satisfaction from its momentary power to do foul things under the public eye.

"Oh, save me! save me! save me!" whimpered a woman's voice. Down in the gulf below, buried under the shoulders of men, a small elderly figure was clinging to the King's arm.

"Oh, can't you do anything for me?" wailed the poor little Chartist, with nerve utterly gone.

"Why don't you go home?" inquired the King kindly.

"I want to go home!" she said. "Take me!"

"The first thing, then, is to get out of this crowd. Keep hold of my arm."

"No!" A perverse tag of conscience held her back. "I don't want to! I've got a petition; it has to go to the King. Oh, if he only knew!"

"Give it to me! I will see that he gets it."

"You? You'd only throw it away when my back was turned."

"No; I promise you I would not. Give it me! It shall really go to him."

"You are not making fun of me?"

"Indeed I am not. Here, where is it? Give it to me, quick!"

She put the precious crumpled document into his hand. Poor nameless soul, unconscious of what she had achieved—"I hope I've done right," she said.

A fresh movement of the crowd drove them against the railings. The elderly little woman cried out like a frightened child.

"Oh, oh! They are killing me!"

The King lifted her up and put her over into free space on the other side.

"Here! none of that!" cried a big voice beside him. A rough hand seized hold of him and wrenched him back; he turned round and found himself in a policeman's charge. Then another came and took hold of him on the other side.

Incredibly the thing had happened: he was arrested. Triumphantly, through a roaring, eddying crowd, the strong arm of the law bore him away.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE KING'S NIGHT OUT



I

The King sat in a large square chamber with barred windows, awaiting his turn to be attended to.

The crowd of prisoners seated on benches round the walls had become attenuated; only about a score of them now remained. Women had been dealt with first, the residuum were men; the general charge against these was pocket-picking.

He had been sitting there for hours. It was now one o'clock.

"Now then, you!" said the voice of the sergeant in charge. His turn had come.

In an adjoining room he found his two accusers awaiting him. He was led up to a table where sat an official in uniform making entry of the names. A charge-sheet, nearly full, was spread on the table before him.

The policeman who had made the arrest gave in the charge.

"Name?" said the sergeant-clerk sharply, suspending the motion of his pen.

The King, still wearing his cap, took off his snow-glasses and turned down the collar of his coat.

It was no use. The officer looked at him without recognition.

"Name?" he said again; and the policeman upon his right, giving the King a rough jog, said, "Tell the sergeant your name!" And so, it appeared, the useless formality must go on.

The King gave the two essentials—first-christian and surname—out of a long string of appendices for which half the sovereigns of Europe had stood as godfathers.

But the three words "John Ganz-Wurst" meant nothing to the official ear. Over the patronymic he paused in doubt when only halfway through. "Spell it!" he said, and, at the King's dictation, altered his V into a W.

"Foreigner?" he grunted; Jingalese names he could spell properly.

"Of foreign extraction," said the King, "my great-grandfather came over to this country and was naturalized."

"Oh, we don't want to hear about your great-grandfather!" said the sergeant, cutting him short.

At this moment one of the higher inspectors came into the room.

"Address—occupation?" went on his interlocutor, busy with his form.

The King named the dwelling from which he emanated.

"Come, come!" said the official voice, "no nonsense here! What address?"

The inspector was now looking at the prisoner. He touched the sergeant upon the shoulder, and made a gesture for the two constables to stand back.

"Will you please to come this way, sir?" he said, in a tone of very marked respect.

The King followed him to an inner room.

The inspector closed the door. "I beg your Majesty's pardon," he said. "This is a most regrettable occurrence. Fortunately, none of those men know."

The King smiled. "I tried not to give myself away before I was obliged to," he said.

"Your Majesty must think we are all quite mad."

"Not at all. So far as I know, every man I have encountered has merely done his duty. Your methods of arrest are a little—arbitrary, shall I say?"

"That is unavoidable, sir, when we have large crowds to deal with."

"I can understand that. A woman was being crushed; I helped her to get over the railings. I suppose that was wrong?"

The inspector smiled apologetically. "Men have been fined for it, before now, sir," said he.

"Very well, I will pay my fine," smiled the King. "And then, if you don't mind, I will go home."

His Majesty's kindly humor won the inspector's gratitude. "I'm sure it's very good of your Majesty to treat the matter so lightly."

"It was entirely my own fault," said the King. "How was I to be recognized?"

"You took us off guard, sir. We were not informed that your Majesty would be going anywhere to-night."

"Is that the rule?"

"It is always our business to inquire."

"I should not have told any one."

"It would still, sir, have been our business to find out."

"You surprise me!" said the King. It had never dawned upon him that he was so watched. "And so to-night, for the first time, I gave you the slip?"

"I take the blame, sir," said the inspector; his voice was grave.

"Why should you? No harm has been done. The only question now is how am I to get back?"

"I can get you a cab, sir, at once. Or would your Majesty rather I sent word to the palace?"

"No, certainly not. If I have not been missed, nobody need know."

"Your Majesty was missed by us four hours ago. That is what brought me here."

"You come from the palace?"

"Yes, sir. As head of the special department, I have to be there every night."

"I'm sorry to have given you so much trouble."

"Oh, not at all, sir."

And then, a cab having been summoned, he led the way out.

No one was by; the street had not a soul in it, and the King knew that once more foresight and care were watching over him.

"I have paid the cabman, sir," said the inspector, as he closed the door. "And, sir, would you kindly say where he is to go?"

There was a hint of discretion in the man's tone.

"Ah, yes," said the King, "to be sure—yes. Tell him to stop at the park gates."

The inspector, saluting, gave the required direction, and the cab drove off. Arriving a few minutes later at his destination, the King got out, and passed in through the gates.

The palace was now shrouded in gloom; only in the guard-room, within the high-railed quadrangle, a light still burned. Dimly through the night a sentry could be seen pacing up and down.

By a subconscious instinct the King was returning along the same route that he had come. Only as he approached the postern in the wall did it occur to him that it would almost certainly be locked; and yet for no other door had he a key. Attended constantly by servants, and leading a scrupulously regular life, requiring neither secret passages nor late hours, he had never possessed a latch-key of his own.

How, then, was he to get in now without attracting attention?

Having come so far, however, he went forward on chance and tested the door. The attendant policeman was no longer there, the road-lamp had been turned low, giving only a glimmer.

He tried the handle, but found that it would not respond. A figure glided forward and inserted a key. "Allow me, sir," came the inspector's voice.

"You?" exclaimed the King, surprised.

"It was my duty to see your Majesty safe home."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure." He passed in, and the inspector followed.

"Pardon me for asking, sir. Was this the way your Majesty came out?"

"Yes."

"Ah, that accounts for it! We never thought of your Majesty coming this way, and the man put here was only on beat, not on point duty."

"He was here when I came out," said the King.

"He did not report, sir."

"Are they all bound to?"

"Oh, yes, sir, of course we have to know."

The King smiled. "I suppose he did not recognize me. Remember, I was not quite myself."

"All the same, sir, he should have known. It's what he is trained for."

The King's surprise grew. "I never guessed that I had to be guarded like this."

"Of course, sir, we try to keep it out of sight as much as possible. It isn't pleasant always to feel yourself watched."

"I make you my compliments," said the King; "I had not the remotest idea. Whereabouts are we now?"

The walls of the palace loomed black above them; the night was dark.

"Small stair entrance on the north side, sir. If your Majesty is without a key——"

"I have no key at all."

"Then kindly allow me, sir." And again to the inspector's pass-key a door opened.

The King entered, and the inspector still accompanied him. "There may be others locked inside," he said, by way of explanation.