Charlotte all her life had been quick and impulsive in her decisions; her hatreds and her affections had always been precipitately bestowed, and while her conduct was seldom reasonable, her instincts were generally right. So now—when a most crucial question was coming to her for decision—for she no longer needed to be informed of the Prince's mind in the matter—she did not allow its serious character to weigh upon her spirits or make her less ready and spontaneous in the bestowal of her liking. On the contrary, if anything, it hastened her verdict of approval. "I do believe that I am going to fall in love with him!" she said to herself after an acquaintance of only twenty-four hours; and having so determined, she set forth with all speed to study "philosophically," as she phrased it, this huge healthy natural specimen which fortune had thrown in her way. "For if I don't take a philosophical view of him now," she said to herself, "I shall never be able to do it afterwards."

The effort to do so rather amused her; she was not in love with him but she liked him more than a little. She had not yet, however, put him to the test by revealing the awful fact that she had been in prison as a common criminal; and before doing so (a little nervous as to the result) she took such opportunity of survey as was left to her, studied him up and down, noticed his ways, demeanor, habits, and wondered to herself whether in three weeks' time she would be so infatuated with this great creature as not to know where divinity ended and mere earthly clay began.

She had plenty of material to go upon: he was as naive in the revelations of his own character as in his half-bewildered admiration for the swift mercurial motions of her livelier temperament.

For a while, at the beginning of their acquaintance, some question as to the degree of her sincerity seemed to trouble him.

"How much of what you say do you really mean?" he inquired.

"Oh, it varies!" she answered. "I talk so as to find out what I think. Don't you? Some things one can't judge of till one hears them spoken."

"That seems funny to me."

"Why? You are fond of music: don't you find that sound is very important? Can you think music without ever hearing it?"

"Sometimes," he said.

"But only the airs."

"Oh, no; sometimes I can think like an orchestra, when I know all what is in it."

"You must be very musical."

"Yes; that is my misfortune sometimes. The world has so much ugly sound already; and then some people go out of their ways to make more."

"Ah, yes," she smiled, "I remember you were a musical critic once."

He let that go; and turning the conversation abruptly, as was his wont, to more personal ends, said—

"Tell me, do you like my name?"

"Schnapps-Wasser?" Shaping the word elaborately, she made a wry face over it.

"No—not that; my own name."

"But you have three."

"Yes; Hans, Fritz, Otto. Which of them you like best?"

"Fritz suits you best."

"Then will you always call me it?"

"Prince Fritz, Prince Fritz?—sounds like a robin," she said, trying it in musical tones.

"No, just Fritz; no more, only that."

"Wait till I have known you a few more days; then we will see."

"But I shall already be nearly gone by then," he protested. "I am only here such a short time."

"Perhaps some day you will come again."

"Ah! Again!" He sounded unutterable things, as though upon that word hung his whole fate. Anything might happen to him before they met again.

"I have a secret," he said; "I want to tell it you."

"Are you sure you can trust me?"

"When I have told you it, you can tell anybody."

"Then it can't be much of a secret."

"Oh! You think?" He opened his big childish eyes at her and nodded his head solemnly. "This secret has been with me thousands and thousands of miles. Every time I shot off my gun, every day I went 'tramp, tramp' through the forest walking on snakes, every time I fought for my life I had this secret of mine to live with."

"You had better not tell it then; it may lose its interest."

"I want it to interest you."

"It does," said Charlotte, "very much."

"Huh! You do not know what it is."

"That is why; it is much more interesting not to know."

"Ah, you are playing at me! But what I go to tell you is no joke."

"I was not laughing," she said.

"No; only 'chatter, chatter'!"

"You know where I have been?" he continued.

"I know the continent."

"Yes;—you are right; that is all anybody knows about it. Well, inside of it there is a country as big as this Jingalo of yours; and it belongs really to nobody. I have been all over it."

"The people are very savage, are they not?"

"Savage?—oh, no. They are very fierce and proud, and strong; they are also the most wonderful artists. You call that to be a savage?"

"Artists?"

"Yes; look at that."

As he spoke he drew up his sleeve almost to the elbow, exposing a sunburnt arm, smooth, fine of texture, and enormously muscular. Over its brawny mold, with scaly convolutions elaborately tattooed, writhed a dragon in bright indigo.

"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed the Princess. Marveling at the clear intricacy of its detail, she stooped to examine it more closely.

Prince Fritz turned his arm this way and that, displaying it. He snapped his fingers: flick went each separate muscle, the dragon became alive.

"What do you think?" he inquired, smiling with childish vanity and the delight of feeling upon his skin the warmth of her breath.

"It is very beautiful," she murmured again, her admiration divided between the scaly dragon's wings and the splendidly molded limb.

"I have them far more beautiful upon my legs," said the Prince.

"Dragons?"

"Yes; but oh! quite different; more—how do you say?—'bloodthirsty' you call it? Here and here"—he went on, indicating the locality—"I have two. One of them is climbing up and the other is climbing down; and they are both biting on my knee-cap with their teeth—like mad."

"They must be quite wonderful."

"They are all that! When I look at them I am lost with admiration of myself." Then he gazed speculatively into her eyes and speaking in dull, soft tones of Teutonic sentiment, said confidentially, "If you will marry me, you shall see them some day."

Charlotte's laughter rang loud. "Do you think I should marry you for that?"

A wistful, rather nonplussed expression came into the Prince's face.

"I do not know," said he, "why women marry at all; they are so wonderful, so beautiful, so good all by themselves; we men are not beautiful at all—not our bodies nor our hearts. And I—oh, well!"—he drew down his sleeve as he spoke,—"I have nothing more beautiful to offer you than those—my dragons. If you do not want them, why should you want me?"

"But women don't marry dragons!" objected Charlotte, scarcely less puzzled than amused.

"Oh! Do they not? I think you are wrong. Many of them marry only because the man they marry makes them afraid. I have seen it done in the country where I come from;—Germany I mean—and everywhere here it is the same. I am not a dragon myself; but if you are that sort of woman, these might help you to pretend. Do you not think you could be afraid of me enough to marry me?"

This was strange wooing.

"I am not afraid of you at all," said Charlotte; "but I like you—very much."

"Ah, then you want me to be quite another person? Very well, that make it so much easier. Then now I will tell you what I am really like; and you will try not to laugh, will you not?"

Charlotte composed her countenance to as near gravity as was possible, and the Prince went on.

"I am just one little child that has lost its way through having grown so big and strong. And I want some nice, kind woman, that is more sensible than I, to be a mother to me—to take me in her arms and let me cry to her when I am afraid. Herr Gott! I am so frightened sometimes—how I have cried! Of the dark night, of loneliness, of the stillness when there is no noise near, but only that, something far, far away, that comes! Everything frightens me when I am alone. Fighting? No, I am not afraid of that; it is this wait, wait, wait—for what? And I want to have one woman just at my heart, and her voice at my ear, and children—yes, plenty of them; and when I have plenty children, then I shall not be afraid of loneliness any more."

"But if you so dislike it, why did you go away into the wilds?"

"Ah! I had to run away from the music. That was awful! And then—have you lived in a German town?—that is awful too. Do not think that I am asking you to live in a German town? No: I could not be so cruel. So now I tell you my secret."

"You mean the dragons?"

"The dragons? No, no! They go with me,—they are part of me, they are 'in the know': but they themselves are not the secret. That is much, much bigger thing still!"

He paused, and she saw his blue eyes looking far away, as though he had forgotten her presence.

"Well?" she said encouragingly, "you are going to tell me, are you not?"

"Oh, yes! That is what I am come for." His tone was quite business-like now.

"That big country I told you of—it belongs to nobody. You know that those North Americans say that nobody from Europe is to have it, though they do not use it themselves. Well, I am going to have it."

"You?"

"Schnapps-Wasser,—me, with my water-bottles. I have turned them into a company; and they are going to give for it—well, never mind how much. But with what my bottles bring me I can make that country so that no power in the world can prevent it from being a great country to itself."

"But you say it has no coast?"

"No—just like Jingalo; that is what makes it strong. If I were foolish, if I were only going there to make money, I should try to get some treaty, some concession, some sort of trade-monopoly—rubber, or gum, or niggers' blood, it is all the same thing—I should try to get that from the Brazils or the Bolivias or whoever thinks that it is theirs to sell. I am not such a fool: I do not want to trade, if I have got the people. They are strong, they can run, they live clean lives—nobody has spoiled them; they do not want to be rich; they are still a wonderful people; they know a leader when they have found him. And when they gave me these dragons that I have on me, then I became their King. That is my secret. Now!"

"But if I were to tell people that——"

"Pooh! They would not believe you. 'Mad,' that is what they would say. 'Don't marry that man, he is mad!' And besides I am not King as we talk of kings here in Europe; they would not pay taxes to me or anybody, but I can show them what to do. That country on the map may 'belong' to anybody—the United States may write 'Monroe'—one of their big 'bow-wows' that was—they may write 'Monroe' all round the coasts of South America and at every port that they like to stick in their noses; but they cannot get there to say that the people living on that land shall not become great and strong in their own way, without any one else to say about it. To those men outside I shall only look like a trader what is too stupid to trade with them; but all my trade will be among my own people. That country can live on itself; there, that is my secret! It wants nothing, nothing from outside at all; and the people want nothing either. They have great high plateaux where they can live cool; and they have all the brains and the blood that they want to make themselves a great nation. I have drilled them; ah, but not German fashion, no! They are much too splendid for that. Every man is an army to himself. They do not fear, for in their religion it is forbidden them. But if you can think of Bersaglieri—which are the best troops in Europe—able to climb like monkeys, to swim like fish, to go along the ground like snakes, and to get all by different ways to the same place in the dark with their eyes shut, though they have never been there before—for that is how it seems—well, that is what my army is going to be like. I have ten thousand of them drilled already; in a year I shall have them armed; and I tell you that at six hundred miles from the nearest coast nobody will be able to beat them."

"No, perhaps not with armies," said Charlotte; "but what about civilization itself—all the evil part of it, I mean? How are you going to keep that out?"

"Civilization will find us a bad bargain," said the Prince, "we shall not trade: that is to be our law. I have told them how dreadful civilization has become, and they are afraid of it; they will not touch it with a pair of tongs. Traders may come to us; they shall get nothing, and we shall get nothing from them. Only the King, with those that he has for his Council, shall choose what is to bring in from outside; and that will not be for trade at all.

"Well, now you know! And it is to be Queen of that country, but never to wear any crown, that I ask if you are going to marry me?"

"It would be rather a big adventure, would it not?" said Charlotte.

"Of course! I thought that is what you like."

"Yes, so it is. But what about papa? I don't know what he would say if he knew."

"Do you always tell him what you do, beforehand, to see if he shall approve?"

"I've not done lately," said Charlotte. And then she saw that a suitable moment for her own confession had arrived. She had very small hope of shocking him now; but she did her best.

"Do you know that I have been in prison?" she said.

"No. Who was it that put you there—your papa?"

"I put myself."

"Did you get the keys?"

"I made them arrest me."

"How?"

"I took a policeman's helmet from him, and ran away with it. At least that is what he said afterwards: I don't know whether it was true."

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the Prince in ravished tone. He did not turn a hair; it was merely as though he were listening to some fairy tale.

"But very likely it was!" persisted Charlotte, anxious for the worst to be believed; and then she gave him a full account of the whole thing.

"And what for did you do it?" he inquired when she had finished.

"Because they had told me that you were coming, and I had promised not to run away."

"I do not understand?"

"Well, I didn't know what you were like; and I didn't want you to think I was a bit anxious to meet you.—That was all!"

"That was all, was it?" Enlightenment dawned on him; he beamed at her benevolently.

"And I wanted to see," she continued, "whether you would be shocked: at least, I wanted to give you the chance of being."

"Well, you have given it me, and I am not; I am delighted. The more women can do that sort of thing the better—pull men's heads off, I mean."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Charlotte, "but I'm not going on doing it."

"Why not? A good thing done twice is better."

The simplicity of his approval left her without words.

"In that country where you and I are going to," went on the Prince, imperturbably, "the women can fight just as well as the men. They are trained to wrestle; and before they allow to marry they must have wrestled off on to his back a man as old as themselves."

"But the men?" cried Charlotte, astonished. "How can they stand being beaten by women?"

"Pooh, that is nonsense!" said Fritz; "men do not mind being beaten by women unless it is that they despise them. In that country the woman that has thrown most men is the one that they are most anxious to marry."

"I have never thrown any one yet," said Charlotte reflectively.

"You!" Peaceful of look he eyed her wonderingly. "You have thrown something much stronger than a man," he said—"you, a princess, that has gone to prison!—and for that silly notion of yours that you could shock me. Ha!"

"I did it for other reasons, too."

"Quite like; people may have a lot of reasons they can make up afterwards for doing wise, brave, foolish things like that!"

"But I did think," insisted Charlotte, "that those Women Chartists were right."

"I do not care whether they are right or wrong;—that is not my concern. They may be just as foolish as you, or just as wise—what difference to me? But when I go to think of you sitting there in that common prison all those ten days with everybody looking for you—looking, looking, and not daring to say one word—so afraid at what you had done—oh, that is marvelous! That is to be a King! That is power!"

Charlotte had become very attentive to her lover's praise. "You think they were really afraid, then?" she inquired, "afraid that it should be known."

"You ask them!" replied Fritz, "and see if they do not all cry 'Hush'!"

And then in his usual abrupt way he returned to matters more personal to himself.

"Well, what are you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking off on to something else."

"Wriggling is one way of wrestling," said Charlotte. Her eye played mischief as she spoke.

"Just waggling the tongue!" retorted Fritz with genial scorn. "Throw a man with that?—you cannot throw me!"

"But I must throw somebody, or else I shall not be qualified. The women of that wonderful country of yours would look down on me."

"Throw me!" The Prince opened his arms, smiling. "I will let you!" he said.

"And despise me afterwards! No, Mr. Schnapp-dragon, I shall choose my own man, and throw him in my own way."

"And if you succeed?"

"Then—yes, then I will marry you."

"And if you fail?"

"Then I won't."

"H'm!" observed the Prince in easy-going tones, "you must have been very sure of him before you would say that!"

Charlotte opened her mouth to rebuke that brazen remark; and then shut it again.

"When do you do it?" went on Fritz, equable as ever. "Before I go?"

Charlotte pretended to temporize. "Well, perhaps to-morrow," said she.

And sure enough, to-morrow it was.

II

Nobody in Jingalo knows to this day what finally induced the Prime Minister to concede so unexpectedly that preliminary point of vantage—a mere foothold among the interstices of the ministerial program—which the Women Chartists had so long and vainly striven for. What use they made of the opportunity thus accorded has now become a matter of history: we need not go into it here.

No royal message to ministers in Council assembled worked that miracle; for, as we shall see in another chapter, the King's mind was destined at this point to be suddenly distracted in quite other ways; and when he was again able to turn his attention anywhere but to himself he found that and other matters which had disturbed his conscience tending with comparative smoothness toward a solution in which he personally had had little share.

But though Jingalo knows nothing of these inner workings of history, we peering behind the scenes may note how, when bureaucracy is bent on keeping up appearances, fear of scandal can become more potent to constitutional ends than love of justice.

Never in his long career had the Prime Minister known so flagrant an instance of blackmail unpunishable by law as that which the Princess Charlotte sprung on him when, in brief interview, she dictated the terms on which alone the Ann Juggins episode was to be allowed to sink into oblivion. And perhaps one can hardly wonder, under the circumstances, that even then he did not feel secure, and was anxious to see so incalculable a "sport" or variant of the royal breed removed to a safe distance. For even though he might rely on her word as to the past, where was his guarantee that she might not do the same thing again?

"That Prime Minister is very anxious to get rid of you," said Prince Fritz when at a later date he and the Princess began once more to compare notes as to future plans, when in fact the joyful news of their engagement was about to be publicly announced in a general uproar of thanksgiving.

"Oh, yes," went on Fritz, enjoying the retrospect, "one could see that quite well. He was putting on my boots for me all the time, and was willing to pay a good deal more for the accommodation than he had expected me to ask."

"Pay?"

"Yes, dearest; but it all goes into your pocket, not mine. It is the price he pays for your character; that is all."

"But what has my character to do with him?"

"Your character, beloved," said the Prince, turning upon her an adoring gaze, "leaves him with no moment in which he can feel safe. He thinks that you have 'a great vitality,' but here not enough scope. And he seems that he cannot govern this country so long as you stay in it. I think him very wise. Shall I tell you what I did?"

"Well?"

"I made a bargain."

"About me?"

"Of course about you, beloved—for you; who else except would I bargain for? Besides was it about anything but your business that he and I were having to seek each other? Well, because you so frighten him now he pays rather more to get rid of you; and you, oh my dear heart's beloved, you will get more. That is all that your Fritz had to do yesterday—and he has done it. So now!"

And then, well pleased with himself, the practical Fritz let his romantic side appear again, and for two minutes or so he lived up to the sky-like blueness of his eyes and the childlike gentleness of his face, and because his heart was very full of love he talked his own native German, and not Jingalese any more.

And these two sides of him are here given so that the reader, if kindly anxious about Charlotte's future, may trouble about her no more; for when your idealist is also a very practical man of business he can, up to the capacity of his brain-power, go anywhere and do anything, and even in a land that is outside Baedeker will assuredly find his feet. Not for nothing had Prince Hans Fritz Otto of Schnapps-Wasser turned his bottled industry of home-waters into a company.

In tentative motherings of her gigantic babe, Charlotte had forgotten all about money and business affairs when once more the practical man in him came out of childish disguise to make an inquiry.

"Beloved," said he, "tell me—was he that man?"

"Which man?" inquired Charlotte innocently.

"The one that you wrestled with?"

Charlotte nodded; a smile flickered over her face.

"And you got him down?"

"Yes."

"Quite down?"

"As flat as he could go."

"And that is why you marry me?"

The two lovers exchanged sweet looks of candor and honesty.

"Yes," said Charlotte, smiling, "that is why."

"O Beloved," murmured the infatuated Fritz, "how beautifully you do tell lies."



CHAPTER XXIII

"CALL ME JACK!"



It was noticed when the King came down to the first Council of the new session that his face was flushed and his manner strangely discomposed. He barely returned the respectful greetings of his ministers, and by postponement of the customary invitation to be seated, kept them out of their chairs for quite an appreciable time. Standing awkwardly about the board they looked like a group of carrion crows awaiting the symptoms of death before descending to their meal. To none did he accord any word of personal recognition.

Even when proceedings had commenced it was evident that his attention constantly wandered, only returning by fits and starts at the call of some chance phrase on which now and again he would seize, remarking in a tone of irritation, "And what does this mean, please?" And thereafter he would require to be instructed at some length, as though he had forgotten all current or preceding events.

In consequence of this the formal reports of the various departments became a lengthy business; and the really important matters, to discuss which the Council had been specially called, were proportionally delayed.

Presently the word "strikes" caught his ear.

"Ah, yes, what about those strikes?" he inquired.

"They are still going on, your Majesty."

"Yes, I know that! Why are they going on—that's what I want to know? The strike you are talking about was practically over more than a month ago; why has it begun again?"

"They have secured fresh funds, sir, and other trades have joined in."

"Is it the other trades that are finding the funds?"

"Not entirely, sir; large contributions are now coming in from abroad."

"From abroad?" interjected the King irritably, "where are they getting funds from abroad?"

"From England, sir."

"From the Government, do you mean?"

"Of course not from the Government, sir."

"Well, explain yourself, then! Don't call it England if it isn't England."

"I might almost say that it is England, sir, since a judicial decision is the immediate cause of it. Labor in that country has just won a very important action for damages arising out of a Crown prosecution. It has now been decided that the Crown is responsible for the torts of its civil and military agents. The unions in consequence are flush with funds, and a portion of the Court's award, amounting to L50,000, has been handed over to the strike fund in this country."

"And this subsidy from a foreign and a so-called friendly Power is having the effect of prolonging our industrial conflicts, and is doing damage to our trade?"

"Undoubtedly, sir, it has that effect."

"Well, and has nothing been said about it—to the English Government, I mean?"

"It is not a direct act of the Government, sir."

"I don't need to be told that," said the King. "Neither was it a direct act of the Government when a party of English undergraduates climbed to the top of our embassy and hauled down the national flag because Jingalese had been made a compulsory substitute for Greek at their universities. But for that the English Government apologized, publicly and privately, and all round. Do they apologize for this? Do they offer to compensate us for the loss it is to our trade and the corresponding gain to theirs? Have they been asked to apologize?"

"Certainly not, sir."

"And pray, why not?"

By this time, around the ministerial board, much open-eyed interrogation was going on. Where, they seemed to be asking, was this glut of foolish interrogations going to end? But still the minister under examination endeavored to answer as though the questions were reasonable.

"There would be no chance, sir, of obtaining any redress."

"Yet this is doing us infinitely more harm?"

"It is merely a development, sir, of that new thing called 'syndicalism.' It is cropping up everywhere now."

"It may be new as it likes," protested the King. "All I say is that as it stands it is a casus belli. You say it is cropping up; all the more reason why it should be put down! What else is government for? Take cattle disease; you put that down, you do not allow that to be imported. Why should you allow syndicalism to be imported either?"

The Council sought resignation of spirit in sighs and looked to its Chief in mute appeal.

"How would your Majesty propose to prevent the importation of ideas?" inquired the Prime Minister dryly, in a tone that tried to be patient.

"Don't tell me," said the King, "that a syndicalist subsidy to Labor of L50,000 is only an idea. But you are quite right, Mr. Prime Minister; in the past countries have gone to war largely over the importation of ideas, as you call them, either religious or social; that is why they failed. England went to war with France at the end of the eighteenth century merely because France was importing revolutionary ideas into England. Was she able to prevent it? No; she only got the disease in a much more virulent form herself, and has been running tandem to it ever since. It is no use going to war for sentimental reasons; you must do it for business reasons, and you must do it in a business-like way."

"Merely as a matter of business, sir," said the Prime Minister, his hopefulness now on a descending scale, "war with England would cost us considerably more than the loss of trade occasioned by this subsidy which you complain of."

"Not a bit of it!" retorted the King, "not if you went the right way to work. The Chancellor was saying just now that we should have to devise some fresh taxes. Well, put a tax on Englishmen; quite enough of them come here to make it worth while. Every summer the place is alive with them!"

"I am afraid, sir," said the Prime Minister, sighing wearily, "that the most favored nation clause stands in the way of your Majesty's brilliant suggestion."

"Not if we do it openly as an act of war," explained the King; "then it becomes a war tax. That's what I mean when I say conduct your wars on business lines. Don't tax yourself, tax your enemy! England is the one country we can fight on our own terms. She can't get at us. We are an inland power; there isn't a coast within three hundred miles of us; and Dreadnoughts can't walk on land, you know. They really can't!" he added, as though there might be some doubt among those who had not yet given the matter their consideration.

"I assure you, gentlemen, that war on England, if scientifically conducted, would be a profitable thing. I've been reading a book by a man named Norman Angell, who says that war doesn't pay. Well, the reason for that is we don't conduct our wars on the proper lines. Now if we made war on England——"

"Your Majesty," entreated the Prime Minister, "may we proceed to business?"

"If we made war on England," persisted the King, "we should not have to send out a single regiment, or impose any extra taxation on ourselves; in fact we should save. We should simply raise our railway and hotel tariffs fifteen or twenty per cent. to all Englishmen, except children in arms; children up to thirteen half price. There's the whole thing in a nutshell; no difficulty, no difficulty whatever."

At this point, to the Premier's annoyance, Professor Teller took up the question with a humorous appreciation of its possibilities.

"But, sir," he inquired, "how should we know that they were Englishmen? They might disguise themselves as Americans."

"They couldn't!" said the King. "An Englishman trying to talk American makes as poor an exhibition of himself as an American trying to talk English; and besides, you don't know the British character! Penalize them in the way I am suggesting and they would flaunt their nationality in our faces; they would wear Union-jack waistcoats and carry in their pockets gramophones which played 'God save the King' when you touched them. They would make a point of showing us that they didn't care twopence for our fifteen per cent.; in fact, their Tariff Reformers would applaud us—they would put it in large headlines in all their newspapers, and call it an object lesson and would demand a general election on the strength of it."

"But supposing, sir," inquired the Professor, "that they did not come at all? We have to remember that we live largely by our tourists; and if we eliminate the English tourist——"

"Better and better," said the King. "Think how popular we should be with the rest of Europe! No English? The Germans would simply flock to us; our hotels would be crammed; we should be turning away money at the door."

The Prime Minister tapped wearily upon the table; all this was such utter waste of time; and he began to think that the King was so intending it, and was bent upon making a royal Council a constitutional impossibility.

But in some curious magnetic way other members of the Cabinet were now beginning to be infected. The idea tickled their national vanity; and though it was all put in a very amateurish way, many of them saw well enough that for war to be retained as a solution of international problems something on these lines would have to be done for it. Syndicalism was merely a showing of the way.

"But, your Majesty," inquired the President of the Board of Ways and Means, "might not England retaliate by declaring a Tariff war on us?"

"She might," said the King; "but not with the Liberals still in power; they couldn't reduce themselves to absurdity in that way. Still, supposing our declaration of war threw the Liberals out, what could the others do? Our trade in English goods comes to us mainly through France or Germany; and our own return trade is chiefly limited to our native crockery, toys, wood-carving, and needlework, supposed survivals of our peasant industries, which, as a matter of fact, are nearly all of them manufactured for us in Birmingham, the home of Tariff Reform. In that matter, by the taxing of articles which are only nominally made in Jingalo, English trade would suffer more than ours; and there might, in consequence, come about a real revival of our native crafts (an advantage which I had not previously thought of)—lacking our usual supply of the bogus article we should at last become honest in our professions and truthful in our trademarks. Let the Minister for Home Industries make a note of it."

"The prospect your Majesty holds out is certainly alluring," replied the minister thus appealed to; "but if war is to teach us moral lessons, surely we ought to have moral reasons for engaging in it as well as business ones."

"Well, if you want them, you've got them!" said the King. "If moral reasons were to count we ought to have been at war with England any day for the last fifty years. England has become—if she has not always been—a center of infection to the whole of Europe. Every disastrous experiment on which we have embarked has come from her. By her gross mismanagement of established institutions—the Church, the Peerage, the Army, Land, Labor, Capital—the whole system of voluntary service and voluntary education—she has driven the rest of Europe into revolutionary changes for which there was no necessity whatever. In avoiding the woeful example she has set us, of always standing still on the wrong leg, we have run ourselves off both our own. And now she is nourishing syndicalism like a bed of weeds, and sowing the seeds of it into her neighbors' territories. If you are looking for moral excuse there is no end to it; I preferred, however, to put it to you as a business proposition."

"I must assure your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, "that your Majesty's present advisers have no intention whatever of making themselves responsible for a war on England, however advantageous the circumstances may seem."

He might as well have spoken to the wind; with an increasing volubility of utterance the King went on—

"If it were decided," said he, "that an actual invasion of England were advisable, I have three separate plans now forming in my head, all equally feasible and promising, and all capable of being put into operation at one and the same time. Each one, in fact, would serve to divert attention from the others."

It may be noted that at this point Professor Teller suddenly ceased to be amused; his look of half-quizzical detachment becoming changed to one of gravity, almost of distress; his Majesty's "pace" had apparently become too much for him.

"We know, for instance," pursued the King, "that if we succeeded in effecting a landing the German waiters would rise as one man and join us as volunteers. Germany would, of course, officially disown them, while for the purposes of the war we should give them letters of Jingalese naturalization on their enlistment; these, which they would carry in their knapsacks, would prevent them from being shot in the event of their being taken prisoners. Our own army of twenty thousand picked Jingalese sharp-shooters would go to England disguised as tourists. Each in his bag would carry a complete military outfit; our new uniforms are so like those of the English territorials that they would arouse no suspicion at the Customs House, and even when worn only experts would know the difference. At a given signal——"

There the Prime Minister, having extracted a look of despairing encouragement from the Council, got upon his feet.

"I have to ask your Majesty," he said very resolutely, "that we may now be allowed to proceed to the business for which we have been called together."

"At a given signal——" went on the King.

"I must protest, your Majesty."

It was quite useless.

"At a given signal—I will give you your signal, Mr. Prime Minister, when you may throw your bomb; yes, for I have seen you preparing it!—at a given signal when the King and his Parliament were assembled together in one place, some of our forces would mingle with the crowd; others emerging from places of concealment would form into ranks and advance from various quarters upon Westminster. Then, before any one was aware, we would cable our declaration of war, rush the House, seize the heads of the Government, carry them off to the topmost story of the clock tower, garrison it from basement to roof, and there, with the King and his whole Cabinet in our hands, stand siege till the rest of the nation sued for peace."

Once more the Prime Minister endeavored to interpose; he was borne down.

"They could not blow us up," went on the King, "without blowing our prisoners up also; they could not starve us out, for the King and his Cabinet would perforce have to share our privations. We should have in our possession not only the whole personnel of the Government, but that supreme symbol and safeguard of the popular will which crowns their constitutional edifice. And, gentlemen, you may think me as mad as you like—you may arrest me, you may take me to the police-station, you may rob me of all the evidence of conspiracy I have against you, and you may call me Jack—jack-of-all-trades, master of none—Jack, plain Jack——"

The Prime Minister and Council sprang to their feet. Consternation was upon the faces of all.

"But nothing! nothing!" he went on, "no power on earth—except it were a whole army of steeplejacks——"

At that word the flow of his eloquence ceased; his mouth remained open but no sound came from it. Suddenly his staring eyes puckered and closed, wincing as from a blow; and his face flushed to a fiery red, then paled.

He gave a short cry, threw out an arm feebly; wavered, toppled, crumpled like a thing without bone, and fell back into his chair.

"My God!" muttered the Prime Minister. "Oh, great Heaven!"

Some one, more nimble of wit than the rest, dashed out of the room to seek aid. All the others, impressed with a true sense of incompetence, stood looking at their fallen King. Not one of them knew how to handle him, whether it were best to lay him down or leave him alone. First aid—even to their sovereign lord—had formed no part in the education of these his counselors.

The Prime Minister did the one thing which he knew to be correct—and which could not possibly do harm; he felt the King's heart. But nobody for a moment supposed him to be dead; unconscious though he lay, his heavy breathings could be seen and heard.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING



I

For three whole weeks thereafter—if the papers were to be believed—the entire nation hung upon the bulletins which were issued hourly from the royal palace. The King's illness gave the finishing touch to his popularity; devotion to affairs of State had brought on brain-fever, and the more desperate the symptoms of the illness could be made to appear, the more sublime became the moral character of its august victim, and the more deeply-rooted the affection of his people.

Professional vanity had also to be flattered; and during those fierce fluctuations of hope and despair, Jingalo's topmost place in the world of medical science became vindicated to the meanest intelligence. If by a scientific miracle the King's life was to be saved, Jingalese doctoring, and no other doctoring in the world would do it.

Nobly the press performed its task of giving to every factor in the situation its due prominence; even the Church got its share; and when favorable bulletins became the order of the day, their origin was generously ascribed, even by the ministerial press, almost as much to the prayers of the people publicly offered as to the skill of the six best medical authorities. But when all was said and done it was to the King's marvelous constitution, his patient courage, and his quiet submission to the hands of his nurses (foremost of whom was her Majesty the Queen), that the praise was chiefly due; for it was necessary, in order to complete the situation, that the loyalty so nobly tendered should be nobly earned.

And nobly tendered it certainly was. Never could the nation have had so good an opinion of itself as during those dark weeks when, taught by its press the meanings of the various symptoms, it sat by the King's bed feeling his pulse, holding his breath, and scarcely daring to raise any voice above a whisper. Various sections of the public were informed in their daily journals how they and other sections were behaving themselves; how business men went to office almost apologetically, and only because they could not help themselves; how nursemaids hushed the voices of their charges as they wheeled them past the precincts of the palace for their morning's airing in the royal park; and how Jingalo only consented to its accustomed portion of beer in order that it might drink to the King's health and his quick recovery.

Every week in the streets at the back of the palace fresh straw was laid down, not so much for the benefit of the sufferer (whose room was too far away for any sound of traffic to disturb him), but as a stimulus to popular imagination. The men who laid it down performed their task as though the eye of the whole nation were upon them; and even upon the Stock Exchange one learned that the rise and fall of prices were but the harmonious accompaniment of a stupendous national anxiety.

All these things Jingalo was told by its newspapers, and some of them were true; and in the reading and the doing of them how Jingalo enjoyed itself! It had never had such a time of feeling good, unselfish, and thoughtful on a large and homogeneous scale, without having to do anything particularly unpleasant in return. The theaters suffered, but not nearly so much as the charities; for though Jingalo was still able decorously to amuse itself—and did so at her Majesty's special request, for the sake of trade—it could not have its heart successfully wrung by human compassion in more than one direction at a time—at least, not to the same extent. And so, charitable appeals had to wait till a livelier sense of gratitude prompted by the King's recovery should revive them.

In the conduct of human affairs association plays a very curious part. When a man is shouting for joy he can scatter largesse with a free hand, but he cannot loosen his purse-strings while he is holding his breath; and even when it is only being held for him by a sort of hypnotic suggestion, his nature is still undergoing a certain impedimental strain.

And as a visible embodiment to all this strain of calculation and suspense, small crowds could be seen standing constantly at the gates of the palace, waiting for bulletins and watching with a curious fascination the flag that so obstinately continued to float mast high. They watched it as a crowd watches for a similar sign outside the walls of a jail: not that they wanted it to fall—but still, if it had to, they dearly wished that they might be there to see. Thus, even in their griefs, did the sporting instincts of the Jingalese people rise to the surface and bring them a consolation which nothing else could afford.

My readers will give me credit, I trust, for not having sought to impose on them that fear of impending doom, that apprehension of what the next hour might bring forth, on the strength of which the Jingalese press so sedulously ran its extra editions from day to day. I have never for a moment pretended that the King was going to die, seeing, on the contrary, that he was destined to make a complete recovery. But he was not to be quite the same man again—not at least that man whom we have seen in these pages bumping his way conscientiously through a period of constitutional crisis. For when the six Jingalese medicos came to put their heads together over him, they found in the back of his head a small dislodgment of bone, rather less than the size of a florin, and protruding almost an eighth of an inch from the surface of the skull. Great was their speculation as to how such a thing could have come about without their knowing it—for here, of course, was the root of the whole mischief. This fracture, brought about perhaps by some flying fragment of bomb, unnoticed in the excitement of the moment and afterwards ignored, had evidently been the cause of the brain-fever; and when a cause of this sort is discovered nothing is easier for medical science than to put it right again.

And so, seeing that the bone was out of place, they put it back just where it ought to be, that is to say, where it had been. And as soon as that was done, and the right pressure once more restored to the King's brain, then his temperature went down, his delirium abated, and his mind, as it gradually came back to him, recovered the dull, safe, and retiring qualities which had belonged to it a year ago; and with its old constitutional balance restored to it, it became once more contented with its limitations and surroundings, and made a very quiet, happy, and peaceful convalescence. And though on his recovery the King still remembered the events of the past months they appeared to him rather in the light of a bad dream than as a slice of real life.

The Prime Minister came to see him on the very first day when he was allowed to sit up and receive visitors, and they met without any sign of constraint or enmity.

"Well, Mr. Prime Minister, how are things going?" inquired the King.

"Very well, indeed, sir," replied the minister, "now that your Majesty has taken the necessary step to relieve us of all anxiety. And, though I have not come on this occasion to intrude politics, it may interest you, sir, to hear that on the question of the Spiritual Chamber, the Archbishop and I have come to an arrangement, and the necessary legislation is to be carried through by the consent of both parties."

"Very gratifying, I am sure," said the King. "How did it come about?"

The Prime Minister hesitated. "Well, sir," he said, "there were several contributing causes: I need not go into them all. The one thing, however, which made some modification of our plans clearly necessary was the death of the Archimandrite of Cappadocia. After that our proposed consecration of Free Churchmen to the new bishoprics ceased to be possible. No doubt your Majesty will feel relieved."

"Yes, I am," murmured the King mildly.

And so was the Prime Minister; for that event, happening so fortuitously at the right moment, had saved his face; his political retreat was covered, partly at any rate, by the death—in a queer odor of sanctity all his own—of that exiled patriarch of the Eastern Church.

His exit, though opportune, had not been dramatic; attention being at the moment otherwise directed. His two wives nursed him devotedly to the end, and wrapped him for burial in the magnificent cape which in his brief day of political importance the Prime Minister had given him. Very quietly and unostentatiously he was laid to rest under the rites of an alien Church—for his own would have none of him; nor was there any one left to say of him now, in the land of his exile and temporary adoption, "Ah, Lord," or "Ah, his glory!" Only in his duplicated domestic circle was he in anywise missed; polities had shifted the ground from under him, and he had become negligible.

II

The King's recovery was the event of the new year, not only giving it an auspicious send-off, but lending thereafter a peculiar flavor to the whole social calendar. For months, addresses of congratulation kept coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and focussed the applause. Its influences extended to every department of public life; it affected politics, trade, public holiday, art, science; it invaded literature, increased the circulation of the newspapers, and lent inspiration even to poetry.

And those being the facts, how useless for satirists and cynics to pretend any longer that monarchy as an institution was not firmly and inextricably imbedded in the very life and habits of the Jingalese people?

Even at the universities the theme chosen for the prize poem that year was the King's recovery from sickness; and though the prizes were few an unusually large number of the rejected poems, owing to the popularity of their subject, were published in the local newspapers. Perhaps only a few of them were good, but one at least achieved success, and was recited at all charity bazaars, concerts, and theatrical entertainments given in the ensuing year. One couplet alone shall be here quoted, portraying as it does in graphic phrase the national suspense during those weeks of prolonged crisis when telegram after telegram continued to pour monotonous negation on the hopes of an expectant people—

"Swift o'er the wires the electric message came, He is no better: he is much the same!"

Even amateur reciters could make an effect out of lines like that. Many of them did, and on one occasion the Princess Charlotte was a conspicuous member of the touched and attentive audience. It was a difficult moment for her, but with the help of a handkerchief she concealed her emotion, and the papers referred to it appreciatively as a touching incident.

The joy-bells that rang for a King's recovery, rang also for the public announcement of a royal betrothal. Prince Fritz had returned to the enchantment of his Charlotte's society at the earliest possible moment, and was in consequence one of the royal family group which went in state to the Cathedral to return thanks for the sovereign's restoration to health.

Across that bright scene we have to note the passing of one shadow which, though not of impenetrable gloom, should not fail to enlist the equable sympathy of kindly hearts. Max still moved upon the public stage with a pensive and a chastened air. In the last month he had matured visibly, yet he did not mourn as one without hope, for he remembered that in the Church of Jingalo virginity could only vow itself for a limited number of years, and he knew that time could bring wisdom to inexperience, and make conspicuous the virtue of a heart that would not take "no." Also he had certain fireworks up his sleeve whose brightness, when they were let off, would penetrate even to the most cloistral abode—he had, that is to say, his Royal Commission to work on, and the preparation of a minority report which could not fail, when it was divulged, to startle the world. He was even beginning to have hopes that three or four others would sign it; for to be in a minority with royalty has its charm.

But though he still believed in the future he was for the moment in very solitary plight. His Countess, to whom alone he could go for comfort in his grief, had cried over him and kissed him with all the motherly kindness imaginable; and then, disturbed by the very depth of her pity and afraid of what might come of it—her heart being but tender clay—had suddenly packed up her traps and flown, leaving, if you would like to know, most of her jewels behind her. And Max, sending after her with his own hands those souvenirs of the past, had added a few tender words of regret and thanks which to her dying day that good woman cherished and said her prayers over.

III

The Thanksgiving was a very splendid affair; but the people who liked it least were the piebald ponies. Never in their lives did they so narrowly escape a hugging at the hands of the great unwashed; and this unwelcome demonstration as directed against them was quite without reason or excuse. They had not had brain-fever, or bones put back into place, or made miraculous recoveries from anything; and they practically said as much when resenting the liberties that were taken with them. All they knew was that they were doing rather more than their usual tale of work; and in consequence they were a little cross. Nothing serious happened, however, and while waiting at the Cathedral doors they were given sugar which quieted them down wonderfully.

Inside the Cathedral all that was great and good and noble in Jingalo had assembled to celebrate the occasion; and in its midst, still looking rather frail and delicate after his illness, sat the King with the Royal Family. To right and left of him sat judges, bishops, lords, ladies, members of the House of Laity, staff officers, diplomatists, mayors, and corporations, heads of public departments, all very gorgeously arrayed in their official uniforms; and there amongst the rest sat a compact bunch of prominent Free Churchmen in black gowns—their chances of episcopal preferment flown.

With triumphant suavity the Archbishop of Ebury conducted the service, assisted by deans, chapters, bishops, and a dozen cathedral choirs. Something in G was being intoned; the Archbishop was in splendid voice.

He asked that the King might be saved; and, man and boy, the twelve choirs were with him.

He asked a blessing on the Church; and his prayer was seconded.

He implored wisdom for Cabinet ministers; that, it was agreed, would add to the national satisfaction.

"In our time, O Lord, give peace!"

Peace: the echoes of that blessed word thrilled down the vaulted aisles of the Cathedral.

Put into another form that might mean, "After our time, the deluge." But the better word had been chosen: "Peace."

To the King's ear it came with all the softness of a caress; he welcomed it, for it meant much to him. And thinking of all that was now happily past he rubbed his hands.

The watchful reporters in the press-gallery above took notes of that; to them, whose duty that day was to interpret all things on a high and spiritual plane, it betokened the stress of a fine emotion, and in their grandiloquent reports of that solemn ceremony they set it down so and published it.

Yet as a matter of fact, the King had only rubbed his hands. And, truly interpreted, his thoughts ran thus—"Peace? Well, yes, I think that now I have earned it! Here am I, still King of Jingalo, alive and in my right mind. During the last few months I have abdicated—put myself off the throne, and been blown on to it again by a bomb engineered by my own Prime Minister; I have been arrested, I have been locked up in a police cell, I have committed robbery, and in my own palace been robbed again. My daughter has been in prison for ten days as a common criminal; my son seriously assaulted by the police, and for about four months surreptitiously engaged to the daughter of an Archbishop; while a revolutionary and seditious book written by him as a direct attack on the Constitution and on society has been providentially burned to the ground—that also, probably, at the instigation of my ministers. And though all this has been going on in their midst, making history, bringing changes to pass or preventing them, the people of Jingalo know nothing whatever about it. What a wonderful country is the country of Jingalo!"

And at that happy conclusion of the whole matter the King had rubbed his hands.

THE END