King John of Jingalo

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"You are becoming theatrical again," said the King.

"No, no," said Max, "but my brain is taking fire; an angel warned me of
it in a dream, and behold it has come true. I have been seeing things."

"Your Uncle Nostrum won't be pleased," remarked the King.

"He never is," said Max. "Discontent is his prevailing virtue. Give
himself something to be discontented about, then he can go down to his
house justified."

"The Prime Minister has already recommended him," went on the King, "at
least, said he would not oppose; but I don't know what he'll say to
this."

"Nor do I," said Max, "and I don't care; neither do you."

The King opened his eyes as though he had been surprised in some
secret--how did Max know that? And then his mind traveled a few months
further on; yes, it was quite true, he did not now care in the least.
What he had made up his mind to do had released him from all ministerial
terrors; and as he contemplated the relief in his own case his thoughts
turned to that bright youth over whose head so unlooked-for a fate was
now impending; how dramatic it would be! And here was Max, all
unbeknownst, harnessing himself to the wheels of State, pledged, unable
to run away. It was just one more turn in the toils which a
simple-minded man of gentle and retiring character was able to wind
around the scheming lives of others. By at last daring to be himself he
had become a power.

"Very well. I will see that it is arranged," he said. "Yes, it is
perhaps time you had some experience in presiding over--over boards and
all that sort of thing. I shan't last for ever; I don't feel like it."
And he shook his head sadly, for he liked to be sorry for himself;
nothing helped him more to bear up under the troubles of life.

"My dear father," said Max, with some fondness of tone, "you know that
the prospect of going for your cure always depresses you; but as you
insist on doing it you must pay the penalty. And when you are taking
those waters which so upset your digestion, and deprive you of the flesh
which nature meant you to wear, then think of me--not talking any
longer, but really up and doing--preparing myself at last to follow in
your footsteps. Now in this land of Jingalo, in the very heart of its
social and commercial system, I am going to make history."

"Oh, you think so?" said the King to himself. "Young man, before you
have much more than begun, you may have to come out of it! You can't do
that sort of thing when you are in my shoes."

And then he bade Max a benevolent good-bye and went off to his cure; and
Max, assured of his seat upon the forthcoming Commission, went off to
his.

III

"How am I to dress for this business?" Max had inquired; it was one of
the first practical problems to be solved, and an important one.

"If you don't mind," said Sister Jenifer, "you had better dress like a
Socialist. Wear a very soft hat, a very low collar, and a very red or
green tie, done loose in the French fashion, and nobody will wonder at
your looking clean, or at your asking questions. Young Socialists come
here to study the social problem and to show themselves off, and in a
vague sort of way the people have begun to understand them; and though
they look upon them as cranks, they don't any longer think they are
inspectors or charity agents--the two things you must avoid."

"Dress," said Max, "has a very subtle effect upon the character. At a
fancy-dress ball, last season, I wore a Cardinal's robe--there is a
portrait of one in the British National Gallery rather like me--and it
took me a month to get rid of the effects. If I turn into a Socialist,
therefore, it will be upon your advice."

"As far as politics go it matters very little what you turn into," said
Sister Jenifer.

"What a statement!" exclaimed Max.

"It is perfectly true," she said. "At present what we are fighting is
ignorance and indifference; in comparison to that the mere theory of
government doesn't matter, for nothing is going to succeed while one
half of society neither knows nor cares how the other half lives. Your
politicians are welcome to any theories they can find tenable, if only
they will face facts."

"What are your own politics?"

"I haven't any; I haven't room for them. My only aim is just to get that
one half of the community to come and look with understanding at the
other half; and then service, I know, would follow. It won't until they
do."

"Well, you are making me look," said Max.

"Yet I have not been able to make my father."

"Has he never been here?"

"He has opened churches."

"Well, you believe in prayer."

"That depends on how you define it."

"I wanted to ask you that. You are only a lay-sister; but some of you
have taken vows--for a period, at all events."

"That is all the Church allows; but it makes little difference since
they can always renew."

"Those who have taken vows--do they give themselves entirely up to
prayer?"

"No, but they entirely depend upon it."

"Depend--how?"

"They could not do their work without it. You asked me for definition: I
can only give you example. Some of our sisters quite literally cannot
face what they have to do except after prayer; otherwise their flesh
would revolt."

"Is it such horrible work?"

"They will not tell you so; but I know that it must be. You see I am
rather an outsider. My father only allowed me to come here on certain
conditions; and with the inner side of our work here I have nothing to
do; I understand nothing about it."

Her face flushed slightly under his gaze, the faint, troubled flush of
maidenhood which apprehends an evil of which it may not know the
conditions; and he saw by swift intuition that this sincere spirit was
ashamed of its own ignorance. His mind darted a guess that he had before
him, in fact, an inexperience of life underlying intimate acquaintance
with grief and poverty which he would not have believed to be possible.
And oh, sexually, how it redoubled her beauty and charm! Yes, he could
not deny that so unnatural a combination attracted him, and yet it
enraged him also. A few moments ago he had heard from this woman's lips
a declaration that no help could come till half and half made up one
whole in knowledge and understanding; and yet there she stood--if his
guess was right--hesitant and bashful on the borders of that great
central problem about which parental authority had decreed she was to
know nothing; an example set before him of that idealistic waste of
womanhood which is for ever going on, and which for bad practical
reasons society is always encouraging. For depend upon it the practical
social result is what we men are really afraid of--not lest our women
should lose either modesty or charm, but lest with knowledge they should
apply themselves too ruthlessly to practical ends, and set upon their
charm a price which hitherto we have avoided having to pay. And as he so
moralized upon the relations of sex, a sentimental desire grew in him to
kneel down there and then at her feet and tell her how good a young man
from his point of view he had always been--and how bad a one from hers.

For the time being he resisted that temptation; other things that he was
not yet sure of must come first; for before we can allow the beloved to
think ill of us at all she must first think far better of us than we
deserve. Then for the letting-down process there is a safe margin left,
and confession becomes a luxury with no danger involved; since to see
himself retrospectively pardoned by a heart virginally pure has surely
restored to many a weary and disillusioned sensualist a better opinion
of himself than he could ever have hoped to refurbish by his own
efforts. That, oh ye men about town, is a good woman's mission in life;
that is what she is for--when the watch has run down she winds it up
again and sets it domestically ticking. And that she may continue to do
so, let us keep her from all knowledge independently acquired. When we
ourselves bring her the evidence, having first packed her fond jury of a
heart, then we can also dictate verdict and sentence, and the world will
run on in the grooves to which we have accustomed it.

All of which is a digression, and not in the least intended as being
applicable to Max, unless, indeed, some reader of virulent morals so
chooses to apply it; for far be it from this historian to prevent any
reader forming his or her own judgment on the facts set forth. And if to
any of these Max appears as one whose springs have run riotously down
and now need setting up again--if his seems to be a heart that has never
yet ticked domestically, because it had not been legally registered, I
can at least promise them this--that before they come to the end of this
history they will have an eminent ecclesiastical authority agreeing with
them, and expressing their sentiments with an eloquence which I cannot
hope to rival. And so having done with digression, let us return to the
social education of Max, now trying to become acquainted with the lowest
stratum of all.

IV

After a few weeks he began to distinguish in the squalor of the faces
that surrounded him the separate causes of their malady--to know drink
from disease, dissipation from destitution, the drug-habit from hunger.
Complexion and facial expression stood more than dress as an indication
of trade, habit, and environment; from physiognomy he began to learn
history, and from Monday's streets a commentary on the linked sweetness
long drawn out of Jewish followed by Christian sabbath. He became inured
to smells, to the breathing of foul atmosphere, to contact with foul
bodies, to a nakedness of speech such as he had not dreamed of, to a
class-hatred that struck from eye to eye like murder, to an apathy of
dead hopelessness that revolted him yet more. From Sister Jenifer he
learned the hardest lesson of all, that to understand social conditions
he must refrain from gifts of charity. And so, afraid of his own
frailty, he came to his district with empty pockets, and going hungry
himself spent hours among sale-dens, pawn-shops, the alleys where
half-starved middle-men received the piece-work of sweated labor, and
the black staircases where rent-collectors, hard-driven by competing
agencies, plied a desperate piece-work of their own.

In every place he visited cleanliness was discouraged, and the water
system seemed a mere after-thought. In most cases the taps were buttons
requiring continuous pressure, and then yielding only an exiguous
supply; a kettle took nearly a minute to fill, so that while one tenant
drew service others stood waiting. He spoke indignantly of it to Sister
Jenifer. What were the sanitary authorities doing? he asked.

"Oh, yes," she said, "those buttons are a new device; the old taps were
taken away--they became too dangerous; these poor people found a way of
turning them to effect."

"You mean they stole the fixings?"

"No; though they used to do that now and then. But this was at the last
strike which happened to come during a drought. One of their leaders
said to them: 'Take all the water you can; drain the city dry, make the
rich give up their baths,--then perhaps they will attend to you.' They
actually had the power; they organized the whole of the working
district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street
fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full
share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those
tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could
run us dry as their leader proposed,--hold the whole city up to ransom
and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, so we
gave them buttons instead; and of course the death-rate has gone up."

"And now the next strike has come."

"Ah, yes, but this is not such a large one and so, as it isn't reckoned
'dangerous,' the Government doesn't interfere, and no one outside
troubles about the rights of it."

They were moving on the outskirts of a crowd in the center of which a
demonstration of strikers was going on. Gaunt, hungry, apathetic faces
formed the bulk of them; in their midst a man with a big voice talked
heroically of the rights of labor and prophesied victory. They stood to
listen for a while, then moved on. At the corner of a side-street which
they crossed stood a smaller group; a woman, her hat tied round with a
motor-veil, stood waving her arms from an orange-box.

"Who are those?" inquired Max.

"Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer.

"What are they doing here?"

"They go wherever they can get a hearing."

Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman
speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found
that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said.

"This does not interest you, then?"

"It is a subject about which I know nothing."

"But you came to learn."

"Well,--is that woman telling the truth?"

"No, not exactly."

"Does she know what she is talking about?"

"Not as well as she ought to."

"Then, isn't that sufficient?"

"You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the
mark, and whose proposals were just as useless."

"Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker
but the crowd."

"You have a crowd here."

"A much smaller one."

"So you are for the majorities?"

Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back."

"No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?"

"They listened."

"That is something, is it not, when she was talking of things that to
their minds hardly concerned them?"

"But you say she was not telling the truth."

"She was ignorant, and she exaggerated; but for all they know what she
is saying might be gospel."

"Is that how you would have it preached?"

"If gospels had to wait for the wise and prudent," said Jenifer, "they
would wait till eternity. That woman was speaking not for an institution
but for a movement."

"Do not such exaggerations condemn it?"

"By no means; if some did not exaggerate none of us would get a
hearing--especially if we happened to be in a minority; and reformers
always are."

"Though I embroider it for myself," said Prince Max, "from others I
prefer to get plain truth."

"Plain truth," she replied, "is only that manner of dealing with a
thing--with some wrong, say--which makes it plain to people that the
wrong exists. Short of that you haven't got truth into them."

"Now you are preaching pragmatism," said Max.

"Do you suppose," she went on, "that to that dull, sunk, slow-witted
crowd we have been looking at, a mere niggardly statement of facts
would make the truth plain, or stir them to any action or feeling
for others? That woman on some points over-stated her case quite
ridiculously--especially as to the benefits and rewards which the
women's Charter would bring--but the effect upon her hearers fell far
short of what the real facts justify. Oh, people have to be bribed even
to do no more than open their ears to the truth."

"By false promises of reward? Yes, you have the Church with you there.
It deals with our ordinary everyday morality, in very much the same way.
Tells a maximum of untruth so that a necessary minimum may spring out of
it. How many Christians to-day really believe in the doctrine of hell?"

"Surely," she said, "to see the light of its fires in so many faces is
proof enough."

"That is not the doctrine," said the Prince, "and you know it. Hell here
and now may be very real; but it is not what your Church preaches. Many
of those lit-up faces that you speak of are aglow with mere lustful
enjoyment. But the Church does not teach that men can make the mistake
when in hell of actually believing themselves in Heaven; that would be
too dangerous. Turn on that tap, and the jasper sea in which your angels
take their baths will run dry."

She looked at him half quizzically. "And what is your doctrine?" she
inquired. "When you are enjoying yourself--saying things like that, for
instance, hoping to hurt--do you ever think that you are in hell?"

"No," said Max, "I do not make enjoyment the test. Just now, for
instance, I rather feel that I may be at the gates of Heaven; but I am
not, therefore, superlatively happy. Can you promise me that the
heavenly road is one of pure happiness?"

"To any one who accepted absolutely the Divine Will it must be."

"The Divine Will," said Max, "gave me my body and my reasoning power.
You must not ask me to forfeit them. I agree with that old collegiate (a
doctor of divinity like myself) to whom one of more austere piety had
declared 'abject submission' the only possible attitude of the creature
toward his Creator. 'No, no!' protested the Doctor, with outraged
dignity, 'deference, but not--not abject submission!' Deference is all a
man can honestly promise so long as reason remains to him; abject
submission is fit only for lunatic asylums."

"And yet," she retorted, "abject submission to antecedents is all that
science can infer when once it starts to investigate the springs of
action."

"That is not to deny reason; that only conditions it. I wanted you to
accuse me of blasphemy; but as you do not give me my legitimate openings
I have to make them for myself. To me the abrogation of reason, on any
pretense, is the most rooted blasphemy of which the mind of man is
capable. Some modern Romanist penned once a hymn which had in it these
or like words for its refrain--

'And black is white,
And wrong is right,
If it be Thy sweet Will.'

That, to my mind, is a blasphemous utterance, for it juggles with the
fundamentals of all morality. The person who adopts that attitude as an
act of surrender to earthly love is a sensualist. It is a form of
sensualism rampant in women; and men encourage it by bestowing upon it
the names of womanly virtues. To adopt a similar attitude in spiritual
matters seems to me sensualism none the less. And what a hot-bed for
that sort of sensualism the Church has always been and still is!"

His ugly talk roused her spirit of resistance.

"How can it be sensual," she protested, "when it results in self-denial
and self-sacrifice?"

"Self-sacrifice," he replied, "may be merely sensualism in its intensest
form; it is peculiarly a woman's temptation; the scientific name for it
(since you throw science at my head) is 'negative egoism.' You yourself
are quite capable of it; for you cannot get rid of the results of your
training all in a day."

She did not flinch from his attack.

"What do you know of my training?" she asked.

"I know this: here are you the superior of any Bishop on the bench now
preparing to play injured martyr at the loss of his political
privileges; and what position of authority and influence has your Church
to offer you--you and the thousands like you whose practical humanity
alone has made its antiquated forms still possible? Yes, you are its
life-preservers, and they tuck you away into subordinate positions and
back slums where nobody hears of you. And you have been trained to think
that it is right!"

"The training was all my own," she said. "I tucked myself."

"Wastefully, under parental conditions--you yourself have owned it."

"There is always more work than one can do."

"There is much more work that you could do; but here, what is your
chance? Has it not struck you--if you had only the position given you,
what a power you might be, in that direction, I mean, of bringing the
two halves of society face to face, which you say is your main object?
If that position were offered you would you accept it as a thing sent to
you from God, or would you----?"

And then Max stopped abruptly, for he realized that in another moment he
would have been offering her the succession to the throne, and he felt
that the street was not exactly the right place for it. Not that he
minded making the offer anywhere; but she, self-sacrificingly, might
refuse; and a crowded street was not the place where he could tackle a
refusal of the throne to advantage. It was not like an ordinary
proposal; there were too many points to urge and objections to be met;
while a certain amount of preliminary incredulity was almost inevitable.
She might know that he loved her still; but it would take a considerable
amount of knowing that he also wished her to sit with him upon the
throne; nay, for that matter, to sit with him off it, if Court etiquette
and the fates so ordained. And if they did so ordain, where would that
great position be which he was proposing to offer?

And so as Max has ended his declaration abruptly let us also end the
chapter abruptly, and wonder what the next, or the next but one may have
to bring forth.

CHAPTER XII

AN ARRIVAL AND A DEPARTURE

I

Bad-as-Bad was a hardy annual which grew high up among the hills and
pine-forests on the borders of Schafs-Kleider and Schnapps-Wasser. With
its roots extending into both States it flourished exceedingly for three
months of each year. During the winter it was bottled up in its native
passes by snow, and for at least five months no visitors ventured
thither to expose their constitutions to the rigors of its climate or of
its waters. But in another bottled-up form, of a more portable
character, it made a great trade and reputation for itself throughout
Europe; and during the three summer months crowned heads visited it in
turn (often by careful diplomatic arrangement when they or their
countries happened not to be on good speaking terms), and drew after
them a steady influx from that class of their communities on which a
town composed almost entirely of hotels can most safely flourish.

The medicated springs, to which so many came but for which nobody
thirsted, rose in Schnapps-Wasser territory; and being the property of
the reigning house brought to it a huge revenue. Every red-stamped label
broken so carelessly in the restaurants and sanatoria of Europe meant
twopence halfpenny to the princely pocket of its highly descended ruler.
And it was upon these proceeds that the young heir had absented himself
for three years and fitted out an expensive expedition of a
semi-military character to the unexplored wilds of South America.

Behind his back local warfare had gone on. Not for nothing had he said
"crocodiles" to those orchestral scramblings in the bass of an
imperially inspired oratorio; and Schafs-Kleider, receiving certain
mysterious grants in aid (for its own funds were nil), had started to
sink shafts at a lower level on the outskirts of the town; and after
many failures had secured at one point a trickle of water which tasted
suspiciously like the real article, and was declared by interested
experts to be chemically the same.

News had gone out to the Prince in the wilderness that by this
earth-stroke his revenues from the retail business might presently be
very seriously affected.

His remedy had been simple; he had directed the town authorities to lay
out a new cemetery at a strategic point on the slopes lying towards
Schafs-Kleider; and though it had little actual effect upon the chemical
properties of this new breach in his patent it created a prejudice in
unscientific minds, and the Schafs-Kleider variant of the Bad-as-Bad
waters failed to "catch on." And thus it came about that on returning
from his three years' exile Berlin had not restored him to favor, and
he, one of the richest and least encumbered princes in Europe, was more
or less going a-begging--an easy prey to the match-making net which, by
assiduous correspondence, his aunts and others had prepared for him.

Bad-as-Bad, though economically its most important asset, was not the
capital of the principality; but when the Prince arrived at Schnapps,
thirty miles distant, Bad-as-Bad fired off a salute from a toy cannon in
the gardens of the municipality, and hoisted the royal ensign on the
flag-staff beside the kiosk. The principality having been without its
head for three years had recovered it.

On hearing that salute her Majesty, Queen Alicia of Jingalo, at once
knew what it referred to. "Ah!" she remarked, in a tone of complete
satisfaction, "that means that the dear Prince has arrived. What a
distance he has been! I was afraid we might miss him." And as she spoke
her glance traveled across to her daughter Charlotte, and in the peace
and plenitude of her domestic musings she smiled with more meaning than
she was aware of. Princess Charlotte caught sight of that smile, and
sitting observant saw presently that her mother was studying her with
some attention.

"You are looking very well, child," remarked her Majesty. "I am sure
that the place suits you."

"Getting out of the place suits me," said the Princess. "I like the
hills, and the forest. Three miles away one meets nobody, except the
peasantry."

"Well, be sure you don't overdo it; and don't let your face get too
brown. Remember that sort of thing doesn't go with a low dress."

"But I am not wearing low dress while I am here."

"You may be before we go. We may have to give a dinner in the Prince's
honor; or he in ours. Now he has arrived he is sure to come over and see
us. What very nice-sized countries these principalities are! I wish we
had them everywhere, then being kings and queens would be really no
trouble whatever. If Jingalo had only been smaller how much younger it
would have made your father; and, besides, it would have got rid of all
that socialist element."

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