King John of Jingalo

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"My dear! wouldn't that be revolutionary?" inquired the Queen.

"Keeping things as they are is not revolutionary," replied his Majesty,
"though it's a hard enough thing to do now-a-days."

"But," objected his wife, "they must pass something, or else how would
they earn their salaries?"

"That's it!" said the King,--"payment of members; another of those
unnecessary reforms thrust on us by the example of England."

"Ah, yes!" answered his wife, feeling about for an intelligent ground of
agreement, "England is so rich; she can afford it."

"It isn't that at all," retorted his Majesty; "plenty of other countries
have had to afford it before now. But it was only when England did it
that we took up with the notion. We are always imitating England: the
attraction of contraries, I suppose, because we are surrounded by land
as they are by water. Why else did they start turning me into a
commercial traveler, sending me all over Europe and round the world to
visit colonies that no longer really belong to us? Only because they are
doing the same thing over in England."

"They saw that you wanted change of air," said the Queen.

"Change of fiddlesticks!" answered the King; "I consider it a most
dangerous precedent to let a sovereign be too long out of his own
country. It makes people imagine they can do just as well without him!"

The Queen looked at her husband with shrewd and kindly furtiveness. She
had a funny little suspicion that the ministry did at times greatly
prefer his absence to his presence: and that "change of fiddlesticks"
was really their underlying motive. About this monarch she herself had
no illusions: he was a dear, but he fussed; and when once he began
fussing he required an enormous amount of explanation and persuasion.
Even she, therefore, was not at all averse to letting him go on these
State outings in which she need not always accompany him. They gave him
something fresh to think about, and to her a time of leisure when she
need not pretend to think about anything she did not understand.

"Of course," went on the King, "it makes good copy for the newspapers.
The press is powerful, and governments are obliged now-a-days to throw
in a certain amount of spectacle to keep it in a good temper. We are
sent off to perform somewhere, and after us come the penny-a-liner and
the cinematograph."

"Oh! my dear, much more than a penny-a-liner," corrected the Queen; "I
heard of one correspondent who makes L5,000 a year. And think how good
for trade! Besides, do not we get the benefit of it?"

"Benefit!" exclaimed the King irritably, "where is the benefit to us of
journalists who describe State functions as though they were jewelers'
touts and dressmakers rolled into one? The vulgarity of people's present
notion of what makes monarchy impressive is appalling. Listen to this,
my dear! This is you and me at the Opening of Parliament yesterday." He
unfolded his paper and read--

"'The regal purple flowed proudly from the King's shoulders; above their
three ribbons of red, green, and gold, the Orders of his ancestors
burned confidingly on the royal breast. The Queen's diamonds were
supreme; upon the silken fabric of her corsage they flashed incredibly;
one watched them, fire-color infinitely varied, infinitely intensified,
like nothing else seen on earth. As she advanced, deeply bowing to right
and left, parabolas of light exhaled from her coronet like falling
stars. When King and Queen were seated, their State robes flowing in
purple waves and ripples of ermine to the very steps of the dais, the
picture was complete. Single gems of the first water glistened like
dewdrops in the Queen's ears, while upon her bosom as she breathed the
three great Turgeneff diamonds caught and defiantly threw back the
light. They became the center of all eyes.'

"I call that disgusting!" said the King. "Why diamonds should burn
confidingly on my breast, and flash incredibly on yours, I'm sure I
don't know. But there we are: a couple of clothes'-pegs for journalists
to hang words on."

The Queen had rather enjoyed the description, it enabled her to see
herself as she appeared to others.

"I don't see the harm," she said; "we have to wear these things, so they
may as well be described."

"I wish some day you wouldn't wear them!" said the King. "Then, instead
of talking of your trinkets and your clothes, they would begin to pay
attention to what royalty really stands for."

The Queen was gathering up her letters from the table: she smiled
indulgently upon her spouse.

"Jack," said she, "you are jealous!"

"I wish, Alicia," said the King testily, "that you would not call me
'Jack'; at least, not after--not where any of the servants may come in
and overhear us. It would not sound seemly."

"My dear John," said the Queen, "don't be so absurd. You know perfectly
well that it's just that which makes us most popular. People are always
telling little anecdotes of that kind about us; and then, think of all
the photographs! If people were to talk of you as 'King Jack,' it would
mean you were the most popular person in the country."

"I wonder if they do?" murmured the King. "I wonder!" He felt remote
from his people, for he did not know.

The Queen noticed his depression; something was troubling him, and being
a lady of infinite tact, she abruptly turned the conversation. "What are
you doing to-day, dear?" she inquired brightly.

"I have a Council at eleven," moaned the King, "and I really must get
through a few of these papers first. It gives me a great advantage when
Brasshay begins talking--a great advantage if I know what the papers
have been saying about him. To-day it's the Finance Act. By the way,
Charlotte was asking me yesterday to raise her allowance. Is there any
reason for it?"

"A little more for dress would now be advisable," said the Queen. "She
has lately begun to open Church bazaars: I thought they would do for her
to begin upon. And the other day she laid the foundation-stone of a
dogs' orphanage--very nicely, I'm told."

"Of course," said the King, "she's old enough, and it is quite time I
asked for a definite grant from Parliament. But if one did that now they
would probably not raise it afterwards. Very much better to wait, I
think, till we have made a really brilliant match for her; then, for the
sake of its financial prestige, the nation will do the thing
handsomely."

"She has got an idea she doesn't like foreigners," said the Queen
reflectively.

"She will have to like some foreigner!" said the King. "As the only
daughter of a reigning monarch she must marry royalty, and we haven't
any one left among ourselves who is eligible. Charlotte must get to like
foreigners. Max has no objection to foreigners, I hope?"

The Queen gave her husband a curious look.

"From what I hear," she murmured, "I should say none: but it is not for
me to make any inquiries."

"Dear me! is that so?" said the King. "Well, well! When did you hear
about it?"

"Only yesterday; but it has been going on a long time."

"I suppose," sighed his Majesty, "I suppose one couldn't expect it to be
otherwise. Well, I must speak to him, then; and we shall really have to
get him married to somebody. The religious difficulty, of course,
narrows our choice most unfortunately; and when we happen to be on bad
terms both with Germany and England, through trying to be friendly to
both, why, really there is hardly anybody left."

"I hear," remarked the Queen, "that the Hereditary Prince of
Schnapps-Wasser is returning from his three years' exploration of
central South America this autumn. Wouldn't he be worth thinking about?"

"You mean for Charlotte? But I expect he will be wanted at the Prussian
Court."

The Queen shook her head. "Oh, no! He is out of favor there. They have
never forgiven him his description of the Kaiser's oratorio as 'Moses
Among the Crocodiles.' That is why I thought he might not be averse to
looking in our direction. He used to be a nice boy; he is handsome
according to his portraits, and Charlotte is not without her taste for
adventure."

"That doesn't solve the problem about Max," said his Majesty
discontentedly. "And, by the way, where is Charlotte?"

"She has gone to stay with Lady--oh, I have forgotten her name--the one
who had a fancy for history and took a diploma in it. They are opening
that new college for women, with a Greek play all about the Trojans, and
Charlotte particularly wanted to go."

"H'm?" queried the King; "rather an advanced set for Charlotte to
consort with--just now, I mean,--don't you think? There might be some of
those Women Chartists among them."

"Oh, no!" replied her Majesty; "they are all quite respectable,--ladies
every one of them. I took care to make inquiries about that."

And then, quite contentedly, she made a final gathering of her
correspondence, and sailed off for a preliminary interview with her two
indispensable secretaries; while the King, selecting three out of the
pile of newspapers, carried them away with him to his study. There was a
sentence in one of them which he particularly wanted to read again. And
with this vacating of the breakfast-chamber we may as well close the
chapter.

CHAPTER II

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN

I

The sentence which had attracted the King's attention, coming as it did
from the newspaper on whose opinions he most frequently relied, ran
thus--

"In this developing crisis the Nation looks with complete and loyal
assurance to him who alone stands high and independent above all
parties, confident that when the time for a final decision has arrived
he will so act, within the recognized limits of the Royal Prerogative,
as to add a fresh luster and a renewed significance to that supreme
symbol and safeguard of the popular will which, under Divine Providence,
still crowns our constitutional edifice."

The King read it three times over. He read it both standing and sitting:
and read in whatever attitude it certainly sounded well. As a peroration
its rhythm and flow were admirable, as a means of keeping up the courage
and confidence of readers who placed their reliance mainly upon literary
style nothing could be better; but what, by all that was constitutional,
did it mean?--or rather, how did it mean that he, the high and
independent one, was to do it? Point by point its sentiments were
unexceptionable; but what it actually pointed to he did not know. "Add
luster?" Why, yes, certainly. But was not that what he was already doing
day by day on the continuous deposit system, even as the oyster within
its shell deposits luster upon the pearls which a sort of hereditary
disease has placed within its keeping? "Renewed significance?" But in
what respect had the significance of the royal office become obscured?
Was anything that he did insignificant? "Symbol and safeguard of the
popular will?" Yes: if his Coronation oath meant anything. But how was
he, symbol and safeguard and all the rest of it, to find out what the
popular will really was? No man in all the Kingdom was so much cut off
from living contact with the popular will as was he!

The King was in his study, the room in which most of the routine work
of his daily life was accomplished--a large square chamber with three
windows to one side looking out across a well-timbered park toward a
distant group of towers. But for those towers, so civic in their
character, it might well have been taken for a country view; scarcely a
roof was visible.

Upon a large desk in the center of the chamber lay a pile of official
letters and documents awaiting his perusal; and he knew that in the
adjoining room one of his private secretaries was even now attending his
call. But from none of his secretaries could he learn anything about the
popular will.

He walked to a window and stood looking out into the soft sunlit air,
slightly misty in quality, which lay over the distances of his capital.
Away behind those trees, beneath those towers, sending toward him a
ceaseless reverberation of bells, wheels, street cries, and all the
countless noises of city life, went a vast and teeming population of men
and women, already far advanced on the round of their daily toil. He was
in their midst, but not one of them could he see; and not one of them
did he really know as man to man. Everything that he learned about their
lives came to him at second or at third hand; nor did actual contact
bring him any closer, for wherever he moved among them they knew who he
was and behaved accordingly. For twenty-five years he had not walked in
a single one of those streets the nearest of which lay within a stone's
throw of his palace. As a youth, before his father came to the throne,
he had sometimes gone about, with or without companions, just like an
ordinary person, taking his chance of being recognized: it had not
mattered then. But now it could not be done: people did not expect it of
him; his ministers would have regarded it as a dangerous and expensive
habit, requiring at least a trebling of the detective service, and even
then there would always have been apprehension and uncertainty. He was
King; and though, whatever might happen to him, his place would be
automatically filled, and government go on just as before, yet, as a
national symbol, his life was too valuable to be risked; and so on
ascending the throne he had been forced, as his father before him, to
resign his personal liberty and cease to go out in the happy,
unpremeditated fashion of earlier days.

He had long since got over the curious home-sickness which this
separation had at first caused him, and as an opening to personal
enjoyment the impulse for freedom had long since died within him; but
his heart still vaguely hungered for the people who called him their
King; and looking out into the pale sunshine that was now thinly
buttering the surface of his prosperous capital, and listening to the
perpetual tick and hum of its busy life, he knew that for him it was and
must remain, except in an official sense, an unknown territory. And yet
out there, in that territory which he was unable to explore, the thing
that is called "the popular will" lived and moved and had its being!
Dimly he dreamed of what it might be--a thing of substance and form; but
there was none to interpret to him his dream--except upon official
lines.

Before his eyes, a salient object in the heavens surpassing the stony
eminences which surrounded it, rose the tall spire of the twin Houses of
Parliament. Upon its top swung a gilded weathercock; while about a
portion of its base stood a maze of scaffolding, the facade of the
building having during the last few months been under repair. There
seemed, however, for the moment, to be no workmen upon it. Presently, as
he gazed vacantly and without intent, something that moved upon the
upper masonry engaged his attention. Slowly along its profile, out of
all those hidden millions below, one of his subjects, a single and
minute representative of the popular will, emerged cautiously into view.

The King was gifted with good sight; and though the figure appeared but
as a tiny speck, it was unmistakably that of a man bearing a burden upon
his back and ascending steadily toward the highest point of all. In a
word it was a steeplejack. As the name passed through the King's mind it
evoked recollection; and he said to himself again, "I wonder whether
they call _me_ Jack,--I wonder."

With a curious increase of interest and fellow-feeling he watched the
distant figure mounting to its airy perch. And as he did so a yet
further similitude and parable flashed through his mind. For the man's
presence at that dizzy height he knew that the Board of Public Works was
responsible: as a single item in the general expenditure the weathercock
of the Palace of Legislature had had voted to it a new coat of gilt, and
this steeplejack was now engaged in putting it on. He was there in the
words of a certain morning journal, "to add fresh luster to that supreme
symbol of the popular will which crowned the constitutional edifice."

As the words with their caressing rhythm flowed across the King's brain
he discerned the full significance of the scene which was being enacted
before him. This weathercock--the highest point of the constitutional
edifice--requiring to be touched up afresh for the public eyes--was
truly symbolical of the crown in its relation to the popular will;
twisting this way and that responsive to and interpretative of outside
forces, it had no will of its own at all, and yet to do its work it must
blaze resplendently and be lifted high, and to be put in working trim
and kept with luster untarnished it required at certain intervals the
attentions of a steeplejack--one accustomed to being in high places,
accustomed to isolation and loneliness, accustomed to bearing a burden
upon his back before the eyes of all: one whose functions were rather
like his own.

He saw that the steeplejack had now reached the point where his work was
waiting for him, work that required nerve and courage. He wondered
whether it were highly paid; he wondered also by what means the man
slung himself into position, and by what process the new gold had to be
applied so that it would stick. Perhaps he only polished up what was
already there, coated and covered from view by the grime of modern
industry. If so, how did he scrape off the dirt without also scraping
off the gold? Perhaps, on the other hand, all the old gold had to come
off before new gold could be put on. He wondered whether the man ever
forgot his perilous position, whether habit did not make him sometimes
careless, whether he ever felt giddy, and how far the exploit was really
attended by danger to one possessed of skill and a cool head; and as he
thought, putting himself in the man's place, his hands grew
sympathetically moist.

Well, he was wasting time, he must really get to his own work now; that
secretary would be wondering what had become of him. He glanced away
over the distant roofs that here and there emerged above the trees, and
then for a last look back again. And as he did so all at once he started
and uttered an acute exclamation of distress. A dark speck had suddenly
detached itself from the ball upon which the vane stood, and could now
be seen glissading with horrible swiftness down the slope of the spire.
It fell into the scaffolding, zigzagged from point to point, and
disappeared. There could be no mistake about it, it was the man himself
who had fallen: that single and minute expression of the popular will
had passed for ever from view; and the smooth and equable hum of the
unseen millions below went steadily on.

II

Fleeing from the sight still registered upon his brain the King rang for
his secretary. A figure of correctitude entered.

"There has been an accident," said his Majesty. "Over there!" He
pointed. "A steeplejack has fallen."

The secretary slid respectfully to the window and looked out. To that
polite official gaze of inquiry the scene of the tragedy returned a
blank and uncommunicative stare.

"Poor wretch!" murmured the King. "I actually saw him go! Ring up, and
inquire at the Police Center; though, of course, the poor fellow must be
dead!"

The secretary sped away on his errand, and the King, moving back to the
window, gazed fixedly at the spire, as though it could still in some way
inform him of the tragedy consummated below. Then he returned to his
desk and looked distractedly at his papers, but it was no use--back he
went to the window again.

Presently the secretary returned and stood drooping for permission to
speak. Permission came. "The man is dead, your Majesty. He was killed
instantly."

The King gave a sigh of relief. "Of course," he murmured, "from such a
height as that!" He stood for a while still cogitating on the sad event:
then he said, with that considerate thoughtfulness which habit had made
a second nature, "Be good enough to find out whether the poor fellow was
married. If so let a donation be sent to his widow,--whatever the case
seems to warrant--more if there should happen to be children."

Over his tablets the secretary bowed the beauty of his person like a
recording angel. Then he paused that the heavenly measure might be taken
with accuracy.

"Shall it be five pounds, sir?" he inquired.

"Better make it ten," said the King; "I believe that pays for a funeral.
In sending it, you might explain that I had the misfortune to be an
eye-witness."

The secretary cooed like a brooding dove. Of course everybody would
understand and appreciate. He made a memorandum of the ten pounds and
closed up his tablets.

Meanwhile the King went on thinking aloud. "I wonder," he said, "whether
they take proper precautions in a trade like that? I would like to look
it up. Find me the 'ST' volume of the _Encyclopedia Appendica_."

And when the volume was brought to him the King sat down and read all
about steeplejacks and climbing irons, and cranks, and pulleys, and all
the other various appliances requisite for the driving of that dreadful
trade; read also how the men were inclined to prime themselves for the
task in ever-increasing measure, and so one day having over-primed to be
found at the bottom instead of at the top, knowing nothing themselves of
how they got there. It was all very interesting and very apposite, and
rather pathetic; and when he had done he turned over the pages backward
till he came from steeplejacks to "Statesmen" and "Statecraft" and
"Statutes" and the affairs of State in general (it was from the
_Encyclopedia Appendica_--a presentation copy--that he got most of his
information upon practical things); and in these articles he became so
absorbed that he quite forgot how time flew, until his chief secretary
came formally to announce to him that the hour for appearing in Council
had arrived.

This announcement, be it observed, was made by no ordinary working
secretary, but by the chief of them all, the Comptroller of his
Majesty's household, a retired general who had passed from the military
to the civil service with a record brilliantly made for him by other
men--adjutants and attaches and all those indefatigable right-hand
assistants of whom your true diplomatist forms his stepping-stones to
power. General Poast and the Prime Minister shared between them the
ordering and disposal of the King's public services to the Nation, while
over other departments impenetrable to the Premier the hand of the
Comptroller was still extended. Though personally the King rather
disliked him, he had become an absolutely indispensable adjunct to the
daily life--so smooth in its workings, yet so easily dislocated--of the
Royal Household; also, as a go-between for ministers whose intercourse
with the Crown was purely formal, he had proved himself a very efficient
implement when on occasion it became necessary to circumvent or reduce
to reason the King's characteristic obstinacy in small matters of
detail. He might, in fact, be regarded as the keeper not so much of the
King's conscience, as of his savoir faire, and of that tact for which
Royalty in all countries is conspicuous. Everything that related to the
remembering of names and faces, of dates, anniversaries and historical
associations, all those small considerate actions of royal charity which
robbed of their due privacy have now become the perquisite of the press;
all these things stood ranged under minutely tabulated heads within the
Comptroller-General's department. He was, literally, the King's
Remembrancer; and so, on this occasion also, he had come as intermediary
to remind his Majesty that the hour for the Council was at hand.

But the Council was one of those functions in which it was held
necessary that the part played by the King (albeit no more than a silent
presidency at a Board where others spoke) should wear an appearance of
importance. And so the announcement made by the Comptroller was merely
preliminary to another and more flourishing announcement by an usher of
the Court. Two lackeys threw open a door--other than that through which
the General had just entered, and a bowing official, beautifully dressed
and waving a fairy-like wand, announced from the threshold, "Your
Majesty's Council, now in attendance, humbly begs audience of your
Majesty."

III

Then followed a pause. The Comptroller-General with head deferentially
bent waited to catch the royal eye. The King graciously allowed his
royal eye to be caught; and the Comptroller-General, interpreting the
silent consent of that glance, uttered with due solemnity the
traditional form of words indicative of the royal pleasure. "His Majesty
hears," he lowed in the correct "palace accent": and the usher bowed and
retired.

All this helped, of course, to make the act of presiding in Council seem
highly important and consequential to any monarch susceptible to
ceremonial flattery. Whether it had originally been so devised may be
questioned, for monarchs of old had needed no such ceremonial backing to
their very practical incursions into ministerial debate. What we have to
notice is that the ceremony had survived, while the other thing--the
practice of substantial interference--had become obsolete.

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