King John of Jingalo

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

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

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

"Determined to do what?"

"To serve out her sentence."

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

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

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nonsense; you are not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Come and see me?"

"Yes; bring you a petition."

"What about?"

"To have their grievances looked into."

"_I_ can't look into their grievances."

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

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

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

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

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

"My dear, if that were true----"

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

The King shook his head.

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

By this time Charlotte was weeping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVII

THE INCREDIBLE THING HAPPENS

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Knew what?"

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

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

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

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

"It was the work of an incendiary."

"How do you know that?"

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

"What are you going to do about it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

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

It was those Women Chartists again.

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

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

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

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