King John of Jingalo
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There outside, in the nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a
liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of
newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees
of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps below, and
emergent like a full moon on a misty sky the face of the great
Parliament clock dawned luminous to his gaze.
So long he stood, and listened, and waited, that before he closed the
window again the clock had told the three-quarters to eight. Then he
hesitated no more; passing out of his study and down to a lower corridor
he came presently to the cloak lobby, and selecting a rough full-length
overcoat, a motor cap, and from a drawer a pair of clouded snow-glasses,
arrayed himself in these, and with flaps drawn down and coat collar
turned high, passed out by a small side-entrance which led on to the
terrace.
Chill air and a bosom of darkness received him; through the thick
barrier of trees skirting the walled precincts scarcely a light winked;
only the large domed conservatory behind him threw a pale radiance
before his feet as he crossed the terrace and moved off by a winding
path in the direction of a small postern concealed in shrubbery.
As he quitted the grass, the sound of his own footfalls upon firm gravel
made him guiltily afraid; and it was not without some moral effort that
he, a king in his own domain, kept himself from stepping back
secretively to the turfed edge. Suppressing the inclination, he
proceeded at a smart pace, and coming presently to the door with a
slip-latch on its inner side he opened it and passed through.
At the sound of opening a policeman stationed outside turned and stood
passively regarding him; his muffled appearance seemed sufficiently in
keeping with the uses to which this particular exit was put by others to
awaken neither suspicion nor surprise. With a half-waggish air of
respect the man touched his helmet. "Good-evening, sir," said he, as
though there subsisted between the habitues of that door and himself a
sort of understanding.
To make a quicker escape from the man's scrutiny and the glare of the
lamp commanding the entrance, the King crossed the road, and took up his
course along the more dimly lighted footway on the further side. At this
hour the park row in which he found himself was almost deserted; now and
again single pedestrians went by, and as he received from none of these
more than a cursory and inattentive glance, his sense of incognito
increased, and he stepped out more confidently to the task that lay
ahead.
Presently he was passing along the palace front and under the
eyes of sentries standing motionless at their posts; and again
he had satisfaction in perceiving that as he went by there was no
inclination on the part of any one of them to present arms. He
glanced up at the palace facade, with its windows softly lighted
through blinds. He could pick out his own sitting-room, and the
Queen's, where probably she was now reading the note he had sent to
inform her that urgent business called him away. There were the
lights of the smaller dining-hall, within which a table richly adorned
with gold and silver plate stood even now waiting its twenty accustomed
guests--the minister-in-attendance and the higher permanent officials of
the Court. No one else from outside was coming to-night except Prince
Max. That was fortunate, Max would take his place.
As soon as he was outside the borders of the park the King quitted the
main thoroughfare for narrow and dimly lit alleys, avoiding the streets
of wide pavements and shops which had scarcely yet begun to close; and
before long found that he had lost his way.
The fact was sufficiently absurd; here within a stone's throw of his own
palace, and stretching almost to the doors of the House of Legislature
whereto he went in so much state every year, lay an unknown territory
which he had never thought to explore. The intricacy of back streets was
quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be
stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn
back again. In a short time all sense of the points of the compass was
gone.
A small ragged urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of
communalism made him feel more at home. He took out his watch--it was
already five minutes past eight: over those high narrow streets, with
their thin strip of sky, the big clock of Parliament had boomed the hour
and he had not heard it. Away scurried the urchin as though already late
for something, excitedly calling on others to follow; and the King, with
the presumption that these running feet would be sure to lead him in the
direction where he wished to go, followed them round two corners. After
that all trace of them was gone.
A sound of shrill singing now struck his ear. He was in a narrow
asphalted way surrounded by workmen's tenements. Right in the middle,
occupying the place of the non-existent traffic, ten or a dozen children
were dancing a sort of figure, and singing the while. As he drew near he
caught snatches of the words.
Of an elder child, who stood looking on, he stopped and asked the way.
She told him, gesticulating as to which corners he was to pass, pointing
all the time to the promised goal. Incautiously he dropped a coin into
her hand; and, as kings do not carry coppers, immediately there was a
cry. The singers stopped and surrounded him, stretching up clamorous
palms; a whole dozen were now feverishly anxious to show him every step
of the way.
"It's the 'Chartises' as you want to see, arn't it, mister?" inquired
one. "I'll show you where they go; I know all of 'em."
The King pressed hurriedly on, hoping to get rid of them; but his
flustered air appealed to the tormenting instincts of youth, and told
them that here they had got some one capable of being worried into
surrender. Still clamoring and thrusting up hands for backsheesh they
kept pace with him. A few of them started singing again, and the rest
joined in: perhaps singing was what the gentleman liked best--and so a
better way for gaining their end. The shrill voices fell into chorus;
and to a queer lilting tune the words rang clear.
"Come to me
Quietlee,
Do not do me an injuree!
Gently, Johnnie of Jingalo."
"What's that?" cried the King, stopping short in his amazement; "what's
that you say?" A new bewilderment seized on him. It was
impossible--quite impossible that the children should know who he really
was, yet there were the words with their implied accusation, as though
personally directed at him, and at him alone.
The small street singers, taking the inquiry for an encore, sang it
again; and this time the words had a curious flirtatious meaning which
made them even worse. What was he being charged with?
"Where did you get that from?" he inquired, hot of face.
"One of the Chartises taught it us," said a child more ready of speech
than the rest. "They all sings it now. It's one of their songs, that
is!" So with reduplicating speech she conveyed intelligence to his mind.
Never before had any word of poetry struck him a blow like this. He had
said that he did not understand poetry, but here was meaning only too
clear; in this song--so gentle, pleading, and pathetic in character, he,
John of Jingalo, stood publicly accused of all the injuries that were
being done to women in that necessary defense of law and order against
which, petition in hand, they were so obstinately setting themselves.
What was all his popularity worth, if by the mouths of little children
his name was to be thus cried in the streets? It was scandalous,
indecent; and yet--was it altogether without justification?
To be rid of his small tormentors and free for his own meditations, he
took the most practical means that suggested itself.
"There, there!" he cried. "Run away, run away, all of you!" and throwing
a random coin into their midst moved hastily away. Behind him as he went
he heard battle royal being waged; liberal though the donation, and
sufficient to distribute sustenance to all, each was now claiming it as
her own perquisite.
And so at his back the shrill sounds of wrath and contention went on
till they became merged in a louder roar, the origin of which was
presently made apparent.
He turned a corner and saw before him a huge crowd, and Regency Row
packed with seething humanity from end to end.
III
For the first time in his life the King formed part of a crowd, and knew
what it was like to feel his body and limbs packed in by the bodies and
limbs of others and to have the breath squeezed out of him. In this
crowd the proportion of men to women was as ten to one; from the
physical point of view, therefore, the chances for these conflicting
women were nil. All the same they were there in large numbers, and not
for the first time; many of them were already sufficiently well known to
the police.
A curiously corporate movement possessed this crowd; when it shifted at
all it shifted in large sections--three or four hundred at once; a whole
street-width of men driving forward at a lunge, before which the
strongest barrier of police momentarily gave way. And wherever this kind
of movement went on a few women formed the center of it.
Small bundles of humanity, they shot by in the grip of that huge force,
mischievous and uncontrolled; tossed, tousled, and squeezed, shedding as
they went small fragments of their outer raiment, lost momentarily to
view in the surging mass of men, cornered, crushed back, held down as
within a vise--emerging again like popped corks followed by a foaming
rush of shouting youths, jeering or cheering them on; and still through
all that pressure obstinately retaining their human form, and enduring
with a strange silence what was being done to them by this great roaring
mob which had come out "for fun."
Some went their way wide-eyed, with terror in their looks, yet still set
to their end; some with rigid faces and eyes shut fast, as though
scarcely conscious--their souls elsewhere, submitting passively to the
buffetings of fate; and a few--strangest sight of all--smiling to
themselves, almost with a look of peace, as though in the very violence
by which they were assailed they discerned a triumph for their cause.
And with all the screwing, pushing, and wrenching, the driving forward
and the hurling back, scarcely one woman's arm was raised, except now
and again to protect her breast from the lewd or wanton assaults of the
crowd. Some held, tight clasped in their hands, crumpled bits of
paper--the petition, presumably, over which all this trouble
arose--stained, torn, almost illegible now, useless, yet still a symbol
of the fight that was being waged. Now and then above the turmoil, in
the dimness that lay between the lighted streets and the crowning
darkness of night, went sudden flashes like sheet-lightning in storm;
and at the stroke horses plunged, and youths screamed, facetiously
imitating the voice of women. It was the work of photographers,
securing, from some point of vantage overhead, flashlight records for
the delectation of the music halls. Again and again, with pistol-like
report, the monstrous dose was administered, the night took it at a
gulp, and the rabble responded with noise and shoutings.
The genial voice of a mounted policeman working his way through the
crowd sounded humanly above the din.
"I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" There was a touch of
humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his
wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went
pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness
mingled itself with the crowd.
"Oh! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" Away he went on his
disciplined errand of mercy, a man of kindliness, good counsel, and
understanding, carrying out his orders in as human a way as was
possible.
"Now then! Now then! Now then! I'm coming. Oh, I'm coming!"
The roaring multitude swallowed him; his cry grew faint, merged in the
general din.
By the gradual compression and movement of the multitude toward some
fancied center the King had been borne a good many hundred yards from
his original point. Presently he found himself in a large open space,
with its low-railed inclosure guarded by police. Here the crowd was
denser than ever and its sway harder to withstand. A woman's form was
driven sharply against him. To avoid elbowing her off he offered the
shelter of his arm; and she, finding herself up against something not
immediately repellent, stayed to breathe. He saw the sweat pour from her
skin, and as she panted in his arms she had the rank scent of a creature
when it is hunted. Yet in her face there was no fear at all, only the
white strain of physical exhaustion nearing its last point.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"The police; are they treating you properly?"
"I have nothing to complain of," she said.
"Won't you go home? You must see it is no use."
She turned away as though she had not heard him, and threw herself once
more against the barrier she was unable to overcome. Into the shock of
it she went, with "nothing to complain of," forgetful of self, forgetful
of all but her blind unreasoning determination to gain her end. Her
passive yet battling form was borne away from him in the huge eddies of
the crowd.
"Hot work!" said a voice at his side; a little man, with keen, appetized
face, ferreting this way and that, was hurriedly taking notes as though
his life depended on it. The King looked at him in surprise, and
wondered what it meant.
"Got any news?" inquired the man, still scribbling at his notebook.
"What kind of news?"
"I'm not particular; anything suits me. I'm the Press."
"The Press?"
"Yes, reporter." And, as one proud of his great connection, he named the
King's favorite journal.
Never it is to be hoped to his dying day did that poor penny-a-liner
know what a piece of news he allowed in that moment to slip by--news
which to him would have meant almost a fortune; and here he was actually
rubbing shoulders with it; and making no profit.
"How many arrested?" he inquired.
"I don't know."
"Any of the leaders yet?"
"I have not heard."
Unprofitable company; the man moved away. They were separated by a
fresh movement of the crowd.
A royal mail-van drove through the square, the police with difficulty
making way for it. And the crowd, mistaking it for something else,
rushed off to gaze and cheer excitedly at the prisoners within. The
postman who sat mounting guard over the netted window at the rear smiled
wittily at the popular error which made him for a few brief moments so
conspicuous a figure. No doubt the incident gave the newspaper-man some
copy, and the van, having contributed its share to the general
amusement, rolled on its way.
Again the crowd made a rush; on the other side of the square a woman had
managed to get arrested, and a strong body of constables was escorting
her across to the police-station. Captors and captive walked quickly,
anxious to get the thing through. The woman had a scared yet triumphant
look in her eyes: she had succeeded in making the police do what they
did not want to do; and now for a fortnight, or a month, or for two
months--according to what these men might swear to, or the magistrate
think--she and a few score of others would find in a criminal cell that
temporary goal at which they had aimed; and the press would quiet the
public conscience by saying that they had done it "for notoriety."
Always friendliest when it saw a woman actually under arrest, the crowd
broke into applause--dividing its cheers impartially between prisoner
and police. For this was what it had come out to see: this was why it
had paid tram-fares from distant slums, sacrificing its evening at the
"pub" and its pot of beer. These men of hard toiling lives and dull
imagination were there to see women of a class and education superior to
their own break the law and get "copped" for it, just like one of
themselves.
"Quite right too! teach them to be'ave as they ought to," was the
comment passed here and there--though as a matter of fact it had already
been abundantly proved that it taught them nothing of the kind. But
that, after all, is "Government" as understood by the man in the street;
he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who,
smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is
down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to
ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of
prisoner and escort passed on its way.
"Three cheers for the Women's Charter!" cried a voice somewhere in the
crowd; and there went up in response a genial roar, half of derision,
half of sympathy.
"Give 'em hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage
and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on,
butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him;
nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" he cried.
"They're getting it!" laughed a pale youth with an underhung jaw.
Wherever the eye turned hell could be seen having its will, and deriving
a curious satisfaction from its momentary power to do foul things under
the public eye.
"Oh, save me! save me! save me!" whimpered a woman's voice. Down in the
gulf below, buried under the shoulders of men, a small elderly figure
was clinging to the King's arm.
"Oh, can't you do anything for me?" wailed the poor little Chartist,
with nerve utterly gone.
"Why don't you go home?" inquired the King kindly.
"I want to go home!" she said. "Take me!"
"The first thing, then, is to get out of this crowd. Keep hold of my
arm."
"No!" A perverse tag of conscience held her back. "I don't want to! I've
got a petition; it has to go to the King. Oh, if he only knew!"
"Give it to me! I will see that he gets it."
"You? You'd only throw it away when my back was turned."
"No; I promise you I would not. Give it me! It shall really go to him."
"You are not making fun of me?"
"Indeed I am not. Here, where is it? Give it to me, quick!"
She put the precious crumpled document into his hand. Poor nameless
soul, unconscious of what she had achieved--"I hope I've done right,"
she said.
A fresh movement of the crowd drove them against the railings. The
elderly little woman cried out like a frightened child.
"Oh, oh! They are killing me!"
The King lifted her up and put her over into free space on the other
side.
"Here! none of that!" cried a big voice beside him. A rough hand seized
hold of him and wrenched him back; he turned round and found himself in
a policeman's charge. Then another came and took hold of him on the
other side.
Incredibly the thing had happened: he was arrested. Triumphantly,
through a roaring, eddying crowd, the strong arm of the law bore him
away.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE KING'S NIGHT OUT
I
The King sat in a large square chamber with barred windows, awaiting his
turn to be attended to.
The crowd of prisoners seated on benches round the walls had become
attenuated; only about a score of them now remained. Women had been
dealt with first, the residuum were men; the general charge against
these was pocket-picking.
He had been sitting there for hours. It was now one o'clock.
"Now then, you!" said the voice of the sergeant in charge. His turn had
come.
In an adjoining room he found his two accusers awaiting him. He was led
up to a table where sat an official in uniform making entry of the
names. A charge-sheet, nearly full, was spread on the table before him.
The policeman who had made the arrest gave in the charge.
"Name?" said the sergeant-clerk sharply, suspending the motion of his
pen.
The King, still wearing his cap, took off his snow-glasses and turned
down the collar of his coat.
It was no use. The officer looked at him without recognition.
"Name?" he said again; and the policeman upon his right, giving the King
a rough jog, said, "Tell the sergeant your name!" And so, it appeared,
the useless formality must go on.
The King gave the two essentials--first-christian and surname--out of a
long string of appendices for which half the sovereigns of Europe had
stood as godfathers.
But the three words "John Ganz-Wurst" meant nothing to the official ear.
Over the patronymic he paused in doubt when only halfway through. "Spell
it!" he said, and, at the King's dictation, altered his V into a W.
"Foreigner?" he grunted; Jingalese names he could spell properly.
"Of foreign extraction," said the King, "my great-grandfather came over
to this country and was naturalized."
"Oh, we don't want to hear about your great-grandfather!" said the
sergeant, cutting him short.
At this moment one of the higher inspectors came into the room.
"Address--occupation?" went on his interlocutor, busy with his form.
The King named the dwelling from which he emanated.
"Come, come!" said the official voice, "no nonsense here! What address?"
The inspector was now looking at the prisoner. He touched the sergeant
upon the shoulder, and made a gesture for the two constables to stand
back.
"Will you please to come this way, sir?" he said, in a tone of very
marked respect.
The King followed him to an inner room.
The inspector closed the door. "I beg your Majesty's pardon," he said.
"This is a most regrettable occurrence. Fortunately, none of those men
know."
The King smiled. "I tried not to give myself away before I was obliged
to," he said.
"Your Majesty must think we are all quite mad."
"Not at all. So far as I know, every man I have encountered has merely
done his duty. Your methods of arrest are a little--arbitrary, shall I
say?"
"That is unavoidable, sir, when we have large crowds to deal with."
"I can understand that. A woman was being crushed; I helped her to get
over the railings. I suppose that was wrong?"
The inspector smiled apologetically. "Men have been fined for it, before
now, sir," said he.
"Very well, I will pay my fine," smiled the King. "And then, if you
don't mind, I will go home."
His Majesty's kindly humor won the inspector's gratitude. "I'm sure it's
very good of your Majesty to treat the matter so lightly."
"It was entirely my own fault," said the King. "How was I to be
recognized?"
"You took us off guard, sir. We were not informed that your Majesty
would be going anywhere to-night."
"Is that the rule?"
"It is always our business to inquire."
"I should not have told any one."
"It would still, sir, have been our business to find out."
"You surprise me!" said the King. It had never dawned upon him that he
was so watched. "And so to-night, for the first time, I gave you the
slip?"
"I take the blame, sir," said the inspector; his voice was grave.
"Why should you? No harm has been done. The only question now is how am
I to get back?"
"I can get you a cab, sir, at once. Or would your Majesty rather I sent
word to the palace?"
"No, certainly not. If I have not been missed, nobody need know."
"Your Majesty was missed by us four hours ago. That is what brought me
here."
"You come from the palace?"
"Yes, sir. As head of the special department, I have to be there every
night."
"I'm sorry to have given you so much trouble."
"Oh, not at all, sir."
And then, a cab having been summoned, he led the way out.
No one was by; the street had not a soul in it, and the King knew that
once more foresight and care were watching over him.
"I have paid the cabman, sir," said the inspector, as he closed the
door. "And, sir, would you kindly say where he is to go?"
There was a hint of discretion in the man's tone.
"Ah, yes," said the King, "to be sure--yes. Tell him to stop at the park
gates."
The inspector, saluting, gave the required direction, and the cab drove
off. Arriving a few minutes later at his destination, the King got out,
and passed in through the gates.
The palace was now shrouded in gloom; only in the guard-room, within the
high-railed quadrangle, a light still burned. Dimly through the night a
sentry could be seen pacing up and down.
By a subconscious instinct the King was returning along the same route
that he had come. Only as he approached the postern in the wall did it
occur to him that it would almost certainly be locked; and yet for no
other door had he a key. Attended constantly by servants, and leading a
scrupulously regular life, requiring neither secret passages nor late
hours, he had never possessed a latch-key of his own.
How, then, was he to get in now without attracting attention?
Having come so far, however, he went forward on chance and tested the
door. The attendant policeman was no longer there, the road-lamp had
been turned low, giving only a glimmer.
He tried the handle, but found that it would not respond. A figure
glided forward and inserted a key. "Allow me, sir," came the inspector's
voice.
"You?" exclaimed the King, surprised.
"It was my duty to see your Majesty safe home."