King John of Jingalo
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"I do not think, sir, that your experience puts you in a position to
know how the Church deals with the consciences of the faithful."
"You mean," said Max, "that in the ears of royalty uncomfortable
subjects are avoided? That merely indicates the system. As the snail
withdraws first his horns into his head, then his body into his shell,
so your Church adapts itself to its surroundings. Let me give you a case
in point--it touches on our present discussion. I have heard often
enough the cheaper forms of prostitution decorously alluded to; but when
did I ever hear dealt with, either for approval or reprobation, the
established practice among the unmarried youth of our aristocracy of
keeping mistresses?"
"I think, sir, that you must have been often inattentive. The virtue of
purity is, I am sure, constantly inculcated by our clergy."
"In such a form," replied the Prince, "that we need not apply it to
ourselves. The betrayal of innocency, yes, I have heard of that, for
that only touches a small minority. But these mistresses whom most of us
keep are no more innocent than ourselves, nor are we more innocent than
they. And yet, while to them all social entrances are barred, we men are
allowed to go in free."
"Society cannot act on mere rumor and suspicion," said the Archbishop.
"In the woman's case it does," replied the Prince. "And I wonder whether
it has ever occurred to any one to connect that fact with the
cheapening of our modern definition of chivalry. Are you ever
chivalrous; am I?"
"Charity is a greater thing than chivalry."
"I am not so sure of that," said the Prince. "You had forgotten just now
that I was a Doctor of Divinity; have you also forgotten that we share
the honors of one of the most ancient knighthoods in the world?"
"Will your Highness be so good as to explain?"
"Your Grace will perhaps remember--since you officiated upon the
occasion as prelate of the Order--my investiture rather more than two
years ago as a Knight of the Holy Thorn?"
The Archbishop bowed assent.
"Your discourse upon that occasion was both learned and eloquent; but it
did not really touch the subject that had brought us together."
"How would you define the subject?" inquired his Grace.
"The subject on which I hoped to be instructed," said the Prince, "was
the real meaning of Chivalry as expressed in the Order of the Thorn, and
the reason why I was deemed worthy to be made a knight of it. There had
already been some comment owing to the fact that the honor was not
conferred immediately on the attainment of my majority. Perhaps my
shortened career at college had something to do with it--perhaps the
fact that I had brothers who were older and worthier than myself. I am
not in the least blaming my father for the delay; rather am I now
inclined to be grateful. But that year the death of my two brothers
created more than a vacancy: and any further postponement would, I
suppose, have made the omission too pointed. I stepped into those dead
shoes."
"What a talker the man is!" said the Archbishop to himself. But
etiquette held him bound, and there he was obliged to sit, looking
interested and attentive, while Max went on.
II
"For some reason or another--perhaps because it was the one thing for
which, in spite of legitimate expectations, I had been kept waiting--I
conceived for the honor, when it was bestowed on me, a sentimental
regard which I did not experience toward my other titles. They had all
dropped upon me without any merit on my part; for this one honor I felt
in some curious way that I was not worthy. It may have been that feeling
of unworthiness which made me, before the date of my investiture, study
the history of the Order and the legend of its origin. I had hoped that
you would touch upon that legend, and give it some modern application. I
wonder now whether your Grace is aware of the legend; or whether I,
indeed, am not the only Knight of the Order who has troubled to think
anything about it."
"I fancy," said the Archbishop, "that the legend you refer to has a
flavor of medieval Romanism that would hardly commend itself to modern
ears."
The Prince smiled bitterly. "Your Grace persuades me," he said, "to tell
the story myself. At the point where it does not commend itself I shall
be glad to hear your criticism.
"The Founder--or ought I not rather to say the first Knight?--of the
Order was (if the story be true) a certain ancestor of our royal house
who had spent the greater part of his life in wars of unjust aggression.
To atone for them--or for other things which weighed more heavily on his
conscience--he went late in life on a crusade to the Holy Land; and
after being there handsomely trounced by the infidel, was returning in
dejection to the sea-coast with the mutinous remnant of his following,
when the founding of the Order of the Thorn occurred to him.
"It occurred to him thus: this at all events was his own account of it.
He had become separated from his company of knights, darkness was coming
on--when, as he spurred his tired steed with little mercy for its
exhausted condition, he passed by the roadside a beggar who cried out to
him for charity. But the charity asked for was not alms, but only the
withdrawal from the mendicant's foot of a thorn which troubled him.
"My ancestor, softened by some accent of gentleness or patience in the
suppliant's voice, dismounted to do the service required of him, and in
the growing darkness drew out the thorn. But when he had got it free
from the flesh it seemed no more a thorn but an iron nail; and the wound
out of which he had drawn it shone with celestial radiance. Then was
founded the Order. The Mendicant bade him bind the Thorn upon his heel
in the place of his spur, so that whenever thereafter he should be
tempted to goad or oppress whether man or beast the Thorn should remind
him of pity and mercy. I wait for your Grace's criticism of that
legend?"
The Archbishop made no reply: with a courteous gesture of the hand he
invited the Prince to continue.
"I hoped," said the young man, "to be instructed in the connection
between that Founding and the continuance of the Order. You spoke of
chivalry and loyalty; but the chivalry which you invited us to emulate
was merely the physical daring of our ancestors as proved in war
(wherein I am no longer allowed to take part); and the loyalty was to a
form of monarchy which modern conditions now threaten with change. And
I, looking at all my brother Knights around me, and at myself, wondered
by what right we wore that iron thorn upon our heels.
"Among us--I need not mention names--were men whose lives were far more
notoriously evil than mine--men whose wealth had been gained for them by
the grinding of sweated humanity; men who received enormous rents from
houses not fit for human habitation--men who opposed every act of
remedial legislation which disturbed their own vested interests, and who
did these things with an untroubled conscience because the conditions
they fought for were all the outcome of custom or of law.
"And I remembered that some day I should be required to become their
Grand Master--the titular head of that dead Order of Chivalry; and I
wondered what would happen if I acted honestly upon my conscience and
refused."
"Yet you say, sir, that for this Order, of which you now speak so
slightingly, you had sentiments of reverence?"
"For the Order--yes; but none for the men--including myself--who make up
its membership."
"Surely," said the Archbishop, "your Highness must admit that they are
all men of mark; many of them have spent their lives in the public
service--leaders of the people in peace and war. You cannot regard these
things as nothing."
"For these things they already have their titles," said the Prince,
"their state-pensions, or the wealth personally acquired on which their
power and influence are based. Has the Order of the Thorn ever once in
its history been given to a man because he was conspicuously good, or
gentle, or forbearing, or unselfishly thoughtful for others? Has it ever
once been given to a successful philanthropist who was not also of high
lineage and title? I have looked through the lists; I can find none.
Your Grace is the only one among us whose profession is to serve God
rather than to be served by men."
The Archbishop glanced uneasily at the Prince; but there was no sarcasm
in his look or tone. Max was never more of an artist than in his
adaption of manner to theme. Sadly, almost dejectedly he went on.
"And now let us come to myself. It seems that I am not accounted worthy
to receive your daughter's hand in marriage. In a certain sense I admit
it. That he is unworthy seems true to every man who ever loved a woman
well; and perhaps the woman feels the same of herself. But I do not
admit that the reasons for your judgment are just. You deny me my claim
because, during my early manhood, I have had illicit connection with one
woman. Tell me--do you propose that your daughter shall ever marry at
all?"
The Archbishop looked at the Prince with a half-pitying surmise and drew
himself up as though he had some statement to make. Then putting the
inclination aside he said: "That is for her to choose."
"From her own rank in life?" persisted Max,--"not limited, I mean, to
the clerical profession?"
"I impose no limits on my daughter's freedom," said the Archbishop.
"And do you mean to tell me," inquired the Prince, "that of every
suitor for your daughter's hand--lawyer, soldier, politician, man of
letters--you will make it your business to inquire--and will expect to
be told the truth--whether they have not at some period of their career
had illicit connection with women?"
"I could recommend no suitor," said the Archbishop, "who had been at so
little pains as your Highness to avoid the setting of a bad example to
others."
"Is it, then, merely secrecy that you advocate?"
"A respect for moral observances is in itself a ground of
recommendation," answered his Grace; "though at times a man may fall
short of what he knows to be right."
"You mean," said the Prince, "that I have flagrantly committed myself in
the upkeep of an establishment, where others have only paid an
extravagant price for a night's lodging?"
"Your Highness puts the matter in a way that makes it impossible for me
to discuss."
"I beg your pardon; I really was trying to be delicately indirect. But
that you should beg off discussion because my way of putting things
seems to you indelicate is yet another count in my quarrel with your
established ministry. You seem to me to be amateurs where you ought to
be professionals. How can you possibly deal with poor weak humanity in
kid gloves? Like the surgeon before he can hope to bring healing in his
wings, you too must be anatomical in your researches. It is the
anatomical your civil churchmen fight shy of. Well, I will endeavor to
get at the matter from another and a more accessible side. Your Grace
is, I take it, a man of the world?"
The Archbishop was inclined to demur; humbly but firmly he deprecated
the imputation.
"But surely!" protested the Prince, "had you not been, you would not now
be in the place which you occupy; every one knows that an Archbishop's
appointment is political. I ask you then, as a man of the world,
how--short of a miracle--could you expect a man in my position and
circumstances to have kept a technically unblemished record? Surrounded
with luxuries from my birth, disciplined by no real hardship, having to
make no struggle for my existence; brought up to eat meat and drink
wine; athletic, but without any reason or opportunity for leading a
strenuously athletic life; with brains, but with no compulsion to use
them; passed, for the perfecting of my education, from one privileged
grade to another; from the University to the Army, and from thence to
sport and the race-course; from where on God's earth, in this modern
curriculum for kings, was the idea to have occurred to me that I should
do this thing, in attempting to do which your early hermits went
hullabalooing to the desert?
"I am now nearly twenty-six. My father, for reasons of State, married at
twenty-one: I, for similar reasons, have been kept unmarried, no
sufficiently eligible partner could be found for me. And I solved the
time of waiting by contracting a non-legal conjugal relationship with a
woman for whom I had a very real affection, who was considerably my
senior in years, and who knew quite well that the arrangement could only
be temporary. My Lord Archbishop, I ask you--could you in my
circumstances have shown a better, a more blameless record? I was even
punctilious enough to tell your daughter--an excessive scruple, I
think,--she did not understand."
"She understands now," said the Archbishop.
"And who is it," inquired the Prince sharply, "who has thus played
bo-peep with her intelligence--first shutting and now opening her eyes?"
"When evil is encountered," said his Grace, "instruction has to be
extended."
"And still you have stopped halfway, just at the point where it serves
you best. What does her pure soul know of these problems which to her
are only a few hours old?"
"She is a daughter of the Church; and she knows what the Church's answer
has always been."
"She knows, then," said Max, "what no school of historians has yet been
able to decide! See over in England to-day how the Church, clinging to
its establishment, has to dodge and shuffle over the changes in the
moral law arising out of national habit. Is the Church of Jingalo so
greatly superior, think you, that it can boast?"
At that moment a clock upon the chimney-piece intoned the hour; and the
Archbishop, reduced to extremity in order to get rid of his
distinguished but unwelcome visitor, permitted himself to throw an
involuntary glance in the direction of the sound.
The Prince, perceiving the indication, rose at once to his feet.
"Pardon me," he said, "for having kept you so long."
"Pardon _me_," returned his Grace; "unfortunately I have to dine."
"Of course. I ought not to have forgotten."
"I mean that I have guests."
"They shall not be kept waiting by me," said the Prince. He moved to the
door. Then he stopped.
"Your Grace," he said, "I know that we cannot be friends, still----"
He paused; and there was silence.
"I greatly wish to see your daughter. Surely you cannot deny me that
right."
"_I_ cannot," said the Archbishop. "She does."
This pulled Max up with a jerk: not that he yet believed it, however.
"Where is she now?" he inquired.
"She has joined the Sisterhood of Poverty. To-day she entered her
profession."
The Prince choked.
"That is horrible!" he said. "You mean she has taken vows?"
The Archbishop of Ebury bowed his head. "For the remainder of _my_ life
at all events," he said in a stricken tone. "She will not return here.
My house is left desolate to me--because of you."
"You still have guests," said the Prince.
"That is an unworthy gibe," retorted his Grace. "My work has still to go
on."
"I beg your pardon," said Max.
"I have written to her," he added after a pause; "and she has not
answered. Will your Grace be good enough----"
"I do not think she will. She prays for you. If you came, I was to tell
you that."
Again there was silence for a time.
"When I was a child," said the Prince, "I had an old nurse, who whenever
I did anything wrong--as whipping was not allowed--used to go down on
her knees and pray for me; and she always did it against a blank wall. I
suppose it helped her. That has always remained my vision of prayer. And
now I shall always think of your daughter with her dear face turned to a
blank wall, praying for you and me--her murderers."
He went out.
"Upon my word!" thought the Archbishop, "that is a dangerous man to be
heir to a throne."
CHAPTER XXI
NIGHT-LIGHT
I
And meanwhile the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser had arrived; and Max,
instead of pursuing his own love-affair, ought to have been busy
entertaining him.
The first meeting between Charlotte and her suitor had been tactfully
arranged; they had met riding to a review of troops in the great Field
of Mars which occupied a central space in the largest of the royal
parks. The Princess had a healthy taste for riding in thoroughly cold
weather; she also particularly disliked to be in a carriage when those
round her were on horseback; and so, by following her own taste, when
the Prince met her she was looking her very best. Down a white-frosted
avenue of lindens she and her escort came trotting to the
saluting-point; and there, once more in his sky-blue with its sable and
silver trimmings, the Prince was presented, and opening upon her mild
blue eyes that looked curiously light in his bronzed and ruddy
countenance, with dutiful promptness he fell in love with her.
By a little quiet maneuvering and attendance to other matters the
King left them side by side for a while. Troops stood massed in the
distance waiting the signal to advance.
"Do you like soldiers?" inquired the Prince.
"It rather depends upon the uniform," replied Charlotte.
"Oh! Do you like mine?"
She looked at it, and smiled; for there were no sky-blue tunics in
Jingalo; and such cerulean tones on a man were to her eyes a little
incongruous.
"It would be rather trying to some complexions," she observed. "But you
look very well in it."
"Ah! I have been abroad," he explained. "That has given me the colors of
a Red Indian."
"You look just as if you had dropped from the sky," she said, smiling
still at him.
"Oh, no, not this sky!" and he cast up a grudging glance at the opaque
grayness overhead. "Here you seem to have a sun that looks only the
other way."
She threw back a light remark, while her eye strayed over the field.
Presently he returned to the subject.
"So you only like soldiers because of their uniforms?"
"And when they ride well. I like drums too," she added.
"Ah! good! I can play on the drum. It is my one instrument."
"Does it require much practice?"
"Oh, yes; it is very difficult--to play well. But it has been very
useful to me. I took a drum with me to South America. That is music that
the natives can understand, it can make them afraid; and when one is all
by oneself in the forest, then it helps that one shall not feel lonely.
One night when I had no fire left, I was saved my life from wild beasts
just by beating at them with my drum. It is funny that you should like
drums."
"I like something with them as well," said Charlotte.
"Ah," grunted the Prince, "that depends. There is some music in the
world that ought never to be allowed."
"Well, there is some of ours," said the Princess, as the massed bands of
three regiments sent forth their blast. "How does that strike you?"
The Prince listened with the ear of a connoisseur. "For you here, that
is good," he said judicially; "but you are not a musical nation. And
there is a man there that is playing his drum as it ought not to be
played."
And then his formal duties called him away. This was their first
exchange of compliments. Old Uncle Nostrum, who had kept within ear-shot,
reported to the King that things had gone sufficiently well. There was
no secrecy about the intended affair in the royal circle now; everybody
knew of it.
And that evening, at a State ball given in the Prince's honor, the
destined pair met again.
Nothing very much happened at the ball. The Prince danced once with
Charlotte and once with the Queen, and with nobody else; while Charlotte
danced nearly the whole evening; and Max, moving about with a pensive
and preoccupied air, danced with nobody. But the only reason why this
ball has to be mentioned is because of something that happened
immediately after, quite unconnected either with the about-to-be-linked
or the about-to-be-separated lovers--something which takes us back to
those underground workings of the body politic which his Majesty was
only now beginning fully to apprehend.
State balls end punctually, and as it were upon the stroke; as soon as
the royal countenance is withdrawn they come to an end. And so within
half-an-hour of the retirement of the royal party all the great suite of
chambers was empty, and in less than an hour light and movement had
ceased in all that part of the palace wherein the royal family resided.
But the King, hindered during the day by constant attendance upon his
guest, had some papers to look through before his next meeting with the
Prime Minister. He went into his study, switched on the light, and for
an hour sat at work. Outside traffic died away; the sense of silence
grew deep; the whole palace became permeated by it. Wearying for bed,
having got through his last batch of papers, the King looked at the
clock; it was half-past one.
Just as he was getting up from his seat the mere ghost of a sound caught
his ear. The door, silent on its hinges, had softly opened; and within
its frame stood a figure in dark civil uniform who gave the military
salute.
II
"Mr. Inspector!" cried the King in surprise, recognizing the face.
"I beg your Majesty's pardon."
"Ah! You came to see that everything was safe? This time you were a
little too early. Still, as you are here, I should rather like to know
how far those keys do allow you to penetrate?"
"Everywhere, your Majesty."
"You mean, even to the private apartments?"
Apparently he did.
"Do you often have occasion to use them?"
"Not after to-night, your Majesty--never again."
"Oh, do not suppose that I am objecting, if it is really necessary."
"I give these keys up to-morrow, sir," said the man. "I ought to have
given them up to-day; but I wanted to see your Majesty."
The King drew himself up; this seemed an intrusion.
"You could have asked for an interview," he said.
"I could have asked to the day of my death, sir; you would never have
heard of it."
"You could have written."
"Does your Majesty think that all letters personally addressed are even
reported to your Majesty?"
"I suppose not all of them," said the King after considering the matter.
"Not one in a hundred, sir."
"Still, any that are important I hear of."
"Mine, sir, would not have been reckoned important," said the man
bitterly.
The King looked hard at him, not with any real suspicion, for his
straightforward bearing inspired liking as well as confidence. But here
was a man whose measure must be carefully taken, for he was certainly
doing a very extraordinary thing.
"And have you something really important to tell me?"
Their eyes met on a pause that spoke better than words.
"Yes," said the man. Quietly he shut the door.
"Won't you come nearer?" said the King, for the depth of a large chamber
divided them. But the disciplined figure kept its place. Slowly but
without hesitation he gave what he had to say.
"I am dismissed the force," he began; "but that's not important--at
least only to me--though I suppose that's partly why I'm here, for a man
must fight when his living is taken from him. I am dismissed because
your Majesty got out of the palace the other night without my hearing of
it."
The King breathed his astonishment, but said nothing.
"I admit I ought to have known, but the man we had on duty at that door
didn't know your Majesty--at least not so as to be sure. I asked him
yesterday who it was went out, and he said--well, sir, he thought it was
one of the palace stewards. They use that door a good deal at night, so
I'm told."
"That he did not recognize me was, of course, my own doing," said the
King.
"I know that, sir," replied the man, "but in the detective force we
can't afford to make those sort of allowances. The consequence is--I'm
out of it."
"I'm sorry, Inspector. What do you want me to do?"
"Well, sir, I'm here because I know something that I can't tell to
another soul on earth. If I could have gone to them with it, I needn't
have troubled your Majesty. But, so happens, I haven't got the proof."
"Are you going to ask me to believe you without proof?"
"Your Majesty can get the proof--or see it anyway. It's there at Dean's
Court."
"Dean's Court? What is that?"
"Where the police museum is, sir. The proof of what I'm going to tell
your Majesty lies there."
This was getting interesting. "Pray go on," said the King.
"That bomb," said the man, "the one that was thrown at your Majesty the
other day--all the pieces of it are in the museum now."
He paused, then added--
"They have gone back to the place they came from."
It was evident then, from the man's tone, that to his own mind he had
stated the essential part of his case.
But the King, his brain working on unfamiliar ground, missed the
connection.
"I do not quite understand," he said.
"No, sir? Well, then, it's like this. After the bomb was thrown, we were
put on to the ground, and the public were kept off. All the pieces
picked up were brought to me. It must have been a very mild sort of
charge, sir, nothing much besides gunpowder I should say; no slugs nor
anything. Most of the shell I was able to put together again. It was
blackened all over, partly by fire, partly new painted I think, but,
under the black, I found lettering and numbers, all quite faint. I've
got them here." (He drew out a pocket-book as he spoke.) "D.C.M. 5537."