King John of Jingalo

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"You had better not tell it then; it may lose its interest."

"I want it to interest you."

"It does," said Charlotte, "very much."

"Huh! You do not know what it is."

"That is why; it is much more interesting not to know."

"Ah, you are playing at me! But what I go to tell you is no joke."

"I was not laughing," she said.

"No; only 'chatter, chatter'!"

"You know where I have been?" he continued.

"I know the continent."

"Yes;--you are right; that is all anybody knows about it. Well, inside
of it there is a country as big as this Jingalo of yours; and it
belongs really to nobody. I have been all over it."

"The people are very savage, are they not?"

"Savage?--oh, no. They are very fierce and proud, and strong; they are
also the most wonderful artists. You call that to be a savage?"

"Artists?"

"Yes; look at that."

As he spoke he drew up his sleeve almost to the elbow, exposing a
sunburnt arm, smooth, fine of texture, and enormously muscular. Over its
brawny mold, with scaly convolutions elaborately tattooed, writhed a
dragon in bright indigo.

"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed the Princess. Marveling at the clear
intricacy of its detail, she stooped to examine it more closely.

Prince Fritz turned his arm this way and that, displaying it. He snapped
his fingers: flick went each separate muscle, the dragon became alive.

"What do you think?" he inquired, smiling with childish vanity and the
delight of feeling upon his skin the warmth of her breath.

"It is very beautiful," she murmured again, her admiration divided
between the scaly dragon's wings and the splendidly molded limb.

"I have them far more beautiful upon my legs," said the Prince.

"Dragons?"

"Yes; but oh! quite different; more--how do you say?--'bloodthirsty' you
call it? Here and here"--he went on, indicating the locality--"I have
two. One of them is climbing up and the other is climbing down; and they
are both biting on my knee-cap with their teeth--like mad."

"They must be quite wonderful."

"They are all that! When I look at them I am lost with admiration of
myself." Then he gazed speculatively into her eyes and speaking in
dull, soft tones of Teutonic sentiment, said confidentially, "If you
will marry me, you shall see them some day."

Charlotte's laughter rang loud. "Do you think I should marry you for
that?"

A wistful, rather nonplussed expression came into the Prince's face.

"I do not know," said he, "why women marry at all; they are so
wonderful, so beautiful, so good all by themselves; we men are not
beautiful at all--not our bodies nor our hearts. And I--oh, well!"--he
drew down his sleeve as he spoke,--"I have nothing more beautiful to
offer you than those--my dragons. If you do not want them, why should
you want me?"

"But women don't marry dragons!" objected Charlotte, scarcely less
puzzled than amused.

"Oh! Do they not? I think you are wrong. Many of them marry only because
the man they marry makes them afraid. I have seen it done in the country
where I come from;--Germany I mean--and everywhere here it is the same.
I am not a dragon myself; but if you are that sort of woman, these might
help you to pretend. Do you not think you could be afraid of me enough
to marry me?"

This was strange wooing.

"I am not afraid of you at all," said Charlotte; "but I like you--very
much."

"Ah, then you want me to be quite another person? Very well, that make
it so much easier. Then now I will tell you what I am really like; and
you will try not to laugh, will you not?"

Charlotte composed her countenance to as near gravity as was possible,
and the Prince went on.

"I am just one little child that has lost its way through having grown
so big and strong. And I want some nice, kind woman, that is more
sensible than I, to be a mother to me--to take me in her arms and let me
cry to her when I am afraid. Herr Gott! I am so frightened
sometimes--how I have cried! Of the dark night, of loneliness, of the
stillness when there is no noise near, but only _that_, something far,
far away, that comes! Everything frightens me when I am alone. Fighting?
No, I am not afraid of that; it is this wait, wait, wait--for what? And
I want to have one woman just at my heart, and her voice at my ear, and
children--yes, plenty of them; and when I have plenty children, then I
shall not be afraid of loneliness any more."

"But if you so dislike it, why did you go away into the wilds?"

"Ah! I had to run away from the music. That was awful! And then--have
you lived in a German town?--that is awful too. Do not think that I am
asking you to live in a German town? No: I could not be so cruel. So now
I tell you my secret."

"You mean the dragons?"

"The dragons? No, no! They go with me,--they are part of me, they are
'in the know': but they themselves are not the secret. That is much,
much bigger thing still!"

He paused, and she saw his blue eyes looking far away, as though he had
forgotten her presence.

"Well?" she said encouragingly, "you are going to tell me, are you not?"

"Oh, yes! That is what I am come for." His tone was quite business-like
now.

"That big country I told you of--it belongs to nobody. You know that
those North Americans say that nobody from Europe is to have it, though
they do not use it themselves. Well, I am going to have it."

"You?"

"Schnapps-Wasser,--me, with my water-bottles. I have turned them into a
company; and they are going to give for it--well, never mind how much.
But with what my bottles bring me I can make that country so that no
power in the world can prevent it from being a great country to itself."

"But you say it has no coast?"

"No--just like Jingalo; that is what makes it strong. If I were foolish,
if I were only going there to make money, I should try to get some
treaty, some concession, some sort of trade-monopoly--rubber, or gum, or
niggers' blood, it is all the same thing--I should try to get that from
the Brazils or the Bolivias or whoever thinks that it is theirs to sell.
I am not such a fool: I do not want to trade, if I have got the people.
They are strong, they can run, they live clean lives--nobody has spoiled
them; they do not want to be rich; they are still a wonderful people;
they know a leader when they have found him. And when they gave me these
dragons that I have on me, then I became their King. That is my secret.
Now!"

"But if I were to tell people _that_----"

"Pooh! They would not believe you. 'Mad,' that is what they would say.
'Don't marry that man, he is mad!' And besides I am not King as we talk
of kings here in Europe; they would not pay taxes to me or anybody, but
I can show them what to do. That country on the map may 'belong' to
anybody--the United States may write 'Monroe'--one of their big
'bow-wows' that was--they may write 'Monroe' all round the coasts of
South America and at every port that they like to stick in their noses;
but they cannot get there to say that the people living on that land
shall not become great and strong in their own way, without any one else
to say about it. To those men outside I shall only look like a trader
what is too stupid to trade with them; but all my trade will be among my
own people. That country can live on itself; there, that is my secret!
It wants nothing, nothing from outside at all; and the people want
nothing either. They have great high plateaux where they can live cool;
and they have all the brains and the blood that they want to make
themselves a great nation. I have drilled them; ah, but not German
fashion, no! They are much too splendid for that. Every man is an army
to himself. They do not fear, for in their religion it is forbidden
them. But if you can think of Bersaglieri--which are the best troops in
Europe--able to climb like monkeys, to swim like fish, to go along the
ground like snakes, and to get all by different ways to the same place
in the dark with their eyes shut, though they have never been there
before--for that is how it seems--well, that is what my army is going to
be like. I have ten thousand of them drilled already; in a year I shall
have them armed; and I tell you that at six hundred miles from the
nearest coast nobody will be able to beat them."

"No, perhaps not with armies," said Charlotte; "but what about
civilization itself--all the evil part of it, I mean? How are you going
to keep that out?"

"Civilization will find us a bad bargain," said the Prince, "we shall
not trade: that is to be our law. I have told them how dreadful
civilization has become, and they are afraid of it; they will not touch
it with a pair of tongs. Traders may come to us; they shall get nothing,
and we shall get nothing from them. Only the King, with those that he
has for his Council, shall choose what is to bring in from outside; and
that will not be for trade at all.

"Well, now you know! And it is to be Queen of that country, but never to
wear any crown, that I ask if you are going to marry me?"

"It would be rather a big adventure, would it not?" said Charlotte.

"Of course! I thought that is what you like."

"Yes, so it is. But what about papa? I don't know what he would say if
he knew."

"Do you always tell him what you do, beforehand, to see if he shall
approve?"

"I've not done lately," said Charlotte. And then she saw that a suitable
moment for her own confession had arrived. She had very small hope of
shocking him now; but she did her best.

"Do you know that I have been in prison?" she said.

"No. Who was it that put you there--your papa?"

"I put myself."

"Did you get the keys?"

"I made them arrest me."

"How?"

"I took a policeman's helmet from him, and ran away with it. At least
that is what he said afterwards: I don't know whether it was true."

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the Prince in ravished tone. He did not turn a
hair; it was merely as though he were listening to some fairy tale.

"But very likely it was!" persisted Charlotte, anxious for the worst to
be believed; and then she gave him a full account of the whole thing.

"And what for did you do it?" he inquired when she had finished.

"Because they had told me that you were coming, and I had promised not
to run away."

"I do not understand?"

"Well, I didn't know what you were like; and I didn't want you to think
I was a bit anxious to meet you.--That was all!"

"That was all, was it?" Enlightenment dawned on him; he beamed at her
benevolently.

"And I wanted to see," she continued, "whether you would be shocked: at
least, I wanted to give you the chance of being."

"Well, you have given it me, and I am not; I am delighted. The more
women can do that sort of thing the better--pull men's heads off, I
mean."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Charlotte, "but I'm not going on doing it."

"Why not? A good thing done twice is better."

The simplicity of his approval left her without words.

"In that country where you and I are going to," went on the Prince,
imperturbably, "the women can fight just as well as the men. They are
trained to wrestle; and before they allow to marry they must have
wrestled off on to his back a man as old as themselves."

"But the men?" cried Charlotte, astonished. "How can they stand being
beaten by women?"

"Pooh, that is nonsense!" said Fritz; "men do not mind being beaten by
women unless it is that they despise them. In that country the woman
that has thrown most men is the one that they are most anxious to
marry."

"I have never thrown any one yet," said Charlotte reflectively.

"You!" Peaceful of look he eyed her wonderingly. "You have thrown
something much stronger than a man," he said--"you, a princess, that has
gone to prison!--and for that silly notion of yours that you could shock
me. Ha!"

"I did it for other reasons, too."

"Quite like; people may have a lot of reasons they can make up
afterwards for doing wise, brave, foolish things like that!"

"But I did think," insisted Charlotte, "that those Women Chartists were
right."

"I do not care whether they are right or wrong;--that is not my concern.
They may be just as foolish as you, or just as wise--what difference to
me? But when I go to think of you sitting there in that common prison
all those ten days with everybody looking for you--looking, looking, and
not daring to say one word--so afraid at what you had done--oh, that is
marvelous! That is to be a King! That is power!"

Charlotte had become very attentive to her lover's praise. "You think
they were really afraid, then?" she inquired, "afraid that it should be
known."

"You ask them!" replied Fritz, "and see if they do not all cry 'Hush'!"

And then in his usual abrupt way he returned to matters more personal to
himself.

"Well, what are you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been
asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle,
wriggle,' talking off on to something else."

"Wriggling is one way of wrestling," said Charlotte. Her eye played
mischief as she spoke.

"Just waggling the tongue!" retorted Fritz with genial scorn. "Throw a
man with that?--you cannot throw me!"

"But I must throw somebody, or else I shall not be qualified. The women
of that wonderful country of yours would look down on me."

"Throw me!" The Prince opened his arms, smiling. "I will let you!" he
said.

"And despise me afterwards! No, Mr. Schnapp-dragon, I shall choose my
own man, and throw him in my own way."

"And if you succeed?"

"Then--yes, then I will marry you."

"And if you fail?"

"Then I won't."

"H'm!" observed the Prince in easy-going tones, "you must have been very
sure of him before you would say that!"

Charlotte opened her mouth to rebuke that brazen remark; and then shut
it again.

"When do you do it?" went on Fritz, equable as ever. "Before I go?"

Charlotte pretended to temporize. "Well, perhaps to-morrow," said she.

And sure enough, to-morrow it was.

II

Nobody in Jingalo knows to this day what finally induced the Prime
Minister to concede so unexpectedly that preliminary point of vantage--a
mere foothold among the interstices of the ministerial program--which
the Women Chartists had so long and vainly striven for. What use they
made of the opportunity thus accorded has now become a matter of
history: we need not go into it here.

No royal message to ministers in Council assembled worked that miracle;
for, as we shall see in another chapter, the King's mind was destined at
this point to be suddenly distracted in quite other ways; and when he
was again able to turn his attention anywhere but to himself he found
that and other matters which had disturbed his conscience tending with
comparative smoothness toward a solution in which he personally had had
little share.

But though Jingalo knows nothing of these inner workings of history, we
peering behind the scenes may note how, when bureaucracy is bent on
keeping up appearances, fear of scandal can become more potent to
constitutional ends than love of justice.

Never in his long career had the Prime Minister known so flagrant an
instance of blackmail unpunishable by law as that which the Princess
Charlotte sprung on him when, in brief interview, she dictated the terms
on which alone the Ann Juggins episode was to be allowed to sink into
oblivion. And perhaps one can hardly wonder, under the circumstances,
that even then he did not feel secure, and was anxious to see so
incalculable a "sport" or variant of the royal breed removed to a safe
distance. For even though he might rely on her word as to the past,
where was his guarantee that she might not do the same thing again?

"That Prime Minister is very anxious to get rid of you," said Prince
Fritz when at a later date he and the Princess began once more to
compare notes as to future plans, when in fact the joyful news of their
engagement was about to be publicly announced in a general uproar of
thanksgiving.

"Oh, yes," went on Fritz, enjoying the retrospect, "one could see that
quite well. He was putting on my boots for me all the time, and was
willing to pay a good deal more for the accommodation than he had
expected me to ask."

"Pay?"

"Yes, dearest; but it all goes into your pocket, not mine. It is the
price he pays for your character; that is all."

"But what has my character to do with him?"

"Your character, beloved," said the Prince, turning upon her an adoring
gaze, "leaves him with no moment in which he can feel safe. He thinks
that you have 'a great vitality,' but here not enough scope. And he
seems that he cannot govern this country so long as you stay in it. I
think him very wise. Shall I tell you what I did?"

"Well?"

"I made a bargain."

"About me?"

"Of course about you, beloved--for you; who else except would I bargain
for? Besides was it about anything but your business that he and I were
having to seek each other? Well, because you so frighten him now he pays
rather more to get rid of you; and you, oh my dear heart's beloved, you
will get more. That is all that your Fritz had to do yesterday--and he
has done it. So now!"

And then, well pleased with himself, the practical Fritz let his
romantic side appear again, and for two minutes or so he lived up to the
sky-like blueness of his eyes and the childlike gentleness of his face,
and because his heart was very full of love he talked his own native
German, and not Jingalese any more.

And these two sides of him are here given so that the reader, if kindly
anxious about Charlotte's future, may trouble about her no more; for
when your idealist is also a very practical man of business he can, up
to the capacity of his brain-power, go anywhere and do anything, and
even in a land that is outside Baedeker will assuredly find his feet.
Not for nothing had Prince Hans Fritz Otto of Schnapps-Wasser turned his
bottled industry of home-waters into a company.

In tentative motherings of her gigantic babe, Charlotte had forgotten
all about money and business affairs when once more the practical man in
him came out of childish disguise to make an inquiry.

"Beloved," said he, "tell me--was he that man?"

"Which man?" inquired Charlotte innocently.

"The one that you wrestled with?"

Charlotte nodded; a smile flickered over her face.

"And you got him down?"

"Yes."

"Quite down?"

"As flat as he could go."

"And that is why you marry me?"

The two lovers exchanged sweet looks of candor and honesty.

"Yes," said Charlotte, smiling, "that is why."

"O Beloved," murmured the infatuated Fritz, "how beautifully you do tell
lies."

CHAPTER XXIII

"CALL ME JACK!"

It was noticed when the King came down to the first Council of the new
session that his face was flushed and his manner strangely discomposed.
He barely returned the respectful greetings of his ministers, and by
postponement of the customary invitation to be seated, kept them out of
their chairs for quite an appreciable time. Standing awkwardly about
the board they looked like a group of carrion crows awaiting the
symptoms of death before descending to their meal. To none did he accord
any word of personal recognition.

Even when proceedings had commenced it was evident that his attention
constantly wandered, only returning by fits and starts at the call of
some chance phrase on which now and again he would seize, remarking in a
tone of irritation, "And what does this mean, please?" And thereafter he
would require to be instructed at some length, as though he had
forgotten all current or preceding events.

In consequence of this the formal reports of the various departments
became a lengthy business; and the really important matters, to discuss
which the Council had been specially called, were proportionally
delayed.

Presently the word "strikes" caught his ear.

"Ah, yes, what about those strikes?" he inquired.

"They are still going on, your Majesty."

"Yes, _I_ know that! Why are they going on--that's what I want to know?
The strike you are talking about was practically over more than a month
ago; why has it begun again?"

"They have secured fresh funds, sir, and other trades have joined in."

"Is it the other trades that are finding the funds?"

"Not entirely, sir; large contributions are now coming in from abroad."

"From abroad?" interjected the King irritably, "where are they getting
funds from abroad?"

"From England, sir."

"From the Government, do you mean?"

"Of course not from the Government, sir."

"Well, explain yourself, then! Don't call it England if it isn't
England."

"I might almost say that it is England, sir, since a judicial decision
is the immediate cause of it. Labor in that country has just won a very
important action for damages arising out of a Crown prosecution. It has
now been decided that the Crown is responsible for the torts of its
civil and military agents. The unions in consequence are flush with
funds, and a portion of the Court's award, amounting to L50,000, has
been handed over to the strike fund in this country."

"And this subsidy from a foreign and a so-called friendly Power is
having the effect of prolonging our industrial conflicts, and is doing
damage to our trade?"

"Undoubtedly, sir, it has that effect."

"Well, and has nothing been said about it--to the English Government, I
mean?"

"It is not a direct act of the Government, sir."

"I don't need to be told that," said the King. "Neither was it a direct
act of the Government when a party of English undergraduates climbed to
the top of our embassy and hauled down the national flag because
Jingalese had been made a compulsory substitute for Greek at their
universities. But for that the English Government apologized, publicly
and privately, and all round. Do they apologize for this? Do they offer
to compensate us for the loss it is to our trade and the corresponding
gain to theirs? Have they been asked to apologize?"

"Certainly not, sir."

"And pray, why not?"

By this time, around the ministerial board, much open-eyed interrogation
was going on. Where, they seemed to be asking, was this glut of foolish
interrogations going to end? But still the minister under examination
endeavored to answer as though the questions were reasonable.

"There would be no chance, sir, of obtaining any redress."

"Yet this is doing us infinitely more harm?"

"It is merely a development, sir, of that new thing called
'syndicalism.' It is cropping up everywhere now."

"It may be new as it likes," protested the King. "All I say is that as
it stands it is a casus belli. You say it is cropping up; all the more
reason why it should be put down! What else is government for? Take
cattle disease; you put that down, you do not allow that to be imported.
Why should you allow syndicalism to be imported either?"

The Council sought resignation of spirit in sighs and looked to its
Chief in mute appeal.

"How would your Majesty propose to prevent the importation of ideas?"
inquired the Prime Minister dryly, in a tone that tried to be patient.

"Don't tell me," said the King, "that a syndicalist subsidy to Labor of
L50,000 is only an idea. But you are quite right, Mr. Prime Minister; in
the past countries have gone to war largely over the importation of
ideas, as you call them, either religious or social; that is why they
failed. England went to war with France at the end of the eighteenth
century merely because France was importing revolutionary ideas into
England. Was she able to prevent it? No; she only got the disease in a
much more virulent form herself, and has been running tandem to it ever
since. It is no use going to war for sentimental reasons; you must do it
for business reasons, and you must do it in a business-like way."

"Merely as a matter of business, sir," said the Prime Minister, his
hopefulness now on a descending scale, "war with England would cost us
considerably more than the loss of trade occasioned by this subsidy
which you complain of."

"Not a bit of it!" retorted the King, "not if you went the right way to
work. The Chancellor was saying just now that we should have to devise
some fresh taxes. Well, put a tax on Englishmen; quite enough of them
come here to make it worth while. Every summer the place is alive with
them!"

"I am afraid, sir," said the Prime Minister, sighing wearily, "that the
most favored nation clause stands in the way of your Majesty's brilliant
suggestion."

"Not if we do it openly as an act of war," explained the King; "then it
becomes a war tax. That's what I mean when I say conduct your wars on
business lines. Don't tax yourself, tax your enemy! England is the one
country we can fight on our own terms. She can't get at us. We are an
inland power; there isn't a coast within three hundred miles of us; and
Dreadnoughts can't walk on land, you know. They really can't!" he added,
as though there might be some doubt among those who had not yet given
the matter their consideration.

"I assure you, gentlemen, that war on England, if scientifically
conducted, would be a profitable thing. I've been reading a book by a
man named Norman Angell, who says that war doesn't pay. Well, the reason
for that is we don't conduct our wars on the proper lines. Now if we
made war on England----"

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