King John of Jingalo

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The King passed from his private apartments to broad corridors and
portals where resplendent footmen stood in waiting, where everything
worked with silent and automatic precision to prepare the way for his
feet, signaling him on from point to point as though he were a sort of
special train for which the line had been expressly cleared and all
other traffic shunted. And yet when he came to the small anteroom which
opened directly into the Council Chamber he felt for all the world like
a timid bather about to unbutton the door of his bathing-machine and
step forth into a strange and hostile element. That moment of
trepidation was one he never could get over,--to face his Council of
Ministers was always a plunge; for here truly he felt out of his depth,
aware that politically he was no swimmer. And now for a couple of hours
he would have to endure while, thoroughly at home in their own element,
twenty stout aquatic athletes tumbled around him.

The door was thrown open; and with an air of calm self-possession he
walked to the head of the table about which his ministers stood waiting.
"Be seated, gentlemen," he said, embracing in a single bow the
obeisances of all; and like slow waves they closed in on him, subsiding
in large curves and soft fawning ripples of hand-rubbing around the
empurpled board at which nominally he was to preside.

When all were seated in order, he signed for the Prime Minister to open
the proceedings, and thereafter had scarcely to speak; for at a King's
Council only general reports were presented, no discussions took place,
no fresh proposals were mooted; and so he sat and heard how this
department or that was extending its beneficent operations, how
statistics were completing to their last decimal places the
prognostications of experts, and how along with these things imports and
exports were balancing, trade declining, education advancing, and
strikes growing every day more formidable and more popular.

It was only this last point that really interested him; for here he
seemed to get a dim rumor of something that was part at least of that
popular will which it was his duty to symbolize and to safeguard. But
these official advisers of his were all for putting strikes down, and
yet while putting them down they seemed to wish to curry favor with the
strikers themselves. For on the one hand there was trade declining, if
the strikes were not put down, to support fresh taxation, on the other
the Labor Party, eighty strong, declining, if the strikes were put down,
to support the Government. And with the Finance Act coming on the
question was whether to accept an increasing deficit in the revenue or a
declining majority in the Legislature. This could be read vaguely
between the lines of the report presented by the Minister of the
Interior. But all this time not one word was said about the coming
constitutional crisis which was in everybody's mind. That had been
thoroughly discussed by ministers sitting in real Council elsewhere, a
Council at which the Head of the Constitution had not been present, and
about which he would hear no more than the Prime Minister chose to tell
him.

And so, smoothly, equably, and uneventfully the Council reached its
conclusion; ministers one after another closed up their portfolios, and
sitting mute in their places respectfully waited the royal word of
dismissal.

Then the King rose: and all around the board the fawning ripples of
hand-rubbing ceased, and the slow curving wave of the ministerial body
receded to a respectful distance; while his Majesty passed forth to the
adjoining chamber, there to give, as was customary, separate audience to
those ministers who had any special memoranda to submit requiring the
royal endorsement.

On this occasion he found his Comptroller already awaiting him,
apologetic for what might seem intrusion on territory belonging more
properly to the Prime Minister. Under the correctness of his deportment
it was clear that urgency impelled.

"I have come, sir," he said, "to submit to your Majesty, before the
matter goes further, a certain difficulty which has arisen in connection
with your Majesty's gracious donation to the widow of the unfortunate
workman who----" He paused.

"You mean the steeplejack?" queried the King.

The Comptroller-General bowed assent. "Your Majesty ordered inquiry to
be made."

"I did. Has it been found whether he had a family?"

"A large family, sir: a wife and seven children."

"Ah," said the King, "then you would suggest that ten pounds is not
quite----? Well, make it twenty."

"That, sir, is not the difficulty. The fact is we have discovered that
the man was what in the industrial world is known as a 'blackleg.' As
your Majesty may be aware there is at this moment a strike in the
building trade: and this man was working against the orders of his
Union. Under those circumstances a donation from your Majesty becomes
pointed."

"Pointed at what?"

"At the Trades Unions, sir."

"But what," cried the King, astonished, "have a widow and children to do
with the Trades Unions?"

"The man was working against orders, your Majesty."

"But at somebody's orders, I suppose? Anyway, it was for the
Government."

"Oh no, sir!" Correctitude protested against so dangerous an
implication.

"But surely! Wasn't he there at the orders of the Board of Works?"

"At the orders of the contractor, your Majesty."

"Who was under contract with the Board to complete by a certain date."

"That, sir, cannot be denied."

"Well, really then," said the King, "from what department does this
objection to the donation emanate?"

"From no department, your Majesty. The objection is on general grounds
of policy."

The King's pride and modesty were becoming a little hurt; he was annoyed
that so small a matter of private charity should be thus canvassed and
brought within the range of politics. Subconsciously he had also another
and a more symbolic reason which helped him to show fight.

"Really, my dear General," he said, "I think we are discussing this
matter very unnecessarily. The widow is still a widow, and the children,
who you tell me number seven, are orphans; and surely at his death a man
ceases to be either a blackleg or a trades unionist. He is not working
against orders now, at any rate. Make it twenty! make it twenty." (His
utterance grew hurried; a way he had when crossed and anxious not to
have to give way.) "I can't hear anything more about it now: I have
Brasshay waiting to see me." And as at that moment the Prime Minister
was announced, the Comptroller-General, for the present at any rate,
"made it twenty" and retired. But he did so with a wry and a determined
face.

As for the King he was thoroughly put out; the steeplejack was by
association beginning to assume in his mind a very particular
importance; he had become a symbol not merely of the sovereign himself,
but of that act of statesmanship which he had been adjured to undertake
by his favorite newspaper. This man, his prototype, had failed to add in
completeness that luster which he had set out to add; had even died in
the attempt; and here, in seeking with all his sympathies aroused to
provide for the widow and children, the King was finding himself
thwarted, and thwarted, too, on purely political grounds. Well, it
should be a test: he would not be thwarted. The Cabinet couldn't resign
on this; so he would do as he liked! And under the table, on a soft deep
carpet of velvet-pile he stuck his heels into the ground and felt very
determined.

And then he found that he must attend to something else, for the Prime
Minister was speaking, and now at last was speaking on a very important
matter.

IV

"Your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, "the Bishops are blocking all
our bills; the business of the country is at a standstill."

"Blocking?" queried the King; for he did know a little of contemporary
history at all events.

"Amending," corrected the Minister. "Amending on lines which we cannot
possibly accept."

"Some of them seemed to me quite excellent amendments," said the King.
"But, of course, I don't know."

"They express, sir, no doubt, a point of view--quite an estimable point
of view, if it were not a question of politics: they reflect, that is to
say, the mind of the ecclesiastical side of the Spiritual and Judicial
Chamber. Your Majesty's House of Laity sees things differently: I am
bound, therefore, to submit to your Majesty certain important proposals
for the relief of the impasse at which we have now arrived. As no doubt,
sir, you are aware, we have the Judges, the Juridical half of the
Chamber, for the most part with us, since for the last few years their
appointment has been entirely in our hands. But the Bishops, with the
exception of one or two, are obdurate and immovable. We select the most
liberal Churchmen we can find: but it is no use; each new Bishop,
adopted by Dean and Chapter, becomes when once seated in the Upper
Chamber, merely a reflection of those who have gone before him: the
Juridical minority is swamped, the Spiritual element remains supreme,
and we have no chance of obtaining a majority."

"It is only because you will try to do things too fast!" said the King;
but the Prime Minister continued--

"And now, sir, our one opportunity has come. The Bill for dividing the
dioceses and doubling the number of the Bishoprics has just passed into
law. I flatter myself that when the Prelates assented to that Bill they
did not realize how its powers might be directed. It is the proposal of
your Majesty's advisers to nominate to those Bishoprics only Free
Churchmen, men whose political views coincide with our own."

"Free Churchmen!" cried the King, startled; "but they are outside the
Establishment altogether."

"Merely on a point of Church discipline," answered the Prime Minister.
"They are ministers properly ordained. When they seceded over the
'Church Government Act' they carried their full Canonical Orders with
them: only as they had no Bishops they have become a diminishing body.
Their beliefs, or their disbeliefs (for on many points the churches are
merely maintaining an observance of definitions which their intellects
no longer really accept)--their professed beliefs, then, shall I
say?--in all matters of doctrine are not more heterogeneous than those
which distract the councils and the congregations of the Establishment.
It is only on matters of administration and Church discipline that they
fundamentally differ. We count upon the Free Church Bishops to give us a
majority both on the secularization of charities and the opening of the
theological chairs and divinity degrees of our Universities to all sects
and communities alike. After that we shall be in a position to deal
with State Endowment and with Education generally."

"But will the Chapters, under such circumstances, accept the Crown's
nominees?" inquired the King. "And even if they do, may not the Bishops
refuse to consecrate them?"

"The right in law of a Dean and Chapter to reject the Crown's nominee
and to substitute one of their own has already been decided against
them," said the Prime Minister. "As for the consecration, if the Bishops
refuse their services we have an understanding with the exiled
Archimandrite of Cappadocia to see the whole thing through for us."

"Good Heavens!" cried the King, "a black man with two wives."

"His orders," said the Prime Minister, "are perfectly valid, and are
recognized not only by us but by Rome. Only last year the Bishops were
making quite a stir about him; there was even a proposal that he should
assist at the next consecration so as to clear away all doubts in the
eyes of Romanists as to the validity of our own orders. It would,
therefore, be a measure of poetic justice if now----"

"I don't think we ought to do it," interrupted the King.

"If the Bishops give way in time, sir, it will be unnecessary."

"Will you consent to my seeing the Archbishop about it?" inquired the
King, much perturbed.

"Sir, I have already seen him."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He said a good many things, and said them very well. His general
impression seemed to be that we should not dare to do it. That is where
he is mistaken."

"You have to consult me also," remarked the King.

"Sir, that is what I am now doing." The Prime Minister bowed with the
utmost deference.

"You put me in a great difficulty!"

"I am sorry that your Majesty should make difficulty," retorted the
Premier dryly.

"You seem to forget," pursued the King, "that I am sworn to maintain
both Church and Constitution as established by law."

"Sir, we propose nothing unconstitutional."

"Free Churchmen are not constitutional, they have no standing."

"They have a right to their opinions like all the rest of your Majesty's
subjects."

"Not to be made Bishops."

"That merely legalizes their position."

The King shook his head. "I don't like it," he said; "I don't like it!
And if you won't let me consult the Archbishop how am I to know what I
ought to do?"

"If as advisers to the Crown we have had the misfortune to lose your
Majesty's confidence," said the Prime Minister suavely, "I hope your
Majesty will not hesitate to say so. But I am bound to inform you, sir,
that should your Majesty be unable to accept the advice now offered, it
will be the most painful duty of your Majesty's ministers to tender
their resignation."

"I observe," retorted the King tartly, "that whenever you begin
reminding me of my 'Majesty' you have always something unpleasant to
spring on me! You are treating me now just as you have been treating the
Bishops; you will not listen to advice; no, you will not accept
amendments, you behave as though you were already a single Chamber
Government. You ought to accept amendments! I don't like Free Church
Bishops. If they want to become Bishops they can go to the Archimandrite
for themselves. I suppose you are making it worth his while?" he added
suspiciously.

"Doubtless there will be an arrangement," answered the Premier smoothly.
"There again the Archbishop has already helped us. Less than a year ago
he made representations to us on the subject, recommending the
Archimandrite for a State pension."

"And pray, will that appear in the estimates?"

"There is no reason why it should not appear."

"I have noticed," commented the King, "that if people do an unscrupulous
thing in the full light of day, it takes a certain appearance of
honesty."

"A very statesmanlike observation, your Majesty," smiled the Prime
Minister. "In this matter I may say we are without scruple because our
case is unanswerable."

"You shall have my answer," said the King, "when I have had more time to
think about it."

With which oblique retort to the Prime Minister's assertion he rose, and
the interview terminated.

V

By this time he was thoroughly tired: he had done a hard morning's work;
not only had he been harassed and annoyed, but he had been thinking a
great deal more than he usually thought, and his brain ached. But even
now his troubles were not ended; just as he turned to go the Minister of
the Interior craved audience; and at his first word the King's
irritation grew afresh, for here was dismissed controversy cropping up
again.

While the King was receiving the Prime Minister his Comptroller-General
had not been idle: indeed he never was idle. He had gone straight to the
Minister of the Interior and had reported to him the failure of his
efforts, for it was this minister who had in the first place come to
him. The steeplejack had fallen, so to speak, right into the middle of
his department; and with the King's donation coming on the top the
catastrophe bulked large. For, be it known, on the order of the day for
the morrow's sitting of Parliament was a motion of the Labor Party,
directing censure on the Government for having brought pressure to bear
on contractors and caused work to be continued upon Government buildings
when Labor and Capital were at war. It was nothing to Labor that the
hire of the scaffolding used in the repairs was costing the country a
considerable sum of money while it stood uselessly waiting about the
walls of the Legislature; blacklegs had gone up on it and blacklegs had
been pulled down from it; and one particular blackleg had gone up on it
and had come down without any pulling whatever--an accident over which
Labor was savagely ready to exult and say, "Serve him right!" And how
would it be if they saw in their morning papers, on the very day when
the motion was down for debate, that the King had gone out of his way to
make a handsome donation to the widow? The Minister of the Interior
simply could not allow it; yet now word had come to him that his Majesty
persisted in his intention. So when the Prime Minister came out the
Minister of the Interior went in and put his case to the King, as I have
put it here to the reader--only far more persuasively, and ornately, and
at very much greater length. He also added to what has already been set
forth, as a point making the man a less worthy object of compassion,
that according to latest accounts he had gone to his work under the
influence of drink.

"So do all steeplejacks," said the King, and quoted the _Encyclopedia_:
"It is only when they are drunk that they can do it. _I_ know." He spoke
as though he had tried it.

Before the minister had done the King was really angry. "Mr. Secretary,"
said he, "I don't care how many strikes there are, or how many Trades
Unions, or how many motions of censure from the gentlemen of the Labor
Party: they may motion to censure _me_ if they like! The man is dead,
and I was unfortunate enough to be a witness of his death. He died in an
attempt to do a laudable action." (Here the King was tempted to quote
the peroration from his favorite newspaper, but he checked himself: the
minister would not have understood.) "His wife," he went on, "is now a
widow, and his children are orphans; and if that twenty pounds may not
go to them, then I am not master of my own purse-strings, or"--he added
by way of finish--"of my own natural feelings and emotions as an
ordinary human being."

And before that burst of eloquence the Minister of the Interior was
abashed into silence, and retired from the royal presence discomfited.

The King's argument had heated him, like the royal furnace of
Nebuchadnezzar, seven times more than he was wont to be heated. He so
seldom argued with anybody, still less with his ministers: and here he
had been arguing with one or another of them for half the morning. He
almost felt as if something had happened to him; a touch of giddiness
seized him as he turned to retire to his private apartments; and the
thought struck him--if he was as much upset as this over a small
side-issue, what would he be like when he had done adding that luster to
the constitutional edifice which the nation in its crisis would
presently be demanding of him? The wear and tear were going to be
considerable.

Circumstance had departed as he retraced his steps to the domestic wing.
The lackeys, having done their ceremonial duty, had disappeared: he was
free to go unobserved. As he ascended the marble staircase which led
from the great hall toward the private apartments he was still thinking
of the steeplejack, the man who somehow seemed now to be an emblem of
himself. This man, set to the superfluous task of regilding the
weathercock of the Legislature, doing it in defiance of master craftsmen
and fellow-workmen, lured to do it because the cost of the hiring of the
scaffolding had become an expensive charge on the Board of Works, and
then, after the custom of the Trade, primed, emboldened, and made drunk
to do it, drunk to a point which had brought him to destruction--yes, he
was like that man; his temptations, his perils, his essential
superfluity were all the same. As he went up the stair he tried to
imagine he was the man himself, going up and up, a solitary and uplifted
figure, fixing his thoughts on things above in order that he might
forget the gulf which yawned below. He took his hand from the
balustrade, and gazing upward at the gilt and crystal chandelier
suspended from the dome above, so entirely forgot his surroundings for
one moment that, missing a step, he lost balance backwards and fell with
amazing thoroughness down the full flight of steps till he reached the
bottom.

CHAPTER III

WILD OATS AND WIDOWS' WEEDS

I

Bump! bump! bump! went his head. Through a confused vision of stars,
veined marble, stained glass, and flying stair-rails he saw his legs
trail helplessly after, close in above, fling violently across him feet
foremost, and dash out of view. In other words, having reached the
bottom of the grand staircase he had turned a complete and homely
somersault.

For awhile he lay half stunned, unable to move. Something had
undoubtedly happened to his head, but he was still conscious. Cautiously
he turned himself over and looked round. No one was about; no one had
seen this ignominious downfall of Jingalo's topmost symbol on the too
highly polished floors of its own abode; and nobody must know. It was
not the right and dignified way for a royal accident to happen: falling
down-stairs suggested the same failing as that to which steeplejacks
were prone.

He picked himself up, and aware now of a sharp pain in the middle of his
spine as well as at the back of his head, crawled slowly and in a
rather doubled-up attitude toward the royal apartments.

As he moved cautiously along the private corridor, he met the Queen
coming from her room, dressed for going out. She detected at once his
painful and decrepit attitude. "What is the matter, dear?" she inquired.

"Nothing, nothing," mumbled the King, "only a touch of sciatica." And as
he did not encourage her impulse to pause and make further inquiries,
she let him go past.

He went into his room, and sat very carefully down, for he was still
uncertain whether some vertebral bit of him was not broken. Then he put
his hand to the back of his head and felt it. Yes, undoubtedly something
had happened; at contact with his finger it made a sound curiously like
the ticking of a clock, and under the scalp a portion of bone seemed to
move. And yet he was not threatened with unconsciousness; on the
contrary he felt very wide awake: shaken though he was, ideas positively
bubbled in his brain, his whole being effervesced. For a moment a fear
flickered across his mind that he was going mad. But if so it was a
wholly pleasurable sensation, for though his fancy went at a gallop, it
was orderly, logical, and consecutive, not like madness at all. He
dismissed the notion; but further reflection confirmed him in his
determination not to tell anybody; he did not want to explain how he had
walked upstairs fancying himself a steeplejack. It would have sounded
stupid.

Then all at once he felt very sick and giddy, and going to the couch he
lay down on it, and there, finding relief in the horizontal position, he
fell fast asleep.

When he awoke an hour later his head, except for an extreme local
tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint
ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no
longer went at a gallop, but they seemed--what was the word?--freer,
more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far
less harassed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself
more than he had ever done before: his mental views had become more
open.

Then he remembered that he wanted to see his son Max, and talk to him
about certain matters; and so, after a few more tentative touches to the
back of his head to find if it was still ticking--which it was--he went
into his study, and sending for one of his secretaries, got a message
despatched. And only when he was well on in the routine of his
afternoon's labors did he recollect that he had not lunched.

That break in the regularity of his habits seemed almost an adventure;
but as he did not now feel hungry he plodded on, for this was his day of
the week for signing accumulated arrears of documents, and several
hundreds awaited him. So for a couple of hours he worked as regularly
and monotonously as a bank-clerk, and while he was signing the less
important papers, and passing them to one of his secretaries to be
blotted and sorted, another read out to him those of which he wished to
learn the contents.

This duty was generally performed by the Comptroller-General himself;
but to-day he was missing, and the King, left to make his own selection,
was rather startled to find what a number of really important documents
had been left over for this day, devoted to what may be described as
routine signatures. As a rule it was the Comptroller who, out of his
long experience, selected those documents which must be read and, only
after due consideration, signed. Now, by some accident, he had been
prevented from attending, and here was a crowd of important documents,
the terms of which the King had never heard. He began to wonder. At
least ten or a dozen were strange to him: he ordered them to be set
aside. And now very dimly, very gradually, he began to suspect his
position, and to perceive that without watchfulness he might very easily
become less a conscious instrument of Government than a mere mechanism.
What if he had become that already?

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