King John of Jingalo

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"Good gracious!" cried the King.

Max was pleased to see what an impression he had made: he did not
usually get so good a listener. "And to think," said he, "that all this
talk came of your having asked me a question on a matter that is already
five years old. I am sorry to have taken up so much time explaining
myself."

"On the contrary," said the King, "I am glad. Five years? Yes, I am very
glad to know that." He got up and moving to the table made a call on his
private telephone. "Would you mind waiting a few minutes," he went on,
"perhaps I shall need your countenance."

A secretary answered the call; and presently the Comptroller-General
himself appeared to learn the royal pleasure.

"I am sorry, my dear General," said the King, "to trouble you at so late
an hour. But about that matter of the widow--who is not a widow. I wish
fifty pounds to be sent to her--anonymously. Yes, fifty pounds. Will you
see that it is done to-night?"

Turning to Max he said, as though referring to conversation already
passed, "You have effectually interested me in her case."

Max saw that he was being used as a pawn in a game he did not
understand, and held his tongue; and the Comptroller-General, finding
himself dismissed, retired to do for once as he was told.

And so, by the inglorious device of anonymity and lavishness combined
the King maintained his point, and sent his gift to the relief of one
who was, as a matter of fact, just as legally a widow as any other you
or I may like to name.

John of Jingalo had not yet broken the official leading-strings, but on
this occasion he had circumvented them. Flushed with his triumph, he
bade his son an affectionate good-night. "Come and talk to me again," he
said. "I don't agree with anything you say, but you help me to think."

It was a sign of progress. Hitherto he had relied, with a far greater
sense of security and comfort, on those who had enabled him not to
think. Consultation with Max, insidious as the drug-habit, and as
secretively employed, was henceforth to count for much in the
development of the Constitutional Crisis. Hereditary monarchy had
conceived the idea of turning its hereditary material to account. No
doubt the Cabinet would have objected, preferring to keep its victim in
complete mental isolation; but at present, the Cabinet did not know.

CHAPTER IV

POPULAR MONARCHY

I

That talk with Max formed the preliminary to a month of the most
strenuous verbal and intellectual conflict that the King had ever known.
Outside all was calm: the Constitutional Crisis was in suspension; by
agreement on both sides hostilities had been deferred till trade should
have reaped its full profit out of the Silver Jubilee celebrations. The
papers spoke admiringly of this truce to party warfare as "instinctive
loyalty" on the part of the people, "expressive of their desire to do
honor to a beloved sovereign in a spirit undisturbed by the contending
voices of faction."

There was no "instinctive loyalty," however, within the Cabinet! While
streets were decorating and illuminations preparing, ministers were
giving his Majesty a thoroughly bad time.

In a way, of course, he brought it upon himself, for at the very next
Council meeting after his conversation with Max he did a thing which, so
far as his own reign was concerned, was absolutely without precedent: he
opened his mouth and spoke;--objected, contended, argued. And at the
sound of his voice uttering something more than mere formalities,
ministers sat up amazed, most of them very angry and scandalized at so
unexpected a reversion to the constitutional usages of a previous
generation.

Not a word of all this leaked out. The whole thing was an admirable
example of that keeping-up of appearances on which bureaucratic
government so largely depends. And it was, if you come to think of it, a
very deftly arranged affair. There was the whole country bobbing with
loyalty, enthusiasm, and commercial opportunism; the Cabinet
unencumbered for a while by any parliamentary situation that could cause
anxiety, and correspondingly free to direct its energies elsewhere; and
there within the Council, and without a soul to advise him, was the
King, scuffling confusedly against the predatory devices of his
ministers. The poor man's knowledge of the Constitution was but scanty,
and his powers of argument were feeble, for from the day of his
accession the word "precedent" had governed him. Yet he had an idea, a
feeling, that he was now being forced into a wrong position; the
constitutional breath was being beaten out of his body, and he would
pass from his levees, from his receptions of foreign embassies and
addresses of loyalty and congratulation, to a conflict in Council which
reminded him of nothing so much as a "scrum" upon the football field.
Through one goal or another he was to be kicked--the exercise of the
Crown's prerogative to nominate Free Church Bishops, or the refusal to
exercise it. And whichever expedient he was driven to in the end, he
knew that on one side grandiloquent words would be written about his
fine instinct for the constitutional limitations or powers of monarchy,
and on the other, pained, but deeply respectful words of regret that he
had been so ill-advised by his ministers--or by others. Whichever side
loses, it is the football which wins the game. That, however, is merely
the spectator's point of view. The football only knows that it has been
kicked. Yet the King was well aware that in Parliament at any rate
appearances would be kept up; and that whatever corner of the field he
got kicked to, the blame for it would be laid, ostensibly, on others;
though, as a result, the monarchy to which it was his bounden duty to
"add luster" would be either strengthened or weakened: and what course
to take he really did not know.

His mind, in consequence, was greatly troubled. Being of conservative
instincts he believed that, in the main, the Bishops were right and the
Prime Minister wrong. The Prime Minister had been harassing the country
with general elections; and the country had had about as many as it
could stand: yet without a fresh election no other ministry was
possible. And now, at a moment when the country was bent on profiting by
the revival in trade which the approaching celebrations had stimulated,
nothing would be so unpopular as a fresh ministerial crisis; and he
could have no doubt that, whatever the papers might pretend to say, the
odium of that crisis, if due to his own action, would fall eventually
upon himself.

And the Prime Minister knew it! Yes, just at that juncture, resignation,
or the threat of it, had become an absolutely compelling card; and he
was playing it for all it was worth. Free Church Bishops were to be
promised for the ensuing year, or the Ministry would be bound to feel,
here and now, that his Majesty's confidence in it had been withdrawn.

Resignation, aimed not against any opposing majority in Parliament, but
against the demur and opposition of the Crown itself--that fact in all
its political significance, with all its possible developments of danger
for the State and of humiliation for the monarchy, was daily pressing
its relentless weight against the King's scruples. The more unanswerable
it seemed the more angry he became, the more keenly did he feel that he
was being unfairly used. And then, one day, as he sat thinking at his
desk, all at once a new thought occurred to him, throwing a queer
radiance into his face, of joy mixed with cunning. And then, gradually,
it faded out and left a blank; the old expression of anxiety and
distrustfulness returned. He shook his head at himself, scared that such
a thought should ever have come into it. "No, no, it wouldn't do!" he
muttered. "Impossible."

All the same he got up from his desk, and in deep cogitation began
walking about the room. The carpet with its rich variegated pattern,
like Max's conversation, helped him to think; until certain deliveries
of a royal courier from abroad came to divert his attention to more
particular and family affairs.

Nevertheless his mind had again reverted to its vetoed notion when, an
hour later, on his way to the Queen's apartments he met the Princess
Charlotte tripping gaily along the corridor. She stopped to give him her
"return home" embrace. "How well you are looking, papa!" cried she,
admiring his flushed countenance. But the King, though he smiled,
remained preoccupied with the embryos of statecraft.

"My dear," he said abruptly, "do you think that I am popular?"

"Why, yes, papa, of course!" she said, opening sweet eyes at him.
"Doesn't everybody cheer you when you go anywhere?"

"I think," said her father dubiously, lending his ears in fancy to the
sound, "I think that crowds get into the habit of cheering,--not because
they care for me, but just because there are a lot of them, and they
like to hear the sound of their own voices."

"But sometimes you have quite small crowds," said his daughter, "and
still they cheer."

"Yes, yes," he allowed, "so they do. Yes, even the nursemaids, I notice,
wave their handkerchiefs when I ride by them in the park. And I daresay
some of them do it because they are sorry for me."

"Sorry for you, papa?"

"My dear, wouldn't you be sorry to have to be King now-a-days? It's no
fun, I can assure you."

"I wouldn't like to be King always," said Charlotte, with honesty; "but
you know, papa, with all the Silver Jubilee celebrations coming on you
are quite immensely popular."

"Ah!" said the King. "Thank you, my dear, that is what I wanted to
know."

He went on to the Queen's apartments, and Princess Charlotte stood
looking after him. "Poor dear!" she said to herself. She was sorry for
him too--very sorry just now; for she had a secret growing within her
somewhere between heart and head which, if he knew of it--and some day
he would have to know of it--would cause him a great deal of worry.

This young woman with her growing secret was at that time twenty-three.

II

The Princess Charlotte had a way of drawing in a breath as if to speak,
and then bottling it. This little performance was at times very telling
in its effect--it spoke volumes: it told of a long training in
self-repression which still did not come quite naturally: it told of
inward combustion, of a tightly cornered but still independent mind.
Ladies-in-waiting had seen the Princess run out of her mother's presence
to tabber her feet on the inlaid floor of the corridor, thence to return
smooth, sweet-tempered, and amiable; for between Charlotte and the Queen
there were temperamental differences which had to declare themselves or
find safety through emergency exits.

The Princess had no such difficulties with her father, for
imperturbability was not one of his characteristics, and
imperturbability was the one quality in a parent which the Princess
simply could not stand; it made her feel powerless; and to feel
powerless toward one's intellectual inferiors is, to certain
temperaments, maddening. Charlotte had long since been brought to
recognize that her mother, in her own dear way, was quite hopeless: but
she was able with astonishing ease to get upon her father's nerves and
to trouble his conscience; for while the Queen remained impervious to
all influences outside the conventions of her training and her habits,
the King was as open to new scruples of conscience as a sieve is to the
wind--fresh ideas rattled in his head like green peas in a
cullender--when he shook his head it seemed to shake them about, and all
the larger ones came uppermost; and the Princess Charlotte had in recent
years acquired a habit of entangling her father, with the most engaging
simplicity, in moral problems for which constitutional monarchy could
find no answer.

She was evidently interested in politics, and when of late the King,
wishing to check so dangerous a tendency, had sought to know the reason
why, she had answered with perfect frankness: "Max says" (for to her,
also, Max, the man born to inaction, had been talking), "Max says he is
not sure if he means to come to the throne. If he doesn't, it is just as
well I should know something of the business."

The young lady had a most disrespectful way of talking about the
monarchy as "the business," and did not say it as if in joke.

"Are you going to business to-day, papa?" was actually the phrase
uttered in all seriousness, which had met him one of the days when he
went down to open Parliament. But though she spoke thus gracelessly of
an important State function she attended it herself with grace, and
behaved well.

The Princess Charlotte had learned many things alien to her nature; but
she had never learned that correctitude of deportment which is supposed
to accompany all those born in the regal purple from the cradle to the
grave. She substituted for it, however, something much more individual
and charming. Tall and abundantly alive, she moved in soft rushes
rather quicker than a walk; and her manner of swimming down a room, with
swift invisible run of feet, and just three long undulating bows on the
top of all--those three doing duty for so many--was a sight on the
decorum of which Court opinion was sharply divided. Yet every one
admitted that though she might lack convention or anything in the least
resembling "the grand manner"--she had a style of her own; many
also--even those who disapproved--admitted her charm. As she talked to
her chosen intimates, her two hands would go out in quick bird-like
gestures of momentary contact, while her brightly moving face gave a
constant invitation to the free entry of her thoughts. Barriers she had
none. A dangerous young person for getting her own way; for in the
process she often got not only her own but other people's as well.

At the moment when she makes her introductory bow from the pages of this
history her main and consuming desire was to secure the ordering of her
own dresses; and to obtain that preliminary measure of independence for
the expression of her own character she was prepared, in the face of
maternal opposition, to go to considerable lengths.

The King when he met her in the corridor was, as we have said,
preoccupied with affairs of State. But his preoccupation was partly put
on with intent for the concealment of other thoughts. The sight of his
daughter at that moment, embarrassed him--gave him, indeed, almost a
sense of guilt, for he held in his hand a letter from the Hereditary
Prince of Schnapps-Wasser accepting the circuitously worded proposal,
with all its delicate adumbrations of yet other proposals to follow,
that he should visit the Jingalese Court early in the ensuing
year--immediately, that is to say, upon his return from South America;
and though in his reply the veiled object of that visit was not
mentioned there was a touch here and there of compliment, of warmth, of
a wish that the date were not so far off, which indicated "a coming on
disposition."

And so, under the bright eyes of his daughter, the King was conscious of
a sense of guilt, in that he was concealing from her something in which
her future was very greatly concerned. It seemed hardly fair thus to be
pushing matters on without letting her know: and yet--what else could he
do? So, covering his affectionate embarrassment in inquiries about
himself, he shuffled past; and when he had gone a little further, turned
to take another look at her, and found, startled, that she too was
looking at him. There, at opposite ends of the long corridor, father and
daughter stood interrogatively at gaze, each feeling a little guilty,
each wondering what, at the denouement, the other would say. Then the
charming Charlotte blew him a kiss from her hand, and his Majesty did
likewise; and, off to the fulfilment of her destiny went the Princess;
and off to his fulfilment of her destiny went he; each quite sure in
their two different ways that they knew what was best for her.

III

The King found the Queen at her knitting, very placid and contented and
well pleased with herself, for she had just been giving Charlotte a mild
talking to. Charlotte had come home with adjectives in her mouth of
which the Queen did not approve, and with enthusiasms that went
riotously beyond bounds. She had talked of some Professor's translation
of a Greek play as "glorious"; and of the play itself--a play all about
expatriated women who, their proper husbands having been killed in a
siege, were forced to accept at the hands of their enemies husbands of a
less proper kind--she had talked of that play as "the most immense,
immortal, and modern thing in all drama."

"I told her," said the Queen, "that she was talking about what she
didn't understand; but she answered that she had seen it three times.
_I_ said, that to go and see the same play three times--especially a
play with murders in it--showed a morbid taste. She didn't seem to mind:
'Then I _am_ morbid,' was her reply. And when I said, 'That comes of
making friends with these intellectual women,' she only laughed at me. I
shan't let her go again, it is doing her harm; she has far too many
ideas, far too many: and where she picks them all up I'm sure I don't
know; she doesn't get them from me!"

And then the conversation--though Charlotte remained its subject--took
another turn, for the King put into his wife's hand the letter he had
received from the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser, and immediately her
comments began.

"He writes a nice hand," she said, "and expresses himself very well.
Speaks of writing a book on his travels; he must be clever. Well, at all
events, it's very evident that he means to come, and wants to. We must
ask him to send his photograph. I think, my dear, we have made a very
good choice, and Charlotte may consider herself very fortunate. But what
a pity he's not coming sooner. Well, Charlotte must wait, that's all!"

And so in her own mind the matter was settled, and only the usual
details waited to be arranged. She handed the letter back to him.

"Of course," she said, "before he comes Charlotte must have a bigger
allowance." She became meditative. "By the way, you had better leave it
in my hands; don't give it to Charlotte herself. She wheedles you, I
know; but she has ideas about dress which I am not going to encourage;
she makes herself far too noticeable as it is. Somebody has been talking
to her about 'national costume' and the folly of fashions; and she
actually said just now that she wanted to have some kind of dress that
she could wear three years running! I told her that fashions were made
to be followed, and that it was her duty to follow them. Oh, she was
quite sweet about it, and said she supposed I knew best, which of course
is true. But she had a sort of 'I'll ask papa' look in her eyes that
made me suspicious. She went out just before you came."

"I met her," observed the King.

"And she said nothing?"

"Not a word about her dress allowance."

"Ah, that's all right, then: she takes what I tell her sometimes." Then
with a quick glance the Queen asked abruptly: "Have you seen Max?"

"I fancy I may be seeing him this evening," returned the King casually,
for he wished to conceal even from his wife the importance he had begun
to attach to his son's visits.

"Something is happening," said the Queen pointedly; "at least, so I am
informed. That--that person I told you about--she isn't there now."

"However do you come to know that?" inquired the King, surprised; but
his question was ignored.

"She has gone abroad," went on his informant. "Had you said anything to
Max?"

"I did speak to him."

"Then it seems to have had its effect."

The King very much doubted whether the effect was any of his doing; but
he held his peace.

"Now we must find somebody for him," continued the dear lady, covering
the past in a tone of charitable allowance.

"I think that Max will find somebody for himself."

But this was not to her taste at all. "How can he," she objected,
"unless we send him abroad? I'm sure there's nobody here."

But the King had come recently to know more about Max than his wife did.
"Max will find somebody for himself," he repeated; "and if he thinks it
worth while, he will go all round the world on a wild goose chase to
look for her."

IV

Could the King only have known it, Max had already found his choice
nearer home. His domestic arrangements having been temporarily disturbed
by a certain lady's departure to visit her son on his estates, he had
gone off on a spurt of social curiosity to inspect the slums of his
father's capital, and on the third day of his investigation had spied,
under a nursing sister's habit, and above a gentle breast bearing an
ivory cross, the face of his dreams. Having taken scientific steps to
discover whether that particular garb entailed celibate vows, and
learning that it did not, he had industriously run its wearer to sainted
earth--had, that is to say, pursued her to a top-floor tenement and
there found her upon her knees with sanitary zeal scrubbing dirt from
the boards of poverty; and poverty upon its bed whimpering with rage and
feebly cursing her for thus coming to disturb its peace. Thus they had
met, and very promptly and practically had the wearer of the habit made
him pay the price for his intrusion by setting him there and then to
work of a kind he had never tackled before.

Who she was, and all the sacred dance that she led him on holy feet,
before she gave him that reward which was his due, will be told in the
later pages of this history. For the present Max had hardly any idea how
pure and deep a Jordan he was about to be dipped in, or how thorough a
scrubbing he himself was to receive. His voice was still like the
rollings of Abana and Pharpar, when he came on this next evening to
discourse up-to-date wisdom in his father's ears; not a hair of his
well-groomed head showed the ruffling of perturbed thoughts within, nor
were his self-confidence and easy satisfaction in the moral and mental
liberties wherein he ranged at large in any way diminished or disturbed.

When they had settled down to their talk, the King confidentially
broached the proposed visit of the Hereditary Prince of Schnapps-Wasser
and its intended significance. Max did not seem particularly impressed.
"What does Charlotte say about it?" he inquired casually.

"Charlotte does not say anything. How should she? She does not yet
know."

Max smiled. "It will be time, then, to talk about it when she does."

"But there is really nobody else; and Charlotte must marry somebody."

"Has she said so?" inquired Max. "My own impression is that she will
have to get through at least one good healthy love affair of her own
before she settles down to anything you or the Courts of Europe can
provide. After that--if you let her plunge deep enough--you won't have
any trouble; she will marry anything you offer. Of course, if you really
believed in monarchy as a principle, and not as a mere expedient--a
divine institution, and not as the last ditch in which the old
class-barriers have to be maintained--you would let her marry any one
she chose. It would do the monarchy no harm, and might do it good."

The King shook his head. "It's no use talking like that," said he. "We
are not free, any of us. The more other ranks of society have become
mixed, commercially mixed--for you know it is money that has done
it--the more we must maintain ours. Royalty must not barter itself
away."

"But you _do_ barter it," said Max, "for rank if not for gold. And the
one is really as base as the other. The great game for royalty to play
now-a-days is courageous domesticity."

"There are limits," replied his father. "We must maintain our position."

"That is just where you make the mistake," retorted Max. "You and my
dear mother are always ready to play the domestic game where it is not
important. You allow photographs of your private life to be on sale in
shop-windows; charming private details slip out in newspaper paragraphs;
one of you behaves with natural and decent civility to some ordinary
poor person, and news of it is immediately flashed to all the press. Two
years ago, for instance, when you were triumphantly touring the United
States you arrived by some accident at a place called New York; and
there, early one morning, having evaded the reporters, you stood looking
up at the sky-scrapers when you trod on an errand-boy's toe, or knocked
his basket out of his hand; and having done so you touched your hat and
apologized--you a King to an errand-boy! And immediately all America,
which yawps of equality and of one man being the equal of any other,
fell rapturously in love with you! You, I daresay, have forgotten the
incident?"

"Quite," said the King.

"But America remembers it. When you left, with all the locusts of the
press clinging to the wheels of your chariot, they dubbed you 'conqueror
of hearts'; and it was mainly because you had knocked over an errand-boy
and apologized to him. Now you do these things naturally; but they are
all really part of the business: your secretaries report them to the
press."

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