King John of Jingalo

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"What?" exclaimed the King, startled.

"Why, of course! The errand-boy didn't know you from Adam, and no one
but your private secretary was with you at the time; at least, so I
gathered: it was before breakfast and you had given the detectives the
slip. Well, then, merely by letting your human nature and your sense of
decency have free play you help to run the monarchic system--you almost
make a success of it. But you stop just where you ought to go on. You
are natural--you are yourself--where there is no opposition to your
being so. If you would go on being natural where there _is_
opposition--where all sorts of high social and political reasons step in
and forbid--you would find yourself far more powerful than the
Constitution intended you to be, for you would have the people with you.
There is a mountain of sentiment ready to rush to your side if you only
had the faith to call it to you. Have you not noticed, whenever a royal
engagement is announced, how every paper in the land declares it to be a
real genuine love-match? And you know--well, you know. I myself can
remember Aunt Sophie crying her eyes out for love of the Bishop of
Bogaboo whom she fell in love with at a missionary meeting and wasn't
allowed to marry; and six weeks later her engagement to Prince
Wolf-im-Schafs-Kleider was announced as a sudden and romantic
love-match! Why, he had only been sent for to be looked at when the
Bogaboo affair became dangerous; and so Aunt Sophie was coerced into
that melancholy mold of a jelly which she has retained ever since.

"Now that is where my grandfather showed himself out of touch with the
spirit of the age. Had he allowed Aunt Sophie to marry the Bishop and go
out during the cool months of the year to teach Bogaboo ladies the use
of the crinoline--it was just when crinolines were going out of fashion
here, and they could have got them cheap--he would have done a most
popular stroke for the monarchy."

"But you forget, my dear boy," said the King, "the Bogaboos were at that
time a really dangerous tribe--they still practised cannibalism."

"Yes, they still had their natural instincts unimpaired; the Christian
substitute of gin had not yet taken hold on them, and their national
institution still provided the one form of useful martyrdom that was
left to us. Had Aunt Sophie, or her husband, been eaten by savages there
would have been a boom in missions, and both the Church and the monarchy
would have benefited enormously. Royalty must take its risks. Kings no
longer ride into battle at the head of their armies: even the cadets of
royalty, when they get leave to go, are kept as much out of danger as
possible. But if royalty cannot lead in something more serious than the
trooping of colors and the laying of foundation-stones, then royalty is
no longer in the running.

"Now what you ought to do is--find out at what point it would break with
all tradition for you to be really natural and think and act as an
ordinary gentleman of sense and honor, and then--go and do it! The
Government would roll its eyes in horror; the whole Court would be in
commotion; but with the people generally you would win hands down!"

"Max, you are tempting me!" said the King.

"Sir," said his son, "I cannot express to you how great is my wish to be
proud of your shoes if hereafter I have to step into them. Could you not
just once, for my sake, do something that no Government would
expect--just to disturb that general smugness of things which is to-day
using the monarchy as its decoy?"

The King gazed upon the handsome youth with eyes of hunger and
affection. "What is it that you want me to do?" he inquired.

Max held out his cigar at arm's length, looked at it reflectively, and
flicked off the ash.

"Don't do that on the carpet!" said his father.

Max smiled. "That is so like you, father," he said; "yes, that is you
all over. You don't like to give trouble even to the housemaid. Now when
you see things going wrong you ought to give trouble--serious trouble, I
mean. You ought, in vulgar phrase, to 'do a bust.'

"When I was a small boy," he went on, "I used to read fairy stories and
look at pictures. And there was one that I have always remembered of a
swan with a crown round its neck floating along a stream with its beak
wide open, singing its last song. To me that picture has ever since
represented the institution of monarchy going to its death. The crown,
too large and heavy to remain in place, has slipped down from its head
and settled like a collar or yoke about its neck. Its head, in
consequence, is free, and it begins to sing its 'Nunc dimittis.' The
question to me is--what 'Nunc dimittis' are we going to sing? I do not
know whether you ever read English poetry; but some lines of Tennyson
run in my head; let me, if I can remember, repeat them now--

"'The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full, and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold!'

"That, my dear father, is the song I wish to hear you singing--that I
want to take up, I in my turn after you. I want your voice now to be
awful and jubilant, and your carol to be 'free and bold' like the carol
of that dying bird; and the sound of it to be like the rejoicing of a
mighty people on a day of festival."

The King shook his head. "My dear boy," he said, "I don't understand
poetry; I never did."

"Well," said the son, "let me interpret it then into prose. Monarchy as
an institution is dying, and it can either die in foolish decrepitude,
or it can die mightily, merging itself in democracy for a final blow
against bureaucratic government. All that is written in my book. That is
why I am now able to express myself so well: these periods are largely a
matter of quotation. The right role for monarchy to-day is, believe me,
to be above all things democratic--not by truckling to the ideas of the
people in power--the 'ruling classes' as they still call themselves--but
by daring to be human and natural, and to refuse absolutely to be
dehumanized on the score of its high dignity and calling.

"If, for instance, I came to you to-day and said I wanted to marry one
of my own nation--say even a commoner--in preference to the daughter of
some foreign princeling, let me do it! It breaks with a foolish
tradition--largely our own importation when, as foreigners, we were
seeking to keep up our prestige--it may annoy or even embarrass the
Government. Well! have they not annoyed and embarrassed you?"

The King nodded sympathetically, but in words hastened to correct
himself. "One has often to make sacrifices in defense of an
institution," he said. "That is a duty we both owe."

"Why," inquired the Prince, "should I make sacrifices to an institution
I do not really approve? Why should I pretend to love some foreign
princess if I have given my heart to one--I cannot say of my own
race--for I remember that we are an importation--but of the country of
my adoption? Do you really suppose that because it annoys the Prime
Minister and disturbs his political calculations, an alliance within
those artificially prohibited degrees imposed on royalty will lessen the
influence of the Crown by a straw's weight, or quicken its demise by an
hour? This country, like all civilized countries, is moving towards some
form of republican government. If we are sufficiently human, if we show
ourselves determined to call our souls our own--it is not merely
possible, it is probable, that when the change comes we shall be called
on by popular acclaim to provide the country with its first President.
If we did we could secure for that presidency a greater power and
prestige than any bureaucratic government would willingly concede. It
may be that the real counter-stroke to the present increase of Cabinet
control can most effectively be administered by a monarch who is not too
careful to preserve the outward forms of monarchy. When that is done, by
you, or by me, or by one who comes after us, I am confident that there
will be the sound of a people's rejoicing."

"You have strange ideas," said the King, "for one who calls himself a
monarchist."

"I am a republican," said the young man.

The King stared at him as though at some strange animal. "You don't say
so!" he murmured half aghast. "Supposing the Prime Minister were to find
out."

"He will soon," said the Prince. "I shall be sending him a copy of my
book on the day of publication."

The King shook his head warningly. Then he smiled, a shy nervous smile.
"It would be very awkward," he said slowly, "very awkward indeed, if you
happened to come to the throne just now. I really don't know what
Brasshay would do. But it's too late for me to begin that sort of
thing--far too late now."

CHAPTER V

CHURCH AND STATE

I

All this while other swan-songs were in preparation to be forced down
other throats (and thence presently to be rejected); forced with that
gentle air of persuasion which rears its lying front over all forms of
"peaceful picketing." Starvation and stuffing were the two methods to be
employed.

While the Government was picketing the King with threats of withdrawal
from office, and the Labor Party the Government with threats of a
national strike, the Government was preparing to picket the Bishops by a
process of forcible feeding--a plethora of their own kind be thrust upon
them--of their own kind but of a very different persuasion. And now at
last the Bishops understood that the doubling of their dioceses was but
a device of Machiavellian subtlety for the halving of their
temporalities.

The Bishops had just opened their holy mouths to protest when the
approach of the Jubilee festivities shut them up. The Church of Jingalo
was on a tight and established footing, and had to conform to the
commercial, conventional, and constitutional requirements of its day;
for you cannot, if you are by law established, play fast and loose with
those institutions on which a nation bases its prosperity. So even when
the Government proposed the creation of demi-mondain bishops, and the
setting up of what amounted to a second establishment in the upper
chamber of its spiritual spouse, the outward proprieties were still
observed, and the sanctities of national interests respected. It is true
that the Bishop of Olde, lifting from his bed a burden of ninety years,
climbed up into the central pulpit of his diocese to preach a sermon
which was ecstatically applauded by all Churchmen, and committed
thereafter to the keeping of a carefully selected few. It won for him
the affectionate nickname of "Never-say-die" and put his followers into
a hole from which they never afterwards emerged. And so the Bishops
entered into the loyal silence of the Jubilee truce with a flush of
conscious rectitude upon their faces; while behind closed doors the
Prime Minister and the Primate Archbishop of Ebury had met to talk
business, to drive conditional bargains, and to kill time till such
other time as seemed good to them.

They met at the town-residence of the one Bishop of the Establishment
who had lent a favorable ear to the Prime Minister's proposals.
Boycotted by his brother Bishops this solitary pelican in piety was
still on terms of official acquaintance with his titular head. Placing
his well-stored nest at the disposal of the two combatants, he retired
for a discreet week-end into the wilderness; and the Prime Minister and
the Archbishop, after announcing in the press that they also had gone
elsewhere, came together by appointment for the indication of ultimatums
and the fixing of dates when ju-jitsu was to commence.

When the Prime Minister arrived his Grace the Primate, attended by his
chaplain, was already in the house. An ecclesiastical butler carried
word to the chaplain, and the chaplain carried it to the oratory.

The Archbishop finished his prayer; it served the double purpose of
strengthening him in his resolve to present a firm front that for the
time being could do no harm, and of keeping his opponent waiting. The
effect did not quite come off. Under that enforced attendance, the Prime
Minister had turned his back on the door, and wrapt in contemplation of
the book-shelves stood as though unaware that the Primate had made his
state entry. It was a pity that he should have missed it.

The Archbishop came into the room bearing in his hands a large Bible,
subscribed for and presented to him by a general assembly of Church
clergy and laity when the constitutional crisis first began to loom
large. It was fitting, therefore, that it should now accompany him to
the field of battle. Corners of silver scrollwork, linked together by
bands and clasps of the same metal, adorned its surface, and over the
glowing red of its Venetian leather binding, lambs, lions, eagles,
doves, and pelicans stood lucently embossed, bearing upon their
well-drilled shoulders the sacred emblems and mottoes of the
ecclesiastical party. More important and more central than these showed
the proud heraldic bearings of the metropolitan see of Ebury, crowned
with a miter which its occupant never wore, and a Cardinal's hat for
which he was no longer qualified.

All these collective sources of inspiration the Archbishop bore in
monstrant fashion with hands raised and crossed, and, moving to the
strategic position he had previously selected, set down upon the table
before him. While thus designing his way he exchanged formal salutation
with his antagonist.

"And now, sir," said he, bowing himself to a seat, "now I am entirely at
your disposal."

"And I at yours," said the Prime Minister.

But the Archbishop corrected him. "I am here, I take it, rather to be
informed of the latest novelties in statecraft than to admit that any
fresh standpoint upon our side has become possible." Slowly and solemnly
he rested his hands upon the presentation volume as he spoke; across
that barrier, representative of the spiritual forces at his back, his
small diplomatic eyes twinkled with holy zeal. He was an impressive
figure to look at, and also to hear: over six feet in height, with dark
hair turned silver, of a ruddy complexion, portly without protuberance,
and with a voice of modulated thunder that could fill with ease, twice
in one day, even the largest of his cathedrals. As a concession to the
world he wore flat side-whiskers, as a concession to the priestly office
he shaved his lip. By this compromise he was able to wear a cope without
offense to the Evangelicals,--his whiskers saving him from the charge of
extreme views. Under his rule, largely perhaps because of those
whiskers, peace had settled upon the Church; and in consequence it now
presented an almost united front to its political opponents.

All his life he had been accustomed to command. Even in the nursery, as
the eldest child and only son of his parents, he had ruled his five
sisters with that prescriptive mastery which sex and primogeniture
confer. At school he had pursued his career of disciplinarian first as
"dowl-master," then as captain of teams, then as prefect with powers of
the rod over senior boys his superiors in weight. Continuing at the
University to excel in games, he became at twenty-four a class-master in
Jingalo's most famous public school. Marrying at thirty a lady of title,
he acquired the social touch necessary for his completion, and five
years later was appointed Head. Left a disconsolate widower at the age
of forty-seven, he drew dignity from his domestic affliction, received a
belated call to the ministry, took orders, and became Master of
Pentecost, only on the distinct understanding that a bishopric of
peculiar importance as a stepping-stone to higher things should be his
at the next vacancy. The vacancy occurred without any undue delay; and
from that bishopric, after three years of successful practice, he passed
at the age of fifty-five to the crowning grace of his present position.
Thence he was able to look back over a long vista of things successfully
done and heads deferentially bowed to his sway--deans, canons, priests,
sisters--a pattern training for a humble servant of that Master whose
Cross, as by law established, he was now helping to bear. Even the Prime
Minister, facing him with all his parliamentary majority at his back,
knew him for a redoubtable opponent. This fight had long ago been
foreseen by the Church party, and it was for the fighting policy he now
embodied that Dr. Chantry had received nine years previously his "call"
from collegiate to sacerdotal office. A large jeweled cross gleamed upon
his breast, and a violet waistcoat that buttoned out of sight betokened
the impenetrable resolution of his priestly character.

"And now, sir, I am at your disposal," said he; and sat immovable while
the Prime Minister spoke.

II

The Prime Minister's argument ran upon material and mathematical lines;
he imported no passion into the discussion,--there was no need. He had
at his disposal all that was requisite--the parliamentary majority, the
popular mandate, and, so he believed, the necessary expedient under the
Constitution for bringing the Church to heel. Episcopalianism no longer
commanded a majority of the nation; Church endowments had therefore
become the preserves of a minority, and scholarship by remaining
denominational was getting to be denationalized. Having laid down his
premises he proceeded to set forth his demands. Henceforth the
Universities were to be released from Church control, all collegiate and
other educational appointments to be open and unsectarian, scholarships
and fellowships, however exclusive the intentions of their pious
founders, were to follow in the same course; degrees of divinity were to
be granted irrespective of creed, and chairs of theology open to all
comers.

At this point the Archbishop, who had hitherto sat silent, put in a
word.

"That will include Buddhists and Mohammedans. Is such your intention?"

The Prime Minister corrected himself. "I should, of course, have said
'all who profess themselves Christians.'"

The Archbishop accepted the concession with an ironical bow.

"Unitarians and Roman Catholics?"

"That would necessarily follow."

"I am ceasing to be amazed," said his Grace coldly. "We, the custodians
of theological teaching, are to admit to our endowments the two extremes
of heresy and of schism."

"If both are admitted," suggested the Prime Minister, "will they not
tend to correct each other? We study history by allowing all sides to be
stated, and we admit to its chair both schools, the scientists and the
rhetoricians. Why, then, should not theology be studied on the same
broad lines?"

"Will the chair of theology become a more stable institution," inquired
the Archbishop, "by being turned into a see-saw?"

The Prime Minister smiled on the illustration, but his answer was edged
with bitterness.

"That is a way of securing some movement at all events," he remarked
caustically.

"The Church," retorted his Grace, "denies the need of such movement. Her
firm foundations--we have scriptural warrant for saying--are upon rock.
She is neither a traveling menagerie, a swingboat, nor a
merry-go-round."

"Yet I have heard," said the Prime Minister, "that she takes a ship to
be her symbol, and one, in particular, very specially designed to be a
traveling menagerie--containing all kinds both clean and unclean."

"The unclean," said the Archbishop, "were by divine dispensation placed
in a decisive minority."

"Yet they shared, I suppose, the provisions of the establishment?"

"They did not, I imagine, sit down at the table with the patriarch and
his family."

"Perhaps the dogs ate of the crumbs?"

"It is not 'crumbs' that you are seeking," said the Archbishop with
asperity. "From our chairs of theology we dispense to the Church the
bread of wisdom from which she draws sustenance; and you ask us to let
that source of her intellectual life become infected with microbes,--at
a time when latitudinarian doctrines are sapping the unity of the Church
and weakening her discipline, to allow their establishment as a
principle in our centers of learning and in our seats of divinity! What
claim to denounce heresy and schism will be left to the Church if in her
very government heretics and schismatic teachers receive posts of
influence, emolument, and authority? To what extremes may not the minds
of our students be led, to what destruction of ecclesiastical
discipline?"

"If you will admit free teaching in the Universities," explained the
Prime Minister, "we shall not seek to touch your theological seminaries,
or to invade your orders by an infusion of fresh blood."

"Invade our orders?" cried the Primate. "That you cannot do; no Bishop's
hands would bestow them!" and he drew back his own with a declamatory
gesture. "You yourself are not a Churchman, and you do not perhaps know
what to us the Church means. We hold in sacred trust the power of the
Keys--if we surrender those we surrender everything."

"They are in a good many hands already," remarked the Prime Minister
blandly. "Episcopal power is not limited to the Church of Jingalo." And
then for the first time, as a pawn in the political game, the
Archimandrite was mentioned. The Archbishop could not believe his ears.
"You would not dare," he said.

"I am sorry," replied the other, "that you should be under any such
misapprehension. Let me remind you that only a year ago you yourself
recommended him for an honorary benefice--a church that had not a
parish."

"Yes, honorary; not with administrative powers."

"Yet I fancy it was devised in order that at a later date you might
employ him--merely by accident as it were--for confirming the validity
of your orders."

"While your device," said the Archbishop, "is to use him as a means for
placing schismatics in a position of control and authority. Sir, I say
to you that you would not dare. The nation will not allow it."

"Time will show," replied the other smoothly.

"Ah!" cried the Archbishop passionately; "you trust to time; I to the
power of the Eternal. If such an attempt is made to violate the body of
our Mother Church then I pronounce sentence of excommunication upon all
who take part in it."

"It would have no legal effect," said the Prime Minister. "You miss the
point in dispute. We have not to discuss matters of faith and doctrine,
but only of government. If you prefer--if you will give us your
co-operation and consent--we are ready at any time to offer you the
alternative of disestablishment. It is a solution which for the moment I
do not press; but undoubtedly it would leave the spiritualities of the
Church more free. Your real fear, I have gathered, is that it would
prepare the way for extremes of doctrine, which you yourself cannot
countenance. The Church Triumphant, I am told, would run the risk of a
larger recognition than is allowed to it under present forms; and the
limitations imposed by a State connection are your most hopeful means of
retarding doctrinal development. Is not that so?"

"We have not to discuss matters of doctrine," countered the Archbishop
stiffly, "but only of government. Our concern is not with the Church's
teachings but with her powers for enforcing them upon her own members."

"Including," commented the Prime Minister, "what you have called 'the
power of the Keys.' That power you seek to extend over temporalities to
which we claim access; and to retain it you have in the past used
political means; we are using them to deprive you of that power. I
recognize that had your Grace occupied to-day the position of advantage
which is now mine, you would have used it--and with justification--for
the strengthening of your order; from the popular verdict you would have
had authority to deliver sentence against me. Upon the same ground I now
take the only sure means that are open to me to strengthen my own order
and to safeguard its future liberty."

"What is your order?" smoothly inquired his Grace.

"My order is the representative system, which voices the popular will."

"Mine," said the Archbishop in richly reverberating tones, "is divine
revelation, which voices the will of God."

"You claim a closer acquaintance with that Authority than I," remarked
the Prime Minister. "Yet I, too, have faith in the efficacy of its
workings."

"We base our faith differently," retorted his Grace. "I have my
principles; you, as you have just boasted, have your opportunity. I do
not think that opportunities are of the same eternal character as
principles. To-morrow your opportunity which now seems to give you
power, may disappear. My principles will remain."

"I shall always respect them, in their proper place. As an adornment to
the Church I am sure they will continue to shine. In the State they have
become an excrescence and an impediment."

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