I
Inside the Council, meanwhile, curious and uncomfortable things had been happening. The King's talkativeness had steadily increased; no one could reduce him to reason.
"He reminds me," said one of his ministers irritably, "of the school-boy's story of the tea-kettle which discovered locomotion. Off boiled the lid: 'Why!' cries the observant inventor, 'put that upon wheels and it would go!' So he put it upon wheels and it went. He is exactly like that tea-kettle on wheels, miraculously set going without any inside reason to guide him! In my opinion before long there will have to be a regency." He tapped his skull meaningly, but in the wrong place: he should have tapped the back of it.
"What? Prince Max!" ejaculated his auditor; "I should hardly call that a remedy!"
"Nothing can be worse," declared the other, "than things as they are!"
In that he made a mistake; they were going to be much worse. The King's new mental activities were only just getting into their stride; and from a very unexpected quarter he was about to receive aid.
At the Council board, where the King had now found voice, one alone sat humorously interested and amused—the Minister of Fine Arts. He was not an artist himself—had he been he would never have been allowed to occupy that position; he was a Professor of History, Teller by name, and more than any of his fellow-ministers he studied life. Nothing interested him so much as the human machine; and to see this rather humdrum monarch suddenly developing into a tea-kettle on wheels, as his colleague had so happily phrased it, filled him with profound interest and an underlying sympathy.
Dimly the King had become aware that somewhere in that body of adroit shufflers who were supposed to minister to his constitutional needs the confused cry of his conscience had evoked an echo. He saw under a high bald forehead kindly eyes watching him; and it was a kindly voice charged with considerateness which one day, over a matter in which time pressed, begged for a further interview.
International exhibitions had become the vogue; and in putting on its peace paint for the Jubilee, Jingalo had determined to maintain its prestige among the nations by holding a conversazione of the Arts. In matters of that sort his Majesty had no particular taste; but in an art exhibition it was his duty to be interested. If need be he would open it, and would say of art and of its relations to the national life anything that the commissioners required of him. He would also lend any pictures from the royal collection which did not leave too obvious a gap upon the walls. All this was a mere matter of course; but the occasion being important—one of the great events indeed of the Jubilee festivities—it was expected of him that he should give a rather special consideration to the final plans.
Though wearied by the circumlocutions of his Council which had lasted throughout the morning, he named an hour, and at six o'clock received his minister in private audience.
The Professor began to explain matters in the usual official tone, but before long perceived that the attention paid to him was merely formal. The King sat depressed, listless, and cold. This renewal of the official routine found him mentally fagged out; it was evident that his thoughts were elsewhere.
Making the matter as short as he could in decency, the Professor folded his memoranda and returned them to his pocket.
Recalled to himself by the ensuing silence the King spoke—
"I really don't know enough about it to say anything," he murmured. "No doubt you have arranged everything for the best." But still he remained seated as though the interview were not ended, and the minister had perforce to remain seated also.
"I fear that to-day we have wearied your Majesty," he said at last to fill up the pause. "The Council is sometimes very trying."
The King lifted forlorn eyes in a sort of gratitude upon this, the least troublesome of all his ministers. "You, at least," he answered, "have not to reproach yourself, for I noticed that you did not speak."
"I was listening," answered the Professor; "I was much struck by your Majesty's line of argument."
"You agreed?"
"I cannot separate myself from my colleagues," returned the minister cautiously; "but I recognized the strength of your Majesty's case. On its own premises, if well put, it becomes unanswerable."
"I hardly thought that I had put it well." The King's voice showed despondency.
"To be perfectly frank, sir," said the Professor, tempering the amiable twinkle of his gaze with a deferential movement of the head, "you did not. The historical argument requires a knowledge of history."
"You remind me of another of my deficiencies, Professor."
"It is shared, your Majesty, by nearly the whole of the Cabinet. Very few of us, sir, knew anything more of it than you; and those of us who did were intent on concealing our knowledge."
"Very considerate, I am sure."
"Not at all, sir: our knowledge would have given strength to your argument."
The King sat up a little at this confirmation of his suspicions. "Do you mean, then, that my ministers make it a part of their duty to conceal from me the truth?"
"Some truths, sir," submitted the Professor, "may have undue weight given to them, which it then becomes a councilor's duty to correct. After all, history is only history; if at times we cannot break from it we shall never get anywhere."
"Yet all to-day," protested the King, "history, precedent, and the Constitution are the words that have been drummed into my ears, for all the world as though I, and not you, were the preacher of subversive doctrine."
"Your Majesty will remember that in this country we have had three successful revolutions against the Constitution. In one the monarchy was successful, in two the people."
"Is that said as a warning?"
"By no means, sir; merely to show that precedents lie on both sides like dry bones in the wilderness. But it requires the power of a prophet to call those dry bones to life. At present I see no prophet in Israel."
"Yet every member of the Government prophesies."
"I noticed, sir, that you did not. Never once did you pretend to know what the future would bring forth: you only pointed to the past, deducing therefrom your duty, as you conceived it, to the Constitution. Conditionally that commanded my respect."
"Surely," said the King, "I am bound, whatever the conditions, to hold sacred a trust which has been committed to me by inheritance."
The Professor bowed. "With your Majesty," he assented, "the hereditary principle must naturally be strong: it is implanted in your blood. I have no such impulse in mine. My father was born in a workhouse."
"That is very remarkable," said the King. "To have attained to your present position, your life must have been full of interest and adventure."
"Full of interest—yes. Adventure—no. Very plodding, very uneventful, almost monotonous apart from mental happenings. Now and then an unsought stroke of fortune. That is all."
"How did you ever get into the Cabinet?" inquired the King, in a tone that betrayed a sort of puzzled respect.
"Merely to fill a gap in a ministry whose days were numbered. Then an unexpected turn of the wheel kept us in power, and I remained. It was an inglorious arrival, but I found I could be of use: a sort of connecting line between incompatibles. I am not unpopular with my colleagues, and left alone in my department, I go my own way."
"And what is your way?" inquired the King, still searching for guidance.
"I do nearly everything as my permanent officials tell me, recognizing that while ministers come and go permanent officials remain and acquire experience from both sides. On the other hand, I use my own discretion in the hastening or suspension of the superannuation clause; I promote by results and not by seniority. My department, in consequence, is the most efficient in the whole Civil Service, and I have less work to do than any other minister. Thus I am left with more leisure and energy to devote to the consideration of policy, and affairs in general."
"And do you approve," inquired the King, "of the present policy?"
The minister paused. "I think the pace is about right," he said reflectively.
"The pace?"
"Yes; government to-day, sir, is largely a matter of pace, the actual measures do not so much matter. Modern democracy is making for something of which we are all really—the governing classes I mean—profoundly apprehensive: and the problem now is to let it come about without actual catastrophe. When I used the word 'pace,' I had a certain graphic illustration in my mind—an incident I once heard from the manager of a railway—the recountal of which will show your Majesty what I mean.
"A passenger train, before arriving at the head of a long, evenly graded declivity, had taken on three or four good trucks heavily laden. Owing to some carelessness in the coupling these wagons became detached on the very crest of the descent, and falling to the rear came almost to a halt. Not quite: sluggishly at first they began to move, and gathering impetus from sheer weight followed in the track of the proceeding train. Halfway down the declivity, the engine-driver discovered his loss and the danger that threatened him. Looking back, he saw in the distance the wagons weighted by the labor of men's hands drawing nearer with a speed that grew ever more formidable. His one chance, therefore, of avoiding a catastrophe was to put on pace in the hope of arriving at more level conditions before the impact took place. Yet he must still limit himself to a speed which enabled the train to keep to the rails on a certain sharp curve which lay ahead. That was the problem which the engine-driver set himself to solve: up to a certain point the more pace he could allow the greater his chance of safety, beyond that point a new danger arising out of pace lay ahead of him."
The minister paused.
"What happened?" inquired the King.
"He negotiated the curve with success, and had got so far ahead that when the wagons finally overtook him their impetus had been diminished by the more level conditions of the road, and the impact was but slight. Only the guard's van was smashed, and the guard himself rather badly disabled."
"And what happened afterwards to the guard and the engine-driver?" inquired his Majesty, much interested.
"The guard was pensioned for life: the engine-driver was promoted."
"And whose fault was it—the guard's?"
"Well, not exactly," replied the Professor; "the careless coupling was done by others, but the guard had the right, which he had not chosen to exercise, to refuse to accompany any train in which his van was not put last—so as to embrace the whole combination. At least, he had the technical right."
"I suppose he did not wish to give trouble," said the King meditatively.
"Very likely; for, of course, had he exercised his right the whole train would have been delayed by the extra shunting."
"And he in consequence a less acceptable servant to his employers."
"No one could have blamed him."
"Not for excess of caution?" queried the King. "Did you not yourself say that on those lines government would become impossible? You have to run your railway system, it seems, with a certain risk of accidents—otherwise you would never be up to time."
"That is so," said the Professor. "In every political crisis it is pace more than principle that I find one has to consider. If it is solved in such and such a way, our pace will be so and so, and the question—will it take us safely over the curve? If it is solved in another way so that the pace slackens, those wagons in the rear may be down upon us."
"And the guard, whose control, while the train makes its running, is but nominal, is then the first to suffer!" He saw himself in the man's place. "Poor glow-worm!" he cried, "he may change the green light in his tail to red—or was it red to begin with? but it is no use! Those proletarian forces descending upon him from the rear are quite blind in their purpose: it is merely dead weight and impetus that send them along." And then he pulled up abruptly, astonished to find that he was talking in Max's manner. Was it so catching?
"Not wholly blind, sir," said the Professor; "believe me, they mean well—mainly to themselves, no doubt: that is only human nature. Every body in the community, whether energized or sluggish, has some weight attached to it; and the more that bodies can agree to combine the greater is their weight politically. One has to recognize that consensus of opinion carries with it a certain moral as well as physical force. Out of that springs the evolution of our governing system."
"Only I," said the King, "in the nature of things have always to stand alone."
"Sir, you have all history!" said the Professor.
"Which, as you have reminded me, I do not know."
"May I inquire, sir, whether you have a real wish to know?"
"Why, naturally!" exclaimed the King. Whereupon the Professor, as though laying aside something of his officialdom, took up an easier attitude and addressed himself to the point.
"It would, I think, sir, be quite compatible with my duty to my colleagues were I to send your Majesty a few volumes of constitutional history with certain appropriate passages marked. It would interest me very greatly to hear the argument developed on the lines you have already laid down. The history I would venture to send is a thoroughly reliable and standard authority, written by an eminent jurist to whose words we later historians still bow. As I said, sir, pace is to-day the thing which really matters; beyond a given pace we, certainly, are not able to go. Luckily for our present plans there is no source from which any forcing of the pace seems probable. I do not think this or any other ministry dare attempt it. Speaking for ourselves any increase of the present pace would, I conceive, become a grave embarrassment. If, therefore, your Majesty has been apprehensive of our adopting any increase of speed, I think you may be reassured. After the constitutional readjustment our pace is scarcely likely to grow dangerous."
The Professor had managed to indicate that these were—if so it might be allowed—his last words. The King rose.
"I shall be much obliged, Professor," said he, "if you will lend me the books you have mentioned. When may I look for them?"
"Sir," said the Professor, in smooth matter-of-fact tones, "it so happens that I have them with me in my carriage. I will have them conveyed to your Majesty immediately."
And therewith he bowed over the King's hand and departed.