II
The King went into his study, turned on a light, and sat down. He had, as he had told his guide, many things to think about. It was no use going to bed, for he knew that he could not sleep.
These last few hours had been the most wonderful, and the most crowded—yes, quite literally the most crowded—that he had ever experienced. At last he had really taken part in the life of his people, and had come into direct contact with things very diverse and contradictory, representing the popular will. He had talked with street urchins, and visionaries, had rubbed shoulders with men of brutal habit and vile character,—with knaves, cowards, fools; he had been shut up with drunkards and pickpockets, policemen's thumbs had left bruises upon his arms, and all his mind was one great bruise from the bureaucratic police system which had him fast within its grip.
Now at last he knew that he knew nothing; for only now did he realize it. To what was going on outside his ears had been stopped with official lies; morally, intellectually, and physically he was a prisoner, just as much as when, to the cry of "Old Goggles," from a jeering crowd, he had marched captive to the police-station. He knew now that even his private life was watched and spied on—always, of course, with the most benevolent intentions. This was the price he paid for modern kingship; and what was it all worth?
Out of his pocket he drew a small sheet of crumpled paper. In order to get this to him, a poor, timid woman had gone out into a raging crowd, had borne its brutality for hours, and then, a piteous bundle of broken nerves, had by sheer accident accomplished that which hundreds of others, braver, abler, more confident, and more deserving, had tried to do and failed. Morally this small slip of paper had upon it the blood, and the tears, the sweat, the agony, and the despair of all the rest; and only by accident had he ever come to know of it!
Here, almost within a stone's throw of his palace, he had seen something taking place which to-morrow the papers would deride, and of which the official world would deny him all cognizance. Whether these women had truly a grievance, any just and reasonable cause for complaint, he did not know. But he knew now that, with the most desperate earnestness and conviction, that was their belief, and that in getting their petition to his hands they saw the beginning of a remedy.
He spread out the paper before him, and for the first time read the words—
"Humbly showeth that by your Majesty's Ministers law and justice are delayed, and prayeth that your Gracious Majesty will so order and govern that your faithful subjects' grievances may forthwith be sought and inquired into, and remedy granted thereto by Act of Parliament. And your petitioners will ever pray."
That was all. What the grievances might be was not stated. He knew that to hear argument for or against a given case was outside the functions of the Crown; but he knew equally well that to order inquiry to be made lay still within his right, though every minister in the Cabinet except one would seek to deny it to him. And so he sat looking at the crumpled sheet which meant so much to so many thousands of lives; and slowly the night went by.
Long before the first chitter of awakening birds, and before the first hint of light had crept into the east, he heard outside the slow stir of the city's life breaking back from short uneasy slumber. With stiffened limbs he got up from his chair, for the room had grown cold and his body ached with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening and corners draped into shade.
Halfway across this elevation he paused to look down into the vast chamber below. At some point among its chandeliers burned a small pinhole of light that revealed in a strange dimness various forms of furniture, showing monstrous and uncouth in their night attire. Night-gowns rather than pajamas seemed the general wear; only a few legs were to be seen. In this, its sleeping aspect, the place was certainly more harmonious and more chaste than by day; mirrors and pictures loomed from the white walls with a mystery that would disappear when the lusters contained their light; and the King lingered to take in the pleasant strangeness of it all, and to wonder what was this new quality which so attracted him.
As he did so his ear caught from without a faint reverberation of muffled sound; even and regular in its beat, it drew near.
At the far end a door was thrown open; a flush of light entered the chamber, and there came following it a troop of men wearing felt slippers and long linen aprons, and bearing upon their shoulders brooms, feather-heads, wash-leathers, brushes, dusters, steps, vacuum-cleaners, and other mysterious instruments of an uninterpretable form.
With the regularity and precision of a drilled army, and with no word spoken, they moved forward to the attack. Curtains were drawn, cords pulled, blinds raised, steps mounted. Lusters jingled to the touch of feathers, cornices shed down their minute particles of dust to the Charybdian maw of traveling gramophone. Over the carpet metallic cow-catchers wheezed and groaned with a loud trundling of wheels, and departed processionally to the chamber beyond. Then by a triple process, simultaneously conducted, the furniture-sheets were lifted, drawn off, and folded; a large wicker-table on wheels received and bore them away. A cloud of light skirmishers followed after; and over every cushion and seat and polished surface plied their manicurist skill. Then a storming-party escaladed the gallery from below and the King, to avoid the embarrassment of an encounter with a body of servitors who had not the pleasure of his acquaintance, was at last obliged to retire.
But what a wonderful machine had been here revealed to his gaze—manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of wear or the marks of muddy boots? Yet never before had any thought on the matter occurred to him. And what if some fine day those insects, fired by revolutionary zeal, had taken it to heart to rise up in their dozens by those escalading ladders to the first story and rush the private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed! What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm, very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every November? Did that really meet and counter modern methods of conspiracy and assassination, or the growing dangers of labor unrest? He very much doubted it.
And so, with his head very full of the wonder, the order, and the underlying disturbance of it all, he passed on to his own inner chamber, and had now something to tell the Queen as to how their immediate domestic affairs were conducted which should entirely put aside all awkward questions as to what he had been doing the evening before and where he had spent the night.
But, as a matter of fact, sleek officialdom had sheltered the Queen from all anxiety, and she had not a notion that the King had been anywhere except to some consultation with ministers, and thence late to bed.
In order that his valet might find him there he got into it, and when, a couple of hours later, he greeted her Majesty he found that sanguine mind looking eagerly ahead and concerning itself very little over things which were past.
"Remember, my dear," she said, looking up from her letters, "that in three days' time the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser comes. I do hope, while he is here, that you will be fairly free."
"Not so free as I thought I should be," said the King, and he sighed heavily.
III
His Majesty had a good many things that day to discuss with the Prime Minister when at a later hour they met. He began on the matter which was most regular and formal; had he been at all likely to forget it the Queen's observation would have reminded him.
"By the way, Mr. Premier," he said, "as you already know, the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser arrives in a day or two; and there are certain possible eventualities arising out of his visit which we must be prepared for. Hitherto the Princess Charlotte has had no definite grant made to her. While she was still living with us, without an establishment of her own, I preferred to let the matter stand over. But now—well, now a change may be necessary."
The Prime Minister's face beamed with congratulatory smiles. "Your Majesty may be sure that the matter shall have immediate attention."
"There will be no difficulty?"
"Oh, none whatever."
"I will leave all question of the amount to be discussed later. I believe that it is etiquette, in the case of a reigning Prince, for him also to be consulted."
"That is so, sir."
"The Prince himself is very wealthy; and I think that you will find him disinterested. Still there is, of course, a certain balance to be observed."
"Oh, quite."
"I leave the matter, then, entirely in your hands."
The Prime Minister bowed.
And then the conversation changed.
"You know what happened to me last night, I suppose," said the King.
"Ah, yes, indeed, sir! You will pardon my silence; I was most horrified. But I thought that perhaps your Majesty did not wish to speak of it."
"On the contrary," replied the King, "I have got a great deal to say." And then, with much detail and particularity, he narrated his experience—all those hours which he had spent in the crowd; and the Prime Minister listened, saying nothing.
"Well," said the King, when he had done, "that is what I have seen; and you cannot tell me it is something that does not matter."
"By no means, sir; I admit that it is very serious."
"I was never told so before."
"We did not wish unnecessarily to trouble your Majesty. This is hardly a case for Cabinet intervention; the Home Office does its duty, takes preventive measures as far as is possible, and puts down the disturbances when they arise."
"Yes, yes," said the King, "but is nothing going to be done?"
The Prime Minister raised his eyebrows, as though asked to reply once more to a question already answered.
"Everything possible is being done, sir."
"Legislatively, I mean."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed the head of Government in a tone of the most deferential protest, "that surely is a matter for the Cabinet."
"Quite so," said the King. "That is why I ask."
So then the Premier explained circumstantially and at great length why, in that sense, nothing whatever could be done. We need not go into it here—those who read Jingalese history will find the Prime Minister's reasons published elsewhere; and it all really came only to this: "It is the duty of a government to keep in power; and if it cannot do justice without endangering its party majority, then justice cannot be done."
You could not have a more satisfactory, a more logical, or a more unanswerable argument than that. And at all events—whether you agree with it or not—it is the argument that all ministers act upon now-a-days, even when, in the House of Legislature which sits subservient to their will, there is a majority ready and waiting which thinks differently of the matter, but fears to act lest it should lose touch with the loaves and fishes. For now it is on the life not of a Parliament but of a Cabinet that losses are counted. And the reason is plain; for every member of a Cabinet has to think of saving for himself some £5,000 a year together with an enormous amount of departmental power and patronage; while an ordinary private member of Parliament has only his few hundreds to think about and his rapidly diminishing right to any independence at all. The life and death struggles of a ministry are bound, therefore, to be more desperate, more unscrupulous, and more pecuniarily corrupt than those of any other branch of the legislature. And, of course, when we put all the leading strings into fingers so buttered with gold, political corruption is the necessary and inevitable result, and such incidental things as mere justice must wait.
But the Prime Minister did not explain matters to the King in such plain and understandable terms as these; and, as a consequence, his explanation being incomplete, his Majesty's mind remained unsatisfied.
"Very well," said he, when the ministerial apologia was concluded; "I will consider what you say, and when I have quite made up my mind I will send a message to Council with recommendations; I still have that right under the Constitution."
The Prime Minister stiffened. Here was conflict in Council cropping up again; it must be put down.
"That right, sir," said he, "has not been exercised for nearly a hundred years."
"I beg your pardon," said the King, "I exercised it only two months ago, when I sent in the message of my abdication."
"Which your Majesty has been wise enough not to act upon."
"Which, nevertheless, you were forced to accept, and would have had to give effect to, ultimately, by Act of Parliament."
That was true.
"By the way," went on the King, "arising out of that withdrawal of my abdication which you say was so wise, there has come a difficulty I had not foreseen. Believing that by now my son would be upon the throne instead of me, I gave my consent to his marriage with the daughter of the Archbishop. Yes, Mr. Premier, you may well start: I am just as much perturbed about it as you; for the Prince now comes to me and claims the fulfilment of my promise."
"Impossible, sir!" exclaimed the Prime Minister.
"That is what I tell him. He does not think so."
"But, your Majesty, this is absolutely unheard of. The whole position would be intolerable!"
"I indorse all your adjectives and your statements," said the King coldly; "but the fact remains."
"Then, sir, I must see the Prince, immediately."
"It is no use, no use whatever," replied his Majesty. "Besides—the matter is still rather at a private stage. You had much better wait till the Prince comes to you; otherwise he may accuse me of having been premature."
"But what does the Archbishop say?" cried the Premier, aghast.
"That is the point; I believe he does not yet know. Technically speaking, the engagement is scarcely a day old. The Prince's note claiming my promise reached me only this morning, and I imagine it is only now that the Archbishop will have to be informed. Hitherto the matter has been in suspension. You will understand it was dependent—on my abdication, I might say."
"In that case, sir, the conditions are not fulfilled."
"I fear they are," said the King; "the Prince has my promise in writing; and abdication is not mentioned. You see, it was the bomb that made all the difference. Very provoking that it should have happened just then; it upset all my plans!"
The Prime Minister began to look very uncomfortable.
"Oh, no," went on the King, observing his change of countenance, "don't think that I am blaming you. What you said was quite true; abdication after that became impossible; I am only saying it as an excuse for the position in which I now find myself. It was not I who made the mistake, it was that poor misguided person who threw the bomb; he ought to have killed me. I am confident that, had the Prince been actually on the throne, the situation would have been radically altered, that he would not have persisted—that he would have seen, as you say, how impossible the position would be. Very unfortunate—very—but there we are!"
"But again I say, sir, that even now, though the Prince is not on the throne—and long may your Majesty be spared!—the whole thing is absolutely and utterly impossible."
"I quite agree," said the King; "but that is the situation. Before now I have found myself in similar ones, and have tried to get out of them; yet I have seldom succeeded."
"But this, sir," persisted the Prime Minister, "is politically impossible. Things could not go on."
"And yet, Mr. Premier, you know that they will have to; that is the very essence of politics."
"I tell your Majesty that rather than admit such a possibility the Ministry would resign."
"Very well—then it must," said the King. "But you will find that the Prince will not regard my inability to secure an alternative Government as any reason why he should not marry the lady of his choice. I may as well tell you, for your information, that he has revolutionary ideas, and this is one of them."
"I am confident," exclaimed the Prime Minister, with a gleam of hope, "that the Archbishop himself will forbid it."
"Very likely," replied his Majesty; "but I am not sure that he will succeed. I wish he could; but from all I hear the lady herself is of a rather determined character. Women are very determined now-a-days."
He thought of Charlotte and sighed; and yet, in his heart, he could not help admiring and envying her.
"We will talk of this all again some other time," he went on, tired of the profitless discussion. "After all the marriage is not going to take place the day after to-morrow."
"Sir," said the Premier, "over a matter of this sort any delay is impossible—the risk is too great. I must see the Prince myself."
"Very well," said the King, "do as you like. After all I ought to be glad that it is with the Prince you will have to discuss the matter, and not with me."
And he smiled to himself, for he very much liked the thought of the Prime Minister tackling Max.