III
The Thanksgiving was a very splendid affair; but the people who liked it least were the piebald ponies. Never in their lives did they so narrowly escape a hugging at the hands of the great unwashed; and this unwelcome demonstration as directed against them was quite without reason or excuse. They had not had brain-fever, or bones put back into place, or made miraculous recoveries from anything; and they practically said as much when resenting the liberties that were taken with them. All they knew was that they were doing rather more than their usual tale of work; and in consequence they were a little cross. Nothing serious happened, however, and while waiting at the Cathedral doors they were given sugar which quieted them down wonderfully.
Inside the Cathedral all that was great and good and noble in Jingalo had assembled to celebrate the occasion; and in its midst, still looking rather frail and delicate after his illness, sat the King with the Royal Family. To right and left of him sat judges, bishops, lords, ladies, members of the House of Laity, staff officers, diplomatists, mayors, and corporations, heads of public departments, all very gorgeously arrayed in their official uniforms; and there amongst the rest sat a compact bunch of prominent Free Churchmen in black gowns—their chances of episcopal preferment flown.
With triumphant suavity the Archbishop of Ebury conducted the service, assisted by deans, chapters, bishops, and a dozen cathedral choirs. Something in G was being intoned; the Archbishop was in splendid voice.
He asked that the King might be saved; and, man and boy, the twelve choirs were with him.
He asked a blessing on the Church; and his prayer was seconded.
He implored wisdom for Cabinet ministers; that, it was agreed, would add to the national satisfaction.
"In our time, O Lord, give peace!"
Peace: the echoes of that blessed word thrilled down the vaulted aisles of the Cathedral.
Put into another form that might mean, "After our time, the deluge." But the better word had been chosen: "Peace."
To the King's ear it came with all the softness of a caress; he welcomed it, for it meant much to him. And thinking of all that was now happily past he rubbed his hands.
The watchful reporters in the press-gallery above took notes of that; to them, whose duty that day was to interpret all things on a high and spiritual plane, it betokened the stress of a fine emotion, and in their grandiloquent reports of that solemn ceremony they set it down so and published it.
Yet as a matter of fact, the King had only rubbed his hands. And, truly interpreted, his thoughts ran thus—"Peace? Well, yes, I think that now I have earned it! Here am I, still King of Jingalo, alive and in my right mind. During the last few months I have abdicated—put myself off the throne, and been blown on to it again by a bomb engineered by my own Prime Minister; I have been arrested, I have been locked up in a police cell, I have committed robbery, and in my own palace been robbed again. My daughter has been in prison for ten days as a common criminal; my son seriously assaulted by the police, and for about four months surreptitiously engaged to the daughter of an Archbishop; while a revolutionary and seditious book written by him as a direct attack on the Constitution and on society has been providentially burned to the ground—that also, probably, at the instigation of my ministers. And though all this has been going on in their midst, making history, bringing changes to pass or preventing them, the people of Jingalo know nothing whatever about it. What a wonderful country is the country of Jingalo!"
And at that happy conclusion of the whole matter the King had rubbed his hands.
THE END
[1] Jingalese equivalent for "Black Maria."