King John of Jingalo Part 12

Yes. It was too late. The King knew it. He had known it from the moment the discussion started. Even the Queen was beginning to know it.

Charlotte, sweet, smiling, and determined, held them in the hollow of her hand. Newspaper headlines, if properly manipulated, will defeat in its own domestic circle any monarchy that is now existing.

So the long and short of it was that the King promised Charlotte her allowance; and the Queen sat by and heard, and did not object. And as the Princess pa.s.sed out to follow her own avocations, whatever they might be, she gave each of her parents the nicest kiss imaginable, thanking them quite humbly for that which they had been powerless to withhold.

The King looked enviously on that bright presence as it flitted away, calm, wilful, and self-possessed; and much he wished that he could conduct his own affairs with the same gay insouciance, and emerge with as much success. Max might be able to manage it, but not he.

The Queen's voice broke in on his deliberations.

"Jack," said she, "we must get her married."

It was her Majesty's remedy for that new portent, the revolting daughter. And there and then she started to discuss ways, means, and dates for bringing the wished-for affair to a head. The dear lady was already exuberantly hopeful. A carefully selected portrait of the Hereditary Prince of Schnapps-Wa.s.ser now stood on the central table of her boudoir, and only two days ago she had spied Charlotte looking at it. A fine, adventurous figure, it stood out prominently from all the uniformed splendors surrounding it. "Who is this person in fancy costume?" Charlotte had asked, and the Queen, alive in certain fundamental instincts, had cleverly informed her that it represented one who had been driven by his musical taste to a three years' wandering in the wilderness, and who, though still sadly under a cloud, was now obliged to return to his princely duties. Charlotte did not know, as she looked with amused pity on that sunburnt visage of adventurous youth, that she was gazing on the remedy for her own ailments, nor did she or any one else guess to what surprising results the attempted application of that remedy would lead.

It was quite sufficient for the Queen's gentle lines of diplomacy that Charlotte now knew who he was, that he was presently returning to Europe, and would, on his way or soon after, present himself at the Court of Jingalo. In another quarter her Majesty was less contented, she had not yet found any one good enough for Max; and as the quest added greatly to her daily correspondence, she felt it as a burden and an anxiety, for she did not want to hear of another case of morals.

II

To the King, on the other hand, Max had become a very real and positive relief. The "Max habit" had grown and flourished exceedingly; and as this history deals largely with the mental developments of King John of Jingalo we must follow him to his hours of training and set down their record wherever we can find room for them.

His Majesty told Max of the Charlotte affair that same evening.

Max chuckled. "So Charlotte is not to disapprove of vivisection?" he commented. "How very characteristic that is of the way we have to avoid giving countenance to any movement or change of opinion till it is backed by a majority."

"Is it not our duty to avoid all matters of controversy?"

"If it is we do not act on it. There is much controversy to-day on the subject of vivisection; but that did not prevent you quite recently from bestowing a high mark of favor on its foremost exponent. What you dare not do is bestow a similar mark on one who is opposed to it. Your favors go only to those who represent a majority; minorities are carefully shut away from your ken. You are taught to believe that they are unimportant.

Whereas the exact opposite is the truth; for it is always the minorities who have made history and brought about reform."

"Are you still quoting your book at me?" inquired the King.

"I am always quoting it," said Max, "or, rather, I am composing it. Yes; this is the beginning of a chapter which I am about to put together with your help and a.s.sistance."

"Make it a mild one!" entreated his father.

"I a.s.sure you, sir, that throughout I am understating the case. We have already discussed the question of a monarch's relation to the political and religious controversies of his day. Is he any more truly in contact with the national life on its intellectual side? The only occasion on which I meet at your Court any representatives of literature, or art, is when popular authors and dramatists have come among a miscellaneous gathering of pork butchers, politicians, stock-brokers, bankers, and other prosperous tradesmen to receive at your hands the now somewhat tarnished honor of knighthood. They come in a strange garb hired for the occasion, and they go again. How much have we ever troubled ourselves about the value and quality of their work, or as to why they were selected? Are they the men, think you, who will be reckoned a hundred years hence the artistic and literary giants of their day? I doubt if anybody thinks so except themselves. Is it not rather because by winning contemporary popularity they represent the trade values of their profession, something that can be made to pay, and which, when it does pay, invites public recognition and encouragement? We give small pensions to the specially deserving, I know, to save them from the extremes of poverty and ourselves from disgrace; but to those pensions do we ever add a t.i.tle? No; t.i.tles are the reward of prosperity."

"But, my dear Max," said the King, "how do you expect me to judge of such things? I should only make mistakes."

"You have for your advisers," answered his son, "some twenty men drawn from all departments of life; ought you not to be able to rely on them?

When you came to the throne one of our greatest literary men lay bed-ridden, dying quietly of old age. He had received a State pension, for he was poor; he was a giant whose work was done; and he had never in all his life been to Court. Did it occur to you to go and pay this old man reverence? Did it occur to any of your advisers to suggest that you should? Yet in the past kings have done these things, and history has remembered to praise them for doing it. No, sir, we are out of touch with all the really great things that are going on around us in literature and art; for whenever anything new is really great it inevitably divides opinion; and wherever opinion is sharply or at all evenly divided we are out of place. You are under exactly the same orders as those which Charlotte received from my mother--you must not go down into the garden while the gardeners are actually at work; only when they have finished you may come and gather the results. You are run by the State merely to give prestige to the established order, and you must not support things that are not already popular."

"You are mistaken, Max," said his father, in despondent protest.

"Nothing whatever prevents me; only I haven't anything to take hold of."

"Yet I have been credibly informed," replied Max, "that when you go to see a so-called problem play of the more intellectual kind, it is arranged for you to go in Lent, for the simple reason that during that period of fasting it is against etiquette for the papers to make any announcement of the fact."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed the King.

"You were not aware of it, then? Yet it is all arranged for you by the Comptroller-General. Tell him that you wish to go and see _The Gaudy Girl_ presently, on its five hundredth performance, and he will raise no difficulty whatever. Tell him that you intend to be present at a performance of _Law and Order_, a piece that has managed to hold on through thirty performances in spite of the many interests opposed to it, and difficulties will immediately occur to him. Your going would revive the fortunes of that play; and as it makes a very direct attack upon our present judicial system, you can have nothing to do with it.

Yet I hear that as a result of its production modifications in our criminal procedure have already been discussed."

"Max," said the King, "you are quite unfair! Our last State performance was of a play that attacked the very things you are always talking about, money-lending, gambling, commercial greed, and the rest of it; and it was the Comptroller-General himself who selected it."

"There!" exulted Max, "now you have given me an example, and I will tell you what happened. You had as your guest the king of a country possessing a real school of drama which is affecting the whole of the European stage. What did we do in his honor and for the honor of our dramatic literature? We chose a play of sixty years ago--our worst period--a piece of clever bombastic fustian mildewed with age; and we chose it merely because it contained the greatest possible number of small 'effective' parts in which 'star' actors could strut across the stage, make their bow before an extremely distinguished audience, and speak their lines in the ears of royalty as the accepted representatives of modern drama. And how they did speak them! How they clung to their entries and exits, how they ga.s.sed, and gagged, and threw in fresh 'business' to extend the all too brief time of their appearing; and what an abysmally boring performance the whole thing was! Over a score of these leading actors and actresses had appeared in a similar gala performance on the occasion of your coronation, twenty-five years ago.

Most of them are now living on their past reputations, but they have become established; and so that woeful exhibition of utterly used-up material was royalty's public recognition of drama in this country!

There, then, you have our connection with art! What good do you suppose we do by countenancing performances like that? We are merely employed to flatter the popular choice and to fatten out the drama in its most commercial connection. All that was done to suit the managers. It gave a pleasant little fillip to the star-system on which most of our theaters are now run; every theater contributed its quota and secured its proportion of reward."

"I was under the impression that they all gave their services."

"Just as you gave yours. You were all busily engaged in making each other popular, and in maintaining your prestige; and you were all very well paid for your trouble."

"But what else do you expect me to do?" exclaimed the unhappy monarch irritably. "All this destructive criticism of yours is so easy; but what does it lead to? Nothing!"

"Revolution," declared Max, "peaceful, bloodless revolution! Whenever any matter is submitted to you over which you have control and a deciding voice, do the unexpected, and you will nearly always be right!

That is the biggest revolution in this unwritten Const.i.tution of ours that I can suggest. Do it, and then watch the results."

"But, for instance, do what?"

"Well, go for a beginning to the very plays your Comptroller refrains from recommending or tries to dissuade you from. Oh, you won't come upon anything shocking; quite the reverse. That play, _The Gaudy Girl_, which I spoke of just now, is about to be revived in a new form--with additions. No doubt it will draw enormously; and as a fortune has been spent on it you would do a popular thing by attending the first performance. It is a risky and indecent piece, but no one will object, on that score, to its receiving the royal patronage."

"How possibly can it be indecent," protested the King, "when it has already run for five hundred nights at one of our leading theaters?"

Max smiled. "Father," he said, "in all your life have you ever once been in a crowd--formed part of it, I mean? Well, then, how can you tell? I have. There is plenty of indecency in a Jingalese crowd--especially indecent suggestion; and it is crowds the theaters have to cater for."

"Still, they have the Censor to reckon with."

"The Censor!" exclaimed Max. "Have you ever asked the Lord Functionary, who controls him, to show you the text of the plays he pa.s.ses?--or gone further in order to compare them with those he does not pa.s.s? Till you have, you know nothing about the Censor's protective powers. He merely protects the existing order of things, like yourself; whatever is paying and popular it becomes his duty to countenance. Well, all that is strictly within your own department, for the supervision of the morals of the stage is still a royal prerogative outside parliamentary control.

And I tell you this--that if you were to begin exercising your prerogative conscientiously you would get into more intimate touch with the popular will than would suit the calculations of your ministers. As for the Lord Functionary, he would probably resign. He might be glad of the excuse. Just now there is a considerable row on, and he finds himself in hot water. When you see him you had better ask him about it; and as he is technically the keeper of your conscience you really have a concern in the matter. What has he been doing? Oh, merely drawing the usual invidious distinction between adultery treated seriously and adultery treated as a joke. Under this latter and more popular form it is now occupying with success half the theaters in Jingalo. And if you want to see the deeps open, and understand what they contain,--well, there you have your cue: follow it! Only do that, and you will light such a candle--Ah! now I am quoting from English history; and as I am only concerned with that of Jingalo--I perceive that my present chapter has come to an end. May I take another cigar?"

III

All this time the King had sat cautiously imbibing the stimulus of his son's words. They sent a curious glow through his system; for they touched on the very point which was now daily engaging his thoughts--how, in connection with his own ministerial problem, to do the thing which Bra.s.shay did not expect without thereby involving the prestige of the monarchy in ruin. He looked at his son, so full of self-confidence, so easy and unconcerned in the opinions of others, and very greatly he envied him.

"Max," he said slowly, "you are a very dangerous character."

And Max was flattered, as your man of words and not of deeds always is flattered when the attributes which belong by rights to his betters are ascribed to him.

Nevertheless, in this instance the epithet was well earned, for these secret potations of Max were having their effect upon the King's brain; they reproduced in facsimile the cerebral excitement which had followed upon his fall, and touching the same spot kindled in him a curious mental ardor, which sent him to his Council a different person altogether, one whom his ministers were finding it difficult to recognize and still more difficult to reconcile to their plans. Only when the effects had died down towards the end of each day did the King become himself again. Obstreperous till noon, he would then quiet down by degrees till, at six o'clock, his spirits had reached a strange nadir of depression. Had Bra.s.shay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Bra.s.shay did not know. And then, night after night, came Max with his tangle of words and whipped him into fresh revolt.

He still carried the memory of that last conversation--that chapter which Max had composed into the echoing cavities of his brain--when he next encountered the Lord Functionary.

Certain questions of court etiquette and procedure having been disposed of: "By the way," said his Majesty, "I was told yesterday that you are being criticised--in the play department, I mean."

The Lord Functionary had been spending sleepless nights in a scrambling attempt to acquire a literary education; but his own royal master was the last person to whom he would give himself away; so he only smiled with that air of deference and self-complacence which all court officials know how to combine. "I have heard rumors of it, sir," he replied, in a tone of easy detachment.

"Who are making the complaints?"

"Certain members of Parliament, I believe. They have const.i.tuents to satisfy; and under a democracy, of course, autocrats can never do right."