The Kingmakers

SELDEN dressed for dinner that evening with the same sense of nervous tension that he used to feel in the old days when tumbling out of bed and hustling into his clothes in the middle of the night to witness the jump-off of a big offensive. He had found a note from the baron awaiting him, naming 8:30 as the hour and the Villa Gloria on the Promenade des Anglais as the place, and expressing great pleasure that Selden was to be among the guests. Its perfect wording awakened in Selden fresh admiration for the supreme finish of the old diplomat, who was never at fault for the right word, the right look, the right gesture.

And presently, alone in a compartment of the express which hurtled through innumerable tunnels towards Nice, he had settled himself in a corner and endeavoured to draw such deductions as were possible from his afternoon’s conversation with the countess, and to decide how much of it was grist for his mill.

There was a plot, it seemed, to get the old king back on the throne. But that was nothing new. There had always been such a plot, ever since the day when the king and his family and a few adherents had been forced to flee the country. A plot was taken so much for granted, and seemed so certain to prove futile, that nobody gave it a second thought. Hitherto it had gathered to a head whenever the king was in extraordinary need of funds, and had faded away again as soon as the funds were secured from some too-credulous speculator.

But this time it seemed to be unusually serious, and involved, so the baron had hinted, not only the restoration of the king, but the financing of the country. Heaven knows it needed financing, and no doubt the baron was right—the king would be welcomed back with open arms, if only he brought some money with him. There was no doubt that he had won an immense personal popularity during his half century of power. Most of his subjects had never known any other ruler, and probably desired no other. He had mixed with them as a father with his children—an old-world father, to be sure, whose word was law. He had become a court of last resort to which his subjects were forever appealing to settle their disputes, especially their domestic disputes—a court the more highly esteemed because no fees were exacted, though the gift of a lamb, or a dozen chickens, or a crock of butter, was always appreciated.

He had lived in a state of patriarchal simplicity, carefully contrived and adroitly advertised, so that the peasant woman baked her bread with the pleasant consciousness that the queen baked hers also, and when some shopkeeper or petty farmer compared the time with the king in the public square of the capital, he saw that the king’s watch was of brass like his own. When he went to the bank to make a little deposit, he was as likely as not to encounter the king there, also putting aside a portion of his savings.

Moreover this far-seeing monarch had not relied on popular prestige alone, but had further strengthened his position by marrying his ten children into most of the courts of Europe. For his eldest son he had chosen a Hohenzollern princess; his eldest daughter was now queen of a dominion far larger than her father’s; two other daughters had captured Russian Grand Dukes; and a strange turn of fortune, combined with a bloody tragedy, had brought a grandson to a throne.

So, if any king could be safe, he had seemed to be—and yet all these safeguards had been swept away by the World War. The passion for democracy which emerged from it had decreed that kings must go, and Pietro had found himself cast aside with all the others. But a revulsion had already begun; the feeling was growing that an ordered government, however despotic, was better than a disordered one, however ideal in theory; and kings and princes, exiled in Switzerland or Holland or along the Riviera, were beginning to pick up heart of hope and gather their partisans about them.

Yet, Selden told himself, sitting there and turning all this over in his mind, despite the fact that this revulsion was being sedulously fostered by financiers and aristocrats and every one else who had been despoiled of money or power by the new order, there was not the slightest hope for any of them, except perhaps for this one canny old patriarch. Certainly there was no hope for the pompous coward at Doorn or the perjured neurasthenic at Lucerne. But for this old autocrat—well, perhaps, if he could get hold of enough money to organize an opposition and carry on a campaign. No doubt many of his mountaineers thought he was still ruling over them!

The train creaked to a stop under the great glass-roofed shed at Nice, and Selden clambered down to the platform and made his way through the exit to the street. He saw that it was only a minute or two past eight, so he drew his coat about him and started to walk.

For the first time since the outbreak of the war Nice was experiencing a really prosperous season, and it had gone to the head of that mercurial city. The newly-named Avenue des Victoires hummed with traffic, the side-walks were crowded with chattering people, happy again in having a host of strangers to despoil. The gorgeous shops on either side were a blaze of light, with their choicest wares displayed in their windows. They were devoted almost entirely to articles de luxe, and they seemed to Selden, as he glanced into them, more luxurious and far more expensive than ever.

Where the money came from no one knew, but vaster sums than ever before were being frittered away on articles of vanity and personal adornment. The wealth of the world seemed to have passed suddenly into the hands of women, who were flinging it recklessly to right and left. The season at Deauville had been marked by an extravagance wild beyond parallel, by such gambling as the world had never seen. Now it was here, along the Riviera, that the orgy was continued. And not here only, as he well knew, but in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin—yes, even in Vienna and Budapest and Warsaw, before the eyes of starving spectators—the dance whirled on. Thoughtful men looked on aghast, but no one was wise enough to foretell how or when it would end. That the end would be disaster Selden did not for a moment doubt. He even looked forward to it with a certain pleasure!

The crowds in the street had delayed him a little, so at the Place Masséna he called a cab and gave the driver the address. In a moment they were clattering along the Promenade des Anglais, before a row of stately white villas and great hotels, looking out across the wide cement promenade upon the magic sea which stretched away to the horizon.

The Villa Gloria proved to be one of the most imposing of these edifices, with entrance barred by high iron gates, which were passed only after Selden had given his name and it had been duly checked upon a list in the hands of the concierge, who took a good look at him, evidently suspicious of any one arriving in a public cab. The establishment was plainly an elaborate one—maintained, so gossip said, from the private purse of the daughter who still retained a throne.

His hat and coat were taken from him by a bearded functionary in the native costume—which, to American eyes, savours so much of the bull-ring!—and another led the way up a wide stair, opened a door and announced him.

The room he entered was evidently the salon, but it was deserted except for the Baron Lappo, who was hastening forward across its empty spaces. Selden, rather taken aback, wondered uneasily if he could have mistaken the hour, but if he had, there was no sign of it in the baron’s greeting.

“It is a great pleasure to see you again,” he was saying. “I have spoken of you to the king, and he is most desirous of meeting you. I shall take you to him at once.”

Selden murmured his thanks and followed the baron down the length of the long room to a door at the other end. The baron knocked and, a voice bidding him enter, opened the door and motioned Selden to precede him. Stepping through, Selden found himself in a little room, blue with tobacco smoke, which was evidently the king’s work cabinet. An imposing figure was seated at a desk near the window, and a secretary with a sheaf of papers was just making his escape through an opposite door.

Lappo led him forward.

“This is M. Selden, Your Majesty,” he said.

The figure at the desk rose to its feet—an impressive height.

“I am glad to meet you, sir,” said the king, in excellent English. “I have heard much of you and congratulate you upon your brilliant achievements.”

Selden, considerably abashed by this greeting, had the impression that he was shaking hands with an institution rather than with a man. The Institution of Royalty. He murmured something and sat down, in obedience to the king’s gesture. The king also reseated himself, his chair creaking loudly, but the baron remained standing.

Selden had seen a good many kings in the course of his career, but none who looked the part as this one did. The tall and dignified King of the Belgians was the closest second, but he lacked the picturesqueness, the air of mastery and profundity, which marked this old man. He sat there as though he ruled the world; he imposed himself.

He wore, as always, the costume of his country, rich and colourful with embroidery, and for head-covering a flat round brimless cap of blood-red satin, with his arms in gold upon the front. It became oddly his dark, semi-oriental countenance, with its hawk-nose, its grizzled moustache drooping on either side the full lips, and its deeply cleft chin. But it was the eyes which impressed Selden most. They were very dark and very large, and had a peculiar cast, or lack of focus, which gave them the effect of looking not at one, but into and through one and out on the other side, distinctly disconcerting until one grew used to it. Indeed, just at first, Selden had the impression that the king was gazing fixedly at some one behind him.

“I hope you will not mind,” went on the king, “if I speak in French. I speak English, it is true, and I have insisted that all of my children should learn that language, though I regret to say that some of them forgot, as they forgot other of my teachings, after they left my house. But I have not in it the precision which I have in French.”

“It astonishes me, sir, that you speak English so well,” said Selden. “I found very few people in the Balkans who could speak it at all, unless they had lived in America.”

“Ah, monsieur,” said the king, a little sadly, “when one’s kingdom is so small that from its centre one can see almost to its borders, and when beyond those borders are age-old enemies searching ceaselessly for an avenue of attack, one must take care to neglect nothing. As you perhaps know, I have had six daughters and four sons. Yes, I believe in large families,” he added, with a smile. “I once had a most interesting discussion upon that subject with your great Roosevelt. We found ourselves in entire accord. I wish I could have married one of my girls to one of his boys—it would have been for the good of the race!”

Selden nodded his agreement. Yes, that would have been a new strain! He was more and more fascinated by this astonishing old man.

“But what I wished to say,” went on the king, “was this—that since my kingdom was such a small one—small, you understand, monsieur, in size, but very great in spirit, in tradition and in pride—it was necessary that I strengthen myself wherever possible by alliances. So my children were taught many languages, English among them, and since I could not permit them to be wiser than their father, I was forced to learn them too, though of course I learned them much less readily. But the effort they cost me has been many times repaid by the ability they gave me to converse with men of many nations, whose minds would otherwise have remained closed to me, and to read many things of which otherwise I should have been ignorant—your interesting articles upon my country, for example, and upon Austria and central Europe in general. I congratulate you again upon them—their point of view is not always mine, but I can see that they have been based upon an accuracy of observation and breadth of sympathy altogether unusual. Will you have a cigarette? No? Tobacco is my one dissipation—I am getting too old for any other.”

He took a fat Turkish cigarette from a case on his desk, lighted it carefully, and blew an immense gust of smoke toward the ceiling.

“When my good Lappo told me this morning of having met you yesterday,” he went on, “and suggested that you be asked this evening half an hour in advance of the other guests, I thought it a most happy idea. Lappo has many happy ideas,” with a smile at the baron. “I should be lost without him. Having read your articles, I welcomed the opportunity to explain to you something of my point of view. It is no secret that I am trying to regain my kingdom, of which I have been unjustly deprived. I shall continue to try until I succeed, or until I die. It is a point of honour with me. But I infer from your articles that you would not be sympathetic toward such a restoration?”

“It seems to me, sir,” Selden answered, “that the republican form of government is best for any people, because it opens the way for opportunity and self-development. And I do not believe in the hereditary right to rule—to dispose of people’s lives and fortunes, and to control their happiness.”

“I do not see,” said the king, “that the hereditary right to rule differs in principle from the hereditary right to property. Because this right is sometimes abused, I do not suppose that you would abolish it altogether?”

“No,” said Selden, “I have not yet got quite as far as Communism. But I think hereditary fortunes—all wealth, indeed—should be limited and controlled.”

“So should the hereditary right to rule be limited and controlled—as it is in England, perhaps. Ah, I can see what you are thinking,” added the king, with a smile. “You are thinking that deposed monarchs are always democrats; that I am a new convert to this idea—but there you are wrong. I gave my people a constitution long ago. It was not as liberal as England’s, true; but one cannot scale a mountain at a single bound. One must climb step by step. Even republics are not always perfect!”

“Oh, they never are!” Selden agreed. “They sometimes do disgraceful things—unaccountable things—ours has in turning its back on Europe. But however ignorant and selfish they may appear, they are nevertheless a step forward toward the liberation of mankind.”

“Perhaps so; but I repeat that it may sometimes be too long a step to take safely all at once. My argument, monsieur, is this: One cannot suddenly give complete liberty to a people who for centuries have been accustomed to guidance and control without running the risk of very grave disaster. Civilization is the result of people working together, of a vast co-ordination. When government fails, and the people fall apart into little groups, each working for itself, civilization fails too. Rather than take such a risk, the wise man proceeds slowly and with caution—he seeks to lead the people upward gradually, a small step at a time.”

“That is true, sir,” agreed Selden. “The trouble is that in the past they have often not been led upward at all, but kept ground down in the mud at the bottom of the pit by the fear and the greed of their rulers. If they have progressed, it has been in spite of their rulers.”

“In the past, perhaps; not in the future. That day, monsieur, will never return. The war has liberated the world from slavery to old forms and old ideas.”

“I believe so with all my heart,” said Selden. “Our task is to keep it from sliding back again.”

“But the war was not able to make men wise all at once,” said the king. “So we must also take care not to become the slaves of new ideas which are worse than the old ones, or which are really only the old ones cleverly disguised with a new name. There will always be in the world, monsieur, men who seek wealth and power for unscrupulous and selfish ends. As I look about me at the present state of Europe, I fear sometimes that it is falling into the hands of such men. I fear....”

There was a tap at the door. The king glanced at a little clock on his desk.

“The other guests are arriving,” he said, and rose. “I have enjoyed our talk very much, M. Selden, and especially your frankness. We must continue it sometime. Meanwhile I confide you to the good Lappo,” and he bowed with the most engaging cordiality.