CHURCH AND STATE

I

All this while other swan-songs were in preparation to be forced down other throats (and thence presently to be rejected); forced with that gentle air of persuasion which rears its lying front over all forms of "peaceful picketing." Starvation and stuffing were the two methods to be employed.

While the Government was picketing the King with threats of withdrawal from office, and the Labor Party the Government with threats of a national strike, the Government was preparing to picket the Bishops by a process of forcible feeding—a plethora of their own kind be thrust upon them—of their own kind but of a very different persuasion. And now at last the Bishops understood that the doubling of their dioceses was but a device of Machiavellian subtlety for the halving of their temporalities.

The Bishops had just opened their holy mouths to protest when the approach of the Jubilee festivities shut them up. The Church of Jingalo was on a tight and established footing, and had to conform to the commercial, conventional, and constitutional requirements of its day; for you cannot, if you are by law established, play fast and loose with those institutions on which a nation bases its prosperity. So even when the Government proposed the creation of demi-mondain bishops, and the setting up of what amounted to a second establishment in the upper chamber of its spiritual spouse, the outward proprieties were still observed, and the sanctities of national interests respected. It is true that the Bishop of Olde, lifting from his bed a burden of ninety years, climbed up into the central pulpit of his diocese to preach a sermon which was ecstatically applauded by all Churchmen, and committed thereafter to the keeping of a carefully selected few. It won for him the affectionate nickname of "Never-say-die" and put his followers into a hole from which they never afterwards emerged. And so the Bishops entered into the loyal silence of the Jubilee truce with a flush of conscious rectitude upon their faces; while behind closed doors the Prime Minister and the Primate Archbishop of Ebury had met to talk business, to drive conditional bargains, and to kill time till such other time as seemed good to them.

They met at the town-residence of the one Bishop of the Establishment who had lent a favorable ear to the Prime Minister's proposals. Boycotted by his brother Bishops this solitary pelican in piety was still on terms of official acquaintance with his titular head. Placing his well-stored nest at the disposal of the two combatants, he retired for a discreet week-end into the wilderness; and the Prime Minister and the Archbishop, after announcing in the press that they also had gone elsewhere, came together by appointment for the indication of ultimatums and the fixing of dates when ju-jitsu was to commence.

When the Prime Minister arrived his Grace the Primate, attended by his chaplain, was already in the house. An ecclesiastical butler carried word to the chaplain, and the chaplain carried it to the oratory.

The Archbishop finished his prayer; it served the double purpose of strengthening him in his resolve to present a firm front that for the time being could do no harm, and of keeping his opponent waiting. The effect did not quite come off. Under that enforced attendance, the Prime Minister had turned his back on the door, and wrapt in contemplation of the book-shelves stood as though unaware that the Primate had made his state entry. It was a pity that he should have missed it.

The Archbishop came into the room bearing in his hands a large Bible, subscribed for and presented to him by a general assembly of Church clergy and laity when the constitutional crisis first began to loom large. It was fitting, therefore, that it should now accompany him to the field of battle. Corners of silver scrollwork, linked together by bands and clasps of the same metal, adorned its surface, and over the glowing red of its Venetian leather binding, lambs, lions, eagles, doves, and pelicans stood lucently embossed, bearing upon their well-drilled shoulders the sacred emblems and mottoes of the ecclesiastical party. More important and more central than these showed the proud heraldic bearings of the metropolitan see of Ebury, crowned with a miter which its occupant never wore, and a Cardinal's hat for which he was no longer qualified.

All these collective sources of inspiration the Archbishop bore in monstrant fashion with hands raised and crossed, and, moving to the strategic position he had previously selected, set down upon the table before him. While thus designing his way he exchanged formal salutation with his antagonist.

"And now, sir," said he, bowing himself to a seat, "now I am entirely at your disposal."

"And I at yours," said the Prime Minister.

But the Archbishop corrected him. "I am here, I take it, rather to be informed of the latest novelties in statecraft than to admit that any fresh standpoint upon our side has become possible." Slowly and solemnly he rested his hands upon the presentation volume as he spoke; across that barrier, representative of the spiritual forces at his back, his small diplomatic eyes twinkled with holy zeal. He was an impressive figure to look at, and also to hear: over six feet in height, with dark hair turned silver, of a ruddy complexion, portly without protuberance, and with a voice of modulated thunder that could fill with ease, twice in one day, even the largest of his cathedrals. As a concession to the world he wore flat side-whiskers, as a concession to the priestly office he shaved his lip. By this compromise he was able to wear a cope without offense to the Evangelicals,—his whiskers saving him from the charge of extreme views. Under his rule, largely perhaps because of those whiskers, peace had settled upon the Church; and in consequence it now presented an almost united front to its political opponents.

All his life he had been accustomed to command. Even in the nursery, as the eldest child and only son of his parents, he had ruled his five sisters with that prescriptive mastery which sex and primogeniture confer. At school he had pursued his career of disciplinarian first as "dowl-master," then as captain of teams, then as prefect with powers of the rod over senior boys his superiors in weight. Continuing at the University to excel in games, he became at twenty-four a class-master in Jingalo's most famous public school. Marrying at thirty a lady of title, he acquired the social touch necessary for his completion, and five years later was appointed Head. Left a disconsolate widower at the age of forty-seven, he drew dignity from his domestic affliction, received a belated call to the ministry, took orders, and became Master of Pentecost, only on the distinct understanding that a bishopric of peculiar importance as a stepping-stone to higher things should be his at the next vacancy. The vacancy occurred without any undue delay; and from that bishopric, after three years of successful practice, he passed at the age of fifty-five to the crowning grace of his present position. Thence he was able to look back over a long vista of things successfully done and heads deferentially bowed to his sway—deans, canons, priests, sisters—a pattern training for a humble servant of that Master whose Cross, as by law established, he was now helping to bear. Even the Prime Minister, facing him with all his parliamentary majority at his back, knew him for a redoubtable opponent. This fight had long ago been foreseen by the Church party, and it was for the fighting policy he now embodied that Dr. Chantry had received nine years previously his "call" from collegiate to sacerdotal office. A large jeweled cross gleamed upon his breast, and a violet waistcoat that buttoned out of sight betokened the impenetrable resolution of his priestly character.

"And now, sir, I am at your disposal," said he; and sat immovable while the Prime Minister spoke.

II

The Prime Minister's argument ran upon material and mathematical lines; he imported no passion into the discussion,—there was no need. He had at his disposal all that was requisite—the parliamentary majority, the popular mandate, and, so he believed, the necessary expedient under the Constitution for bringing the Church to heel. Episcopalianism no longer commanded a majority of the nation; Church endowments had therefore become the preserves of a minority, and scholarship by remaining denominational was getting to be denationalized. Having laid down his premises he proceeded to set forth his demands. Henceforth the Universities were to be released from Church control, all collegiate and other educational appointments to be open and unsectarian, scholarships and fellowships, however exclusive the intentions of their pious founders, were to follow in the same course; degrees of divinity were to be granted irrespective of creed, and chairs of theology open to all comers.

At this point the Archbishop, who had hitherto sat silent, put in a word.

"That will include Buddhists and Mohammedans. Is such your intention?"

The Prime Minister corrected himself. "I should, of course, have said 'all who profess themselves Christians.'"

The Archbishop accepted the concession with an ironical bow.

"Unitarians and Roman Catholics?"

"That would necessarily follow."

"I am ceasing to be amazed," said his Grace coldly. "We, the custodians of theological teaching, are to admit to our endowments the two extremes of heresy and of schism."

"If both are admitted," suggested the Prime Minister, "will they not tend to correct each other? We study history by allowing all sides to be stated, and we admit to its chair both schools, the scientists and the rhetoricians. Why, then, should not theology be studied on the same broad lines?"

"Will the chair of theology become a more stable institution," inquired the Archbishop, "by being turned into a see-saw?"

The Prime Minister smiled on the illustration, but his answer was edged with bitterness.

"That is a way of securing some movement at all events," he remarked caustically.

"The Church," retorted his Grace, "denies the need of such movement. Her firm foundations—we have scriptural warrant for saying—are upon rock. She is neither a traveling menagerie, a swingboat, nor a merry-go-round."

"Yet I have heard," said the Prime Minister, "that she takes a ship to be her symbol, and one, in particular, very specially designed to be a traveling menagerie—containing all kinds both clean and unclean."

"The unclean," said the Archbishop, "were by divine dispensation placed in a decisive minority."

"Yet they shared, I suppose, the provisions of the establishment?"

"They did not, I imagine, sit down at the table with the patriarch and his family."

"Perhaps the dogs ate of the crumbs?"

"It is not 'crumbs' that you are seeking," said the Archbishop with asperity. "From our chairs of theology we dispense to the Church the bread of wisdom from which she draws sustenance; and you ask us to let that source of her intellectual life become infected with microbes,—at a time when latitudinarian doctrines are sapping the unity of the Church and weakening her discipline, to allow their establishment as a principle in our centers of learning and in our seats of divinity! What claim to denounce heresy and schism will be left to the Church if in her very government heretics and schismatic teachers receive posts of influence, emolument, and authority? To what extremes may not the minds of our students be led, to what destruction of ecclesiastical discipline?"

"If you will admit free teaching in the Universities," explained the Prime Minister, "we shall not seek to touch your theological seminaries, or to invade your orders by an infusion of fresh blood."

"Invade our orders?" cried the Primate. "That you cannot do; no Bishop's hands would bestow them!" and he drew back his own with a declamatory gesture. "You yourself are not a Churchman, and you do not perhaps know what to us the Church means. We hold in sacred trust the power of the Keys—if we surrender those we surrender everything."

"They are in a good many hands already," remarked the Prime Minister blandly. "Episcopal power is not limited to the Church of Jingalo." And then for the first time, as a pawn in the political game, the Archimandrite was mentioned. The Archbishop could not believe his ears. "You would not dare," he said.

"I am sorry," replied the other, "that you should be under any such misapprehension. Let me remind you that only a year ago you yourself recommended him for an honorary benefice—a church that had not a parish."

"Yes, honorary; not with administrative powers."

"Yet I fancy it was devised in order that at a later date you might employ him—merely by accident as it were—for confirming the validity of your orders."

"While your device," said the Archbishop, "is to use him as a means for placing schismatics in a position of control and authority. Sir, I say to you that you would not dare. The nation will not allow it."

"Time will show," replied the other smoothly.

"Ah!" cried the Archbishop passionately; "you trust to time; I to the power of the Eternal. If such an attempt is made to violate the body of our Mother Church then I pronounce sentence of excommunication upon all who take part in it."

"It would have no legal effect," said the Prime Minister. "You miss the point in dispute. We have not to discuss matters of faith and doctrine, but only of government. If you prefer—if you will give us your co-operation and consent—we are ready at any time to offer you the alternative of disestablishment. It is a solution which for the moment I do not press; but undoubtedly it would leave the spiritualities of the Church more free. Your real fear, I have gathered, is that it would prepare the way for extremes of doctrine, which you yourself cannot countenance. The Church Triumphant, I am told, would run the risk of a larger recognition than is allowed to it under present forms; and the limitations imposed by a State connection are your most hopeful means of retarding doctrinal development. Is not that so?"

"We have not to discuss matters of doctrine," countered the Archbishop stiffly, "but only of government. Our concern is not with the Church's teachings but with her powers for enforcing them upon her own members."

"Including," commented the Prime Minister, "what you have called 'the power of the Keys.' That power you seek to extend over temporalities to which we claim access; and to retain it you have in the past used political means; we are using them to deprive you of that power. I recognize that had your Grace occupied to-day the position of advantage which is now mine, you would have used it—and with justification—for the strengthening of your order; from the popular verdict you would have had authority to deliver sentence against me. Upon the same ground I now take the only sure means that are open to me to strengthen my own order and to safeguard its future liberty."

"What is your order?" smoothly inquired his Grace.

"My order is the representative system, which voices the popular will."

"Mine," said the Archbishop in richly reverberating tones, "is divine revelation, which voices the will of God."

"You claim a closer acquaintance with that Authority than I," remarked the Prime Minister. "Yet I, too, have faith in the efficacy of its workings."

"We base our faith differently," retorted his Grace. "I have my principles; you, as you have just boasted, have your opportunity. I do not think that opportunities are of the same eternal character as principles. To-morrow your opportunity which now seems to give you power, may disappear. My principles will remain."

"I shall always respect them, in their proper place. As an adornment to the Church I am sure they will continue to shine. In the State they have become an excrescence and an impediment."

"You are pushing your definition of impediments rather far when you plan a new thoroughfare, giving strangers the entrée to church premises."

"It is really your definition of 'premises,'" said the Prime Minister, "over which we are chiefly at issue. What right has the Church to regard as strangers any who are baptized Christians?"

The Archbishop seized his advantage exultingly. "I will only remind you," said he, "of the Church Government Act—a measure of no ancient date—by which Parliament forced the Church to expel from benefice those who would not accept her discipline in matters of outward observance. You yourself voted for that measure."

The Prime Minister had to acknowledge the stroke; but he made light of it. "I think that measure has already become obsolete. It was not put very thoroughly into practice even at the beginning."

"Let Parliament, then, admit its error," said the Archbishop, "and abolish the act and the principle which it enshrines before proceeding with other acts diametrically opposed to it. While the law claims a hold over the Church, the Church claims to hold by existing law."

"I may possibly, then, satisfy your Grace," insinuated the Premier, "if presently I propose the restoration of certain Free Church ministers by episcopal consecration to the fold from which they were expelled."

The Archbishop rose to his feet, and raising the presentation Bible high over his head brought it down upon the table with a bang. Then instantaneously conceiving his mistake, he laid his hands over it in the act of blessing.

"Never!" he said firmly and solemnly, with ever deepening inflection of tone, "never! never!"

"It is a measure that might be avoided," conceded the Prime Minister. "The alternative is before you. We have made you our offer."

"You have offered," said the Archbishop, "an alternative which I am not able to discuss. Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism in alternate doses is the price you ask us to pay. The Church of Jingalo will accept neither the Triple Crown nor an untriune Divinity as its guide." He drew himself to his full height. "That, sir, is her answer."

"So you really think," inquired the Prime Minister, "that yours and the Church's voice are one?"

"The blood of her martyrs," said the Archbishop, "has stained the very steps of that throne from which under divine Providence I am commissioned to speak with authority. I call on them to witness that never in her hour of need shall the Church surrender her divine mission to preach only pure doctrine and to defend the faith committed to the saints."

"I thought," said the Prime Minister, "that, officially at least, you did not invoke the dead."

"Sir, we have no need. Their record is our inheritance. It is they who invoke us from an imperishable past."

"Our discussion, then, seems to be at an end. We have gone back into the middle ages."

The Prime Minister, having got very much the answer he expected, here rose and began buttoning his coat. "Well, Archbishop," said he, as he thus trimmed himself to give a neat finish to the discussion, "before we part I will put the question quite frankly: Is it to be peace or war?"

"I am a servant of the Church Militant," answered his Grace.

And then they compared notes and settled dates as to when war was to be declared. Jingalo was about to exhibit to the world the continuity of her institutions, and with her mind thus carried back to ancient times modern controversy was an anachronism.

It was on those historic grounds that they arranged their armistice; but Recording Angels are more truthful than Archbishops or Prime Ministers; and the Recording Angel, having listened to their conversation, was led to set down upon his tables this notable memorandum—that on no account were popular pageantry or trade interests to be disturbed during so golden an opportunity as the Silver Jubilee. While that was going on defense of Church and State must be relegated to obscurity.

III

All this had taken place before the truce actually began (see, in fact, Chapter II). How much, or rather how little the King had heard of it we already know. How little the truce brought benefit to him we shall learn more fully in later chapters. Still for the moment he was not without comfort, for he had got Max to talk to. Every evening that they spent together much talk went on; and the King sat infected and edified while Maxian oratory flowed.

"How is it," inquired his father, "that you have been able to think of these things? I see them when you tell me; but how did they ever come to enter your head?"

"For some years," answered Max, "I had the advantage of being your youngest son. Until I was twenty, two lives stood between me and the succession, and while Stephen and Rupert were drilling I managed to get educated."

"Poor Rupert!" murmured his father, "he would have made a much better King than either of us."

"I don't think so," said Max. "He would merely have kept the monarchy to its old lines—that means sticking in a rut. If the monarchy is to mean anything it will have to move, not merely with the times but ahead of them."

"How can it move ahead of them?"

"How otherwise can it lead? That is what the heads of the privileged classes never seem to understand. Look at the Bishops! See what a spectacle they have made of themselves, all through not leading."

"Ah, yes," sighed the King; "I thought you'd be against the Bishops."

"Against them?" cried Max, "of course I'm against them! The Bishops are a set of prehistoric remains: and even if they were all up to date, a combined house of Bishops and Judges with full legislative powers is antediluvian (I'm speaking of the Deluge now in the sense in which Louis XV spoke of it)—it's an eighteenth-century arrangement.

"Yes, I'm against the Bishops, but I'm much more against the Cabinet. The Cabinet is seeking to control not only the Upper but the Lower Chamber as well, it is fighting the Bishops merely to delude the people; and there are the Laity so stupid, or so lazy, or so corrupt that they won't see it. Every one knows that the Government sells honors for party purposes, and then covers it up by pretending that contributions to the party funds are 'public services.' Everything now is to be had for a price, a Chancellery at so much, a Knighthood at so much more; an Order of the this, that, or the other, in exact proportion to its prestige or its rarity. Last year they had a debate on it in the House, a debate where, between them, the corruptors and the corrupted were in a majority! And they solemnly took a vote on it, and declared that there was no corruption, though everybody knew it to be a fact. The Opposition lay low because they mean to do exactly the same when their time comes. Oh, and it's not only the House of Laity: I daresay a bishopric has got its price if we only knew!"

The King would have rejected such a suggestion as fantastic only a month ago; but now with the Archimandrite in his mind he began to be suspicious. What price, monetary or political, might not the Free Churchmen be paying for their bishoprics, what secret bargain of which it was no one's duty to inform him? He lashed at his own impotence, for the ignominy of his position increased with his growing consciousness. Here was the Prime Minister respectful but compulsive, able to threaten, to browbeat, to dictate terms; but he himself had no counter means to extract from that minister on what terms he was consenting to do these things or what price he was paying to get them done. How constitutionally was he to obtain knowledge of anything? And still, piling up the accusation, the voice of Max went on.

"I presume," said he, "that quite lately a list of Jubilee honors has been submitted to you for approval. What does your approval mean? Is a single one of them your own selection? Do you know what the majority of them are for?"

The King shook his head. "Mostly they are political," said he. "The Government has the right; I have no call to interfere. Isn't it perhaps better that I should not interfere?"

"It may be arguable, sir, that the uncomfortably high position to which we are born cuts us off from the more strenuously fermenting issues of the political game, and from the malignities and hypocrisies of that party system of which, as a nation, we pretend to be so proud, and are secretly so much ashamed. It may be well that some single authority should stand removed from and above party, if in the hands of that authority there is also left power of sentence and dismissal, power also to withhold unmerited reward. But that power you are no longer expected to exercise,—it lies like a china nest-egg never to be hatched, but only to promote the laying of other eggs.

"Yet while your prerogatives have been thus diminished, the claim that you shall act with judicial impartiality has increased, and has become a fetter. To oppose any course of ministerial action to-day is by implication to ally yourself with the other side. You are in the position of a judge whose directions the jury has authority to ignore, and from whose hands all power of imposing a penalty has practically been withdrawn. And these changes have been thrust upon the monarchy by the will, not of the people, but of that class or section which in the evolution of our political system happened at the time to be the ruling one. At one period it was the Church, at another the army, at another the landlord or the capitalist; it was never that latent force lying in the future, that peace-loving, industrial democracy which to-day we are still striving to hold back from its aim. These ruling powers of the past have now concentrated on the Cabinet as their last line of defense; and so at the present day it is the Cabinet which has the largest control not only of patronage (much of it corruptly applied), but of certain penalizing devices by which monetary pressure can be brought upon those who thwart its will. By its practical usurpation of the Crown's right to decree a general election, and by its control of the party funds, from which parliamentary candidates are subsidized and assisted to the poll, it is able to hold over the heads of its supporters a financial threat to which very few can remain indifferent. And this is how our so-called popular chamber is manipulated and run. The power of the purse (I speak now of the moneys voted for public service) lies almost entirely in the hands of those who themselves have the largest monetary interest for keeping away from their constituencies and maintaining their leaders in power; and as a consequence the Ministry's evasion of all regulations and safeguards, its increasing seizure of parliamentary time, its postponement of finance to a date in each session when the legislature's energies are exhausted, have become more and more corrupt in character. Why, the very minister whose duty it is to see that members are constant in their voting and their attendance is the one with whom lies, if not the distribution of patronage, at least its recommendation. He is the go-between, and they know it. How likely, then, are the rank and file to throw their Government out of office when the immediate result will be not only to transfer these bribes to the hands of their political opponents but to inflict upon themselves the cost of a contested election which privately they cannot afford, and to face which they are accordingly obliged to go, cap in hand, to the very men they have voted from power, but who still have absolute control of the party organization and its funds?"

Here Max stopped to take breath.

IV

"But can you suggest any other way?" questioned the King. "Surely we must have party?"

"I have no reason to suggest it," answered his son, "it stands written in history. Under our more ancient Constitution the House of Laity came pledged from its electorate to criticise, and to control (by the giving or withholding of supply) the acts of a separate and administratively independent body. Now Government is carried on by an administrative body, which, though nominally dependent, has at its back a majority of the elected pledged not to criticise. And the difference between the two systems is as the difference between darkness and light. That body is now forcing the monarchy also into the same non-critical attitude, or at least is securing that the criticism shall be impotent of result. And I have the right, sir, to ask what are you doing to-day to preserve for me the powers which you inherited?"

"To tell you the truth, my son," answered the King, "it is only lately that I have begun trying to find out what those powers are. It seems a strange confession to make after twenty-five years; but it is true. When I came to the throne, at a moment of great political changes, I was entirely uninstructed and quite naturally I made mistakes, letting things go when I was told to. From that false position successive ministries have never allowed me to escape; they have kept me (I have only just found it out) as uninstructed as they possibly could. They burden me with routine work, they busy my hands while starving my brain. One of their little ways—done on the score of relieving me of unnecessary trouble—has been to submit in large batches at intervals important documents requiring my assent, smuggling them in under cover of others. And when I find it out, they plead unavoidable delay and urgency, as though it were quite an exception. But I tell you it has been going on, oh, dear me, yes, for a long time now; and the General has known of it as well as any of them! The other day I made one of my secretaries go through the entries, and I find that in the last year I signed sixty Acts of Parliament and about fifteen hundred other State documents, besides mere commissions, titles, diplomas, and all that sort of thing, and I tell you that I haven't a ghost of a notion of what more than a dozen were about! They don't give me time to digest anything; and you are quite right, it's a system!"

"Well," said his son, "at least they don't treat you much worse than they do the people's representatives. It has become their regular plan now to bring in six bills all rolled into one, in a form far too big and complicated ever to be properly discussed. They insert a lot of unnecessary contentiousness at the beginning, and all the really administrative part—the machinery which provides them with political handles throughout the country, and which they call the non-contentious part—at the end; and then—on the score of it being non-contentious, and because by the time they get to it the mind of the legislature is exhausted—then they shut it down with the closure. One result is that we have laws on the statute-book which don't even make grammar. Only last session the Minister of Education got a bill sent up to the Spiritual Chamber with three split infinitives in it."

"What is a split infinitive?" inquired his Majesty.

"Merely a grammatical error for which in your day school-boys used to be whipped. You were not. It's important, because when lawyers get on to the interpretation of the law, loose syntax gives them their opportunity; they make fortunes out of the grammatical errors of Parliament. And, of course, it was a lawyer who drew up this bill."

"Do you mean that some one paid him to put in the split infinitives?" inquired the King anxiously.

"That was quite unnecessary; the thing paid for itself; good drafting is never to the legal interest. But what I wanted to say was this: here, in a House of educated men dealing with education, nobody troubled to correct the grammar of the thing. That to my mind stands out as a moral portent of the first magnitude. The Bishops quite rightly sent it back again, but for the wrong reason. Their reason was pure blind obscurantism; if they had returned it because of its split infinitives and its slovenly drafting, and requested that it should be put into decent Jingalese so that they might pretend to understand it they would have had all the enlightened educationalists in the country with them. As it was they were against them. It is curious how the Spiritual Chamber always seeks its popularity among the fools instead of the wise. It treats democracy like a dog with a bad name, and yet it is to the dog's tail that it pins its faith: and so it wags with the tail."

The King was not happy at hearing the Bishops so abused; and now a word had fallen from his son's lips which enabled him to change the subject to a point which more immediately concerned him.

"Max," said he, "answer me truly, I don't want flattery. Do you think that I am popular?"

The young man viewed his father leniently, indulgently even; the worn, fussy, over-anxious face appealed to his sense of pity. "Oh, yes, I believe so," he said. "They think you are trying to do your best and all that sort of thing. You don't enthuse them as my grandfather used to do; but, then, he had the grand manner, and the grand way of speaking as if he were an oracle. You have put all that aside—except when you make speeches which have been written for you by your ministers. Well, decent people respect you for it; but it has its drawbacks; the crowd prefers the other thing occasionally;—it likes still to pretend, at moments of ceremony, that it believes in divine right and the hereditary principle, and so forth; and where it likes to pretend, the press and the Government are always ready to play into its hands. Yes; it's a mixture; you must attend sometimes to the unrealities,—then, with your real moments, you get your effect."

"Your grandfather," said the King, "never talked to me about anything. He didn't like the idea of being succeeded, hated to think of a time when affairs would have to go on without him. I fancy that he rather despised my mental capacity, or else thought that by just looking at him I should learn. So he never talked to me—not on these subjects I mean; and I am still not sure whether I ought to talk to you. I don't really know where State secrets begin and where they end, or whether I have the right to say anything of what goes on in Council to a single living soul. I wanted to consult the Archbishop the other day—merely to hear his statement of the case from his own side—but I was not allowed. I am the most solitary man in my kingdom; and am kept so, in order that I may remain powerless."

"As Charlotte would say," observed Max, "we haven't taught each other the business. And yet, isn't it strange? Here are we, a long-established firm ('limited, entire,' I suppose we should describe ourselves), existing upon the hereditary principle, and yet not allowed to extract any of its living values. As detached forces we succeed each other upon the throne, each in turn reduced in power and initiative by our official training and our inexperience. When shall we learn to organize our labor and combine like the rest of the world?"

"I think we are combining now," said the King.

"Yes," said Max, "I really believe we are—'John Jingalo and Son'—how nice and commercial that sounds!"

"I only hope the Prime Minister won't hear of it."

"I hope he will," said Max.

OF THINGS NOT EXPECTED

I

"Charlotte!" cried the King, aghast, "what on earth is the meaning of this?"

"What is it, papa?" inquired the Princess innocently.

His Majesty shook at her the paper he had just been reading. "You have promised a hundred pounds donation to the Anti-vivisection Society! Here it is in large headlines: 'The Princess Royal supports the Anti-vivisectionists!'"

"Well, so I do."

"But you mustn't," said her mother.

Princess Charlotte made a face—rather a pretty one.

"I can't help having my opinions, mamma."

"Then you mustn't express them—not publicly."

"If I am not to express them," argued the Princess, "why do you send me into public at all? Isn't laying foundation-stones and opening bazaars a public expression of opinion? Don't I go because you approve of them?"

"That is a very different matter," said her mother. "Good objects like those no one can possibly object to."

"But I think anti-vivisection a good object."

"I don't care what you think," said her father, "you are perfectly free to think as you like. What I want to know is—who do you suppose is going to pay that hundred pounds?"

"You are, papa." She smiled on him sweetly.

"Indeed, your father will do nothing of the sort!" interposed the Queen, while the King was still opening his mouth in wonder at the suggestion.

"If he will only make me an allowance, he needn't," said Charlotte; and while her parents were giving weight to that pronouncement she went on.

"I am going to promise a hundred pounds to every deserving charity you send me to; and if you leave off sending me, I shall write and offer it. It will be in all the papers—it will become the recognized thing—people will begin to look for it,—me and my hundred pounds. And as soon as it is the recognized thing, you know quite well, papa, that you will have to pay."

"Why do you disapprove of vivisection?" inquired her father, finding this frontal attack unmanageable.

"Just a fellow-feeling, I suppose, through being myself a victim. Oh, I don't say there's any torture involved, but now and again mamma gives me an anesthetic, and when I wake up I find something has been done that I don't like—something vital taken off me."

"Nonsense!" said the Queen, "I never do anything of the kind."

But this statement corresponded so startlingly to his Majesty's own experience that he began to pay closer attention.

"When have I done it?" demanded the Queen.

"The last time was when you sent me to spend three weeks with Aunt Sophie in order to develop a taste for foreign missions. It didn't succeed. And when I came back you had changed my suite of rooms without asking me; and I was done out of my balcony!"

"I found her," the Queen explained, "going down by the balcony in the early morning, while the gardeners were still about, to gather flowers."

"I didn't talk to the gardeners."

"You went out when I told you not to."

"You see!" appealed Charlotte, "she does vivisect me. Last time Aunt Sophie was the anesthetic: sometimes it's even worse. You don't hear of these things, papa, because I don't often complain; but there they are. And mamma is so pleased with herself about it—that's what tries me!"

"Charlotte," said her father, "that's not pretty—that's not respectful."

"No, but it's true."

The Queen attempted a diversion. "Why do you want an allowance? I give you pocket-money, and you get all the dresses you need."

"I get a great many more," admitted Charlotte; "but I don't get one that I really like."

"That shows your want of taste."

"Of course, I haven't your taste, mamma, you can't expect it; and what's too good for me doesn't suit me."

But this obliquity of speech missed its point, for of her own taste the Queen had no doubt whatever.

"But, my dear child," interposed the King, "do try to be reasonable! Whatever allowance we made you, you couldn't go on giving a hundred pounds to every charity. You'd have all the benevolent societies in the kingdom flocking about you; life wouldn't be worth living."

"Oh, I know that, papa," said the Princess, "I'm not charitable in the least. I'm only doing it to bring pressure on you; I haven't any other reason whatever."

At this brazen avowal the Queen gasped; but his Majesty became more sympathetic.

"I wanted," she went on, "to do it as nicely and respectably as possible, and I thought to give you away in charity was better than gambling or anything of that sort. Not that I haven't been tempted; for you know, papa, I could quite easily lose you a hundred pounds at every tea-party I go to. But now, if I'm asked to a bridge-table, all I can say is, 'Papa won't make me an allowance, so I can't play for money.'"

"Surely you don't say that!" cried the Queen in horror.

"No," answered the Princess slyly, "but I can say it. And, of course, I shall have to say it to the charities and the anti-vivisectionists if papa doesn't pay up. There'll be headlines about that, too," she added reflectively. "You see, I am in the business now that I've begun helping at sales."

The King got up from his seat, and began to pace the room. For the first time he had discovered in his daughter's character a resemblance to Max, and much as he was beginning to love certain mental values which his son possessed, it rather frightened him to see them cropping up in his daughter.

"Charlotte," he said, in a tone of affectionate appeal, "when have I ever denied you anything that was right and reasonable?"

"Never, dearest papa, never!" said his daughter. "And I'm sure you are not going to begin now. It's too late," she added mischievously.

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 passed 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-Wasser 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 assistance."

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

"I assure 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 title? No; titles 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 gassed, 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 Constitution 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 passes?—or gone further in order to compare them with those he does not pass? 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 Brasshay 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 Brasshay only caught him then, in that period of reaction, he would have found him unformidable as of old; but Brasshay 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 constituents to satisfy; and under a democracy, of course, autocrats can never do right."

"Are you the autocrat?" inquired the King.

"At your Majesty's disposal," returned the Lord Functionary with a bow.

"Then you are not responsible to Parliament?"

The Lord Functionary smiled, with a touch of disdain. "I should not be holding office if I were," said he.

"Then you are not under the Prime Minister, either?"

"No more than your Majesty," said the magnificent one blandly. "In the order of precedence I am, indeed, several degrees above him. It is, of course, a Government appointment; but while I hold it my discretionary powers are unlimited."

This seemed a very great person, and the King looked on him with envy.

"To whom, then, are you actually responsible?" he inquired.

"To you, sir."

"To me alone?"

"My official title would make it indecent for me to consult any one but your Majesty."

"Ah, yes, you keep my conscience for me, don't you?" said the King. Max was right, then; here was something still left for him to do. He addressed himself to the previous question.

"What exactly is the trouble?"

"A self-advertising minority, sir, has been persistently submitting plays which it was quite out of the question to pass. Being annoyed, they are now attacking the plays which have passed."

"I should like," said the King, "to see some of these plays; to be in touch, if I may so put it, with my own conscience. Would you be good enough to send me three of those you have not passed, and three of the others which are now being attacked. I would like also," he added, "to see The Gaudy Girl in its new version."

The Lord Functionary raised his pale eyebrows.

"May I be allowed to know why, sir?" he inquired.

"Just curiosity," said the King. "I thought of going to see it, and I wanted first to be sure that there was nothing—nothing, you know——"

The Lord Functionary's face became wreathed in smiles.

"Why, certainly, sir. I will see that a copy is sent to your Majesty at once. It is, of course, work of a very light and frivolous kind—but it is popular and it does no harm." Then, as by an after-thought, the official countenance grew grave. "Was her Majesty also intending to be present?" he inquired.

The King, discerning that a negative was invited, gave the required assurance. "As a matter of fact," said he, "it was the Prince who asked me to go—suggested it, that is to say." And immediately official confidence was restored, for to the Lord Functionary Max as a reformer was still unknown, while his taste for frivolous diversion was more easily assumed. And so in due course a copy of the play reached the King's hands.

Perhaps it was through mere inadvertence that the other six did not accompany it. The King noted the omission; but when once he started to read the single play which had reached him he forgot all about the others, for he found that his hands were full. At one stroke of the scythe he had reaped a plentiful harvest.

Here was a play on the very eve of production, reeking with the sniggering improprieties which the keeper of the King's conscience had permitted to become the popular vogue. Suggestions and innuendoes to which the ordinary theater-going public had now grown accustomed, struck his inexperienced Majesty as bold and glaring novelties. The mere cheapness of the wit he passed uncritically by, but the indecencies were so bare and bald that even he, with all his innocence and inexperience, could not fail to understand them. The explanation, of course, was easy; this new version of an old and accepted play had received the official sanction through oversight. Providence had sent him to the rescue in the nick of time; and delighted to have found something which his hand really could do, he took up the blue pencil and set to work.

Snatches of dialogue, half lines of lyric—especially when it came to the last verse—here, there, and everywhere he scored them through with a ruthless hand; and with a renewed sense of usefulness, and a conscience well at ease, he returned the much deleted copy to the Lord Functionary.

Before long that official visited him, presenting a grave countenance. He was by no means enthusiastic over the royal handiwork; the production was about to take place; the play had already practically been licensed—silence up to so late a moment having virtually given consent; and—most difficult point of all—these things which the King was now ruling out had almost all of them been in the previously accepted version.

"Then I suppose," said his Majesty, "that nobody really reads the plays?"

"Oh, yes, sir, they are always read," corrected the Lord Functionary, "but our readers have necessarily to go upon certain lines. They are guided by precedent and custom, which it would be highly inadvisable to disturb."

So he pleaded that the status quo ante might prevail; and yet, man to man, he could not defend what the King showed him.

"Could you," inquired his Majesty indignantly, "read such things aloud to your own family? Could you comfortably, if I called upon you to do so, read them aloud to me?"

"The drama," explained the Lord Functionary, "is so different from anything else; it has not to observe the same conventions. In light comedy, especially, these things really do not count. People never trouble to think about them—they mean nothing."

"In that case," said the King, "no one will mind your cutting them out."

The Lord Functionary seemed not so sure,—his assurance went, in fact, in quite an opposite direction. He pleaded hard for the trade interests which he stood to represent. The play was in an advanced state of rehearsal; many thousands had been spent upon it; and, seeing that it was but a revival, no doubt about the new version passing had existed anywhere.

But to all his entreaties the King remained adamant.

"In this matter," said he, "you have to consult my conscience."

The point could not be further argued.

"It is very unfortunate," said the Lord Functionary in acid tones.

"I must insist," said his Majesty, "that you see to these omissions being made." And the Lord Functionary bowed his pained body over the hand which the King graciously extended.

"Your Majesty must be obeyed," said he.

It was a phrase that the King very seldom heard; it gave him a taste of power.

"Max," said he to his son, upon their next meeting, "I have been doing as you advised. And I do believe you are right."

"What did I advise?" inquired Max, assuming forgetfulness.

"That I should 'do a bust' was, I think, your expression; something unexpected."

"And how have you done it?"

"I have censored The Gaudy Girl."

Max whistled.