King John of Jingalo Part 25

"That secures the chairmanship? But am I at all likely to be accepted?"

"From what I hear, n.o.body suspects you of taking any great interest in the life of the poor. They have therefore no reason to be afraid of you."

"I see," said Max. "As a figure-head chairman I might even be valuable."

"Very, I have no doubt."

"Part of the game?"

"Royalty and Trade are supposed to be natural allies," remarked Sister Jenifer.

Max was startled at her discernment. "Oh, but that is true!" he cried.

"How wonderful, then, that you should be able to trust me at all."

This set her smiling. "I had the advantage to begin with of not knowing who you were."

"And that gave you a start."

"No, finding you out gave me the start."

"You certainly have not lost time."

"That I cannot say, till I have your answer." There was no temporizing here.

Max thought for a while, then drew breath and spoke. "I want you quite to understand," he said, "that if I take up this work it will be very largely for a personal reason. I daresay I shall, as you say, 'take fire' when I know more about it; but at present I am not so moved.

Commissions do not attract me; and what I undertake I shall do solely on faith--faith in you. Are you content that it should be so?"

"For a beginning, yes."

"Very well; something else follows. I shall need you for my guide."

"I am always here at certain hours," she said. "But there are others who know far more than I."

He let that point go unregarded.

"Then I may come to you for help?"

"Always, if really you need it."

"My needs shall be as real as I can make them," said Max. "How am I to begin?"

She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with them; they did not want to--women can exist under conditions where men cannot. Go and mix with them, be among them for hours, attend their street-corner meetings; you will hardly hear two ideas of any practical value, but you will get many. It isn't theory that is wanted,--it is that the life which thousands are living should be known and realized.

When the eye has seen, the heart follows. All we really want is brotherhood; but how are we to bring it about?"

"From that I am furthest away of all," said Prince Max.

"No, no," she cried; "that is the great mistake! If kings are not the very symbol of our community then they have no value left. May I tell you two of the most kingly things I ever heard done in the present day?

The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to put their hands to labor--making idleness a cla.s.s distinction. He sat down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on making them daily while he held his Court and administered justice; and so the new folly died."

"And the other?" inquired the Prince.

"It may seem far-fetched in the present connection," said she, "yet as an expression of the real kingly instinct it has all that I mean. Some years ago the heir to the English throne--the one who died young--went out to India. One day he was holding a durbar of Indian chiefs, and they with their retinues stood drawn up in parade ready to offer homage as he pa.s.sed along their ranks. Opposite was a great crowd of natives watching the spectacle, and at a certain point in that crowd stood, as a mere onlooker, one whom Britain had defeated and driven into exile, the old Ameer of Afghanistan. Just before he rode down the Prince heard of it, and had the man pointed out to him; and when he came there he wheeled his horse about and gave the full royal salute. And through all that great mult.i.tude went a thrill because the kingly thing had been done, and all had seen it."

Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke. "He was rather a dull young man," she went on, "so one has been told, but that was better than brains, for that was the touch of human kindness done in the grand manner which royalty makes possible, and ought to make natural--done with a pride which has its place beside the humility of St. Francis."

"Well, well," said Max, "put me in touch then, and I will see what I can do. But I haven't the grand manner, you know."

II

The King was considering the request of his revered uncle, the Duke of Nostrum, to preside over the Commission on slums, when Max came, asking also to be made useful.

"What, you too?" cried his Majesty; "isn't one of us enough?"

"Quite," said Max. "I want to be that one."

"What are your qualifications?"

"Willingness," said Max, "a brain capable of taking fire at facts, a great position, and an open and rebellious mind. I am quoting from authority; I was given my certificate yesterday."

To his Majesty this was merely the voice of Max at his flightiest.

"Well," he said, "your Uncle Nostrum happens to have come first."

"Do you always grant first applications?"

"He has had much more experience."

"Of slums?" inquired Max.

"Of commissions, and all that sort of thing. He has sat on them."

"So he has--the elephant! And they have died the death."

"He works," said the King, "and you don't! You only talk."

"I only talk!" cried the injured Max; his voice went up to Heaven appealing against parental injustice. "Has he ever in his life been down into the slums and spent whole days there, as I have? Has he carried buckets for washing-sisters of charity, as I have; and borne upon his back the beds of the dying, as I have?"

"You?" cried the King with incredulity.

"I do not publish these things upon the housetops," said Max, "but in the secrecy of your chamber and in strict confidence I tell you that they are true. And while I, for many anxious weeks, have been toiling to qualify for this post, he, this Nostrum, this patent-drug from our royal medicine-chest, this soporific sedative----"

"Max, Max!" reproved his father.

"He rushes in where an angel has feared to tread, and filches from me my reward!"

"My dear boy, are you serious?" cried the King.

"I was never more serious in my life, father," replied his son. "But in order to arrest your attention I have to be theatrical. Now if you will really believe what I am going to say I will drop play-acting. I have, as I tell you, been down into our slum districts, I have been among the slum workers, means have been offered me for studying these problems at first hand, and I am prepared,--from this week on when Parliament rises, and the metropolis empties itself of pleasure, and you have gone sadly to your annual cure at Bad-as-Bad,--I am prepared to devote the whole of my time and energy to qualifying for this post; and with Heaven helping me, I will make it the most astonishing and effective Royal Commission that ever sat down believing itself on cushions to find that it was on a hornets' nest."