King John of Jingalo Part 37

Left alone the King felt badly in need of comfort, for now in the hour of triumph depression had begun to enter his soul. He did not like hurting people even when he was not fond of them; and on the Prime Minister's face as he went out he had seen something like tragedy. "Is he going to cut his throat?" he wondered; but, no, it was not the look of a beaten man--rather that of a gambler prepared to make his last throw.

The King had already made his own--he had nothing more to do; and now he wanted companionship, some one to humor him with more understanding and sympathy than his own wife could supply. And it so happened that just then his only two possible comforters were away. Max had gone to the Riviera to recruit before the regular sittings of the Commission began, and Charlotte three days ago had taken that leave of absence which had been promised her; for in less than a month's time the Prince of Schnapps-Wa.s.ser would be paying his promised visit.

As he could not have the society he craved he chose solitude, and wandered out into the deepening dusk of the November garden; and there, gazing up through its now thinned foliage at the quiet and misty heavens above him, thought of steeplejacks and the death of kings, and how at the root of every great downfall in history there had probably been some poor human heart like his own, conscious of failure, longing for the kindred touch which pride of place makes so impossible. And yet he knew that he had brought himself to a better end than, with all the defects of his qualities, he could ordinarily have hoped to secure; perhaps this dramatic taking of himself off (which he felt in a way to be so out of character) would help Max to make something out of the situation startling and unexpected. But Max would have to give up the idea of marrying the Archbishop's daughter.

The quiet, dusky paths had led him to a point where high walls carefully shrouded in creepers shut off the royal stables from view. Through circular barred grilles he could hear the noise of horses champing in their stalls; and the comfortable sound drew him round to the entrance.

Opening a wicket, he stood in a dimly lighted court, but the buildings surrounding it contained plenty of light, and in the harness rooms a brisk sound of furbishing went on.

Turning to the left he pa.s.sed into the largest stable of all, a s.p.a.cious and well-aired chamber of corridor-like proportions divided up into stalls. To right and left of him stood the famous piebald ponies, lazily munching fodder and settling down to their last sleep before the unusual exertions which would be required of them on the morrow.

But these pampered minions did not know as he did what the morrow had in store: how, for the sake of effect, they would be harnessed to a huge obsolete coach weighing a couple of tons, each clad in an elaborate costume of crimson and gold weighing by itself considerably more than a full-grown rider. To the King this presumed ignorance of theirs was a matter for envy; he knew his own part in the affair well enough; the thought of it oppressed him.

He walked down the double line--twelve in all--pausing now and then to take a closer look and judge of their condition, but keeping always at a respectful distance, for he was aware that almost without exception they were an ill-tempered crew. Contemplating the astonishing rotundity of their well-filled bodies, the s.p.a.cious ease of their accommodation, the outward dignity of circ.u.mstances, and the absolute lack of freedom which conditioned their whole existence, he was struck with the resemblance between himself and them; and recalling how, with a similar sense of kinship, St. Francis had preached to the lower forms of life he too became imbued with the spirit of homily and prophecy, though it did not actually find its way into words.

"You and I, little brothers"--so might we loosely interpret the meditations of his heart--"you and I are much of a muchness, and can sing our 'Te Deum' or our 'Nunc Dimittis' in almost the same words. We are both of a carefully selected breed and of a diminished usefulness.

But because of our high position we are fed and housed not merely in comfort but in luxury; and wherever we go crowds stand to gape at us and applaud when we nod our heads at them. We live always in the purlieus of palaces, and never have we known what it is to throw up our heels in a green pasture, nor in our old age are we turned out comfortably to gra.s.s--only to Nebuchadnezzar by accident came that thing, and he did not appreciate it as he should have done. Never shall we go into battle to prove that we are worth our salt, and to say 'Ha, Ha' to the fighting and the captains; nor is it allowed to us to devour the ground with our speed: whenever we attempt such a thing it is cut from under us. Little brothers, it is before all things necessary that we should behave; for being once harnessed to the royal coach, if any one of us struck work or threw out our heels we should upset many apple-carts and the machinery of the State would be dislocated. Let us thank G.o.d, therefore, that long habit and training have made us docile, and that our backs are strong enough to bear the load that is put upon them, and that if one of us goes another immediately fills his place so that he is not missed."

In a vague, unformulated way this was the homily which arose from his meditations; and if he thought at all specially of himself and present circ.u.mstances, it was merely as an insignificant exception which proved the general rule.

As he strolled back again he stopped at the door and spoke to the man in charge.

"They all seem very fit, Jacobs," said he. "They do you credit, I must say."

"Fit they are, your Majesty!" said the man, beaming with satisfied pride; "and so they ought to be, considering the trouble we've took with 'em. We've been polishing them like old pewter for days. Ah! they know what's coming; and you can see 'em just longing for it."

"Oh, they like it, do they?"

"Believe me, your Majesty, they couldn't live without it. It's in the blood--been in 'em from father to son. Why, if we didn't take 'em out to help us open and shut Parliament and things of that sort, they'd think we was mad."

This was a new point of view; the King listened to it with respectful interest, and then a fresh thought occurred to him.

"Jacobs," he said, "did one of them ever refuse to go?--on a public occasion, I mean."

"Well, yes, your Majesty, it did once happen; before my time, though.

One of 'em--ah, it was at a funeral, too--he stuck his heels into the ground and couldn't be got to start, not for love or money."

"Which did they offer him?"

"Ask pardon, your Majesty?--Oh, just my manner of speaking, that was.

Wouldn't go except on his own terms."

"And what were they?"

"Well, your Majesty, he was a clever one, you see, he was; they aren't generally. But he, he'd got a taste for his own set of harness--knew it by the smell, I suppose, and when they come to put it on him a bit of it broke, and he wouldn't wear anything else. That's how it all come about."

"They tried, I suppose?"

"Oh, they got it on him; and they got him out, before all the crowd, with the guns going and the handkerchiefs a-waving--Ah, no; but that was a funeral though--there weren't no handkerchiefs that day. Well, there he was; and when he felt they was all looking at him, and the perishables kept waiting behind----"

"The perishables?"

"The corpse, sir;--then he wouldn't move."

"Very embarra.s.sing, I must say."

"You see, your Majesty, they couldn't beat him in public--not as he deserved; 'twouldn't have been respectful to what was there. They had to do that afterwards. But, believe me, he stopped the whole show for twenty minutes and more; and they never used _him_ again."

"What became of him?"

"Oh, he was just kept, in case; but he weren't never used--he was reckoned too risky after that. Oh, and he felt it too; I haven't a doubt but he did. They don't like only to be one of the extras, they don't."

"What does that mean?"

"Why, you see, sir, there's always four extras here, in case of accident; and believe me, your Majesty, when the four extras to-morrow find 'emselves left out they'll squeal for hours, and it won't be safe to go near 'em, not for days. Blood's a wonderful thing, sir, wonderful!

And they know, just as well as you or me."

"And what becomes of them when they grow old?"

"Well, sir, they make saddle-cloths of 'em for the band of the forty-ninth Hussars. Your Majesty may have reckonized 'em; most people think it's giraffe skin, but it's really our old ponies."

"So they come in useful even at the last?"

"Oh, yes, sir, they ends well, one can't deny that; and they have to be in pretty good condition too. So they aren't none of 'em what you might call really old."

"Very interesting," said the King. "What a great deal there is in the world that one doesn't know till one comes to inquire."

"About horses? Your Majesty's right there!" said the man; and his tone spoke volumes of the things which would never be written, but which those who had the care of horses knew.

As the King moved away from that brief colloquy, one phrase in particular stuck in his mind. "He was reckoned too risky after that."

Was that, he wondered, what the Prime Minister was thinking about him now; had he, indeed, proved himself too risky for future use? If so there would be no yielding at the eleventh hour; and perhaps it was as well that to-morrow would see him harnessed to the royal coach for the last time.

CHAPTER XV

A DEED WITHOUT A NAME

I

The King and Queen sat in their state coach responding with low bows to the plaudits of the crowd. Their velvets and ermines lay heavy upon them, for although it was now November, the day was close and warm, and there seemed to be thunder in the air.

The King, in this his Jubilee year, had resumed wearing his crown on great State occasions, for he found that the people liked it. He had worn it at the Foot-washing; and every one then admitted that it gave the true symbolic touch to the whole ceremony. And now for the last time he was wearing it again.

Artistically he was right; a c.o.c.ked hat, of nineteenth-century pattern, does not accord well with robes in the style of the sixteenth. In some countries that mistake is made by royalty out of compliment to the army; but if on these State occasions sartorial compliments are to be paid irrespective of the general effect, then surely your monarch should wear a wig as representative of the law, lawn-sleeves in honor of the Church, and divide the rest of his person impartially between the army, the navy, and the doctors. Thus all the great professions would receive their due recognition, and we should presently find so symbolical a combination just as harmonious and dignified, and as pregnant with meaning, as we do the heraldic quarterings by which the mixed blood of ancestry is so proudly displayed. We can get accustomed to anything if there is a good reason for it; but when we cease to be reasonable, beauty should be our only guide. In this case reason as well as beauty had induced King John of Jingalo to reject the c.o.c.ked hat and to resume the crown.