King John of Jingalo Part 48

At the far end a door was thrown open; a flush of light entered the chamber, and there came following it a troop of men wearing felt slippers and long linen ap.r.o.ns, and bearing upon their shoulders brooms, feather-heads, wash-leathers, brushes, dusters, steps, vacuum-cleaners, and other mysterious instruments of an uninterpretable form.

With the regularity and precision of a drilled army, and with no word spoken, they moved forward to the attack. Curtains were drawn, cords pulled, blinds raised, steps mounted. l.u.s.ters jingled to the touch of feathers, cornices shed down their minute particles of dust to the Charybdian maw of traveling gramophone. Over the carpet metallic cow-catchers wheezed and groaned with a loud trundling of wheels, and departed processionally to the chamber beyond. Then by a triple process, simultaneously conducted, the furniture-sheets were lifted, drawn off, and folded; a large wicker-table on wheels received and bore them away.

A cloud of light skirmishers followed after; and over every cushion and seat and polished surface plied their manicurist skill. Then a storming-party escaladed the gallery from below and the King, to avoid the embarra.s.sment of an encounter with a body of servitors who had not the pleasure of his acquaintance, was at last obliged to retire.

But what a wonderful machine had been here revealed to his gaze--manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of wear or the marks of muddy boots? Yet never before had any thought on the matter occurred to him. And what if some fine day those insects, fired by revolutionary zeal, had taken it to heart to rise up in their dozens by those escalading ladders to the first story and rush the private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed!

What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm, very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every November? Did that really meet and counter modern methods of conspiracy and a.s.sa.s.sination, or the growing dangers of labor unrest? He very much doubted it.

And so, with his head very full of the wonder, the order, and the underlying disturbance of it all, he pa.s.sed on to his own inner chamber, and had now something to tell the Queen as to how their immediate domestic affairs were conducted which should entirely put aside all awkward questions as to what he had been doing the evening before and where he had spent the night.

But, as a matter of fact, sleek officialdom had sheltered the Queen from all anxiety, and she had not a notion that the King had been anywhere except to some consultation with ministers, and thence late to bed.

In order that his valet might find him there he got into it, and when, a couple of hours later, he greeted her Majesty he found that sanguine mind looking eagerly ahead and concerning itself very little over things which were past.

"Remember, my dear," she said, looking up from her letters, "that in three days' time the Prince of Schnapps-Wa.s.ser comes. I do hope, while he is here, that you will be fairly free."

"Not so free as I thought I should be," said the King, and he sighed heavily.

III

His Majesty had a good many things that day to discuss with the Prime Minister when at a later hour they met. He began on the matter which was most regular and formal; had he been at all likely to forget it the Queen's observation would have reminded him.

"By the way, Mr. Premier," he said, "as you already know, the Prince of Schnapps-Wa.s.ser arrives in a day or two; and there are certain possible eventualities arising out of his visit which we must be prepared for.

Hitherto the Princess Charlotte has had no definite grant made to her.

While she was still living with us, without an establishment of her own, I preferred to let the matter stand over. But now--well, now a change may be necessary."

The Prime Minister's face beamed with congratulatory smiles. "Your Majesty may be sure that the matter shall have immediate attention."

"There will be no difficulty?"

"Oh, none whatever."

"I will leave all question of the amount to be discussed later. I believe that it is etiquette, in the case of a reigning Prince, for him also to be consulted."

"That is so, sir."

"The Prince himself is very wealthy; and I think that you will find him disinterested. Still there is, of course, a certain balance to be observed."

"Oh, quite."

"I leave the matter, then, entirely in your hands."

The Prime Minister bowed.

And then the conversation changed.

"You know what happened to me last night, I suppose," said the King.

"Ah, yes, indeed, sir! You will pardon my silence; I was most horrified.

But I thought that perhaps your Majesty did not wish to speak of it."

"On the contrary," replied the King, "I have got a great deal to say."

And then, with much detail and particularity, he narrated his experience--all those hours which he had spent in the crowd; and the Prime Minister listened, saying nothing.

"Well," said the King, when he had done, "that is what I have seen; and you cannot tell me it is something that does not matter."

"By no means, sir; I admit that it is very serious."

"I was never told so before."

"We did not wish unnecessarily to trouble your Majesty. This is hardly a case for Cabinet intervention; the Home Office does its duty, takes preventive measures as far as is possible, and puts down the disturbances when they arise."

"Yes, yes," said the King, "but is nothing going to be done?"

The Prime Minister raised his eyebrows, as though asked to reply once more to a question already answered.

"Everything possible is being done, sir."

"Legislatively, I mean."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed the head of Government in a tone of the most deferential protest, "that surely is a matter for the Cabinet."

"Quite so," said the King. "That is why I ask."

So then the Premier explained circ.u.mstantially and at great length why, in that sense, nothing whatever could be done. We need not go into it here--those who read Jingalese history will find the Prime Minister's reasons published elsewhere; and it all really came only to this: "It is the duty of a government to keep in power; and if it cannot do justice without endangering its party majority, then justice cannot be done."

You could not have a more satisfactory, a more logical, or a more unanswerable argument than that. And at all events--whether you agree with it or not--it is the argument that all ministers act upon now-a-days, even when, in the House of Legislature which sits subservient to their will, there is a majority ready and waiting which thinks differently of the matter, but fears to act lest it should lose touch with the loaves and fishes. For now it is on the life not of a Parliament but of a Cabinet that losses are counted. And the reason is plain; for every member of a Cabinet has to think of saving for himself some 5,000 a year together with an enormous amount of departmental power and patronage; while an ordinary private member of Parliament has only his few hundreds to think about and his rapidly diminishing right to any independence at all. The life and death struggles of a ministry are bound, therefore, to be more desperate, more unscrupulous, and more pecuniarily corrupt than those of any other branch of the legislature.

And, of course, when we put all the leading strings into fingers so b.u.t.tered with gold, political corruption is the necessary and inevitable result, and such incidental things as mere justice must wait.

But the Prime Minister did not explain matters to the King in such plain and understandable terms as these; and, as a consequence, his explanation being incomplete, his Majesty's mind remained unsatisfied.

"Very well," said he, when the ministerial apologia was concluded; "I will consider what you say, and when I have quite made up my mind I will send a message to Council with recommendations; I still have that right under the Const.i.tution."

The Prime Minister stiffened. Here was conflict in Council cropping up again; it must be put down.

"That right, sir," said he, "has not been exercised for nearly a hundred years."

"I beg your pardon," said the King, "I exercised it only two months ago, when I sent in the message of my abdication."

"Which your Majesty has been wise enough not to act upon."

"Which, nevertheless, you were forced to accept, and would have had to give effect to, ultimately, by Act of Parliament."

That was true.

"By the way," went on the King, "arising out of that withdrawal of my abdication which you say was so wise, there has come a difficulty I had not foreseen. Believing that by now my son would be upon the throne instead of me, I gave my consent to his marriage with the daughter of the Archbishop. Yes, Mr. Premier, you may well start: I am just as much perturbed about it as you; for the Prince now comes to me and claims the fulfilment of my promise."

"Impossible, sir!" exclaimed the Prime Minister.