Part 1 (1/2)
King John of Jingalo.
by Laurence Housman.
CHAPTER I
A DOMESTIC INTERIOR
I
The King of Jingalo had just finished breakfast in the seclusion of the royal private apartments. Turning away from the pleasantly deranged board he took up one of the morning newspapers which lay neatly folded upon a small gilt-legged table beside him. Then he looked at his watch.
This action was characteristic of his Majesty: doing one thing always reminded him that presently he would have to be doing another.
Conscientious to a fault, he led a hara.s.sed and over-occupied life, which was not the less wearisome in its routine because no clear results ever presented themselves within his own range of vision. By an unkind stroke of fortune he had been called to the rule of a kingdom that had grown restive under the weight of too much tradition; and const.i.tutionally he was unable to let it alone. So must he now remind himself in the hour of his privacy how all too fleeting were its moments, and how soon he would have to project himself elsewhere.
Glancing across the table towards his consort he saw that she was still engrossed in the opening of her letters--large stiff envelopes, conspicuously crested, containing squarish sheets of unfolded note-paper; for it was a rule of the Court that no creased correspondence should ever solicit the attention of the royal eye, and that all letters should be written upon one side only. The Queen was very fond of receiving these s.p.a.cious missives; though they contained little of importance they came to her from half the crowned heads of Europe, as well as from the most select circle of Jingalese aristocracy.
They gave occupation to two secretaries, and were a daily reminder to her Majesty that, in her own country at any rate, she was the acknowledged leader of society.
Having looked at his watch the King said: ”My dear, what are you going to do to-day?”
”Really,” replied the Queen, ”I don't quite know; I have not yet looked at my diary.”
Her Majesty seldom did know anything of the day's program until she had consulted her secretaries, who, with dovetailing ingenuity, arranged her hours and booked to each day--often many months in advance--the engagements which lay ahead. Therein she showed a calmer and more philosophic temperament than her consort. The King always knew; every day of his life with anxious forecast he consulted his diary while shaving, and breakfasted with its troubling details fresh upon his recollection.
Having answered his inquiry the Queen relapsed into her correspondence, while the King resumed his newspaper; and the moment may be regarded as propitious for presenting the reader with a portrait of these two august personages, since so good an opportunity may not occur again. The kind of portrait we offer is, of course, of an up-to-date and biographical character, and does not limit itself to those circ.u.mstances of time and s.p.a.ce in which the commencement of this history has landed us.
So, first, we take the King,--not as we have just found him, seated at a table with chair turned sideways and features sharply illuminated by the reflected lights of the journal he holds in his hands--for thus we do not see him to advantage, and it is to advantage that we would exhibit in its externals a character of which, before we have done with it, we intend to grow fond. Time and s.p.a.ce must provide us with a broader view of him than that.
This King had been upon the throne for twenty-five years; and during that period, like a rich wine in the wood, monarchy had mellowed within him, permeating his system with its mild and slightly dry flavor; it had become as it were a habit, and he carried it quite naturally, almost unconsciously, though with just a suspicion of weight, much as a scholar carries his learning or a workman his bag of tools.
A pleasantly florid face, quaintly expressive of an importance about which its owner was undecided, imposed above a fullish waistcoat a chin which was now tending toward the slopes of middle age. The eyes were mild and vaguely speculative, the lips full and loosely formed, and when they smiled they began tentatively in a tremulous lift showing only the two upper front teeth--the smile of a woman rather than of a man. This smile--when it made, as it so often had to make, its appearance in public--was curiously suggestive of interrogation. ”Am I now meant to smile?” it seemed to say. ”Very good, then I will.” This tentatively advanced smile of a countenance so highly exalted for others to gaze on, was peculiarly winning to those who were its recipients; it suggested a gentle character, indicating through its shyness both the giving and the receiving of a favor; and among those in personal attendance on him the King was--perhaps on account of that smile--more liked than he knew.
Servants whom the vastness of his establishments did not convert into total strangers found him a considerate master, full of a personal interest in their snug lives, and with a carefully practised memory for the numbers and names of their children; and the only complaint that even his valets had against him was that he remained his own barber and evinced a certain reluctance in casting his suits until they had begun to show a suspicion of wear. In outward relations he was a kind, touchy, companionable soul; inwardly he was one who suffered acutely from lack of companions.h.i.+p and conversation, not because he had not plenty of people to talk to, but because so many things came into his head that he must not say, while the correct subst.i.tutes for them only occurred to him later. And thus it came about that a good deal of his intercourse with humanity was limited to a pleasant expression of face, wearing generally, especially when it smiled, a wistful note of interrogation.
To present this face to the public in the regulation doses which were considered inducive to loyalty, he had sat thirty-nine times for his portrait to popular rather than famous painters, and to commercially successful photographers more times than any one could count. And painters and photographers alike had agreed that he was a steady and a patient sitter. They all liked him. He himself preferred the photographers; they came more often but they took less time and did not require the give-and-take of artificially made conversation. They were also more amenable to criticism, and kept behind the scenes for ”touching-up” purposes wonderful anonymous artists who gave no trouble whatever, requiring no sittings and yet producing results that for tact and skill combined with accuracy could not be beaten. Occasionally, after having sat for his portrait to one of the painters, the King was advised to bestow on him a knighthood or an order. In his heart of hearts he would have much preferred knighting a photographer; but for some reason which was beyond him to discover this was not considered the correct thing, and the knighthoods went accordingly to the people who gave him the most trouble and the least satisfactory results.
It had never been the King's lot to be handsome; but now the approaches of age were giving to his countenance a dignity which in youth it had lacked. This was part and parcel of a certain mental obtuseness or obstinacy: when his Majesty did not understand, majesty became sedentary in his face. Often when it was the duty, or the device, of his ministerial advisers to confuse his mind with explanatory details about things which lay far beyond it, they would presently become aware that he did not in the least understand what they were saying, or that such understanding as he possessed at the beginning had become darkened by judicious counsel. This stage of the reasoning process was marked by a gentle access of majesty to the royal countenance; and when it appeared ministers were informed that, for the time being, their object was attained. When, however, the King did understand, or thought that he did, he was less majestic and more troublesome, and had to be circ.u.mvented in other ways; and a good deal of this history will be taken up with the circ.u.mventions practised by an astute Cabinet upon a monarch who was brought by accident to imagine that he really did understand the position of ignominy combined with responsibility in which the Const.i.tution had placed him.
II
John of Jingalo had been in harness all his life: he had never known freedom, never been left to find his own feet, never been taught to think for himself except upon conventional lines; and these had kept him from ever putting into practice the rudimental self-promptings which sometimes troubled him. He had been elaborately instructed, but not educated; his own individual character, that is to say, had not been allowed to open out; but a sort of traditional character had been slowly squeezed into him in order to fit him for that conventional acceptance of a variety of ancient inst.i.tutions (some moldering, some still vigorous) which, by a certain official and ruling cla.s.s of monetarily interested persons, was considered to be the correct const.i.tutional att.i.tude. Monarchy, that is to say, had been interpreted to him by those who sucked the greatest amount of social prestige and material benefit from its present conditions as a ”going concern”; and in that imposed interpretation deportment came first, initiative last, and originality nowhere at all.
In many respects, indeed, his training had been like that of a young girl whose parents have determined, without leaving her any choice in the matter, that matrimony is to be her single aim and the sphere of the home her outward circ.u.mference. Like a young girl whose future is thus controlled he had acquired a pleasant smattering of several social accomplishments; he had learned to speak three languages with fluency, to draw, to dance, to ride, to behave under all likely circ.u.mstances with perfect correctness, and to walk down the center of a large room with apparent ease. He had been trained, for review purposes and for the final privilege of carrying a c.o.c.ked hat as well as a crown upon his coffin, in a profession which he would never be allowed to practise; and, having been ”brought out” with much show and parade at an early age, had been introduced to a vast number of very important people, and dragged through a long series of social functions, which, however crowded, gave always a free floor for his feet to walk on and never presented a single back to his view. But as a result of all these crowds, with their bewildering blend of glittering toilet, deferential movement, and flattering speech, he knew no more of the inner realities of life than the young girl knows of it from a series of dances, flirtations, and afternoon teas. This polite and decorous, yet dazzling mask had been drawn between him and the actualities of existence, presenting itself to view again and again, and concealing its essential sameness in the pomp and circ.u.mstance with which it was attended. At these functions thousands of brilliant and distinguished people had bowed their well-stored brains within a few inches of his face, had exchanged with their monarch a few words of studied politeness and compliment, now and then had even laid themselves out to amuse him, but never once had they imparted to his mind an arresting or a commanding thought, never once endeavored to change any single judgment that had ever been formed for him. Not once in all the years since he came to man's estate--except occasionally with his wife and on one isolated occasion with his father--had he ever found himself involved so deeply in argument, or in any difference of opinion, as to be forced to feel himself beaten. That single discussion with his father had been closed peremptorily--parental and regal authority combining had cut it short; and as for his wife--well, she was dear, amiable, and, within her limits, sensible; but intellectually she was not his superior. Thus there had come to him a good deal of social discipline, experience of a kind, but of education in the higher intellectual sense scarcely any. He had merely been taught carefully and elaborately to take up a certain position, and in a vast number of minutely differing circ.u.mstances (mainly of social formality) to fill it or seem to fill it ”as one to the manner born.”
In addition he had been trained, on strictly impartial and noncommittal lines, to take an interest in politics; to have within certain narrow and prescribed limits an open mind--one, that is to say, with its orifice comfortably adapted to the stuffing process practised on kings by the great ones of the official world; and when his mind would not open in certain required directions, well, after all, it did not much matter, since in the end it made no practical difference.
Under these circ.u.mstances he would have been a mere social and official automaton had not certain defects of his character saved him. Though timid he was impulsive; he was also a little irritable, rather suspicious, and indomitably fussy in response to the call of duty.
Temper, fuss, and curiosity saved him from boredom; he was conscientiously industrious, and though there was much that he did not understand he managed to be interested in nearly everything.