Part 4 (1/2)

”A very statesmanlike observation, your Majesty,” smiled the Prime Minister. ”In this matter I may say we are without scruple because our case is unanswerable.”

”You shall have my answer,” said the King, ”when I have had more time to think about it.”

With which oblique retort to the Prime Minister's a.s.sertion he rose, and the interview terminated.

V

By this time he was thoroughly tired: he had done a hard morning's work; not only had he been hara.s.sed and annoyed, but he had been thinking a great deal more than he usually thought, and his brain ached. But even now his troubles were not ended; just as he turned to go the Minister of the Interior craved audience; and at his first word the King's irritation grew afresh, for here was dismissed controversy cropping up again.

While the King was receiving the Prime Minister his Comptroller-General had not been idle: indeed he never was idle. He had gone straight to the Minister of the Interior and had reported to him the failure of his efforts, for it was this minister who had in the first place come to him. The steeplejack had fallen, so to speak, right into the middle of his department; and with the King's donation coming on the top the catastrophe bulked large. For, be it known, on the order of the day for the morrow's sitting of Parliament was a motion of the Labor Party, directing censure on the Government for having brought pressure to bear on contractors and caused work to be continued upon Government buildings when Labor and Capital were at war. It was nothing to Labor that the hire of the scaffolding used in the repairs was costing the country a considerable sum of money while it stood uselessly waiting about the walls of the Legislature; blacklegs had gone up on it and blacklegs had been pulled down from it; and one particular blackleg had gone up on it and had come down without any pulling whatever--an accident over which Labor was savagely ready to exult and say, ”Serve him right!” And how would it be if they saw in their morning papers, on the very day when the motion was down for debate, that the King had gone out of his way to make a handsome donation to the widow? The Minister of the Interior simply could not allow it; yet now word had come to him that his Majesty persisted in his intention. So when the Prime Minister came out the Minister of the Interior went in and put his case to the King, as I have put it here to the reader--only far more persuasively, and ornately, and at very much greater length. He also added to what has already been set forth, as a point making the man a less worthy object of compa.s.sion, that according to latest accounts he had gone to his work under the influence of drink.

”So do all steeplejacks,” said the King, and quoted the _Encyclopedia_: ”It is only when they are drunk that they can do it. _I_ know.” He spoke as though he had tried it.

Before the minister had done the King was really angry. ”Mr. Secretary,”

said he, ”I don't care how many strikes there are, or how many Trades Unions, or how many motions of censure from the gentlemen of the Labor Party: they may motion to censure _me_ if they like! The man is dead, and I was unfortunate enough to be a witness of his death. He died in an attempt to do a laudable action.” (Here the King was tempted to quote the peroration from his favorite newspaper, but he checked himself: the minister would not have understood.) ”His wife,” he went on, ”is now a widow, and his children are orphans; and if that twenty pounds may not go to them, then I am not master of my own purse-strings, or”--he added by way of finish--”of my own natural feelings and emotions as an ordinary human being.”

And before that burst of eloquence the Minister of the Interior was abashed into silence, and retired from the royal presence discomfited.

The King's argument had heated him, like the royal furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, seven times more than he was wont to be heated. He so seldom argued with anybody, still less with his ministers: and here he had been arguing with one or another of them for half the morning. He almost felt as if something had happened to him; a touch of giddiness seized him as he turned to retire to his private apartments; and the thought struck him--if he was as much upset as this over a small side-issue, what would he be like when he had done adding that l.u.s.ter to the const.i.tutional edifice which the nation in its crisis would presently be demanding of him? The wear and tear were going to be considerable.

Circ.u.mstance had departed as he retraced his steps to the domestic wing.

The lackeys, having done their ceremonial duty, had disappeared: he was free to go un.o.bserved. As he ascended the marble staircase which led from the great hall toward the private apartments he was still thinking of the steeplejack, the man who somehow seemed now to be an emblem of himself. This man, set to the superfluous task of regilding the weatherc.o.c.k of the Legislature, doing it in defiance of master craftsmen and fellow-workmen, lured to do it because the cost of the hiring of the scaffolding had become an expensive charge on the Board of Works, and then, after the custom of the Trade, primed, emboldened, and made drunk to do it, drunk to a point which had brought him to destruction--yes, he was like that man; his temptations, his perils, his essential superfluity were all the same. As he went up the stair he tried to imagine he was the man himself, going up and up, a solitary and uplifted figure, fixing his thoughts on things above in order that he might forget the gulf which yawned below. He took his hand from the bal.u.s.trade, and gazing upward at the gilt and crystal chandelier suspended from the dome above, so entirely forgot his surroundings for one moment that, missing a step, he lost balance backwards and fell with amazing thoroughness down the full flight of steps till he reached the bottom.

CHAPTER III

WILD OATS AND WIDOWS' WEEDS

I

b.u.mp! b.u.mp! b.u.mp! went his head. Through a confused vision of stars, veined marble, stained gla.s.s, and flying stair-rails he saw his legs trail helplessly after, close in above, fling violently across him feet foremost, and dash out of view. In other words, having reached the bottom of the grand staircase he had turned a complete and homely somersault.

For awhile he lay half stunned, unable to move. Something had undoubtedly happened to his head, but he was still conscious. Cautiously he turned himself over and looked round. No one was about; no one had seen this ignominious downfall of Jingalo's topmost symbol on the too highly polished floors of its own abode; and n.o.body must know. It was not the right and dignified way for a royal accident to happen: falling down-stairs suggested the same failing as that to which steeplejacks were p.r.o.ne.

He picked himself up, and aware now of a sharp pain in the middle of his spine as well as at the back of his head, crawled slowly and in a rather doubled-up att.i.tude toward the royal apartments.

As he moved cautiously along the private corridor, he met the Queen coming from her room, dressed for going out. She detected at once his painful and decrepit att.i.tude. ”What is the matter, dear?” she inquired.

”Nothing, nothing,” mumbled the King, ”only a touch of sciatica.” And as he did not encourage her impulse to pause and make further inquiries, she let him go past.

He went into his room, and sat very carefully down, for he was still uncertain whether some vertebral bit of him was not broken. Then he put his hand to the back of his head and felt it. Yes, undoubtedly something had happened; at contact with his finger it made a sound curiously like the ticking of a clock, and under the scalp a portion of bone seemed to move. And yet he was not threatened with unconsciousness; on the contrary he felt very wide awake: shaken though he was, ideas positively bubbled in his brain, his whole being effervesced. For a moment a fear flickered across his mind that he was going mad. But if so it was a wholly pleasurable sensation, for though his fancy went at a gallop, it was orderly, logical, and consecutive, not like madness at all. He dismissed the notion; but further reflection confirmed him in his determination not to tell anybody; he did not want to explain how he had walked upstairs fancying himself a steeplejack. It would have sounded stupid.

Then all at once he felt very sick and giddy, and going to the couch he lay down on it, and there, finding relief in the horizontal position, he fell fast asleep.

When he awoke an hour later his head, except for an extreme local tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no longer went at a gallop, but they seemed--what was the word?--freer, more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far less hara.s.sed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself more than he had ever done before: his mental views had become more open.

Then he remembered that he wanted to see his son Max, and talk to him about certain matters; and so, after a few more tentative touches to the back of his head to find if it was still ticking--which it was--he went into his study, and sending for one of his secretaries, got a message despatched. And only when he was well on in the routine of his afternoon's labors did he recollect that he had not lunched.