Part 65 (2/2)

Every week in the streets at the back of the palace fresh straw was laid down, not so much for the benefit of the sufferer (whose room was too far away for any sound of traffic to disturb him), but as a stimulus to popular imagination. The men who laid it down performed their task as though the eye of the whole nation were upon them; and even upon the Stock Exchange one learned that the rise and fall of prices were but the harmonious accompaniment of a stupendous national anxiety.

All these things Jingalo was told by its newspapers, and some of them were true; and in the reading and the doing of them how Jingalo enjoyed itself! It had never had such a time of feeling good, unselfish, and thoughtful on a large and h.o.m.ogeneous scale, without having to do anything particularly unpleasant in return. The theaters suffered, but not nearly so much as the charities; for though Jingalo was still able decorously to amuse itself--and did so at her Majesty's special request, for the sake of trade--it could not have its heart successfully wrung by human compa.s.sion in more than one direction at a time--at least, not to the same extent. And so, charitable appeals had to wait till a livelier sense of grat.i.tude prompted by the King's recovery should revive them.

In the conduct of human affairs a.s.sociation plays a very curious part.

When a man is shouting for joy he can scatter largesse with a free hand, but he cannot loosen his purse-strings while he is holding his breath; and even when it is only being held for him by a sort of hypnotic suggestion, his nature is still undergoing a certain impedimental strain.

And as a visible embodiment to all this strain of calculation and suspense, small crowds could be seen standing constantly at the gates of the palace, waiting for bulletins and watching with a curious fascination the flag that so obstinately continued to float mast high.

They watched it as a crowd watches for a similar sign outside the walls of a jail: not that they wanted it to fall--but still, if it had to, they dearly wished that they might be there to see. Thus, even in their griefs, did the sporting instincts of the Jingalese people rise to the surface and bring them a consolation which nothing else could afford.

My readers will give me credit, I trust, for not having sought to impose on them that fear of impending doom, that apprehension of what the next hour might bring forth, on the strength of which the Jingalese press so sedulously ran its extra editions from day to day. I have never for a moment pretended that the King was going to die, seeing, on the contrary, that he was destined to make a complete recovery. But he was not to be quite the same man again--not at least that man whom we have seen in these pages b.u.mping his way conscientiously through a period of const.i.tutional crisis. For when the six Jingalese medicos came to put their heads together over him, they found in the back of his head a small dislodgment of bone, rather less than the size of a florin, and protruding almost an eighth of an inch from the surface of the skull.

Great was their speculation as to how such a thing could have come about without their knowing it--for here, of course, was the root of the whole mischief. This fracture, brought about perhaps by some flying fragment of bomb, unnoticed in the excitement of the moment and afterwards ignored, had evidently been the cause of the brain-fever; and when a cause of this sort is discovered nothing is easier for medical science than to put it right again.

And so, seeing that the bone was out of place, they put it back just where it ought to be, that is to say, where it had been. And as soon as that was done, and the right pressure once more restored to the King's brain, then his temperature went down, his delirium abated, and his mind, as it gradually came back to him, recovered the dull, safe, and retiring qualities which had belonged to it a year ago; and with its old const.i.tutional balance restored to it, it became once more contented with its limitations and surroundings, and made a very quiet, happy, and peaceful convalescence. And though on his recovery the King still remembered the events of the past months they appeared to him rather in the light of a bad dream than as a slice of real life.

The Prime Minister came to see him on the very first day when he was allowed to sit up and receive visitors, and they met without any sign of constraint or enmity.

”Well, Mr. Prime Minister, how are things going?” inquired the King.

”Very well, indeed, sir,” replied the minister, ”now that your Majesty has taken the necessary step to relieve us of all anxiety. And, though I have not come on this occasion to intrude politics, it may interest you, sir, to hear that on the question of the Spiritual Chamber, the Archbishop and I have come to an arrangement, and the necessary legislation is to be carried through by the consent of both parties.”

”Very gratifying, I am sure,” said the King. ”How did it come about?”

The Prime Minister hesitated. ”Well, sir,” he said, ”there were several contributing causes: I need not go into them all. The one thing, however, which made some modification of our plans clearly necessary was the death of the Archimandrite of Cappadocia. After that our proposed consecration of Free Churchmen to the new bishoprics ceased to be possible. No doubt your Majesty will feel relieved.”

”Yes, I am,” murmured the King mildly.

And so was the Prime Minister; for that event, happening so fortuitously at the right moment, had saved his face; his political retreat was covered, partly at any rate, by the death--in a queer odor of sanct.i.ty all his own--of that exiled patriarch of the Eastern Church.

His exit, though opportune, had not been dramatic; attention being at the moment otherwise directed. His two wives nursed him devotedly to the end, and wrapped him for burial in the magnificent cape which in his brief day of political importance the Prime Minister had given him. Very quietly and unostentatiously he was laid to rest under the rites of an alien Church--for his own would have none of him; nor was there any one left to say of him now, in the land of his exile and temporary adoption, ”Ah, Lord,” or ”Ah, his glory!” Only in his duplicated domestic circle was he in anywise missed; polities had s.h.i.+fted the ground from under him, and he had become negligible.

II

The King's recovery was the event of the new year, not only giving it an auspicious send-off, but lending thereafter a peculiar flavor to the whole social calendar. For months, addresses of congratulation kept coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and focussed the applause. Its influences extended to every department of public life; it affected politics, trade, public holiday, art, science; it invaded literature, increased the circulation of the newspapers, and lent inspiration even to poetry.

And those being the facts, how useless for satirists and cynics to pretend any longer that monarchy as an inst.i.tution was not firmly and inextricably imbedded in the very life and habits of the Jingalese people?

Even at the universities the theme chosen for the prize poem that year was the King's recovery from sickness; and though the prizes were few an unusually large number of the rejected poems, owing to the popularity of their subject, were published in the local newspapers. Perhaps only a few of them were good, but one at least achieved success, and was recited at all charity bazaars, concerts, and theatrical entertainments given in the ensuing year. One couplet alone shall be here quoted, portraying as it does in graphic phrase the national suspense during those weeks of prolonged crisis when telegram after telegram continued to pour monotonous negation on the hopes of an expectant people--

”Swift o'er the wires the electric message came, He is no better: he is much the same!”

Even amateur reciters could make an effect out of lines like that. Many of them did, and on one occasion the Princess Charlotte was a conspicuous member of the touched and attentive audience. It was a difficult moment for her, but with the help of a handkerchief she concealed her emotion, and the papers referred to it appreciatively as a touching incident.

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