King John of Jingalo Part 15

But John of Jingalo had all the defects which belong to a conscientious character. He had not gone to the play for amus.e.m.e.nt, it had not amused him, he did not at all agree with the public's att.i.tude towards it, and yet he was reaping the benefit; he was standing in a glow of popular approbation under false pretenses; and the more he thought about it the less he liked it--it gave him a bad conscience.

Yet, in spite of that, he could not but recognize that he had touched power; under a misapprehension the people had responded to him as never before; he had done what they regarded as a sporting thing in sending unpopular officialdom to the right-about; it was even possible that among theatrical circles when the exploit was talked of he was now known as "good old King Jack." All the same he did not feel that he had been good, and he wanted to make amends.

The highly colored conversations of Max, the talk about whipping-boys and Court jesters, and all those ancient divinities which had once hedged a King but were now mere barbed wire entanglements, had turned his attention toward certain medieval inst.i.tutions the practice of which had lapsed, or had become reduced to a mere shadow of their former selves. And with a conscience ill at ease over the damage he had wrought to a season which he still regarded with a certain conventional reverence, his thoughts lighted upon Maundy Thursday, then less than a fortnight off.

He remembered having once watched from a private gallery in the royal chapel the impoverished ceremony which now did shabby duty for the old symbol of kingly humility and service. He had seen the vicarious sacrifice of silver pennies doled out by his almoners to a duplicated dozen of old men and women who had lost their better days in circ.u.mstances of the utmost respectability; and shocked at the poverty of the display he had been glad to learn that a more Christian gift of tea, clothes, snuff, and tobacco was added outside the Church door when the ceremony was over. But even so its ritual had not attracted him: it had lost its human values, and seemed to have been kept in life merely for archeological a.s.sociation.

Now on looking into the matter once more (the _Encyclopedia Appendica_ gave him the required information) he was astonished to find that the old foot-was.h.i.+ng ceremony of Holy Thursday was originally the chief function at which every year the Knights of the Holy Thorn were bound, if not unavoidably prevented, to appear and do service. Nay, when he turned to it, he found that it still stood so expressed in the Charter of the Order, and that each new Knight, upon admission thereto, swore solemnly to keep and observe the same--so help him G.o.d--faithfully unto his life's end.

If he had had any doubt before, the terms of that oath, which he himself had taken--probably without understanding it since it had been read to him in Latin--were sufficient to decide him. Without loss of time he sent word by his Comptroller-General to the Prime Minister that he intended in the following week to revive the full ceremony and to recall the Knights of the Thorn to the duties they had so long neglected. The ceremony, as of old, was to take place in public at noon outside the doors of the metropolitan cathedral.

"The King is going off his head," said the Comptroller-General by way of preface to the announcement with which he was charged; and the Prime Minister was ready to agree with him when he heard it.

"Preposterous!" he exclaimed.

"He has got chapter and verse for it," lamented the Comptroller-General.

"Can't you persuade him that it's a forgery?"

"It's in the oath," replied the other; "you yourself have taken it."

"Oh, yes, the form; but the ceremony--the accompanying service, I mean--was cut out of the Church Prayers at the time of the Reformation.

It has become illegal."

"Inside a church, yes; not outside. At least that is his contention. Oh, I have already done my best! He got quite excited when I ventured to discuss the matter,--asked me if I understood the nature of an oath, and whether I had ever taken one."

"Is he much set on it?"

"I have had to write to the Archbishop."

"What do you think he'll say about it?"

"Ordinarily he would oppose it as savoring of Rome; under present circ.u.mstances my impression is that he will welcome it as giving the Church an added importance. You don't like it?"

"Of course, I don't."

"Then you had better see the King yourself. You have only a week left; and he has already begun looking at the weather-gla.s.s and wondering if it's going to be fine."

"That's just like him!" said the Prime Minister.

"Yes, and he's getting more like himself every day. My part is not a sinecure, I can a.s.sure you."

Accordingly the Prime Minister went over to the Palace and saw the King.

Informed as to what line of argument had already been tried and failed, he approached the matter from a new standpoint: he spoke in the name of Protestantism. This ceremony had only survived in Catholic countries; in Jingalo the Reformation had killed it, and it had gone with graven images, the invocation of saints, and the wors.h.i.+p of relics to the limbo of forgotten foolishnesses.

"The Charter of the Holy Thorn has not gone," said the King.

"Nor has your Majesty's t.i.tle to the Crown of Jerusalem; but who ever thinks of enforcing it?"

"I am willing to resign it any day," replied his Majesty. "I can also, if you think it advisable, abolish the Charter of the Holy Thorn and the Knighthood with it. But I don't think the Knights would quite like that."

"If it comes to a question of liking," said the Prime Minister, "I do not think they will quite like was.h.i.+ng beggars' feet in public."

"Oh, I do the was.h.i.+ng and the drying," said the King. "They only carry the basins and put on the boots. I have looked up the whole ceremony; it's very impressive. You have only to read it and you will become converted: it is so symbolical."

The Prime Minister objected that though in its origin the ceremony might have had symbolic meaning and beauty, its performance now-a-days would be looked upon as a mere form and superst.i.tion, contrary to the spirit of the age.

This reminded the King of a certain "maxim."

"'The spirit of the age,'" he quoted, "'is the industrious collection of bric-a-brac--good, bad, and indifferent': this one happens to be good, and has been neglected. And talk about forms and ceremonies!--what can be more formal, superst.i.tious, and idiotic than the procession of Court functionaries and King's Musketeers (with the Dean of the Chapels Royal carrying a candle) which, on every ninth of November--the anniversary of the Bed-Chamber Plot--comes to look under my bed to see whether a.s.sa.s.sins are not lurking there? On one occasion I was laid up with influenza, but I had to submit to that form and superst.i.tion because it had become traditional. And all the papers gloated over the fact, and called it 'a link in the chain of monarchy,' though as a matter of fact the conspiracy in question had been got up against that branch of the succession which we afterwards succeeded in dethroning. All the personal inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr.

Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are forms and superst.i.tions, then I inst.i.tute the Order of the New Broom, and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear me now!")

Failing in his personal appeal the Prime Minister turned on the Departments, and the King fought them one by one: the Board of Works which wanted to have the roads up; the Clerk of the Weather who said that a depression unsuitable for open-air gatherings was crossing Europe; the Chief of the Police who said that so large an open s.p.a.ce was bad for a crowd; the Minister of Public Wors.h.i.+p who wished everything to be done--if done at all--indoors and un.o.btrusively, by preference in one of the Royal Chapels: the effect, he said, would be more reverent. And when all these in turn had failed, the Prime Minister asked for a Council on the subject, and was told it was none of the Council's business.

"I am Grand Master in my own Order," said the King, "and you, as one of its Knights, in any matter pertaining to the Order owe me your unquestioning obedience."

That was unanswerable; he did. And so the King got his way.

II

The revival proved a tremendous success, although it did not reproduce the medieval conditions in their entirety.

The twelve old women were left out; it was not considered decent for the King to wash their feet in public and the Queen absolutely refused to do so. Instead they were invited to take tea at the Palace, and afterwards were all presented with foot-warmers.

In other directions also invidious distinctions were attempted, and a certain amount of controversy was raised. The Bishops made a scrambling and desultory fight for it that, as the steps of the Cathedral were to be used, all the washen beggars should be actual communicants of the Established Church; but the demand died down when it was found that such a breed did not exist; and a rush of undesirables to the altar in order to qualify could hardly be welcomed as a tolerable solution.

There was a tussle, too, among the Knights of the Thorn as to how many towel-bearers there should be (the towels remaining perquisites afterwards); but the King and his Master of Ceremonies--the delighted Max helping them--were able to settle matters to the general satisfaction, and, by allowing a towel to each foot and twelve cakes of soap, provided a sufficient number of souvenirs to go round.

And so the day came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled from within, bands played without, and ma.s.sed choirs sang like angels from the parapets and galleries above the west doors of the Cathedral.

And when their ordeal by water was over, then the twelve beggars--all of guaranteed good character although not actual communicants--received with delight each a new pair of shoes and stockings, which they were able to sell at fabulous prices, immediately the ceremony was over, to collectors of curiosities, chiefly Americans. And that same night twelve very happy beggars, all more or less drunk, made their appearance on the largest music-hall stage in the metropolis, where the whole scene was elaborately re-enacted in facsimile, followed by a cinematograph record of the actual event.

The King was a little disappointed at these modern developments, they seemed to take away from the penitential character of the performance, and rather to weaken than restore in the public conscience the due observance of Lent.

Max, however, a.s.sured his father that he had made the greatest hit of his life; his personal popularity had been greatly enhanced. What pleased him better was that in feeling for the public pulse, by the light of his own conscience, he had proved that he was right and the Prime Minister wrong.

Yet, though ostensibly in the wrong, the Prime Minister had really been right. He had reckoned that the move might prove a popular one--for the monarchy; and though a dull average of popularity for that ancient inst.i.tution suited his book for the present, he did not wish, in view of certain eventualities, to see it greatly increased, and still less did he wish the King to discover that by acting in opposition to his ministers he might gain in popular esteem.

As one of the Knights of the Thorn he himself had been obliged to attend the ceremony; and by some it was noticed that, as he stood holding a golden ewer in his two hands, he looked very cross. But all the other Knights of the Thorn--those who had towels and soap as perquisites--enjoyed themselves thoroughly and were already looking forward to a repet.i.tion of the performance next year. Even in their case, then, the King had proved to be right,--forms and ceremonies accompanied by fine clothes were still popular things; the Order of the New Broom would not be yet.

III

And then, with blare of trumpet and clash of drum, with troopings and marchings, with garlanded streets and miles upon miles of cheering people, came the great Jubilee festivities. Silver was the note of the decorations--silver in the midst of green spring. The Queen herself wore silver gowns and bonnets of heliotrope, and the King a uniform wherein silver braid formed the becoming subst.i.tute for gold. Corporations came carrying silver caskets; army pensioners and school-children, feted at the public expense, received white metal mementoes which, while new at any rate, looked as real as any coin of the realm. For a whole week the piebald ponies really worked for their living, grumbling loudly between whiles in their stalls; for a whole week "loyalty" was the note on which the press harped its seraphic praises of monarchy and nation; and for a whole week people actually did drop politics, reduce their hours of labor, and run about enjoying themselves.

The poet laureate published an ode for the occasion; he remarked on the pa.s.sing of time, said that the King had acquired wisdom and understanding, but that the Queen did not look a day older; said that the trees were green on that day twenty-five years ago when the King ascended the throne, and that they were green still; said that cows ate gra.s.s then, and were eating it now without any decrease of appet.i.te; said, in fact, that nothing sweet, reasonable, or beautiful had really changed at all, and that the monarchy, taking its const.i.tutional day by day, was the national expression of that unchangeableness.