Part 14
“Anyhow, the nobility of Monterosso, quite frankly hating Queen Anéli, give her every bad name they can discover in their vocabularies; and the populace, the mob, without stopping to make original investigations, have convicted her on faith, and watch her with sullen captiousness and mislike. When she drives abroad, scarcely a hat is doffed, never a cheer is raised. On the contrary, one sometimes hears mutterings and muffled groans; and the glances the passers-by direct at her are, in the main, the very reverse of affectionate glances. Members of the shop-keeping class alone show a certain tendency to speak up for her, because she spends her money pretty freely; but the shop-keeping class are aliens too, and don’t count—or, rather, they count against her, ’the dogs of Jews,’ the zhudovskwy sobakwy!”
But do you imagine Queen Anéli minds? Do you imagine she is hurt, depressed, disappointed? Not she. She accepts her unpopularity with the most superb indifference. “What do you suppose I care for the opinion of such riff-raff?” I recollect her once crying out, with curling lip. “Any one who has the least individuality, the least character, the least fineness, the least originality—any one who is in the least degree natural, unconventional, spontaneous—is bound to be misconceived and caluminated by the vulgar rank and file. It’s the meanness and stupidity of average human nature; it’s the proverbial injustice of men. To be popular, you must either be utterly insignificant, a complete nonentity, or else a timeserver and a hypocrite. So long as I have a clear conscience of my own, I don’t care a button what strangers think and say about me. I don’t intend to allow my conduct to be influenced in the tiniest particular by the prejudices of outsiders. Meddlers, busybodies! I will live my own life, and those who don’t like it may do their worst. I will be myself.”
“Yes, my dear; but after all,” the King reminded her, “one has, in this imperfect world, to make certain compromises with one’s environment, for comfort’s sake. One puts on extra clothing in winter, for example, however much, on abstract principles, one may despise such a gross, material, unintelligent thing as the weather. Just so, don’t you think, one is by way of having a smoother time of it, in the long run, if one takes a few simple measures to conciliate the people amongst whom one is compelled to live? Now, for instance, if you would give an hour or two every day to learning Monterossan....
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t begin that rengaine,” cried her Majesty. “I’ve told you a hundred million times that I won’t be bothered learning Monterossan.”
It is one of her subjects’ sorest points, by the bye, that she has never condescended to learn their language. When she was first married, indeed, she announced her intention of studying it. Grammars and dictionaries were bought; a Professor was nominated; and for almost a week the Crown Princess (Krolevna), as she then was, did little else than grind at Monterossan. Her Professor was delighted; he had never known such a zealous pupil. Her husband was a little anxious. “You mustn’t work too hard, my dear. An hour or two a day should be quite enough.” But she answered, “Let me alone. It interests me.” And for almost a week she was at it early and late, with hammer and tongs; poring over the endless declensions of Monterossan nouns, the endless conjugations of Monterossan verbs; wrestling, sotto voce, with the tongue-tangling difficulties of Monterossan pronunciation; or, with dishevelled hair and inky fingers, copying long Monterossan sentences into her exercise book. She is not the sort of person who does things by halves.—And then, suddenly, she turned volte-face; abandoned the enterprise for ever. “It’s idiotic,” she exclaimed. “A language with thirty-seven letters in its alphabet, and no literature! Why should I addle my brains trying to learn it? Ah, bien, merci! I’ll content myself with French and English. It’s bad enough, in one short life, to have had to learn German, when I was a child.”
And neither argument nor entreaty could induce her to recommence it. The King, who has never altogether resigned himself to her determination, seizes from time to time an opportunity to hark back to it; but then he is silenced, as we have seen, with a “don’t begin that rengaine.” The disadvantages that result from her ignorance, it must be noticed, are chiefly moral; it offends Monterossan amour-propre. Practically, she does perfectly well with French, that being the Court language of the realm.
No, Queen Anéli doesn’t care a button. She tosses her head, and accepts “the proverbial injustice of men” with magnificent unconcern. Only, sometimes, when the public sentiment against her takes the form of aggressive disrespect, or when it interferes in any way with her immediate convenience, it puts her a little out of patience—when, for instance, the traffic in the street retards the progress of her carriage, and a passage isn’t cleared for her as rapidly as it might be for a Queen whom the rabble loved; or when, crossing the pavement on foot, to enter a church, or a shop, or what not, the idlers that collect to look, glare at her sulkily, without doing her the common courtesy of lifting their hats. In such circumstances, I dare say, she is more or less angered. At all events, a sudden fire will kindle in her eyes, a sudden colour in her cheeks; she will very likely tap nervously with her foot, and murmur something about “canaille.” Perhaps anger, though, is the wrong word for her emotion; perhaps it should be more correctly called a kind of angry contempt.
When I first came to Vescova, some years ago, the Prime Minister and virtual dictator of the country was still M. Tsargradev, the terrible M. Tsargradev,—or Sargradeff, as most English newspapers write his name,—and it was during my visit here that his downfall occurred, his downfall and irretrievable disgrace.
The character and career of M. Tsargradev would furnish the subject for an extremely interesting study. The illegitimate son of a Monterossan nobleman, by a peasant mother, he inherited the unprepossessing physical peculiarities of his mother’s stock: the sallow skin, the broad face, the flat features, the prominent cheek-bones, the narrow, oblique-set, truculent black eyes, the squat, heavy figure. But to these he united a cleverness, an energy, an ambition, which are as foreign to simple as to gentle Monterossan blood, and which he doubtless owed to the fusion of the two; and an unscrupulousness, a perfidy, a cruelty, and yet a superficial urbanity, that are perhaps not surprising in an ambitious politician, half an Oriental, who has got to carry the double handicap of a repulsive personal appearance and a bastard birth. Now, the Government of Monterosso, as the King has sometimes been heard to stigmatise it, is deplorably constitutional. By the Constitution of 1869, practically the whole legislative power is vested in the Soviete, a parliament elected by the votes of all male subjects who have completed three years of military service. And, in the early days of the reign of Theodore IV., M. Tsargradev was leader of the Soviete, with a majority of three to one at his back.
This redoubtable personage stood foremost in the ranks of those whom our fiery little Queen Anéli “could not endure.”
“His horrible soapy smile! His servile, insinuating manner! It makes you feel as if he were plotting your assassination,” she declared. “His voice—ugh! It’s exactly like lukewarm oil. He makes my flesh creep, like some frightful, bloated reptile.”
“There was a Queen in Thule,” hummed Florimond, “who had a marvellous command of invective. ’Eaving help your reputation, if you fell under her illustrious displeasure.”
“I don’t see why you make fun of me. I’m sure you think as I do—that he’s a monster of low cunning, and cynicism, and craft, and treachery, and everything that’s vile and revolting. Don’t you?” the Queen demanded.
“To be sure I do, ma’am. I think he’s a bold, bad, dreadful person. I lie awake half the night, counting up his iniquities in my mind. And if just now I laughed, it was only to keep from crying.”
“This sort of talk is all very well,” put in the King; “but the fact remains that Tsargradev is the master of Monterosso. He could do any one of us an evil turn at any moment. He could cut down our Civil List to-morrow, or even send us packing, and establish republic. We’re dependent for everything upon his pleasure. I think, really, my dear, you ought to try to be decent to him—if only for prudence’ sake.”
“Decent to him!” echoed her Majesty. “I like that! As if I didn’t treat him a hundred million times better than he deserves! I hope he can’t complain that I’m not decent to him.”
“You’re not exactly effusive, do you think? I don’t mean that you stick your tongue out at him, or throw things at his head. But trust him for understanding. It’s what you leave unsaid and undone, rather than what you say or do. He’s fully conscious of the sort of place he occupies in your esteem, and he resents it. He thinks you distrust him, suspect him, look down upon him....”
“Well, and so I do,” interrupted the Queen. “And so do you. And so does everybody who has any right feeling.”
“Yes; but those of us who are wise in our generation keep our private sentiments regarding him under lock and key. We remember his power, and treat him respectfully to his face, however much we may despise him in secret. What’s the use of quarrelling with our bread and butter? We should seek to propitiate him, to rub him the right way.”
“Then you would actually like me to grovel, to toady, to a disgusting little low-born, black-hearted cad like Tsargradev!” cried the Queen, with scorn.
“Oh, dear me, no,” protested her husband. “But there’s a vast difference between toadying, and being a little tactful, a little diplomatic. I should like you to treat him with something more than bare civility.”
“Well, what can I do that I don’t do?”
“You never ask him to any but your general public functions, your State receptions, and that sort of thing. Why don’t you admit him to your private circle sometimes? Why don’t you invite him to your private parties, your dinners?”
“Ah, merci, non! My private parties are my private parties. I ask my friends, I ask the people I like. Nothing could induce me to ask that horrid little underbred mongrel creature. He’d be—he’d be like—like something unclean—something murky and contaminating—in the room. He’d be like an animal, an ape, a satyr.”
“Well, my dear,” the King submitted meekly, “I only hope we’ll never have cause to repent your exclusion of him. I know he bears us a grudge for it, and he’s not a person whose grudges are to be made light of.”
“Bah! I’m not afraid of him,” Anéli retorted. “I know he hates me. I see it every time he looks at me, with his snaky little eyes, his forced little smile—that awful, complacent, ingratiating smirk of his, that shows his teeth, and isn’t even skin deep; a mere film spread over his face, like pomatum! Oh, I know he hates me. But it’s the nature of mean, false little beasts like him to hate their betters; so it can’t be helped. For the rest, he may do his worst. I’m not afraid,” she concluded airily.
Not only would she take no steps to propitiate M. Tsargradev, but she was constantly urging her husband to dismiss him.
“I’m perfectly certain he has all sorts of dreadful secret vices. I haven’t the least doubt he’s murdered people. I’m sure he steals. I’m sure he has a secret understanding with Berlin, and accepts bribes to manage the affairs of Monterosso as Prince Bismarck wishes. That’s why we’re more or less in disgrace with our natural allies, Russia and France. Because Tsargradev is paid to pursue, an anti-Russian, a German, policy. If you would take my advice, you’d dismiss him, and have him put in prison. Then you could explain to the Soviete that he is a murderer, a thief, a traitor, and a monster of secret immorality, and appoint a decent person in his place.”
Her husband laughed with great amusement.
“You don’t appear quite yet to have mastered the principles of constitutional government, my dear. I could no more dismiss Tsargradev than you could dismiss the Pope of Rome.”
“Are you or are you not the King of Monterosso?”
“I’m Vice-King, perhaps. You’re the King, you know. But that has nothing to do with it. Tsargradev is leader of the Soviete. The Soviete pays the bills, and its leader governs. The King’s a mere fifth wheel. Some day they’ll abolish him. Meanwhile they tolerate him, on the understanding that he’s not to interfere.”
“You ought to be ashamed to say so. You ought to take the law and the Constitution and everything into your own hands. If you asserted yourself, they’d never dare to resist you. But you always submit—submit—submit. Of course, everybody takes advantage of a man who always submits. Show that you have some spirit, some sense of your own dignity. Order Tsargradev’s dismissal and arrest. You can do it now, at once, this evening. Then to-morrow you can go down to the Soviete, and tell them what a scoundrel he is—a thief, a murderer, a traitor, an impostor, a libertine, everything that’s foul and bad. And tell them that henceforward you intend to be really King, and not merely nominally King; and that you’re going to govern exactly as you think best; and that, if they don’t like that, they will have to make the best of it. If they resist, you can dissolve them, and order a general election. Or you can suspend the Constitution, and govern without any Soviete at all.”
The King laughed again.
“I’m afraid the Soviete might ask for a little evidence, a few proofs, in support of my sweeping charges. I could hardly satisfy them by declaring that I had my wife’s word for it. But, seriously, you exaggerate. Tsargradev is anything you like from the point of view of abstract ethics, but he’s not a criminal. He hasn’t the faintest motive for doing anything that isn’t in accordance with the law. He’s simply a vulgar, self-seeking politician, with a touch of the Tartar. But he’s not a thief, and I imagine his private life is no worse than most men’s.”
“Wait, wait, only wait!” cried the Queen. “Time will show. Some day he’ll come to grief, and then you’ll see that he’s even worse than I have said. I feel, I know, he’s everything that’s bad. Trust a woman’s intuitions. They’re much better than what you call evidence.”
And she had a nickname for him, which, as well as her general criticisms of his character, had pretty certainly reached the Premier’s ear; for, as subsequent events demonstrated, very nearly every servant in the Palace was a spy in his pay. She called him the nain jaune.
Subsequent events have also demonstrated that her woman’s intuitions were indeed trustworthy. Perhaps you will remember the revelations that were made at the time of M. Tsargradev’s downfall; fairly full reports of them appeared in the London papers. Murder, peculation, and revolting secret debaucheries were all, surely enough, proved against him. It was proved that he was the paid agent of Berlin; it was proved that he had had recourse to torture in dealing with certain refractory witnesses in his famous prosecution of Count Osaréki. And then, there was the case of Colonel Alexandrevitch. He and Tsargradev, at sunset, were strolling arm-in-arm in the Dunayskiy Prospekt, when the Colonel was shot by some person concealed in the shrubberies, who was never captured. Tsargradev and his friends broached the theory, which gained pretty general acceptance, that the shot had been intended for the Prime Minister himself, and that the death of Colonel Alexandrevitch was an accident due to bad aiming. It is now perfectly well established that the death of the Colonel was due to very good aiming indeed; that the assassin was M. Tsargradev’s own hireling; and that perhaps the best reason why the police could never lay hands on him had some connection with the circumstance that the poor wretch, that very night, was strangled and cast into the Danube.
Oh, they manage these things in a highly unlikely and theatrical manner, in the far south-east of Europe!
But the particular circumstances of M. Tsargradev’s downfall were amusingly illustrative of the character of the Queen. Ce que femme veult, Dieu le veult. And though her husband talked of the Constitution, and pleaded the necessity of evidence, Anéli was unconvinced. To get rid of Tsargradev, by one method or another, was her fixed idea, her determined purpose; she bided her time, and in the end she accomplished it.
It befell, during the seventh month of my stay in the Palace, that a certain great royal wedding was appointed to be celebrated at Dresden: a festivity to which were bidden all the crowned heads and most of the royal and semi-royal personages of Christendom, and amongst them the Krol and Kroleva of Monte-rosso.
“It will cost us a pretty sum of money,” Theodore grumbled, when the summons first reached him. “We’ll have to travel in state, with a full suite; and the whole shot must be paid from our private purse. There’s no expecting a penny for such a purpose from the Soviete.”
“I hope,” exclaimed the Queen, looking up from a letter she was writing, “I hope you don’t for a moment intend to go?”
“We must go,” answered the King. “There’s no getting out of it.”
“Nonsense!” said she. “We’ll send a representative.”
“I only wish we could,” sighed the King. “But unfortunately this is an occasion when etiquette requires that we should attend in person.”
“Oh, bother etiquette,” said she. “Etiquette was made for slaves. We’ll send your Cousin Peter. One must find some use for one’s Cousin Peters.”
“Yes; but this is a business, alas, in which one’s Cousin Peter won’t go down. I’m very sorry to say we’ll have to attend in person.”
“Nonsense!” she repeated. “Attend in person! How can you think of such a thing? We’d be bored and fatigued to death. It will be unspeakable. Nothing but dull, stodgy, suffocating German pomposity and bad taste. Oh, je m’y connais! Red cloth, and military bands, and interminable banquets, and noise, and confusion, and speeches (oh, the speeches!), until you’re ready to drop. And besides, we’d be herded with a crowd of ninth-rate princelings and petty dukes, who smell of beer and cabbage and brilliantine. We’d be relegated to the fifth or sixth rank, behind people who are all of them really our inferiors. Do you suppose I mean to let myself be patronised by a lot of stupid Hohenzollerns and Grâtzhoffens? No, indeed! You can send your Cousin Peter.”
“Ah, my dear, if I were the Tsar of Russia!” laughed her husband. “Then I could send a present and a poor relation, and all would be well. But—you speak of ninth-rate princelings. A ninth-rate princeling like the Krol of Tchermnogoria must make act of presence in his proper skin. It’s de rigueur. There’s no getting out of it. We must go.”
“Well, you may go, if you like,” her Majesty declared. “As for me, I won’t. If you choose to go and be patronised and bored, and half killed by the fatigue, and half ruined by the expense, I suppose I can’t prevent you. But, if you want my opinion, I think it’s utter insane folly.”
And she re-absorbed herself in her letter, with the air of one who had been distracted for a moment by a frivolous and tiresome interruption.
The King did not press the matter that evening, but the next morning he mustered his courage, and returned to it.
“My dear,” he began, “I beg you to listen to me patiently for a moment, and not get angry. What I wish to say is really very important.”
“Well, what is it? What is it?” she enquired, with anticipatory weariness.
“It’s about going to Dresden. I—I want to assure you that I dislike the notion of going quite as much as you can. But it’s no question of choice. There are certain things one has to do, whether one will or not. I’m exceedingly sorry to have to insist, but we positively must reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice, and attend the wedding—both of us. It’s a necessity of our position. If we should stay away, it would be a breach of international good manners that people would never forgive us. We should be the scandal, the by-word, of the Courts of Europe. We’d give the direst offence in twenty different quarters. We really can’t afford to make enemies of half the royal families of the civilised world. You can’t imagine the unpleasantnesses, the complications, our absence would store up for us; the bad blood it would cause. We’d be put in the black list of our order, and snubbed, and embarrassed, and practically ostracised, for years to come. And you know whether we need friends. But the case is so obvious, it seems a waste of breath to argue it. You surely won’t let a mere little matter of temporary personal inconvenience get us into such an ocean of hot water. Come now—be reasonable, and say you will go.”
The Queen’s eyes were burning; her under-lip had swollen portentously; but she did not speak.
The King waited a moment. Then, “Come, Anéli—don’t be angry. Answer me. Say that you will go,” he urged, taking her hand.
She snatched her hand away. I’m afraid she stamped her foot. “No!” she cried. “Let me alone. I tell you I won’t.”
“But, my dear....” the King was re-commencing....
“No, no, no! And you needn’t call me your dear. If you had the least love for me, the least common kindness, or consideration for my health or comfort or happiness, you’d never dream of proposing such a thing. To drag me half-way across the Continent of Europe, to be all but killed at the end of the journey by a pack of horrid, coarse, beer-drinking Germans! And tired out, and irritated, and patronised, and humiliated by people like ————— and ————! It’s perfectly heartless of you. And I—when I suggest such a simple natural pleasure as a trip to Paris, or to the Italian lakes in autumn—you tell me we can’t afford it! You’re ready to spend thousands on a stupid, utterly unnecessary and futile absurdity, like this wedding, but you can’t afford to take me to the Italian lakes! And yet you pretend to love me! Oh, its awful, awful, awful!” And her voice failed her in a sob; and she hid her face in her hands, and wept. So the King had to drop the subject again, and to devote his talents to the task of drying her tears.
I don’t know how many times they renewed the discussion, but I do know that the Queen stood firm in her original refusal, and that at last it was decided that the King should go without her, and excuse her absence as best he might on the plea of her precarious state of health. It was only after this resolution was made and registered, and her husband had brought himself to accept it with some degree of resignation—it was only then that her Majesty began to waver and vacillate, and reconsider, and change her mind. As the date approached for his departure, her alternations became an affair of hours. It was, “Oh, after all, I can’t let you go alone, poor Theo. And besides, I should die of heartbreak, here without you. So—there—I’ll make the best of a bad business, and go with you”—it was either that, or else, “No, after all, I can’t. I really can’t. I’m awfully sorry. I shall miss you horribly. But, when I think of what it means, I haven’t the strength or courage. I simply can’t”—it was one thing or the other, on and off, all day.
“When you finally know your own mind, I shall be glad if you’ll send for me,” said Theodore. “Because I’ve got to name a Regent. And if you’re coming with me, I shall name my Uncle Stephen. But if you’re stopping here, of course I shall name you.”