Chapter 15

A PROMISSORY NOTE

I

On their return to Jingalo the Princess heard from her parents how badly she had behaved.

"But I had to do it!" she protested. "After what that paper had said, and all the other things, how else could I show that I hadn't come on purpose?"

"And pray, do you always mean running away from him?" inquired the Queen.

"I shan't go to Bad-as-Bad again, I know that."

"But if he comes here."

"Why, are you going to ask him?"

"He has asked himself," said her father.

"Oh!" This came as a surprise.

"But, of course," he continued, "if you mean to go on being rude to him, it wouldn't do."

"I have never been rude to him!" protested Charlotte. "I only refused to be trapped into meeting him. I shouldn't have minded if it had just been by accident; but it wasn't."

"I'm afraid it can never be by accident now," replied her father. "But you needn't be here when he arrives, or when he goes; though in between whiles, of course, you would have to meet him. And then--well, if you wanted to see more of each other--he might come again."

Charlotte showed her distaste for any temporizing of that sort. "The only difference I can see," she remarked, "is that first you were for offering me to him openly and now I'm to be a sandwich."

"You are not to be anything you don't like, my dear," said her father with gentleness. "But you know, child, we have not the whole world to choose from; being kings and queens and princesses doesn't make life a fairy tale."

"But it does, when we have to end by marrying princes. That's the bother of it."

"Well, I am trying to make it easier for you. Oh, I admit the drawbacks; but why make them out worse than they are?"

Charlotte's moods always softened under her father's cajolery; not that she was more fond of him than of her mother; but these two had more ground for mutual sympathy and understanding; and pity for his vaguely harassed countenance was never far absent from her heart.

"I am having just now," the King went on, "a very trying and disturbing time--in ways that I don't want to talk about. Do try, child, not to add to my anxieties."

Charlotte, feeling compunction working within her, thought hard for a while. "Before he comes----" she said, and stopped. "Papa, when does he come?"

"Not till after the winter session has opened--perhaps about Christmas."

"Well, before he comes, then, I want to go away quite by myself for three weeks or a fortnight, and then--I'll think about it. If, when the time comes, you want me to see him I will, and I promise not to be rude to him. But he shan't think that I have been waiting for him, or that I want to have anything to do with him; I shall make that quite plain."

"Then I do hope that you know what not being rude means," put in the Queen; "for I must say that doesn't sound like it."

"Oh, I will provide a safe margin," replied Charlotte. "He shall have nothing to complain of. If I do see him I will be as nice to him as ever I can; much nicer than you have been to me!"

"Now, my dear, don't begin scuffling again!" said her father deprecatingly. "Very well; that's settled then."

"And you will give me that fortnight?"

"Longer, my dear, if you wish."

"No," said the Queen, "a fortnight is quite enough, if she means to spend it pretending to be a Trojan woman."

"If I stay away longer than a fortnight," said Charlotte, "you can send and fetch me." Then she turned to her father. "I am very sorry, papa, ever to have to pain you: but you don't know how dreadful it feels if one isn't allowed to be oneself."

"Oh, don't I?" exclaimed his Majesty. "My dear, if you knew what being a king was really like--but there, we won't talk politics now! By the way, as you came back before we did, do you happen to know what has become of Max?"

"I haven't seen him," said Charlotte with a certain air of discretion; "but I had a line from him in answer to one I wrote on my arrival: and he does seem to have been doing something at last."

"What has he been doing?"

"Getting his head broken."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Queen. "However did he come to do that?"

"He says he was working among the strikers and got hit. Nobody knows about it, and he doesn't want it known. He writes that he is being very well looked after at some private nursing place."

"Did he give you the address?" inquired her Majesty suspiciously.

"No; he said he would be home in a day or two, and then we might all come and see him."

"So this is what goes on while I am away!" complained the Queen, as though her being at home might have prevented it. "And I wonder how it was we didn't hear the news. To think of poor Max getting hit like that and the papers saying nothing about it!"

II

Later in the day the King heard more of the matter from the Comptroller-General. It had not been kept out of the papers quite as completely as it should have been. There were rumors, allusions; but none of the leading dailies had said anything.

"I gather, sir," said the General, "that the Prince has been preparing himself very thoroughly for the work of the coming Commission, making personal investigations, mixing daily with the people in the very poorest districts. Of course it was the duty of the detective service to know of it and to take what steps they could to insure his safety. I am told that what actually happened was that on one occasion his Royal Highness went to the aid of the police, hard pressed by a gang of rioters; and he was injured in the general mêlée. It all took place in a moment and of course no one had any idea that he would involve himself in it. When he was picked up by the detectives he gave a certain address." Here the Comptroller assumed an air of the utmost discretion. "To that address he was taken; and there I believe, sir, still remains."

"Dear, dear," said the King, "very distressing, very unfortunate. I had hoped all that was over."

"There is no reason, sir, to doubt that he has been properly looked after; certificated nurses have been in attendance, and at no time was there any danger."

"And how much of this has got into the papers?"

"Nothing, sir, as to the origin of the affair; but there have been some interrogations as to his Highness's present whereabouts, and an idea is abroad that he is not where the Court circular continues to say he is. Of course, when such rumors creep out there are also undesirable suggestions, which it would be well to put a stop to as soon as possible. I am glad to hear from your Majesty that the Prince intends coming back into residence. I have been in communication with his secretary, but I have not that gentleman's confidence and he has told me nothing."

"Well," said the King, "at all events the cause of it all--however much the result of indiscretion--was quite reputable."

"Oh, quite."

"Commendable even."

"I am told that his Highness showed great dash and determination." Yet whatever he had been told, there was embarrassment in the General's manner.

"Very well, then," said the King, "if there is any more tittle-tattle--in the press, I mean--you might let the facts be known; surely they ought to strike the popular imagination; and I'm sure the police need all the support we can give them just now."

The General hesitated.

"Would not that tend somewhat to prejudice his Highness's position as an impartial head of the Commission? Talking to the workers themselves, before the sittings have yet begun, has a certain air of _parti pris_. Some of the Commission, I fear, would not like it."

"To tell the truth," said the King, "I very much doubt whether the Prince will serve upon that Commission at all. He will probably be called elsewhere."

The Comptroller seemed considerably relieved. "Ah, that, of course, entirely removes the difficulty. I am afraid, sir, things are in a very disturbed state; so many people with new ideas are airing them just now; sympathy is being shown for criminals, and respect for government is not increasing. I know that the Prime Minister is getting very anxious; he hopes that to-morrow he may see your Majesty."

The King did not welcome the news; during the past few months he had quite lost any remnant of liking that he might once have had for the head of his Government. But when the Prime Minister arrived they exchanged the usual compliments and each was glad to see the other looking so well after change of air and occupation. In the Prime Minister's case, however, that was already over; politicians were in harness again to their respective departments, and on reopening his portfolio he had found a pack of troubles awaiting him.

The nuisance of Jingalese politics was this, that the political situation never would keep itself within the bounds of the ministerial program; and to-day not only had certain voting interests become obstreperous, but other interests which had not the vote were obstreperous also. In these last few months, while its rulers had been taking their well-earned rest, Jingalo had remained agog, obstinately progressive on foolish lines of its own; nothing any longer seemed content to stay as it had been: movement had become a craze.

Under his monarch's eye the Prime Minister thumbed his notes. He spoke of falling revenue, stagnation of trade, strikes, and the increase of violence. Police had actually been killed and the riot leaders were on trial. Presently he came to lesser matters.

"Sedition," said he, passing them in review, "is now openly preached every week in the _Women's War Cry_."

"Why do you not suppress it?" inquired the King.

"It is difficult to do that, sir, without disturbing trade. The paper is highly offensive and seditious; but it has an enormous advertising interest at its back, and so we don't like to touch it. When shop-looting began three years ago as a form of political propaganda it was noticed that those firms which advertised in the _Women's War Cry_ escaped the attentions of the rioters. Immediately the rush to advertise in its pages became tremendous--especially as further loots were then threatening. It has now some forty pages of advertisement and can afford in consequence to retain upon its staff the best journalists and critical writers of the day. Its _War Cry_, printed separately, inserted as a loose supplement, and with the statement 'given gratis' stamped across it in red ink, occupies a comparatively small portion of its space; all the rest is advertisement and high-class journalism. The circulation has gone up by leaps and bounds, and the profits are very considerable. If we prosecuted we might only find that in law the two portions were wholly distinct and independent of each other (I am told that they have even different printers), and the failure of the Crown's case would be a blow to the prestige of the Government; while if we succeeded altogether in suppressing it we should be more unpopular with the great middle-class trade interests than we are already."

"Why should you try to be popular?" inquired the King.

"A Government cannot exist upon air," remarked the Prime Minister; "and, after all, we do endeavor to deal fairly by all the interests which go to make up the prosperity of the country."

"You mean the trade prosperity?"

The Prime Minister did; but he did not like it to be stated thus baldly. "I was only wondering," went on the King, "what price you were prepared to pay for it. We must tolerate sedition, it seems; must we also, in the same interest, encourage disease?"

"I fear that I do not follow your Majesty's argument."

"I was merely recalling what the Prince told me for a fact just before I went abroad. He had been informed of it by a social worker who gave him chapter and verse. Two years ago the medical profession published a book exposing all the fraudulent patents and quack medicines which occupy so large a space in the advertising columns of our newspapers. The book was put authoritatively upon the market, and, as I understand, was advertised in all the leading papers. When the paid-for advertisements terminated not a single paper would renew the contract. The holders of those quack medicines and patents had found means to shut down (so far as the advertising of it was concerned) a scientific work which threatened to diminish their profits. That is why I ask what price we are prepared to pay for the protection of trade interests."

"I should like to be assured of the truth of that statement, with all respect to your Majesty, before I pass any comment."

"You can write to the College of Medicine if you really wish for the facts. I myself made very much the same query, and was shown as proof a letter from its president to one of the medical journals."

But even this did not induce the Prime Minister to regard the matter very seriously. "After all, sir," said he, "viewed in a certain light it is only a method of trade competition; for when the sales of patent medicines decrease no doubt the doctors begin to profit."

"The State has thought it worth while," said the King, "to give to the medical profession a certificated monopoly. Is it outside its province to warn the public against charlatans?"

"Is not charlatans an extreme term? I believe, sir, that many of these patents are quite excellent and in their first effects a stimulant to health; and in these days when 'suggestion' and 'faith-healing' are so much talked of it is an arguable proposition that those drugs which give to mind and body a certain preliminary incentive afford the best leverage for faith to work on. Of course there are a great many matters which need control, supervision, and reform; vested interests do tend to create abuses; but I must remind your Majesty that in the pushing of its reforms the Government has not been quite a free agent. In many respects we have been greatly hindered; that is still the crux of the political situation."

"Ah, yes," said the King, "you do well to remind me. You are, I take it, now engaged in educating the country; the terms of your proposals are before it. May I ask whether your anticipations of popular support have proved correct?"

"We find no reason to alter our opinion as to the necessary solution."

"Or as to your determination to proceed with it?"

The Prime Minister was very urbane. "Your Majesty has been good enough to indicate a date when all difficulties will be removed."

It was a sufficient statement of what was in store.

"Thank you," said the King, "I did wish to know. Have you done well at the by-elections?"

"Beyond the inevitable tear-and-wear due to our period of office we have nothing to complain of."

"I have been longer in office than you," said the King, smiling rather sadly, "and I suppose that in my case the inevitable wear-and-tear has been proportionately greater. You will make allowances, therefore, if I have been slow in arriving at my conclusion. After the date we agreed upon I think you will have no ground for complaint."

"I hope your Majesty has never regarded as a complaint the advice which I have felt bound to offer."

"There is a complaint somewhere," said the King; "perhaps a constitutional one. All I wanted to avoid was quack remedies."

He was rather pleased with himself at thus rounding off the discussion: for while reiterating his promise he had indicated that his own opinion was quite as unchanged as that of his ministers. And so with a little time still left in which to turn round he bethought him of the duty which lay on him to set his house in order against future events. And then it struck him how very important it was that Max should now "settle down" and eliminate for good and all certain elements from his life. Yes, it had become quite necessary that Max should marry.

III

Max was back again in his proper quarters, and the Queen had been to pay him a visit of motherly condolence. She, too, was set upon eliminating from his life those things which ought not to be in it; and finding him still rather feeble from the blow that had fallen on him, and with a head still bandaged, she thought it a seasonable opportunity to press him in the way he should go. But she was not one of those who have any taste for probing into young men's lives; she had an instinctive feeling that such a line of ethical exploration lay entirely beyond her; and so when she approached the subject her touch was only upon the surface.

"Max, my dear," she said fondly, "I do wish you would marry."

Max smiled at her with filial indulgence, and then, perceiving that there might be entertainment in a conversation well packed with double meanings, he fell in with her suggestion.

"I wish I could," he said, "but there are difficulties that you don't understand."

"Oh, yes, I think I do," she answered. "Of course with us there are always difficulties. The choice is so limited."

"I should rather incline to say that it is fixed."

"You mean just to the two I told you of? But you wouldn't have either of them."

"Perhaps _I_ ought to say that _I_ am fixed, then; I can't very well see myself changing."

"Oh, no, Max, no! Don't say that!" cried his mother, alarmed. "It is so very important that you should marry. And people are beginning to expect it."

"Yes, but as I say, there are difficulties--religious ones."

This was strange news for the Queen. Had Max a conscience then? It was a portent for which she had not been prepared.

"Of course," she said, "I don't want to ask questions."

"Perhaps you had better not."

"But I do want you to settle."

"I am settled," said Max.

It was dreadful to hear him say so, and a horrible idea that he had contracted a secret marriage with that foreign woman crossed her mind. Was this the difficulty that she did not understand? She grew timorous, afraid that he was going to tell her something--set before her some moral problem which she could not possibly solve. What if he were trying to entrap her, to lure her into taking sides with him over something no King or Government could countenance? From such a danger as that all her conventional femininity gathered itself in a panic-stricken bundle and fled.

"Max, dear," she said, "I would much rather you didn't tell me."

"I quite agree," he replied.

"But----" She paused, searching her mind for succor; and then, having found it, "Why not see the Archbishop about it?" she urged; "I am sure he could remove all your difficulties."

Max almost jumped out of his skin before he perceived how guileless had been his mother's remark. But the opportunity was certainly not to be missed.

"I should be delighted to see him," he said. "Indeed, I think he more than any one might solve my difficulty."

"Then you shall!" cried his mother, and fondly believed that, without becoming entangled herself she had wrought a good work and provided means to a solution. The Archbishop would, of course, be able to solve for him any difficulties of conscience, and to put such things as--well, anything he might have done in the past--in its right and proper place.

Her Majesty had a great belief in archbishops. At the hands of one she had been confirmed, it had taken two of them to marry her, and by one or another each of her four children had been well and truly baptized. They had also preached sermons of eloquent optimism over the two who had so prematurely died. And since she regarded all that they had done for her as eminently successful in result, they stood out in her world as the most efficient aids to the spiritual etceteras of life; and if any moral difficulty dimmed for a moment the clear horizon of her soul she would turn to the nearest archbishop for advice and encouragement.

And so the Archbishop came to see Prince Max in his convalescence, and sat by his side and talked to him, and tried by various diplomatic shifts to draw his confidence in the salutary direction desired by her Majesty; for he and the Queen had held conversation together on the matter. And Max, lying back at ease upon his cushions, and pretending to be a little further from complete recovery than he really was, examined that face of stern ecclesiastical mold, and seeking therein for some likeness to his beloved found none.

Nevertheless he listened respectfully without protest to the voice of the Church, when at last the Archbishop started to deliver his charge: he heard how necessary it was for the nation that those who were its rulers should set before it an example of regular family life, and how inexpedient it was for that example to be too long delayed; he heard of duty as though it came by inheritance to the accompaniment of a position and a title, and of many other things that he had heard tell of before and profoundly disagreed with; but for once he was not argumentative. He let the Church speak to him and advise him to do the thing he was longing to do, and to leave that life which (without a word said on the matter) he was known to have been leading in the past. And when the Archbishop had quite done and taken his departure, then Max rose up from his bed of sickness and went down to Sister Jenifer and, presenting to her gaze a broken and a contrite head and a rather pallid countenance, spoke as follows: "I have been having a talk with your father, O Beloved, and he tells me that I ought to marry you."

IV

On the next day Max received a visit from his father.

"Well," said the King, wishing to bestow commendation on a wound honorably come by, "you have been on the side of law and order for once at any rate."

"I?" cried Max.

"I hear that you assisted the police."

"On the contrary," said Max, "I went to rescue a poor youth from their clutches."

"Good gracious me!" cried the King, horror-struck.

"Oh, they were quite right to arrest him, but having arrested him, they proceeded to assault him; and when I interfered they assaulted me. And had I not been the person I am, with detectives at my heels to vouch for me, I should have been doing a fortnight hard for interfering with the police in the execution of their duty."

"But I heard it was a beer-bottle thrown by one of the rioters!"

"Oh, no; a truncheon,--having I believe your image and superscription stamped somewhere upon it. Your own mark, sir." And Max pointed to the scar upon his head. "When I, in turn, have to wear the crown its rim will probably rest on that very spot. What a coincidence that will be!"

"Max, this is really too bad of you!" said his father.

"It comes of trying to mix with the people."

"Well, you shouldn't; for we can't do it."

"Not without paying the price. I have, and it was worth it."

"What good has it done you?"

"Can you not see how it has steadied me? You behold here a reformed character who is now only waiting for his father's blessing to lead a good and holy life ever after. Oh, yes, I know what you have come about, sir; my mother has been at me, the Archbishop has been at me,--you have all of you been at me one time or another; and so far as I am concerned, if we can only agree upon who the lady is to be, I am ready to marry her to-morrow."

Then, perceiving a terror in his father's eye (for the Queen had breathed in his ear some word of her apprehensions), Max, divining its cause, spoke to reassure him. "No," said he, "it is not the Countess; she had thrown me over, and is now only a second mother to me. This was largely of her mending." He again pointed to the scar. "Can such things be done, you wonder, in a second establishment? Well, remember it is now only a mausoleum. For three weeks I have lain there like a mummy with my head swathed in bandages."

"Max, I wish you would not talk like that," said the King. "I wanted to speak seriously to you."

"And I to you," answered Max. "But when I start I shall only shock you more."

"Well, we had better get it over, then. Say the most serious thing you have to say, and be done with it!"

Then Prince Max drew a bold breath. "Conditionally upon your consent, sir"--he began--"(I myself regret the condition, but on that point the lady is adamant)--I say all this in order to let the whole case be stated before giving you the necessary shock----"

"Oh, go on!" groaned the King.

"Conditionally, then, I am already engaged to be married."

The King's mind went vacuously all round the Courts of Europe, and returned to him again empty.

"Whom to?" he inquired.

Max made his announcement with stately formality.

"The lady who honors me with her affection is the daughter of our Primate Archbishop."

"Good Heavens!" cried the King. "Does _he_ know of it?"

"No more than the babe unborn; two days ago he sat there telling me it was my duty to marry; and I thinking of his daughter all the time."

"Impossible!" exclaimed the King.

"I knew you would say that,--so did she. That I believe is why she gave me her consent."

"Then she does not really----"

"Love me? Very much, I believe. But her life is a strange mingling of sincerity and self-sacrifice; and it will in some strange way give her almost as much joy to have owned that her heart is utterly mine, and then to be irrevocably parted, as it would to share all the splendor of my fortune as heir to a throne."

"You know, Max, that it is quite impossible."

"Yes; by all the conventions of the last three hundred years, so it is. That is why I trust that you will rise to the occasion, sir, and do what is not expected of you. To allow your son and heir to marry the daughter of the great political antagonist of your present Prime Minister in itself creates an almost impossible situation--for party politics, I mean. But as party politics have already created an almost impossible situation for monarchy, the best thing to do is to have a return hit at party politics. I believe that the monarchy will survive."

"No, no, Max," said the King, "this won't do."

"You know that it would greatly upset the Prime Minister."

"I have other ways of doing that," said the King.

"Without upsetting yourself?"

This gave his Majesty a little start. "It depends what you mean by upsetting; perhaps it would upset you much more. But there, we won't talk about that!" For this was danger-point, and having touched it, he hurried cautiously away from it. Then he returned to the original charge: "Whatever put the idea into your head?"

"A vision of beauty that I had not believed to be possible."

"Is she so very beautiful, then?"

"You have seen her, sir, and you have not remembered her. I did not mean that sort of beauty."

"Ah, then, you are really in love."

"Ludicrously," confessed Max.

"My dear boy, I am very sorry for you."

"Oh, you need not be, sir; I am quite sure of myself at last; and by refusing to marry anybody else I have only to wait and you will have to yield to my request."

"You may have to wait a long time," began the King, and then he stopped; for looking into the future he saw Max in a new light, that same fierce light which had beaten upon himself for the last twenty-five years, preventing him from doing so many things he had wished to do. It would prevent Max too.

"But I want your consent now, father," said the young man; and there was something of real affection in his voice.

"Why can't you wait till I am dead?"

"That would be selfish of me. Do you not want to see me happy first?"

But to that the King only shook his head.

"It won't do, Max, it won't do. The Archbishop wouldn't like it either," he went on, trying to get back to the political aspect again. "It would be terribly damaging to him. With a connection like that, leadership of his party would become impossible."

"Have we to consider the political ambitions of an archbishop?"

"You would have to get his consent."

"I don't think so. All she bargained for was yours. I told her I would get it; and she did not believe me."

"You make me wish that I were altogether out of the way."

"Quite unnecessary, I'm sure."

"Ah, but if you were in my position then you'd see--then you'd understand. You couldn't do it; you simply couldn't do it."

The King was now saying what he really believed, and at the sound of his own voice telling him he realized that all he had to do was to temporize and time would bring its own solution. If Max were King he could no more do this thing than he could fly. Why, then, should he trouble himself?

To cover his change of ground he continued the argument, and on every point allowed Max to beat him (he could not probably have prevented it, but that was the way he put it to himself), and finally, when he felt that he could in decency throw up the sponge, he let Max have his way--or the way to it, which was the same thing.

"Well," he said, "I can't give you my consent all at once. I must have time to turn round and think about it; you must have time too. But if----" here he paused and did a short sum of mental arithmetic. "Yes," he went on, "if in two months from now you find me still upon the throne--and I'm sure I don't know that you will with the way things are going and all the worry I've had--but if you do, and are still of the same mind about it, then you may come to me and I will give you my consent."

A quiet, rapturous smile passed over the face of Max. "May I have that in writing, sir?" he said.

The King was rather taken aback, and a little affronted. "Do you doubt my word?" he demanded.

"Not in the least, but it is your consent I have to get. You might have a stroke, or lose your memory; you might even die, and there should I be left stranded. My love is so great that I can let it run no risks. And therefore, sir, if you will be so good, a promissory note to take effect in two months' time."

"You won't tell your mother?" said the King, halting, pen in hand.

Max shook his head sagely. "Nobody shall know," said he. "No filter could contain such news as this." He took the precious document from the King's hand, folded it, and put it away.

"By the way, sir," he said, "in a week or two I shall be sending you my book."

"I am afraid it is going to shock people," said his father.

"Not nearly so much as this." Max touched his breast pocket and smiled. "I will confess now, sir, that I really had hardly a hope: if I said so just now, I lied. And if a son may ever tell his father that he is proud of him, let that pleasure to-day be mine."

They parted on the best of terms. "I wonder," thought the King to himself, "whether he will be quite so pleased and proud two months hence."

His countenance saddened, and he sighed. "Poor boy," he said. He was very fond of Max.