Part 15

King Robert stood there, gazing at him in anger and rage when he looked up. With a glance of surprise and pity, he asked, “Who are you?”

Robert answered, “I am the king, and I have come to take my place; you are an imposter who pretends to be king.”

At these words the angry guests sprang up with drawn swords, but the man on the throne said, “No, not the king, but the king’s jester. You shall from now on wear the bells and scalloped cape of the court jester, and make fun for us all. Your companion shall be an ape.” Then he turned away toward his guests.

Some of the servants came forward to take Robert away, and they were quite deaf to his ravings and angry threats. With shouts of laughter they pushed him on before them down the stairs, and mockingly bowed before him, and pretended to honor him, all the while laughing and tittering and making fun of him. They left him in a room in the stable where at length, exhausted, he fell asleep.

The next morning, waking with the day’s first light, he thought to himself: “I’ve had an ugly dream.” But the straw rustled when he turned his head, and there were the jester’s cap and bells lying near. He heard the horses champing in their stalls, and on looking around the room saw the poor ape. So he remembered. It was no dream. His happy life that he thought could not be changed, had vanished from him.

The days came and went. Under the rule of the new king the island prospered as never before. Robert continued to be the jester, laughed at and scorned. His only friend was the ape. His only food, what others left.

Sometimes the other king would meet him, and ask, “Are you still the king?” and always Robert would throw back his head and fling the answer haughtily, “I am, I am the king!”

Robert had two brothers; one was Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, the other was Pope Urbane. One day, almost three years after the wild night that Robert had been locked in the church, ambassadors came from Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, bringing letters. The letters asked King Robert to join his brother Valmond in a visit to their brother at Rome. The ambassadors were received with great pleasure, and were presented with many beautiful gifts of robes and jewels.

Then the king who was not King Robert went with them across the sea to Italy. He was accompanied by a great retinue of knights, all dressed in uniform, wearing gay plumes in their helmets. They rode horses with jeweled bridles, and even wore golden spurs. They were followed by pages and servants; and, toward the very last, Robert, the jester, rode on a piebald pony, and behind was perched the ape. Through every town they went they made much fun for the people, who followed along after, laughing and poking fun at them. The company were received with great pomp and ceremony, and the three brothers seemed delighted at being together again.

Suddenly Robert burst through the crowd, and running up to them cried, “I am the king! Do you not know me? Look at me. I am your brother, Robert of Sicily. This man is but an imposter! He is not the king!”

The emperor and the pope looked at the angry worried jester for a long moment; then the emperor laughed, and said, “What strange sport to keep a crazy fellow for a jester!” and the poor baffled jester was hustled back into the crowd.

Then came Easter Sunday, and the beauty and the solemnity of the Easter services touched the hearts of all men. Robert was deeply moved. For the first time in his life he saw what kind of man he had been. He saw how selfish and proud and haughty he had been. He wished with all his soul that he had been a better man, and he made up his mind that, no matter what happened, he would never be so selfish and mean again.

Now, the visit ended; the grand visitors left Rome and journeyed homeward. And when they were once more established, the king on the throne sent for Robert. He motioned every one else out of the room and beckoned Robert to draw near.

And when they were alone, he asked, “Art thou the king?”

Robert bowed his head, and folding his arms, said, “You know best. I only know that I have sinned, and have been proud and selfish. Let me go from here and try to make up in some way for the wrong which I have done!”

And just as he finished saying this, there rose through the windows loud and clear the words of the chant:

“He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree!”

Then the man who was with Robert cried joyously. “I am not the king! I am an angel! You are the king!”

When King Robert raised his eyes--lo! he was alone, but all dressed in his magnificent apparel as of old; and when his courtiers came, they found him kneeling upon the floor in silent prayer.

* * * * *

“Robert was fortunate,” said the Story King, “in learning his lesson before it was too late.”

“Yes, indeed, he was,” answered the Story Lady. “The fourth story is of a young man who repented when it was too late.”

XXXII

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

ONCE there was a man, a young officer in the United States Army, who did a dreadful thing--he cursed his native country!

He pretended for a while that he did not care, when he was punished, but in the end he was very, very sorry. Because he wore his uniform without the official buttons, the sailors on the ships on which he was imprisoned called him “Plain Buttons.”

His name was Philip Nolan. Lieutenant Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of the West,” as the Western division of the United States Army was called in those early days, one hundred years ago.

At that time the Mississippi valley was the Far West to most people, and seemed a very distant land indeed. There were a number of forts along the river and Nolan was stationed in one of these. Nolan’s idol was the brilliant and dashing Aaron Burr, who visited the fort several times between 1805 and 1807. He walked and talked with Nolan and obtained a very strong influence over him. He got Nolan to take him out in his skiff and show him something of the great river and the plans for the new post; and by the time Burr’s visit was over Nolan was enlisted body and soul in Burr’s disloyal schemes. From then on, though he did not yet know it, Nolan lived as a man without a country.

Burr soon got into trouble with the government, and some of his friends were tried for treason, Nolan among them. It became very plain during the trial that Nolan would do anything Burr told him; that he would obey Burr far quicker than his country in spite of his oath as an officer of the army.

So when Colonel Morgan, who was president of the court, asked Nolan, at the close of the trial, whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy: “Curse the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”

Probably he did not realize how the words would shock old Colonel Morgan and the other members of the court. Half the officers who sat with him had served through the Revolutionary War, and had risked their lives, not to say their necks, cheerfully and loyally for the country which Nolan so lightly cursed in his madness.

It may be said for Nolan that he had grown up in the West of those days, then an almost unknown country. He had been educated on a plantation, where the most welcome guests were Spanish officers and French merchants from Orleans, who, to say the least, were unfriendly to the United States. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas, which was not then a part of the United States. In a word, the “United States” meant almost nothing to him.

Yet there was little excuse for Nolan. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to the United States. It was the United States which gave him the uniform he wore and the sword by his side. Nay, Burr cared nothing for poor Nolan, but had picked him out to aid him in his wicked plots, only because of the uniform he wore. Of course, Nolan did not know this, and it did not excuse him; but it does partly explain why he cursed his country and wished that he might never hear her name again.

He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name again. For that half-century and more he was a man without a country.

Colonel Morgan, as you may suppose, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, “God save King George,” Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face white as a sheet, to say:

“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! The Court decides, subject to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United States again.”

Nolan laughed; but nobody else laughed--the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Then Colonel Morgan added, “Mr. Marshall, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat and deliver him to the naval commander there. Request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship.”

Colonel Morgan himself went to Washington and President Jefferson approved the sentence, so a plan was formed to keep Nolan constantly at sea, far from his own country. The ships of our navy took few long cruises then, but one ship was directed to carry the prisoner as far away as it was going, then transfer him to another vessel before it sailed for home. He was to be confined only so far as necessary to prevent his escape and to make it certain that he never saw or heard of his country again.

As soon as a vessel on which Nolan sailed was homeward bound, Nolan was transferred to an outward-bound vessel for another cruise. At first he made light of it--but in time he learned something he had not thought of, perhaps--that there was no going home for him, even to a prison.

There were some twenty such transfers which took him all over the world, but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from the country he had hoped he might never hear of again.

Nolan wore his uniform, but with plain buttons. He always had a sentry before his door, but the men were as good to him as his sentence permitted. No mess wanted to have him with them too steadily because they could never talk about home matters when he was present--more than half the talk men liked to have at sea. They took turns inviting him to dinner, and the captain always asked him on Mondays. He could have any books or papers not printed in America. Newspapers having any mention of America had to be gone over and the allusions cut out. He used to join the men as they were reading on deck and take his turn in reading aloud.

Once when they were cruising around the Cape of Good Hope, somebody got hold of Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which was then new and famous. Nolan was reading to the others when he came to this passage:

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand?

“If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,-- Despite those titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self”----

Here the poor fellow choked, and could not go on, but started up and flung the book into the sea and fled to his stateroom. It was two months before he dared join the men again.

There was a change in Nolan after this. He never read aloud again, unless it was the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. He was always shy afterwards and very seldom spoke unless spoken to, except to a very few friends. He generally had the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded man. Sometimes he tried to trap people into mentioning his country, but he never succeeded; his sentence was too well known among the men who had him in charge.

There was only one day on which, perhaps, he was really happy, except when he knew his lonely life was closing. Once, during the war of 1812, the ship on which he was staying had a fight with an English frigate. A round shot from the enemy entered one of the ports and killed the officer of the gun himself and many of the gun’s crew. Now you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing to see. But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as they and the surgeon’s people were carrying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in his shirt sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority--who should go to the cock-pit with the wounded men, who should stay with him--perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all is right and is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed, captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy struck--sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he was exposed all the time,--showing them easier ways to handle heavy shot--making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders--and when the gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any other gun on the ship. The commodore walked forward by way of encouraging the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said:

“I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir.”

“I see you are, and I thank you, sir,” the commodore said; “and I shall never forget this day, sir, and you never shall, sir.”

And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman’s sword, in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said:

“Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here.” And when Nolan came, he said:

“Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you; you are one of us to-day; you will be named in the despatches.”

And then the commodore took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to Nolan, and made him put it on. Nolan cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards on occasions of ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the commodore’s.

The commodore did mention him in the despatches, and asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it.

At another time Nolan went with a young officer named Vaughan to overhaul a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board. Nolan was the only one who could speak Portuguese, the language used by the slavers. There were but few of the negroes. Vaughan had their handcuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off and put these on the rascals of the schooner’s crew. Then Nolan told the blacks that they were free, and that Vaughan would take them to Cape Palmas.

Now, Cape Palmas was a long way from their native land, and they said, “Not Palmas. Take us home, take us to our own country, take us to our own pickaninnies and our own women.” One complained that he had not heard from home for more than six months. It was terribly hard for Nolan, but he translated these speeches, and told the negroes Vaughan’s answer in some fashion.

“Tell them--yes, yes, yes!” Vaughan said. “Tell them they shall go to the Mountains of the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White Desert, they shall go home!”

And then they all fell to kissing Nolan, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.

As they were being rowed back to the ship, he lay in the stern sheets and said to a young midshipman of whom he was very fond:

“Youngster, let that show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or do a thing that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write, and send, and talk about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you have to travel from it; and rush back to it when you are free, as that poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy,” and the words rattled in his throat, “and for that flag,” and he pointed to the ship, “never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the country herself, your country, and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her to-day!”

And then Nolan added, almost in a whisper, “Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age!”

Years passed on, and Nolan’s sentence was unrevoked, though his friends had more than once asked for a pardon.

The end came when he had been upwards of fifty years at sea, and he asked the ship’s doctor for a visit from Captain Danforth, whom he liked. Danforth tells us about Nolan’s last hours and calls him “dear old Nolan,” so we know his love was returned.

The officer saw what a little shrine poor Nolan had made of his stateroom. Up above were the stars and stripes, and around a portrait of Washington he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which the wings overshadowed. Nolan said, with a sad smile, “Here, you see, I have a country!” Over the foot of the bed was a great map of the United States, drawn from memory, which he had there to look upon as he lay in his berth. Quaint old names were on it, in large letters: Indiana Territory, Mississippi Territory, and Louisiana Territory.

“Danforth,” he said, “I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely you will tell me something now? Stop! Stop! Do not speak till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is not in America--God bless her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag or prays for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has never been one taken away. I thank God for that. But tell me something--tell me everything, Danforth, before I die!”

Captain Danforth, in writing about it afterwards says: “I felt like a monster that I had not told him everything before. Though obeying orders, who was I that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had expiated, in his whole manhood’s life, the madness of a boy’s treason.”

“Mr. Nolan,” he said, “I will tell you everything you ask about.”

Then he told him the names of all the new states, and drew them in on the map. He told him of the inventions--the steamboats, the railroads and telegraphs; he tried to tell him all that had happened to the great and growing country in fifty years. He told him about Abraham Lincoln, who was then President--except that he could not wound his friend by mentioning a word about the cruel Civil War which was then raging.

Nolan drank it in and enjoyed it more than we can tell. After that he seemed to grow weary and said he would go to sleep. He bent Danforth down and kissed him, and then said, “Look in my Bible, Captain, when I am gone.”

Danforth went away with no thought that this was the end. But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had breathed away his life with a smile.

They looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place where he had marked the text:

“They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.”

On this slip of paper he had written:

“Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:

‘In Memory of PHILIP NOLAN Lieutenant in the Army of the United States.

He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.’”

XXXIII

YOUR FLAG AND MY FLAG

WHEN the story was finished the Story People did not applaud; they felt sorry for poor Philip who had repented so bitterly.

Mary Frances felt sad, and sorry, too; as she did every time she heard the story, for she had often heard it before.

“How Americans love their country!” said the Story King. “They must love it as much as we love our island!”

“Indeed, they do love it,” answered Mary Frances patriotically. “I think it’s the greatest big country in all the world!”

The Story People smiled and clapped their hands at this speech, for they admire loyalty wherever shown.

“Yes, it is,” said the Story Queen, “and we think our island is the greatest little country in all the world.”

“So it is! Indeed, it is! I love it next to my own!” cried Mary Frances; and the Story People applauded again.

“There is a little poem about the Stars and Stripes that is very popular in America,” said the Story Lady, smiling. “Now that the stories are finished for the day, perhaps our guest will recite it for us.”

Mary Frances blushed, and then rose in her place and recited:

Your flag and my flag, And how it flies to-day In your land and my land And half a world away!

Rose-red and blood-red The stripes forever gleam; Snow-white and soul-white-- The good forefathers’ dream; Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright-- The gloried guidon of the day; a shelter through the night.

Your flag and my flag! And, oh, how much it holds-- Your land and my land-- Secure within its folds! Your heart and my heart Beat quicker at the sight; Sun-kissed and wind-tossed-- Red and blue and white. The one flag--the great flag--the flag for me and you-- Glorified all else beside--the red and white and blue!

Your flag and my flag! To every star and stripe The drums beat as hearts beat, And fifers shrilly pipe! Your flag and my flag-- A blessing in the sky; Your hope and my hope-- It never hid a lie! Home land and far land and half the world around, Old Glory hears our glad salute and ripples to the sound.[C]

[C] From the “Trail to Boyland,” by Wilbur D. Nesbit, Copyright 1904. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

As Mary Frances sat down, the Story People clapped their hands enthusiastically; and the Ready Writer handed her her copies of the stories for the day. The copy of the poem which he had made, he kept for themselves.

As Mary Frances and the Story Lady were going out, the Story Queen stopped them and said:

“We shall expect you both to dinner to-night--just a little family party, you know.”

“Oh, thank you, that will be delightful,” both replied.

Mary Frances thought ruefully of her best dress hanging uselessly in the closet at home and wished she had it. “But it’s no use wishing,” she thought. “It’s all so unexpected.”