Chapter I. THE KING'S PLEASAUNCE

"In the beginning,"so we are told,"God made the heavens and the earth."

The statement is simple and terse; it is evidently intended to be wholly comprehensive. Its decisive, almost abrupt tone would seem to forbid either question or argument. The old-world narrator of the sublime event thus briefly chronicled was a poet of no mean quality, though moved by the natural conceit of man to give undue importance to the earth as his own particular habitation. The perfect confidence with which he explains'God'as making'two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night,'is touching to the verge of pathos; and the additional remark which he throws in, as it were casually,—'He made the stars also,'cannot but move us to admiration. How childlike the simplicity of the soul which could so venture to deal with the inexplicable and tremendous problem of the Universe! How self-centred and sure the faith which could so arrange the work of Infinite and Eternal forces to suit its own limited intelligence! It is easy and natural to believe that'God,'or an everlasting Power of Goodness and Beauty called by that name,'created the heavens and the earth,'but one is often tempted to think that an Altogether different and rival element must have been concerned in the making of Man. For the heavens and the earth are harmonious; man is a discord. And not only is he a discord in himself, but he takes pleasure in producing and multiplying discords. Often, with the least possible amount of education, and on the slightest provocation, he mentally sets Himself, and his trivial personal opinion on religion, morals, and government, in direct opposition to the immutable laws of the Universe, and the attitude he assumes towards the mysterious Cause and Original Source of Life is nearly always one of three things; contradiction, negation, or defiance. From the first to the last he torments himself with inventions to outwit or subdue Nature, and in the end dies, utterly defeated. His civilizations, his dynasties, his laws, his manners, his customs, are all doomed to destruction and oblivion as completely as an Ant-hill which exists one night and is trodden down the next. Forever and forever he works and plans in vain; forever and forever Nature, the visible and active Spirit of God, rises up and crushes her puny rebel.

The re must be good reason for this ceaseless waste of human life,—this constant and steady obliteration of man's attempts, since there can be no Effect without Cause. It is, as if like children at a school, we were set a certain sum to do, and because we blunder foolishly over it and add it up to a wrong total, it is again and again wiped off the blackboard, and again and again rewritten for our more careful consideration. Possibly the secret of our failure to conquer Nature lies in ourselves, and our own obstinate tendency to work in only one groove of what we term'advancement,'—namely our material self-interest. Possibly we might be victors if we would, even to the very vanquishment of Death!

So many of us think,—and so thought one man of sovereign influence in this world's affairs as, seated on the terrace of a Royal palace fronting seaward, he pondered his own life's problem for perhaps the thousandth time.

"What is the use of thinking?"asked a wit at the court of Louis XVI."It only intensifies the bad opinion you have of others,—or of yourself!"

He found this saying true. Thinking is a pernicious habit in which very great personages are not supposed to indulge; and in his younger days he had avoided it. He had allowed the time to take him as it found him, and had gone with it unresistingly wherever it had led. It was the best way; the wisest way; the way Solomon found most congenial, despite its end in'vanity and vexation of spirit.'But with the passing of the years a veil had been dropped over that path of roses, hiding it altogether from his sight; and another veil rose inch by inch before him, disclosing a new and less joyous prospect on which he was not too-well-pleased to look.

The sea, stretching out in a broad shining expanse opposite to him, sparkled dancingly in the warm sunshine, and the snowy sails of many yachts and pleasure-boats dipped now and again into the glittering waves like white birds skimming over the tiny flashing foam-crests. Dazzling and well-nigh blinding to his eyes were the burning glow and exquisite radiance of colour which seemed melted like gold and sapphire into that bright half-circle of water and sky,—beautiful, and full of a dream-like evanescent quality, such as marks all the loveliest scenes and impressions of our life on earth. The re was a subtle scent of violets in the air,—and a gardener, cutting sheafs of narcissi from the edges of the velvety green banks which rolled away in smooth undulations upward from the terrace to the wider extent of the palace pleasaunce beyond, scattered such perfume with his snipping shears as might have lured another Proserpine from Hell. Cluster after cluster of white blooms, carefully selected for the adornment of the Royal apartments, he laid beside him on the grass, not presuming to look in the direction where that other Workman in the ways of life sat silent and absorbed in thought. That other, in his own long-practised manner, feigned not to be aware of his dependant's proximity,—and in this fashion they twain—human beings made of the same clay and relegated, to the same dust—gave sport to the Fates by playing at Sham with Heaven and themselves. Custom, law, and all the paraphernalia of civilization, had set the division and marked the boundary between them,—had forbidden the lesser in world's rank to speak to the greater, unless the greater began conversation,—had equally forbidden the greater to speak to the lesser lest such condescension should inflate the lesser's vanity so much as to make him obnoxious to his fellows. Thus,—of two men, who, if left to nature would have been merely—men, and sincere enough at that,—man himself had made two pretenders,—the one as gardener, the other as—King! The white narcissi lying on the grass, and preparing to die sweetly, like sacrificed maiden-victims of the flower-world, could turn true faces to the God who made them,—but the men at that particular moment of time had no real features ready for God's inspection,—only masks.

"C'est mon metier d'être Roi!"So said one of the many dead and gone martyrs on the rack of sovereignty. Alas, poor soul, thou would'st have been happier in any other'métier'I warrant! For kingship is a profession which cannot be abandoned for a change of humour, or cast aside in light indifference and independence because a man is bored by it and would have something new. It is a routine and drudgery to which some few are born, for which they are prepared, to which they must devote their span of life, and in which they must die."How shall we pass the day?"asked a weary Roman emperor,"I am even tired of killing my enemies!"

'Even'that! And the strangest part of it is, that there are people who would give all their freedom and peace of mind to occupy for a few years an uneasy throne, and who actually live under the delusion that a monarch is happy!

The gardener soon finished his task of cutting the narcissi, and though he might not, without audacity, look at his Sovereign-master, his Sovereign-master looked at him, furtively, from under half-closed eyelids, watching him as he bound the blossoms together carefully, with the view of giving as little trouble as possible to those whose duty it would be to arrange them for the Royal pleasure. His work done, he walked quickly, yet with a certain humble stealthiness,—thus admitting his consciousness of that greater presence than his own,—down a broad garden walk beyond the terrace towards a private entrance to the palace, and there disappeared.

The King was left alone,—or apparently so, for to speak truly, he was never alone. An equerry, a page-in-waiting,—or what was still more commonplace as well as ominous, a detective,—lurked about him, ever near, ever ready to spring on any unknown intruder, or to answer his slightest call.

But to the limited extent of the solitude allowed to kings, this man was alone,—alone for a brief space to consider, as he had informed his secretary, certain documents awaiting his particular and private perusal.

The marble pavilion in which he sat had been built by his father, the late King, for his own pleasure, when pleasure was more possible than it is now. Its slender Ionic columns, its sculptured friezes, its painted ceilings, all expressed a gaiety, grace and beauty gone from the world, perchance for ever. Open on three sides to the living picture of the ocean, crimson and white roses clambered about it, and tall plume-like mimosa shook fragrance from its golden blossoms down every breath of wind. The costly table on which this particular Majesty of a nation occasionally wrote his letters, would, if sold, have kept a little town in food for a year,—the rich furs at his feet would have bought bread for hundreds of starving families,—and every delicious rose that nodded its dainty head towards him with the breeze would have given an hour's joy to a sick child. Socialists say this kind of thing with wildly eloquent fervour, and blame all kings in passionate rhodomontade for the tables, the furs and the roses,—but they forget—it is not the sad and weary kings who care for these or any luxuries,—they would be far happier without them. It is the People who insist on having kings that should be blamed,—not the monarchs themselves. A king is merely the people's Prisoner of State,—they chain him to a throne,—they make him clothe himself in sundry fantastic forms of attire and exhibit his person thus decked out, for their pleasure,—they calculate, often with greed and grudging, how much it will cost to feed him and keep him in proper state on the national premises, that they may use him at their will,—but they seldom or never seem to remember the fact that there is a Man behind the King!

It is not easy to govern nowadays, since there is no real autocracy, and no strong soul likely to create one. But the original idea of sovereignty was grand and wise;—the strongest man and bravest, raised aloft on shields and bucklers with warrior cries of approval from the people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,—their utmost Head of affairs. Progress has demolished this ideal, with many others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right of descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise, sane or crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the Strongest, but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone authority. This King however, here written of, was not deficient in either mental or physical attributes. His outward look and bearing betokened him as far more fit to be lifted in triumph on the shoulders of his battle-heroes, a real and visible Man, than to play a more or less cautiously inactive part in the modern dumb-show of Royalty. We ll-built and muscular, with a compact head regally poised on broad shoulders, and finely formed features which indicated in their firm modelling strong characteristics of pride, indomitable resolution and courage, he had an Air of rare and reposeful dignity which made him much more impressive as a personality than many of his fellow-sovereigns. His expression was neither foolish nor sensual,—his clear dark grey eyes were sane and steady in their regard and had no tricks of shiftiness. As an ordinary man of the people his appearance would have been distinctive,—as a King, it was remarkable.

He had of course been called handsome in his childhood,—what heir to a Throne ever lived that was not beautiful, to his nurse at least?—and in his early youth he had been grossly flattered for his cleverness as well as his good looks. Every small attempt at witticism,—every poor joke he could invent, adapt or repeat, was laughed at approvingly in a chorus of admiration by smirking human creatures, male and female, who bowed and bobbed up and down before the lad like strange dolphins disporting themselves on dry land. Whereat he grew to despise the dolphins, and no wonder. When he was about seventeen or eighteen he began to ask odd questions of one of his preceptors, a learned and ceremonious personage who, considering the extent of his certificated wisdom, was yet so singularly servile of habit and disposition that he might have won a success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of Court life. He was a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,—not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict etiquette even friendly liberties were not to be too frequently taken with such an Exalted little bit of humanity. The lad himself, however, had a certain mischievous delight in making him perform this courtesy, and being young and vigorous, would often squeeze the old gentleman's hesitating fingers in his strong clasp so energetically as to cause him the severest pain. Student of many philosophies as he was, the worthy pedagogue would have cried out, or sworn profane oaths in his agony, had it been any other than the'Heir-Apparent'who thus made him wince with torture,—but as matters stood, he merely smiled—and bore it. The young rascal of a prince smiled too,—taking note of his obsequious hypocrisy, which served an inquiring mind with quite as good a field for logical speculation as any problem in Euclid. And he went on with his questions,—questions, which if not puzzling, were at least irritating enough to have secured him a rap on the knuckles from his tutor's cane, had he been a grocer's lad instead of the eldest son of a Royal house.

"Professor,"he said on one occasion,"What is man?"

"Man,"replied the professor sedately,"is an intelligent and reasoning being, evolved by natural processes of creation into his present condition of supremacy."

"What is Supremacy?"

"The state of being above, or superior to, the rest of the animal creation."

"And is he so superior?"

"He is generally so admitted."

"Is my father a man?"

"Assuredly! The question is superfluous."

"What makes him a King?"

"Royal birth and the hereditary right to his great position."

"Then if man is in a condition of supremacy over the rest of creation, a king is more than a man if he is allowed to rule men?"

"Sir, pardon me!—a king is not more than a man, but men choose him as their ruler because he is worthy."

"In what way is he worthy? Simply because he is born as I am, heir to a throne?"

"Precisely."

"He might be an idiot or a cripple, a fool or a coward,—he would still be King?"

"Most indubitably."

"So that if he were a madman, he would continue to hold supremacy over a nation, though his groom might be sane?"

"Your Royal Highness pursues the question with an unwise flippancy;"—remonstrated the professor with a pained, forced smile."If an idiot or a madman were unfortunately born to a throne, a regency would be appointed to control state affairs, but the heir would, in spite of natural incapability, remain the lawful king."

"A strange sovereignty!"said the young prince carelessly."And a still stranger patience in the people who would tolerate it! Yet over all men,—kings, madmen, and idiots alike,—there is another ruling force, called God?"

"The re is a force,"admitted the professor dubiously—"But in the present forward state of things it would not be safe to attempt to explain the nature of that force, and for the benefit of the illiterate masses we call it God. A national worship of something superior to themselves has always been proved politic and necessary for the people. I have not at any time resolved myself as to why it should be so; but so it is."