THE OLD ORDER
I
All this, the reader will remember, had taken place in Lent. The King
had done something which according to the accepted canons was quite
incorrect; he had been to a frivolous but popular play during the
penitential season and it had got into the papers. But instead of being
blamed for it he had gained enormously in popularity.
Now had his Majesty been merely aiming for this, as politicians aim for
it (deserting principles for party, or party when its principles become
a hindrance), he might have followed the lead given him by the people of
Jingalo, and, recognizing that the Church Calendar had lost its hold
upon the popular imagination, might thenceforward have secularized his
conduct, and paved the way in Court circles for that separation of
Church and State which his ministers were itching to bring about but did
not yet dare.
But John of Jingalo had all the defects which belong to a conscientious
character. He had not gone to the play for amusement, it had not amused
him, he did not at all agree with the public's attitude towards it, and
yet he was reaping the benefit; he was standing in a glow of popular
approbation under false pretenses; and the more he thought about it the
less he liked it--it gave him a bad conscience.
Yet, in spite of that, he could not but recognize that he had touched
power; under a misapprehension the people had responded to him as never
before; he had done what they regarded as a sporting thing in sending
unpopular officialdom to the right-about; it was even possible that
among theatrical circles when the exploit was talked of he was now known
as "good old King Jack." All the same he did not feel that he had been
good, and he wanted to make amends.
The highly colored conversations of Max, the talk about whipping-boys
and Court jesters, and all those ancient divinities which had once
hedged a King but were now mere barbed wire entanglements, had turned
his attention toward certain medieval institutions the practice of which
had lapsed, or had become reduced to a mere shadow of their former
selves. And with a conscience ill at ease over the damage he had wrought
to a season which he still regarded with a certain conventional
reverence, his thoughts lighted upon Maundy Thursday, then less than a
fortnight off.
He remembered having once watched from a private gallery in the royal
chapel the impoverished ceremony which now did shabby duty for the old
symbol of kingly humility and service. He had seen the vicarious
sacrifice of silver pennies doled out by his almoners to a duplicated
dozen of old men and women who had lost their better days in
circumstances of the utmost respectability; and shocked at the poverty
of the display he had been glad to learn that a more Christian gift of
tea, clothes, snuff, and tobacco was added outside the Church door when
the ceremony was over. But even so its ritual had not attracted him: it
had lost its human values, and seemed to have been kept in life merely
for archeological association.
Now on looking into the matter once more (the _Encyclopedia Appendica_
gave him the required information) he was astonished to find that the
old foot-washing ceremony of Holy Thursday was originally the chief
function at which every year the Knights of the Holy Thorn were bound,
if not unavoidably prevented, to appear and do service. Nay, when he
turned to it, he found that it still stood so expressed in the Charter
of the Order, and that each new Knight, upon admission thereto, swore
solemnly to keep and observe the same--so help him God--faithfully unto
his life's end.
If he had had any doubt before, the terms of that oath, which he himself
had taken--probably without understanding it since it had been read to
him in Latin--were sufficient to decide him. Without loss of time he
sent word by his Comptroller-General to the Prime Minister that he
intended in the following week to revive the full ceremony and to recall
the Knights of the Thorn to the duties they had so long neglected. The
ceremony, as of old, was to take place in public at noon outside the
doors of the metropolitan cathedral.
"The King is going off his head," said the Comptroller-General by way of
preface to the announcement with which he was charged; and the Prime
Minister was ready to agree with him when he heard it.
"Preposterous!" he exclaimed.
"He has got chapter and verse for it," lamented the Comptroller-General.
"Can't you persuade him that it's a forgery?"
"It's in the oath," replied the other; "you yourself have taken it."
"Oh, yes, the form; but the ceremony--the accompanying service, I
mean--was cut out of the Church Prayers at the time of the Reformation.
It has become illegal."
"Inside a church, yes; not outside. At least that is his contention. Oh,
I have already done my best! He got quite excited when I ventured to
discuss the matter,--asked me if I understood the nature of an oath, and
whether I had ever taken one."
"Is he much set on it?"
"I have had to write to the Archbishop."
"What do you think he'll say about it?"
"Ordinarily he would oppose it as savoring of Rome; under present
circumstances my impression is that he will welcome it as giving the
Church an added importance. You don't like it?"
"Of course, I don't."
"Then you had better see the King yourself. You have only a week left;
and he has already begun looking at the weather-glass and wondering if
it's going to be fine."
"That's just like him!" said the Prime Minister.
"Yes, and he's getting more like himself every day. My part is not a
sinecure, I can assure you."
Accordingly the Prime Minister went over to the Palace and saw the King.
Informed as to what line of argument had already been tried and failed,
he approached the matter from a new standpoint: he spoke in the name of
Protestantism. This ceremony had only survived in Catholic countries; in
Jingalo the Reformation had killed it, and it had gone with graven
images, the invocation of saints, and the worship of relics to the limbo
of forgotten foolishnesses.
"The Charter of the Holy Thorn has not gone," said the King.
"Nor has your Majesty's title to the Crown of Jerusalem; but who ever
thinks of enforcing it?"
"I am willing to resign it any day," replied his Majesty. "I can also,
if you think it advisable, abolish the Charter of the Holy Thorn and the
Knighthood with it. But I don't think the Knights would quite like
that."
"If it comes to a question of liking," said the Prime Minister, "I do
not think they will quite like washing beggars' feet in public."
"Oh, I do the washing and the drying," said the King. "They only carry
the basins and put on the boots. I have looked up the whole ceremony;
it's very impressive. You have only to read it and you will become
converted: it is so symbolical."
The Prime Minister objected that though in its origin the ceremony might
have had symbolic meaning and beauty, its performance now-a-days would
be looked upon as a mere form and superstition, contrary to the spirit
of the age.
This reminded the King of a certain "maxim."
"'The spirit of the age,'" he quoted, "'is the industrious collection of
bric-à-brac--good, bad, and indifferent': this one happens to be good,
and has been neglected. And talk about forms and ceremonies!--what can
be more formal, superstitious, and idiotic than the procession of Court
functionaries and King's Musketeers (with the Dean of the Chapels Royal
carrying a candle) which, on every ninth of November--the anniversary of
the Bed-Chamber Plot--comes to look under my bed to see whether
assassins are not lurking there? On one occasion I was laid up with
influenza, but I had to submit to that form and superstition because it
had become traditional. And all the papers gloated over the fact, and
called it 'a link in the chain of monarchy,' though as a matter of fact
the conspiracy in question had been got up against that branch of the
succession which we afterwards succeeded in dethroning. All the personal
inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in
comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr.
Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are
forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom,
and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will
have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling
himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear me now!")
Failing in his personal appeal the Prime Minister turned on the
Departments, and the King fought them one by one: the Board of Works
which wanted to have the roads up; the Clerk of the Weather who said
that a depression unsuitable for open-air gatherings was crossing
Europe; the Chief of the Police who said that so large an open space was
bad for a crowd; the Minister of Public Worship who wished everything to
be done--if done at all--indoors and unobtrusively, by preference in one
of the Royal Chapels: the effect, he said, would be more reverent. And
when all these in turn had failed, the Prime Minister asked for a
Council on the subject, and was told it was none of the Council's
business.
"I am Grand Master in my own Order," said the King, "and you, as one of
its Knights, in any matter pertaining to the Order owe me your
unquestioning obedience."
That was unanswerable; he did. And so the King got his way.
II
The revival proved a tremendous success, although it did not reproduce
the medieval conditions in their entirety.
The twelve old women were left out; it was not considered decent for the
King to wash their feet in public and the Queen absolutely refused to do
so. Instead they were invited to take tea at the Palace, and afterwards
were all presented with foot-warmers.
In other directions also invidious distinctions were attempted, and a
certain amount of controversy was raised. The Bishops made a scrambling
and desultory fight for it that, as the steps of the Cathedral were to
be used, all the washen beggars should be actual communicants of the
Established Church; but the demand died down when it was found that such
a breed did not exist; and a rush of undesirables to the altar in order
to qualify could hardly be welcomed as a tolerable solution.
There was a tussle, too, among the Knights of the Thorn as to how many
towel-bearers there should be (the towels remaining perquisites
afterwards); but the King and his Master of Ceremonies--the delighted
Max helping them--were able to settle matters to the general
satisfaction, and, by allowing a towel to each foot and twelve cakes of
soap, provided a sufficient number of souvenirs to go round.
And so the day came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd
rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of
thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled
from within, bands played without, and massed choirs sang like angels
from the parapets and galleries above the west doors of the Cathedral.
And when their ordeal by water was over, then the twelve beggars--all of
guaranteed good character although not actual communicants--received
with delight each a new pair of shoes and stockings, which they were
able to sell at fabulous prices, immediately the ceremony was over, to
collectors of curiosities, chiefly Americans. And that same night twelve
very happy beggars, all more or less drunk, made their appearance on the
largest music-hall stage in the metropolis, where the whole scene was
elaborately re-enacted in facsimile, followed by a cinematograph record
of the actual event.
The King was a little disappointed at these modern developments, they
seemed to take away from the penitential character of the performance,
and rather to weaken than restore in the public conscience the due
observance of Lent.
Max, however, assured his father that he had made the greatest hit of
his life; his personal popularity had been greatly enhanced. What
pleased him better was that in feeling for the public pulse, by the
light of his own conscience, he had proved that he was right and the
Prime Minister wrong.
Yet, though ostensibly in the wrong, the Prime Minister had really been
right. He had reckoned that the move might prove a popular one--for the
monarchy; and though a dull average of popularity for that ancient
institution suited his book for the present, he did not wish, in view of
certain eventualities, to see it greatly increased, and still less did
he wish the King to discover that by acting in opposition to his
ministers he might gain in popular esteem.
As one of the Knights of the Thorn he himself had been obliged to
attend the ceremony; and by some it was noticed that, as he stood
holding a golden ewer in his two hands, he looked very cross. But
all the other Knights of the Thorn--those who had towels and soap as
perquisites--enjoyed themselves thoroughly and were already looking
forward to a repetition of the performance next year. Even in their
case, then, the King had proved to be right,--forms and ceremonies
accompanied by fine clothes were still popular things; the Order of the
New Broom would not be yet.
III
And then, with blare of trumpet and clash of drum, with troopings and
marchings, with garlanded streets and miles upon miles of cheering
people, came the great Jubilee festivities. Silver was the note of the
decorations--silver in the midst of green spring. The Queen herself wore
silver gowns and bonnets of heliotrope, and the King a uniform wherein
silver braid formed the becoming substitute for gold. Corporations came
carrying silver caskets; army pensioners and school-children, fêted at
the public expense, received white metal mementoes which, while new at
any rate, looked as real as any coin of the realm. For a whole week the
piebald ponies really worked for their living, grumbling loudly between
whiles in their stalls; for a whole week "loyalty" was the note on which
the press harped its seraphic praises of monarchy and nation; and for a
whole week people actually did drop politics, reduce their hours of
labor, and run about enjoying themselves.
The poet laureate published an ode for the occasion; he remarked on the
passing of time, said that the King had acquired wisdom and
understanding, but that the Queen did not look a day older; said that
the trees were green on that day twenty-five years ago when the King
ascended the throne, and that they were green still; said that cows ate
grass then, and were eating it now without any decrease of appetite;
said, in fact, that nothing sweet, reasonable, or beautiful had really
changed at all, and that the monarchy, taking its constitutional day by
day, was the national expression of that unchangeableness.
The day after the appearance of his poem he received that titular
recognition for lack of which a poet laureate must feel that he has
lived in vain. And then, all this unchangeableness of things having been
thus ratified and sealed with the official seal, the King, his
ministers, and the whole political world advanced to the edge of changes
such as the country had not seen the like of for the last hundred years.