CONCEALMENT AND DISCOVERY
I
There was plenty of hue and cry to discover the perpetrator of the
outrage, but nothing came of it. From somewhere in that labyrinth of
unfinished building and scaffolding fenced in by high hoardings a bomb
had been thrown of insufficient power to do much damage to anybody. The
Prefect of Police, riding in close attendance on the royal carriage, had
himself vaulted the barrier, on the side whence it had seemed to come,
and reported that he had found no trace of any one. Pieces of the shell
had been collected upon the spot, they had not flown very far, nor were
they much broken; and experts of the detective department had been busy
putting together the bits.
The whole performance turned out on investigation to have been so feeble
and amateurish that suspicion rapidly descended from the more
experienced practitioners of anarchy, imported from other countries, to
home-products of later growth--strikers made desperate and savage by the
recent sentences upon their leaders, or, as some would have it, the
Women Chartists, hoping by an attack upon royalty to bring a neglectful
ministry to its senses. As there were no real clues except those which
industriously led nowhere and which the police seemed delightedly to
follow, everybody was free to lay the charge against any agitating
section of the community which they happened to regard with special
disfavor; and for that reason the Women Chartists did, in fact, get most
of the blame.
But in the process they also reaped a certain advantage; the mere
suspicion, though malice directed it, was good for them. Had it been
possible to convict them, their cause would have gone down for another
generation; but there was really nothing to catch hold of, and the power
of any organization to commit such an outrage without being detected--to
break the glass of the King's coach and make the eight piebald ponies
rise up on end in horror--was a power which raised them greatly in the
eyes of all law-abiding people; it suggested an unknown potency for
mischief far more ominous than had discovery and conviction followed.
And so, while squibs and crackers were being thrown at them and sham
bombs hurled into their meetings to show how greatly the law-abiding
people of Jingalo disapproved of them for incurring such
suspicion--politically, the unjustly suspected ones moved a little
nearer to their goal.
As for the King and Queen, they were simply inundated with telegrams and
letters of congratulation. In many instances the loyalty shown was
extraordinarily touching: one instance will suffice. Every schoolboy in
every public school in Jingalo contributed a penny from his pocket money
to a congratulatory telegram sent in the name of the school; and when,
as sometimes happened, the school numbered over six hundred boys the
telegram had necessarily to be lengthy, and proved a severe tax upon the
literary ability of its senders.
Amid all this influx--this passionate outpouring of loyalty to a King
who had stood only a few days before within an ace of abdication, there
were of course messages of a more intimate and personal kind. Every
crowned head in Europe had written with that fellow-feeling which on
such occasions royalty is bound to express. "I know what it is like
myself," wrote one who had had six attempts made on him; "but I have
never had it done to me from behind. How very devastating to the nerves
that must be!" The Prince of Schnapps-Wasser wired that he could find no
language to express himself, but hoped in a few weeks' time to come and
show all that he felt. Max after a brief wire had flown back to town;
and his obvious perturbation and demonstrative affection had made it a
happy meeting.
But, while all these messages flowed, there was one inexplicable
silence. Charlotte neither wrote nor telegraphed; nor did she return
home. That portent dawned upon their Majesties as they breakfasted late
the next morning with correspondence and telegrams piled up beside them.
"What can have become of Charlotte?" cried the Queen. "She must _know_!"
"If she knew, she would be here," said the King, confident in his
daughter's affection.
They stared at each other in a surmise which turned gradually to dismay.
This unfilial silence upon their escape from the bomb of the assassin
told them with staggering certainty that Charlotte was missing.
"She has run away!" cried the Queen.
"But she must be somewhere," objected the King; "and wherever she is she
would surely have heard the news."
"She may be quite out in the country," suggested the Queen, picking up
hope.
"Still she has friends who must know where she has gone."
"It's incredible!" cried her Majesty; "heartless, I call it."
"No, no, she simply doesn't know!" said the King; of that he was quite
certain. "We are sure to hear from her in the course of the day," he
continued reassuringly, "meanwhile we shall have to make inquiries."
But the day went on, and no sign from Charlotte; nor did inquiries bring
definite news up to date. She had arrived with her expectant hostess on
the day appointed; but after staying only one night had gone elsewhere,
and from that point in place and time no trace of her was to be found.
Before the day was over the King and Queen had become terribly anxious,
and by the end of the week they were almost at their wits' end.
And here we get yet another instance of the drawbacks and dangers which
attend upon royalty. Had Charlotte belonged to any ordinary rank of
life, it could have been announced that she was missing; her description
could have been issued to the press, and search for her made reasonably
effective. But, as things were, this could not be done, Charlotte was
impulsive and did indiscreet things; and until one knew exactly what it
portended, to publish her disappearance to all the world would have been
too rash and sudden a proceeding. Once that was done there could be no
hushing up of the matter; all Jingalo, nay, all Europe, would have to
hear of it, including, of course, the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser; and so,
at all costs of private strain and anxiety, it was necessary to conceal
as long as possible that the Princess was not where she ought to be, and
was perhaps where she ought not to be.
Now please, do not let my readers at this point think that it was
Charlotte who had thrown the bomb. Even for the sake of literary effect,
I would not for one moment deceive them. It was not Charlotte; Charlotte
had nothing to do with it, and did not even know of it. And yet--I will
give them for a while this small problem to grapple with--Charlotte was
quite well, was in possession of all her senses, was thoroughly enjoying
herself, and was not outside the land of her inheritance. Most
emphatically she had not run away.
And there for the moment we will leave the matter, and attend to things
more important.
II
The King had caught sight in the newspaper of something which annoyed
him very much; annoyed him all the more because it seemed to betoken
that the moment his abdication was withdrawn the old ministerial
encroachments on the royal prerogative had begun again.
"We are officially informed," so ran the paragraph, "that the Minister
of the Interior has advised his Majesty to grant a reprieve to the three
strike leaders now lying under sentence of death for their part in the
recent riots and police murders. It is understood that the sentences
will be commuted to penal servitude for life."
And this was the first the King had heard of it!
He sent at once for the Home Minister; and within an hour that great
official stood before him.
"Mr. Secretary," said the King sharply, as he laid the offending
paragraph before him, "since when, may I ask, has the Crown's
prerogative of mercy become the perquisite of the Home Office?"
"I do not think, sir," submitted the Secretary with all outward
humility, "that any such change has come about. In this case the
circumstances were special and very urgent."
"Why, then, was I not consulted?"
"There was hardly time, your Majesty."
"I was here."
"I apprehended that the recent event--so very upsetting to your
Majesty----"
"Come, come," interjected the King, "if I was able to read my speech
immediately after it--as I did--I was quite able to attend to other
business as well; and you ought to have known it."
The King did not thus usually speak to one of his ministers; but, having
just had to face so heavy a defeat of his plans for honorable
retirement, he was the more bent on asserting himself.
"Your Majesty will pardon me, it had to be issued to the press without a
moment's delay. We had received information which made the matter of
great urgency."
"I will hear your explanation," said the King coldly; and the Secretary
went on.
"You are doubtless aware, sir, that about these sentences there has been
a very considerable agitation among the workers; and the utter failure
of the strike has not improved matters."
"I am aware of that," said the King.
"It had always been my intention, as soon as the march of strikers had
been dispersed in an orderly manner, to recommend the exercise of the
royal clemency. It was in fact merely a matter of hours, when
circumstances forestalled us. The session closed before any of the
strike marchers could arrive upon the scene; and then came the event
which diverted popular attention. It was for that reason, I presume,
that only yesterday certain of the men's leaders made very inflammatory
speeches--of a kind which it would be extremely difficult for the
authorities to overlook or make any appearance of yielding to. One
speech in particular, calling upon the hangman to refuse to perform his
duty and threatening his life if he did so, was of a peculiarly
seditious character; for I need hardly point out that if that
functionary is not protected in the fulfilment of his official duties
the downfall of law and order has begun. It was absolutely necessary,
therefore, to forestall any reports of that speech in the metropolitan
press. For a few hours we were able to keep back the news; your
Majesty's clemency was announced in the late issues of all the evening
papers, and the 'Don't Hang' speech was not reported till this morning;
and thus, coming after the event, has fallen comparatively flat. I think
that now your Majesty will understand the position."
The Secretary had finished.
"And that is your explanation?" queried the King.
The minister bowed.
"I have to say that it does not satisfy me."
The minister lifted sad eyebrows, but did not speak.
"You tell me that for many days this recommendation of mercy has been
your fixed intention. Why, then, did you not consult me? Why did you
assume that, at a moment's notice, I should be able to fall in with your
suggestion; why, even, that I should think the dispersal of certain
riotous assemblies a convenient signal for the exercise of the royal
prerogative?"
"I have merely followed, sir, the ordinary course of procedure observed
in my department."
"Until, being unexpectedly pressed for time, you departed from it. After
all the telephone was between us; I was here. I might not have agreed:
but at least I should have been consulted!"
The minister pursed his lips; to this sort of hectoring he had really
nothing to say. It did not comport with his official dignity.
The King rose. "Mr. Secretary, as I have already said, your explanation
does not satisfy me. I shall communicate my sentiments to the Prime
Minister."
His Majesty did not extend his hand; but by a motion of the head showed
that the interview was over; and there was nothing left for the Minister
of the Interior to do but retire from the room.
And the next day he retired from office; for though the Prime Minister
urged many things in his defense, and more particularly the
misapprehension which his present retirement might cause, the King
remained obdurate; he was bent upon making an example. In the great
political game he had miscalculated and lamentably failed, but red-tape
was still his cherished possession; and you can do a good deal with
red-tape when you have an unquestioned authority to fall back upon.
Professor Teller's volumes of Constitutional History still lay upon a
retired shelf in the royal library (indeed it was from one of them that
he had extracted with slight changes his formal pronouncement of
abdication); and if he could not get anything else out of his ministers
he was determined to secure official correctness. Though they slighted
his opinion, they should recognize his authority; punctiliousness at
least they should render him as his one remaining due.
And so when the Prime Minister urged how small and accidental was the
omission, his Majesty remarked that it was one of many; and when he
argued how any delay might have proved dangerous, the point at which
delay had begun was again icily indicated. More pressingly still did he
invite the King to consider in what light, if unexplained, this
resignation would be popularly regarded; would it not be taken as an
admission of blame by the head of the Home Department for the occurrence
of the late outrage?
"Very likely," assented the King; "after all it took place on
Government premises." Whereat the Prime Minister, looking somewhat
startled and distressed, inquired whether any such imputation of blame
had been his Majesty's ulterior motive for his present action.
"I have no motives left," said the King wearily; "I am merely doing my
duty."
In which aspect he was proving himself a very difficult person to deal
with. "I am not arguing, I am only telling you," was an attitude which
put him in a much stronger position with his intellectual superiors than
any attempt at converting them to his views. From this day on he stood
forth to his ministers as a rigid constitutional reminder; and with six
volumes of the minutiæ of constitutional usage at his fingers' ends the
amount of time he was able to waste and the amount of trouble he was
able to give were simply amazing.
The Prime Minister had been quite right; the resignation of the Home
Secretary caused just that flutter of unfavorable suspicion which he had
expected. For some reason or another he was extremely distressed by it,
and begged from his Majesty the grant of a full State pension to the
retired minister. But the King would not hear of it. "It is not my
duty," he said, "to grant full pensions to those who fail in their
official obligations. Where I am more personally concerned I have not
pressed you; I have not asked for the resignation of the Prefect of
Police, though I think I might have some reason to show for it. He
prevented nothing, and he has discovered nothing. Do you expect me to
open Parliament for you again next week, with the same ceremony, along
the same route, and at the same risk?"
He was assured that every precaution would be taken.
"I hope so," he said in the tone of one who very much doubted whether
the ministerial word was now worth anything.
Under this harassing and unhandsome treatment the Prime Minister was
beginning to show age; and the coming session gave no promise that his
cares in other respects would be less heavy than before; the Women
Chartists were threatening a bigger outbreak in the near future, and
Labor was now claiming to be freely supported from the rates either when
out of work or when on strike. And when the Address to the Throne was
being moved Labor and the Women Chartists would be in renewed agitation,
asking for things which would make party politics quite impossible, and
which it was therefore quite impossible for party politics to grant. If
the Government had not still got that thoroughly unpopular House of
Bishops to sit upon and coerce, things would be looking very black
indeed.
III
And meanwhile where was the Princess Charlotte? Seven horrible days had
gone by; and the inner circle of the detective force had been running
about in padded slippers, so to speak, giving an accurate description of
a lady whose name nobody knew, and who had been last seen in the
vicinity of a college for women. Very privately and confidentially the
titled lady who was the head of that institution had been interviewed;
but her information was limited.
"She came to me only for one day," said the Principal, "though I thought
she was intending to stay a week. I hardly know when I missed her; she
had laid it down so very emphatically that she was to be left free and
treated without ceremony, that really I did not trouble to look after
her. Whenever she was here her Highness always mixed quite freely with
the students; I know that with some of them she had made friends. They
are far more likely to know what her plans were than I am."
Further inquiry in the direction thus indicated had to be carried on
elsewhere, since the students had now separated for the vacation; and
wherever inquiry was made the same stealthy secrecy had to be adopted;
nobody must be allowed to suppose that the Princess Royal of Jingalo was
missing. And so--on a sort of all-fours not at all conducive to
speed--the quest went on.
On the fifth day, however, some relief had arrived to reduce the
parental anxiety to bearable proportions. A letter, dropped from
nowhere, bearing the metropolitan postmark, came to the King's hands. It
gave only the barest, yet very essential information.
"Dearest papa," it ran, "I am quite well, and enjoying myself. I shall
be back in a fortnight."
News of the arrival of this letter was immediately conveyed to the
Constabulary Chief; and after three days of deep cogitation the absence
of all reference to the outrage and to the risk run by those near and
dear to her seemed to strike him as peculiar, and supplied him with what
hitherto the police had lacked--a clue. And after two more days of
strenuously directed search it bore fruit.
Late one afternoon the King was sitting at work in his study when his
Comptroller-General entered hastily and in evident excitement; for
though the King was then busily engaged in writing he presumed to
interrupt, not waiting for the royal interrogating glance to give him
his permission.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, in a tone of very urgent apology.
"Well, well?" said the King rather testily, for he did not like his
writing-hour to be thus disturbed, "what is it?"
"The Prime Minister wishes to see you, sir, on a matter of extreme
urgency."
The King had so long been pestered by ministers on matters which they
considered urgent and which he did not, that he had little patience for
such pleas, coming at the wrong time.
"What about?" he inquired curtly.
The Comptroller-General, who was supposed not to know, replied
discreetly but in a tone of veiled meaning, "Something in the Home
Department I believe, sir. Just now, while there is no chief secretary,
the Prime Minister himself is seeing to matters."
"Dear, dear!" sighed his Majesty, "I do wish he would manage to get his
urgent business done at the proper time!"
"I think, sir," said the General, "that this matter is one of sufficient
importance to justify a suspension of the ordinary rules." He paused, as
though about to say more, but thought better of it; after all the matter
did not lie within his department.
"Very well," said the King, "let him come in, then!" And in due course
the Premier entered.
It was evident at a glance that he was the bearer of important, nay,
even alarming, intelligence; his eye was startled and anxious, his
manner full of discomposure, and without waste of a moment he opened
abruptly upon the business which had brought him.
"I have come to inform your Majesty," said he, "that we have at last
discovered the Princess Charlotte's whereabouts."
"Oh?" said the King, excluding from his tone any indication of gratitude
over the too long delayed discovery. "And pray, where is she?"
"I regret to say, sir, that her Royal Highness is at this moment in
Stonewall Jail."
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the King, startled out of his coldness.
"Whatever took her there?"
"She was taken, sir, in a 'Molly Hold-all'[1] along with several others.
And she has been there for the last ten days."
[Footnote 1: Jingalese equivalent for "Black Maria."]
"Yes, yes; but what I want to know is what has she been doing? In this
country one doesn't get put into prison for nothing, I should hope."
"The charge, sir, was for assaulting the police. No doubt there has been
a very regrettable mistake; there was, unquestionably, in the
magistrate's court, some conflict of evidence."
"Assaulting the police!" exclaimed the King petulantly.
"But what else are the police there for?--when there's trouble, I mean.
And how many of them did she assault, pray?"
"I believe only one, sir," replied the Prime Minister; "at least only
one of them gave any evidence against her, and there were five witnesses
to say that she did not assault him. The magistrate who convicted,
however, accepted the constable's evidence; he is, I believe, rather
hard of hearing; and I am told that he thought the witnesses in her
favor were all giving evidence against her. If that is so, it
sufficiently accounts for the conviction. On the other hand there can be
no doubt that the Princess did intend to get arrested."
"When did all this take place?"
"In the course of the last Chartist disturbances, three days before the
rising of Parliament. Some sixty or seventy women then caused themselves
to be arrested, and it seems that the Princess was one of them."
"She must be mad!" exclaimed the King in bewilderment. "Whatever could
have induced her?"
"Was your Majesty aware that she had any leanings towards politics?"
"She has ideas," said the King, "like other young people; but she is
generally very busy changing them; and, beyond a notion that a woman
ought always to have her own way, and never be asked to do what she
doesn't want to do, she----" And then it began to dawn upon him--though
only darkly--what Charlotte was really after: she was demonstrating
madly, extravagantly, her claim to personal freedom. And to prove how
much she meant it she had gone to these wild lengths. Well might her
father, in his essentially middle-aged mind, wonder what the younger
generation was coming to.
"Poor dear silly child!" he exclaimed in fond irritation. "Why ever
could she not have waited?"
That was a question the Prime Minister could not answer.
"Well, well," he went on, endeavoring to be philosophical over the
business, "she has had her lesson now; and after all there is no real
harm done."
"Your Majesty must pardon me; it has become a very serious matter," said
the Prime Minister gravely.
"Why? Who knows anything about it? Who need know? She wasn't sentenced
in her own name, I suppose?"
"Certainly not, sir; had she been recognized the thing could never have
happened. She must to some extent have altered her dress and her
appearance: as to that I have no particulars. The name she actually went
in under was Ann Juggins."
"Preposterous!" exclaimed the King. "And supposing that were to come
out!"
"That is the trouble, sir. Without the full and immediate exercise of
your authority, I fear it may. As a matter of fact, that is why she
still remains where we found her."
"Oh! Stuff and nonsense!" cried the King. "You don't come for my
authority in cases of this kind. Let her out, let her out! and say
nothing more about it!"
"The Prefect, sir, has already been to see her, and she refuses to be
let out; that is to say, declares that if she is not allowed to serve
her full sentence she will make the whole of the affair public."
"Public?"
"Name and all. There was her ultimatum; she made a special point of it.
Her Highness seems somehow to be aware that the name is an impossible
one, a weapon against which no Government department could stand. The
word 'Juggins,'--only think, sir, what it means! Here we have a
ridiculous, a most lamentable blunder committed by the police,
sufficient of itself to cause us the gravest embarrassment; and then to
have on the top of it all this name with its ridiculous association
rising up to confound us. We should go down as 'the Juggins Cabinet';
the word would be cried after us by every errand-boy in the street--the
Government would become impossible."
The King did his best to conceal his delight at the predicament in which
Charlotte's escapade had, by the confession of its Chief, placed the
Cabinet. This tyrannical Government, in spite of its large majority, its
strong party organization, and its bureaucratic powers, was unable to
stand up against ridicule; a mere breath, and all its false pretensions
to dignity would be exposed, and its dry bones, speciously clad in
strong armor, would rattle down into the dust.
And if he chose to use this knowledge suddenly gained, what a power it
would give him! Yes; he had only to send for Charlotte and bid her cry
'Juggins,' and that which, with so many months of anxious toil and with
threat of abdication, he had failed to bring about, would immediately
accomplish itself in other ways. But unfortunately the King was a man of
scrupulous conscience, and was bound by his ideas of what became a
monarch and a gentleman. He may have been quite mistaken in regarding as
unclean the weapon with which Heaven had supplied him; but as he did so
regard it, one must reluctantly admit that he was right to throw it
aside.
"Well," he said, when the Prime Minister had finished, "she must be made
not to tell, that's all!"
"I fear, sir, she is very determined."
"Determined to do what?"
"To serve out her sentence."
The King sat and thought for a while. He knew his Charlotte better than
the police did; and, besides that, during the past week he had quite
made up his mind that the Prefect of Police was in some matters a
blunderer. "I wonder how he tried to get her out," he meditated aloud.
"Did she send me any message?"
"Nothing direct, sir, that I know of; but I take it that her ultimatum
was also directed against any possible action on the part of your
Majesty. She was quite determined to do her full time; said indeed that
you had promised her a fortnight. What that may mean, I do not know."
"Oh, really!" cried the King, "the folly of the official mind is past
all believing,--especially when it concentrates itself in the police
force! Let somebody go to that poor child and tell her that her father
and mother have had a bomb thrown at them, and are trying to recover
themselves in the grief caused by her absence! And then unchain her (you
keep them in chains, I suppose?), open the door of her prison, and see
how she'll run! And tell the Prefect," he added, "that I cannot present
him with my compliments."
The King was quite right. In case Charlotte should refuse to believe the
official word, she was shown a newspaper with lurid illustrations; and
within an hour's time she was back at the palace, weeping, holding her
father and mother alternately in her arms, and scolding them for all the
world as though they had been guilty of outrageous behavior, and not
she.
And, after all, it was a very good way of getting over the preliminaries
of a rather awkward meeting.
IV
But when the first transports of joy at that reunion were over, they had
to settle down to naughty facts and talk with serious disapproval to
Charlotte of her past doings. And as they did so, though she still wept
a little, the Princess observed with secret satisfaction that she had at
any rate cured her mother of one thing--of knitting, namely, while a
daughter's fate was being dangled in the parental balance.
From that day on when Charlotte showed that she was really in earnest
the Queen put down her knitting; and those who have lived under certain
domestic conditions where tyranny is always, as though by divine right,
benevolent, wise, self-confident, and self-satisfied to the verge of
conceit, will recognize that this in itself was no inconsiderable
triumph.
Charlotte was quite straightforward as to why she had done the thing;
she had done it partly out of generous enthusiasm for a cause which she
did not very well understand, but to which certain friends of hers had
attached themselves with a blind and dogged obstinacy (two of those
friends she had left in prison behind her); but more because she wished
to supply an object lesson of what she was really like to the Prince of
Schnapps-Wasser.
She insisted that he was to be told all about it. And the Queen was in
despair.
"Tell him that you have been in jail like a common criminal for
assaulting the police? I couldn't, it would break my heart! I should die
of the shame of it."
"Very well," said Charlotte, "I will tell him myself, then; you can't
prevent me doing that! No, I'm not going to be headstrong, or foolish,
or obstinate, or any of the things you said I was: now I've made the
exhibition of myself that I intended making, I'll be a lamb. If I like
him enough, and if he likes me enough, I'll marry him. But I shall have
to like him a great deal more than I do at present; and he will have to
want me very much more than it's possible for him to do until he has
seen me----"
"Oh, don't be so conceited, my dear!" said the Queen, her good-humor and
confidence beginning to be restored as she watched the fair flushed
face, and those queer attractive little gestures which made her
daughter's charm so irresistible.
"Before anything will induce me to say 'yes,'" concluded Charlotte.
And then, as though that finished the matter, and as though her own
naughty doings were of no further interest, she cried: "And now tell me
about the bomb!" And the Queen, who still liked to dwell upon that
episode of sights, sounds, and sensations, strangely mingled and
triumphantly concluded by a popular ovation such as she had never met
with in her life before, started off at once on a detailed narrative,
corrected now and then by the King's more sober commentary, and aided by
the eager questions of her daughter, who sat in close and fond contact
with both of them, mopping her eyes alternately with her mother's
handkerchief and her own.
"Oh! why wasn't I there?" she cried incautiously, when word came of the
great popular reception crowning all.
"Ah! why weren't you?" inquired the King waggishly. And when he had made
that little joke at her, Charlotte knew that all her naughty goings off
and goings on were comfortably forgiven and done with.
"But you know, papa," she said later, when for the first time they were
alone together, "I have found out quite a lot of things that _you_ know
nothing about: quite dreadful things! And they are going on behind your
back, and women are being put into prison for it."
All this was said very excitedly, and with great earnestness and
conviction.
"My dear," said the King, "it's no use your talking about those Women
Chartists to me."
"But I'm one of them," said Charlotte.
"Nonsense; you are not."
"I am. I signed on. I couldn't have gone to prison for them if I
hadn't."
"Do any of them know who you are?" cried the King, aghast. It was a
disturbing thought, for what a power it would be in their hands, and he
had always heard how unscrupulous they were.
"Only one or two," declared Charlotte, "and they won't tell unless I
tell them to. They are wonderful people, papa!"
The King sighed; for the very name of them had become a weariness to
him. The whole agitation, with its dim confused scufflings against law
and order, and its demonstrations idiotically recurring at the most
inopportune moments, had profoundly vexed him. Years ago he had received
the bland assurance of his ministers that the whole thing would soon die
down and cease; but it was still going on, and was now taking to itself
worse forms than ever.
"What is it that they want?" he exclaimed, not quite meaning it as a
question; rather as expressing the opinion that the subject was a
hopeless one.
"They want a great many things," said his daughter; "they've got what
they call 'grievances'; I know very little about them; they may be right
or wrong--that isn't the point. The only thing that concerns you, papa,
is that they want to come and see you; and they are not allowed to."
"Come and see me?"
"Yes; bring you a petition."
"What about?"
"To have their grievances looked into."
"_I_ can't look into their grievances."
"No; but you can say that they shall be."
The King shook his head. Charlotte did not know what she was talking
about.
"Yes, papa, that is the position. Of course you haven't the right to
make laws or levy taxes, but you can send word to Parliament to say
something has got to be considered and decided. And about this,
Parliament won't consider and won't decide. And that is why they are
trying to get to you with a petition; so that you shall say that it is
to be looked into."
"But I can't say that sort of thing, my dear."
"Yes, you can, papa! It's an old right; the right of unrepresented
people to come direct to their sovereign and tell him that his ministers
are refusing to do things for them. And your ministers are trying to
keep you from knowing about it, to keep you from knowing even that you
have such a power; and by not knowing it they are making you break your
Coronation oath. Oh, papa, isn't that dreadful to think of?"
"My dear, if that were true----"
"But it is true, papa! These women are trying to bring you their
petition, and they are prevented. The ministers say that you have
nothing to do with it; so they go to the ministers--they take their
petition to the ministers, and ask them to bring it to you, so that you
may give them an answer. Have any of them brought you the petition,
papa?"
The King shook his head.
"You see, they do nothing! And so the women go again, and again, and
again, taking their petition with them; and because they are trying to
get to you--to say that their grievances shall be looked into, and
something done about them--because of that they are being beaten and
bruised in the streets; and when they won't turn back then they are
arrested and sent to prison."
By this time Charlotte was weeping.
"They may be quite wrong," she cried, "foolish and impossible in their
demands; they may have no grievances worth troubling about--though if
so, why are they troubling as they do?--but they have the right, under
the old law, for those grievances to be inquired into and considered and
decided about. And Parliament won't do it; it is too busy about other
things, grievances that aren't a bit more real, and about which people
haven't been petitioning at all. But you, papa (if that petition came to
you), would have the right to make them attend to it. And they know it;
and that's why they won't let you hear anything about it."
The King's conscience was beginning to be troubled. He had no confidence
either in the good sense or the uprightness of his ministers to fall
back upon; and he saw that his daughter, though she knew so little about
the merits of the case, was very much in earnest. She had caught his
hand and was holding it; she kissed it, and he could feel the dropping
of warm tears.
"Very well, my dear," he said, "very well; I promise that this shall be
looked into."
"Oh, papa!" she cried joyfully. "It was partly for that--just a little,
not all, of course--that I went to prison."
"Then you ought not to have been so foolish. Why could you not have come
to me?"
"I don't think you would have attended; not so much as you do now."
And the King had to admit how, perhaps, that was true.
"Well, my dear," he said again, "I promise that it shall be seen to. No,
I shan't forget."
And then she kissed him and thanked him, and went away comforted. And
when he was alone he got down the index volume of Professor Teller's
_Constitutional History_, and after some search under the heading of
"Petitions" found indeed that Charlotte was right, and that the power to
send messages to Parliament for the remedying of abuses was still his
own.