TONY was young Tony, and old Tony was his grandfather. This story is
about young Tony, and no human being believes a word of it, unless
young Tony does.
Tony was born in the town of Antioch. This is not the same Antioch that
you read about in history, but quite a different place. It was a place
where nearly every one was very dark as to the complexion, and rather
short as to the temper and figure. People who were fair in the face and
easy in the temper were not thought much of in Antioch. When Tony’s
mother saw that her baby was as fair as a daffodil and as good as gold,
and laughed all day, she said, “Oh dear, oh dear, I suppose he takes
after his grandfather, he is not in the least like _my_ family,” and
the matter annoyed her so much that she died.
Then there was only old Tony left to look after young Tony, because
his father had been killed in the wars—-only a few weeks before.
The people of Antioch were always fighting the neighbouring tribes,
red-faced savages who deserved no better fate than to be killed, only,
of course, sometimes a few Antiochians had to be killed too, because
that is part of the game, and if there were no danger there would be no
glory, would there?
Little Tony’s hair remained yellow, and his habit of laughing grew with
his years, and he learned his lessons and he learned his play. He was
excellent company, and if it had not been for the yellowness of his
hair and the gentleness of his nature, he would have been quite popular
among his schoolmates.
His grandfather called him “gentle,” but the people of Antioch called
him “lazy,” for they, as I said, were very black, and generally angry.
They scurried up and down in their rocky little city, and always they
seemed to be driven by most urgent affairs, hurrying to keep important
appointments. They ran about all day long, attending to their business,
and hardly stopping even for their dinner or their tea, and no one ever
saw any of them asleep.
“Why is it, Grandfather?” young Tony asked one day, “what is it all
about? why do they never sit down quietly like you and me?”
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE OF ANTIOCH WERE ALWAYS IN A HURRY AND
GENERALLY ANGRY.]
“It is the great heart of the Nation, my boy,” said old Tony, “it
cannot be still; it is in the breed, you know, they can’t help it. They
are all alike too, except you and me. Why, bless your heart, look at
the King, he is more in a hurry than all the rest, and more—and more
noble and active, bless him.”
The old man ended his speech in quite a different voice from the one he
had begun with. This was because he suddenly caught the glitter of the
King’s crown as the Monarch popped round the corner.
The King of Antioch was always in a hurry, always running somewhere or
other, consequently he was seldom on his throne, and his loyal subjects
had to look out very sharply, for he was always sure to be where they
least expected him. You may think that they could have got over this
little difficulty by always looking for the King where they least
expected him, but if you try this simple experiment for yourself with
your governess or tutor, or even your nurse, I think you will find that
it is not so easy as it looks.
“Ha!” said the King, standing in the doorway and laughing cheerfully,
“talking treason, eh? well, you know what the punishment for that is.
Pinching with black pincers, you know, till—well—till you don’t feel
the pinching any more.”
“Aha! your Majesty always has such a pleasant way with you,” said old
Tony politely; and young Tony decided that when he grew up he would try
not to have any pleasant ways at all.
The King rustled quickly round the little house, and looked at
everything—dresser, chairs, plates and pots. He was sorry that there
was nothing that he could find fault with, so he said, “Beware of
Luxury,” and hurried off to make his presence felt in some other humble
home. There was no pride about King Anthony XXIII. He just dropped in
without an invitation and took his subjects as he found them.
“King Anthony XXIII. is the noblest of monarchs,” said old Tony, as he
and his grandson sat down to their plain supper.
“It’s all right, grandfather, he has quite gone, he’s not listening—for
a wonder!” said young Tony.
Meantime the King was hurrying in and out and up and down the crowded
streets of his city, picking up little bits of information, and making
his subjects feel that his kingship was not a mere matter of form, but
that he was really interested in the most humble life among his people.
It was a strange town, all up-hill and down-hill, with steep rocks and
precipices all mixed up with the public streets. The people, for all
their busy habits, had no trade, or rather they did not manufacture
anything. They built houses, and brought up their families. They
wrapped their children up very snugly and carried them about at an
earlier age than we consider safe, and they milked their cows, which
were large and green and had wings, and they drank the milk, and they
gathered the fruit of the trees that grew on the plain below the town,
and they got on very well indeed. There was only one drawback to life
in Antioch, and that was its uncertainty. At any moment an earthquake
might occur, then down would go half the town, and the busy citizens
had it all to build again. They soon did it, for they were nothing if
not industrious. A much more awful thing was the storm of hot rain
that now and then fell on the town, a blighting rain that killed all
it touched. This was more dreaded than even the earthquakes, but
fortunately it very seldom happened.
Old Tony was beadle and sexton and keeper of the town records; and
very nicely he kept them too. There was not a speck of dirt on one of
them. He used to spend hours and hours polishing the records, and he
scoured the tombstones till they shone again; and he had most of the
inscriptions by heart. After an earthquake he was always most careful
to put the tombstones back in their proper places, and one day, when
he was doing this, he came on a stone he did not remember to have seen
before. He called to young Tony, who had had a Board School education,
to see if he could read the bits of words that were carved upon it.
“It seems like a foreign language,” said he.
“I can’t make it out,” said young Tony, “it is not carved, it is in the
stone somehow. Looks as if it were coming through from the other side.”
He turned the stone over, and there, on the other side, was an
inscription which both of them had read a hundred times.
“HERE LIES HENRY BIRKBECK,
MAGICIAN TO THE INSTITUTE,
However humble he seems to you,
His last foretelling is going to come true.
P.S.—You see if it doesn’t.”
“Dear me,” said old Tony. “Poor old Henry Birkbeck, it seems like
yesterday; yes, he was very respectable, but only in a small way of
business. A magician he was by trade, but no one thought much of him,
except perhaps the King, and _he_ never gave him a lift. He used to do
things with eggs and a hat. He broke the eggs as often as not. And the
goldfish and handkerchief he hardly ever brought off.”
Old Tony began to lay down the tombstone, but young Tony held it up
with one hand and tried to scrape the back of it with the other.
“There’s something here,” he said, “let’s set it upright instead of
laying it down, and I will scrub it and see what the letters are. Poor
old Mr. Birkbeck, I wonder what his last foretelling was. Was he good
at prophesying, grandfather?”
“Not a bit,” said the sexton, “and to do him justice he almost gave
it up in his later years. You see people laughed at him so, because
the things that he foretold never happened. Towards the end he grew
very feeble—hardly prophesied a single prophecy from one year’s end
to another. Sometimes he would say, ‘I should not wonder if it rained
before Sunday,’ but then he never wondered at anything. He was a calm
old man, was poor Henry. It took a good deal to astonish him.”
Young Tony tried to interest his boy friends in the back of poor old
Henry Birkbeck’s tombstone, but nobody cared. They were all in too much
of a hurry to care for an occupation so slow as cleaning tombstones,
but Tony worked away perseveringly. He cleaned it with soap, and he
cleaned it with soda, with brickdust and vinegar, with rotten stone and
washleather, with patience and elbow grease, and the last two, as you
know, will clean almost anything. So after a time a few letters began
to show distinctly here and there, and presently Tony found he could
read whole words.
There was “milk” and “mountain,” and a word that looked like “Jilk,”
only of course it could not be that. And the last word of all was
“reign,” and the second word of all was “Tony.”
“It must be something to do with me,” said young Tony, “because of my
name being in it.”
“It must have something to do with the King,” said old Tony, “because
it says ‘reign,’ so you’d better cut off to the Palace, and look sharp
about it, or His Majesty will know the reason why.”
So Tony looked sharp about it, and got to the Palace in less than five
minutes. For a wonder the King was not engaged in dropping in on his
subjects, but was on his throne amid his fussy black courtiers, who
were all busy trying to make themselves as small as they could.
This was because the King was very short, though he did not like to
say so. He always had himself described in the Census and the Palace
Reports as a “powerful man of middle height,” though he was nowhere
near the middle height, and no more powerful than other people.
“Well, boy,” said King Anthony XXIII., “what have you come here for?”
“There is a prophecy,” said Tony.
“There are a good many,” said King Anthony, “but they don’t amount to
much since poor Henry Birkbeck died. He was something like a prophet,”
he went on, turning to his courtiers; “he foretold, when I was only a
baby, that if I grew up I should perhaps be king. The late King, my
father, was very pleased, I remember.”
The courtiers all bowed, and said it was really wonderful. Tony said,
“Well, then you’d better come and have a look at this prophecy,
because it is the late Mr. Birkbeck’s last one, and he said it’ll come
true.”
“Bring it here, can’t you?” said the King.
“No, I can’t,” said the boy. “It’s on his tombstone, so there. I can’t
carry tombstones about.”
“No,” said the King thoughtfully, “of course you are not powerfully
built. You are nowhere near the medium height.”
“Come and look at it if you want to,” said Tony. “I’m in no hurry.”
“Well,” said King Anthony, “I don’t care if I do. I’m tired of sitting
still.”
So off they all went, King, Court, heralds, men-at-arms, banner-bearers
and spearmen, down the narrow, dark, crooked town streets, till they
came to the churchyard where the tombstones were—both the upright and
the flat kind.
Tony ran on ahead and knelt in front of the tombstone. Then he jumped
up and called out,
“You hurry up, it’s as plain now as the nose on your face.”
“You should say the royal nose on your Majesty’s royal face,” said old
Tony anxiously.
But the King was too interested to care about even his subjects’
manners.
[Illustration: OFF THEY ALL WENT, KING, COURT, AND MEN-AT-ARMS.]
He came up to the tombstone, and on it he read, and Tony read, and all
the courtiers read:—
“When Tony drinks the Blue Mountain’s milk
He shall wear a Sunday suit of silk.
He shall be tallest in all the Land,
And hold the town under his command.
He shall have greatness and we shall have grain;
Soon may it happen and long may he reign!
Hurrah.
H. T. BIRKBECK.”