King John of Jingalo | Page 6

inarticulate not being interpreted at all. There they sit, he with his
newspapers, she with her letters: the King a little anxious and perturbed,
the Queen not anxious or perturbed about anything.
She was still enjoying her superfluous correspondence, he studying in a
vague distrustfulness the various organs of public opinion which lay
around him, doubtful of them all, yet wishing to find one he could rely
on. For now they were all very full of the approaching constitutional
crisis, and were adumbrating in respectful, yet slightly menacing terms,
what the King himself would do in the matter. Whereas what he
actually would do he had not himself the ghost of a notion,--did not yet
know, in fact, what legs he had to stand on, having no information upon
that point beyond what the Prime Minister had chosen to tell him.
And being puzzled he wanted to talk, yet not directly of the matter
which perturbed his mind; but somehow by hearing his own voice he
hoped to arrive at the popular sentiment. It was a way he had; and the
Queen, who was often his audience, knew the preliminary symptoms
by heart. So when presently he began crackling his newspaper and
drawing a series of audible half breaths as though about to begin

reading, his wife recognized the sign that here was something she must
listen to. She put down her letters and attended.
"I see," said his Majesty, culling his information from the opening
paragraph of a leading article, "I see that the Government is losing
popularity every day. That Act they passed last year for the reinstitution
of turnpikes to regulate the speed of motor-traffic is proving
unpopular."
"Is it a failure, then?" inquired the Queen.
"On the contrary, it is a success. But the system was expected to pay for
its upkeep by the amount of fines it brought in, whereas the result has
been to make the conduct of motorists so exemplary that the measure
has ceased to pay. Unable to escape detection, 'joy-riding' has become
practically non-existent, motor-cars are ceasing to be used for breaches
of the peace, and the trade is going down in consequence by leaps and
bounds. The fact is you cannot now-a-days put a stop to any grave
abuse without seriously damaging some trade-interest. If 'trade' is to
decide matters it would be much better not to legislate at all."
"My dear! wouldn't that be revolutionary?" inquired the Queen.
"Keeping things as they are is not revolutionary," replied his Majesty,
"though it's a hard enough thing to do now-a-days."
"But," objected his wife, "they must pass something, or else how would
they earn their salaries?"
"That's it!" said the King,--"payment of members; another of those
unnecessary reforms thrust on us by the example of England."
"Ah, yes!" answered his wife, feeling about for an intelligent ground of
agreement, "England is so rich; she can afford it."
"It isn't that at all," retorted his Majesty; "plenty of other countries have
had to afford it before now. But it was only when England did it that
we took up with the notion. We are always imitating England: the

attraction of contraries, I suppose, because we are surrounded by land
as they are by water. Why else did they start turning me into a
commercial traveler, sending me all over Europe and round the world
to visit colonies that no longer really belong to us? Only because they
are doing the same thing over in England."
"They saw that you wanted change of air," said the Queen.
"Change of fiddlesticks!" answered the King; "I consider it a most
dangerous precedent to let a sovereign be too long out of his own
country. It makes people imagine they can do just as well without
him!"
The Queen looked at her husband with shrewd and kindly furtiveness.
She had a funny little suspicion that the ministry did at times greatly
prefer his absence to his presence: and that "change of fiddlesticks" was
really their underlying motive. About this monarch she herself had no
illusions: he was a dear, but he fussed; and when once he began fussing
he required an enormous amount of explanation and persuasion. Even
she, therefore, was not at all averse to letting him go on these State
outings in which she need not always accompany him. They gave him
something fresh to think about, and to her a time of leisure when she
need not pretend to think about anything she did not understand.
"Of course," went on the King, "it makes good copy for the newspapers.
The press is powerful, and governments are obliged now-a-days to
throw in a certain amount of spectacle to keep it in a good temper. We
are sent off to perform somewhere, and after us come the