Читать книгу King Tommy - James Owen Hannay - Страница 4

Table of Contents

I had finished breakfast and was reading the Irish news in The Morning Post. It gave me some pleasure to read the Irish news in The Morning Post in the early part of 1922. The Republicans or the Free Staters, or some other association of brigands, had burned my house in County Clare, and I liked being told that such people come to a bad end. The Morning Post told me that every day, wittily and with emphasis. In the security of my London flat I could appreciate the wit and enjoy the emphasis. I might not have cared for either if I had been in the position of my sister Emily Chambers. She still lives in Ireland.

Lord Norheys walked in and greeted me.

“Good morning, Uncle Bill. Had a good night? Sleep sound and all that? Chewed up a satisfactory breakfast? What I always say is, if a fellow sleeps and eats he’s fit for anything.”

I am not Norheys’ uncle, and my name is not Bill, or even William; but I have known him ever since he was born, and I suppose he has a right to stick to the nickname which he first gave me when he was a child in the nursery. His father, the eighth marquis, was my best friend. He and I and Edmund Troyte, the younger brother, were at Winchester together, and afterward at Oxford. Some of the happiest days of my boyhood—for that matter of my manhood—have been spent at Norheys Chase. I was asked to be godfather to the present marquis. It is natural enough that he should still call me Uncle Bill, and I am glad to think that he comes to me for advice when he is in trouble. I see a great deal of him, for he is very often in trouble of one sort or another. He never by any chance takes my advice. I dare say he would get into worse trouble if he did.

“Thanks,” I said. “I got through the night fairly well and the coffee was quite hot at breakfast.”

“I thought I’d inquire,” said Norheys, “because what I’ve got to tell you may give you a bit of a shock. And what I always say is this: unless a fellow is pretty well braced up it’s better to let a shock stand over for a day or two. There’s no earthly use running risks with a dicky heart. And every fellow’s heart is a bit dicky, so I’m told, even if he doesn’t know it.”

“I feel as fit this morning,” I said, “as I’m ever likely to; so unless your news is really desperate—— It’s about Miss Temple, I suppose.”

Miss Temple—Viola Temple of the advertisement hordings and the picture papers—is a very beautiful lady with a spotless reputation. At that time all London was enthusiastic about her dancing. Norheys was more enthusiastic than any one else. I hoped he did not mean to marry her, but was very much afraid he did.

“Viola doesn’t come into it at all so far,” said Norheys. “Though of course she may later on. No fellow can possibly tell who’ll come into what, can he? You might be in it yourself, Uncle Bill, before we’re actually through it.”

“That,” I said, “is an extra reason for telling me what it is.”

“It’s a new stunt of Uncle Ned’s.”

His uncle Ned—this time a real uncle—is Lord Edmond Troyte, son of the seventh Marquis, uncle of the ninth Marquis of Norheys, one of our ablest, quite our most sincerely patriotic statesman, at present Minister for Balkan affairs. Whatever the “stunt” was, it must surely be safe and decorous if Lord Edmund invented it. So I thought; but I was wrong. I might have remembered that there is a queer vein of adventurousness and daring in the Troyte family. There was a Lord Alfred who made himself a sort of Arab sheik early in the eighteenth century. Before him there was an Elizabethan Lord Edmund who came back from the Spanish Main with a shipful of gold plate. There was Lady Elizabeth Troyte who married Prince Boris of Lystria in 1762, and, after a brilliant military career, had her head cut off by the Turks, who were playing about in Lystria at that time. There were others. And that kind of thing, if it is in the blood, is very hard to eradicate. But no one would have expected it to break out in Lord Edmund, whose cool far-seeing wisdom guides the present cabinet in all Eastern questions.

“Uncle Ned,” said Norheys, “wants me to be a king.”

Norheys was perfectly right to inquire about my health before he made an announcement like that. A man who had slept badly or who had had no breakfast might have fainted through sheer astonishment.

“A king,” I said. “Good gracious! But—he can’t possibly have suggested your being a king. King of what? Where?”

“Does seem a bit of a facer just at first, doesn’t it, Uncle Bill? But the way to look at all these things is this: Why not? You may think that some fellow is pulling your leg about something, say a rank outsider that nobody ever heard of for the Grand National. But before you turn it down and hoof the fellow out you ought to say to yourself, Why not? That’s what I’ve been saying to myself ever since Uncle Ned sprang it on me.”

“Well,” I said, “when you put it that way I can see—— I dare say you’d make a fairly good king of some very small country. But I still find it very difficult to believe that your Uncle Ned really proposed it. Did he mention the name of the country?”

“He did; but it’s slipped out of my head for the minute. It was the same place where my great-aunt Elizabeth went with that mucker of hers one hundred fifty years ago.”

“Lystria,” I said. “But—well, of course your Uncle Edmund knows better than I do, but I have an impression that Lystria isn’t an independent state any more.”

I was right about that. I looked the matter up after Norheys left me. Lystria, once an independent kingdom, was incorporated into the Republic of Megalia by the Treaty of Trianon. Megalia is one of those new republics which make the map of Europe very confusing to people like me who knew it before the war. No doubt the Lystrians deserved to lose their independence. The late king, Wladislaws VI, backed the wrong side in the war and like all who did that, lost his throne.

“Lystria is the spot Uncle Ned mentioned,” said Norheys. “Potty little one-horse place; but of course a fellow can’t expect to step into a first-rate job when he first goes into the king line of life. Anyhow, I shouldn’t be surprised if there was some good hunting there.”

“All I’ve ever heard of it,” I said, “is that it’s a very mountainous country. I don’t suppose it’s safe to ride anything there except mules.”

“Hunting on mules. Good lord!”

“There may be a few wild boars,” I said.

“Good. I’ve never tried pig-sticking. I’d like to.”

“But,” I said, “if you really are to be a king——”

As his godfather I felt it my duty to speak seriously to Norheys about his future. I had thought of quite a nice thing to say, but he interrupted me.

“Uncle Ned wants me to,” he said, “and what I always say is: If a fellow’s family is keen on a fellow doing any particular thing, then he ought to do it; unless it’s a thing that he bars strongly. I can’t say I’ve any particular objection to being a king. It isn’t a thing I’d have thought of going in for all on my own; but when Uncle Ned has set his heart on it—well, no fellow with any sense of decency wants to start a family quarrel by going against his relations, unless he absolutely has to. Now what do you say, Uncle Bill?”

“I say,” I replied, “that if you’re to be a king you ought not to be thinking only about sport. Kings have duties.”

“No fellow could possibly be keener on duties than I am. And I’ve been thinking things over since Uncle Ned spoke to me. My idea is that a king’s duty is to make as few laws as possible, and to stop other fellows making them if he can. What I always say is this: Most fellows are all right if you leave them alone and don’t go trying to make them do things they don’t want to, such as drinking soda-water instead of beer. Of course if they take to batting each other on the head, then you’ve got to send a policeman to stop them. But otherwise—— Well, my idea of kings and presidents and people like that is that they’ve far too good an opinion of themselves. They always think they know what’s best and want the other fellow to do it. Whereas the other fellow knows really just as well as they do. And my idea is: Let him. So long as it doesn’t annoy anybody else much let him.”

Norheys’ political principles struck me as sound. I felt that, if ever he became King of Lystria, I should like to go and live there. Taxes ought to be light; for the greater part of our national income seems to go in paying officials to compel people to do things they don’t want to. There would be no expenditure of that sort in Lystria under Norheys.

“There’s another fellow in this stunt,” he said, “besides Uncle Ned. Ever hear of any one called Cable?”

“I’ve heard of Procopius Cable,” I said. “Everybody has.”

“I haven’t,” said Norheys. “At least I hadn’t till yesterday. What sort of bird is he?”

I found it a little difficult to give a clear account of Procopius Cable. Nobody knows where he came from. His Christian name sounds Greek, and I have heard it said that he was originally a Levantine Jew. If so, the Semitic strain does not show in his nose, which is short and snub. He appears to be enormously rich; but I have known several men who spent as much as Cable does and turned out in the end to have nothing at all. I could not call him a Captain of Industry, for he does not manufacture, nor drive other people to manufacture, anything. I suppose he might be described as a financier. I said so to Norheys.

“Anything to do with oil?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said, “but he may. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Cable had something to do with anything in the world if there’s money to be made out of it.”

“I mentioned it,” said Norheys, “because Uncle Ned said something about oil in Lystria. I can’t say I much like the idea of living in a place that stinks of paraffin, nasty stuff, always getting into your food and dripping about. However, Uncle Ned says the good old British Empire wants oil, and if it does I’m all for its having as much as it can get. That’s what I said to Uncle Ned, and what I always say to any fellow who starts talking about the Empire: The proper thing is to let the British Empire get what it wants with the least possible fuss, whether it’s oil, or rubber, or whatever the thing may be. Uncle Ned seemed to think that in this case it was oil.”

“Is there oil in Lystria? I never heard of it.”

“That fellow Cable seems to have said so,” said Norheys, “and I rather gather—mind you, I’m not saying this as a certain, sure thing. My general impression is that if I was King of Lystria, Uncle Ned and the jolly old Empire would collar the oil. See?”

I began to see.