Читать книгу King John of Jingalo - Laurence Housman - Страница 12

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Fleeing from the sight still registered upon his brain the King rang for his secretary. A figure of correctitude entered.

"There has been an accident," said his Majesty. "Over there!" He pointed. "A steeplejack has fallen."

The secretary slid respectfully to the window and looked out. To that polite official gaze of inquiry the scene of the tragedy returned a blank and uncommunicative stare.

"Poor wretch!" murmured the King. "I actually saw him go! Ring up, and inquire at the Police Center; though, of course, the poor fellow must be dead!"

The secretary sped away on his errand, and the King, moving back to the window, gazed fixedly at the spire, as though it could still in some way inform him of the tragedy consummated below. Then he returned to his desk and looked distractedly at his papers, but it was no use—back he went to the window again.

Presently the secretary returned and stood drooping for permission to speak. Permission came. "The man is dead, your Majesty. He was killed instantly."

The King gave a sigh of relief. "Of course," he murmured, "from such a height as that!" He stood for a while still cogitating on the sad event: then he said, with that considerate thoughtfulness which habit had made a second nature, "Be good enough to find out whether the poor fellow was married. If so let a donation be sent to his widow—whatever the case seems to warrant—more if there should happen to be children."

Over his tablets the secretary bowed the beauty of his person like a recording angel. Then he paused that the heavenly measure might be taken with accuracy.

"Shall it be five pounds, sir?" he inquired.

"Better make it ten," said the King; "I believe that pays for a funeral. In sending it, you might explain that I had the misfortune to be an eye-witness."

The secretary cooed like a brooding dove. Of course everybody would understand and appreciate. He made a memorandum of the ten pounds and closed up his tablets.

Meanwhile the King went on thinking aloud. "I wonder," he said, "whether they take proper precautions in a trade like that? I would like to look it up. Find me the 'ST' volume of the Encyclopedia Appendica."

And when the volume was brought to him the King sat down and read all about steeplejacks and climbing irons, and cranks, and pulleys, and all the other various appliances requisite for the driving of that dreadful trade; read also how the men were inclined to prime themselves for the task in ever-increasing measure, and so one day having over-primed to be found at the bottom instead of at the top, knowing nothing themselves of how they got there. It was all very interesting and very apposite, and rather pathetic; and when he had done he turned over the pages backward till he came from steeplejacks to "Statesmen" and "Statecraft" and "Statutes" and the affairs of State in general (it was from the Encyclopedia Appendica—a presentation copy—that he got most of his information upon practical things); and in these articles he became so absorbed that he quite forgot how time flew, until his chief secretary came formally to announce to him that the hour for appearing in Council had arrived.

This announcement, be it observed, was made by no ordinary working secretary, but by the chief of them all, the Comptroller of his Majesty's household, a retired general who had passed from the military to the civil service with a record brilliantly made for him by other men—adjutants and attachés and all those indefatigable right-hand assistants of whom your true diplomatist forms his stepping-stones to power. General Poast and the Prime Minister shared between them the ordering and disposal of the King's public services to the Nation, while over other departments impenetrable to the Premier the hand of the Comptroller was still extended. Though personally the King rather disliked him, he had become an absolutely indispensable adjunct to the daily life—so smooth in its workings, yet so easily dislocated—of the Royal Household; also, as a go-between for ministers whose intercourse with the Crown was purely formal, he had proved himself a very efficient implement when on occasion it became necessary to circumvent or reduce to reason the King's characteristic obstinacy in small matters of detail. He might, in fact, be regarded as the keeper not so much of the King's conscience, as of his savoir faire, and of that tact for which Royalty in all countries is conspicuous. Everything that related to the remembering of names and faces, of dates, anniversaries and historical associations, all those small considerate actions of royal charity which robbed of their due privacy have now become the perquisite of the press; all these things stood ranged under minutely tabulated heads within the Comptroller-General's department. He was, literally, the King's Remembrancer; and so, on this occasion also, he had come as intermediary to remind his Majesty that the hour for the Council was at hand.

But the Council was one of those functions in which it was held necessary that the part played by the King (albeit no more than a silent presidency at a Board where others spoke) should wear an appearance of importance. And so the announcement made by the Comptroller was merely preliminary to another and more flourishing announcement by an usher of the Court. Two lackeys threw open a door—other than that through which the General had just entered, and a bowing official, beautifully dressed and waving a fairy-like wand, announced from the threshold, "Your Majesty's Council, now in attendance, humbly begs audience of your Majesty."