King John of Jingalo Part 24

"An unusual one."

"And so you have an unusual proposition to make to me?"

"Yes, I suppose you will think so. There is a brand I want plucked from the burning--a Royal Commission saved from becoming merely official and useless."

"What is its subject?"

"All this!"--she made an inclusive gesture--"slums, the conditions of sweated labor, the daily material which we have to work on."

"About which you have taught me that I know really nothing."

"You said you were anxious to learn. At least half of that Commission will be anxious not to learn--or not to let others."

"Then you ought to be on it."

"No woman is on it."

"You wish them to be?"

She threw out her hands. "What would be the use? Their voices would have no weight."

"Whose would?"

"Yours," she said; and, eyeing him full, stopped dead.

"You wish me to go upon that Commission?" cried Prince Max.

"Yes."

"In spite of all my ignorance?"

"The sittings do not begin till late autumn; between now and then you could get more actual knowledge--brought home and made visible to you, I mean--than most of those who will form its majority."

"Then you think I could be of use?"

She looked at him, silent for a moment. "I think you have a mind capable of taking fire, when it learns the facts."

"Facts only deaden some people," said he.

"Yes; that is what crushes us here. We have such mountains of facts to deal with."

"And you want fire to come down from those mountains and consume me?"

She nodded prophetically.

"I know you wouldn't run away."

"I am trying to feel the call," said Max a little skeptically. And in truth he was of divided mind, not because he had any doubt of his ability, but because the temptation to insincerity was so strong. This would give him the very opportunity he sought--through a vale of misery he beheld the way to his own Promised Land; but was it fair that he should take advantage of it without a heart of pity and conviction? This Prince of ours rather prided himself on his conscientious scruples.

"Will you tell me from the beginning," he said at last, "what put this thought into your mind? I seem to be getting it only by fragments."

"Three days ago," she answered, "I heard my father talking with others of the projected Commission. They were dissatisfied at the Church not being sufficiently represented--so insufficiently, indeed, that they took it as an intentional slight, part of the Government's policy for depriving the Bishops of all standing. It was held that further representation was imperative."

"What?" exclaimed Max; "am I to represent the Bishops, then?"

She shook her head, laughing. "Oh, no!" she answered. "They found some one very much better for themselves. That is the really immediate danger. They are afraid that the Commission as it stands will issue findings of a one-sided and party character, and that any minority report, unless it obtained the chairman's signature, would have no weight. Their main hope, therefore, is to secure a chairman of high standing on whose help they can rely, and it is thought that the Government could not oppose the nomination of a member of the Royal Family. It would appeal to popular sentiment; and subject to his Majesty's a.s.sent, his Royal Highness the Duke of Nostrum has expressed his willingness to serve."

Max had no great opinion of the collaterals of his grandfather--this one least of all. "Oh, ye Heavens!" he exclaimed. "For what use these bones of my ancestors? Why, with him to direct its deliberations, the Commission will run on into the next century, and its report be only applicable to the last!" Then, as he took stock of the situation, "And are you expecting me to head the minority report instead of him?" he inquired.

"It is not their report I am concerned about," she answered, "and for party I care little; it is the majority I fear. On paper the Commission looks as if it meant business; Church and property have been squeezed into one small corner, but the trade-interest is very strong; it is there in concealed ways which outsiders cannot recognize, for even over our public and medical departments--and still more in the press--it has now got control. I can give you instance after instance of men known as philanthropists whose riches come from sweated labor, and whose munificent charities form not one t.i.the of their inhuman profits drained from the lives of the very poorest. Some of them, great advertisers, are to sit on this Commission, and all the press, irrespective of party, will praise their appointment; while to defend their interests others will be attacked. The Government may be quite ready as a temporary expedient to make scapegoats of the property-owners, but it is not so ready to antagonize trade. I believe, sir, that on this Commission the real source of evil will never be traced; we shall hear of the grinding middleman and the rack-renter, but nothing dangerous to these magnates, or to the trade-system itself--unless----" She paused, and left silence to carry her message.

"Unless," supplemented Max, "some one thoroughly indiscreet occupies the chair?"

"Somebody," she replied, "whose minority report of one would attract all the attention it deserved."

"Oh, you think----?" His mind sparkled at the prospect: to be in a minority of one had a peculiar fascination for him.

"Yes, I think it may come to that," she said, "if you will honestly open your eyes."

"Then you cannot promise me the support of the Church?"

She shook her head as though that were the last thing possible.

"I am to be all alone?" His tone invited commiseration, while his brain soared with the dreams of a has.h.i.+sh-eater.

"I think about three may be with you, not more," she said, letting him down to earth again.

"Why are you so confident about me?"

Her gentle gray eyes met his with friendly understanding.

"When I found out who you were," she said, "I saw"--then she hesitated--"I saw that you had the rare gift of doing naturally what one would never expect."

"In what way?"

"To begin with, in coming here at all. And then you did things which, I imagine, no prince ever did before, and did them quite easily--'for fun,' I suppose you would say. Well, if you could do all that for fun, what might you not do when you became serious? A man who doesn't mind being laughed at--whatever his position--is very rare."

"Ah!" cried Max, "but now you are giving me more credit than I deserve.

You set me to do ridiculous things for you--ridiculous, I mean, in one dressed as I was for fas.h.i.+on and not for use--I was aware of it; but n.o.body was aware of me. When I come here into these poor streets, I am so unexpected that n.o.body recognizes me. If they thought that they did, they would not believe their eyes. In that alone there is a sense of enlargement and liberty which those who have not to live in our position can hardly realize. It was like holiday; I felt as though I had been let loose."

"And so became more yourself?"

"I cannot say; but I was happy while I was here. Why did you send me away?"

"For the same reason that I now ask you to come back. I wanted you to be of use--independently."

"Yet here I am dependent upon you again."

"No; you have this in your own hands: it is your position."