The King's Men: A Tale of To-morrow Read online

  THE KING'S MEN

  A Tale of To-Morrow

  ROBERT GRANT, ET AL.

  Copyright, 1884, byRobert Grant.

  CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER PAGE I. RIPON HOUSE, 1

  II. RICHARD LINCOLN, 8

  III. MY LADY'S CHAMBER, 19

  IV. JARLEY JAWKINS, 32

  V. "JAWKIN'S JOLLITIES," 46

  VI. THE ROYALISTS, 67

  VII. A FOUR-IN-HAND AND ONE IN THE BUSH, 85

  VIII. SPRETAE INJURIA FORMAE, 97

  IX. "THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE," 110

  X. KING GEORGE THE FIFTH, 124

  XI. THE RAISING OF THE FLAG, 147

  XII. IN THE LION'S MOUTH, 161

  XIII. AN UNFINISHED TASK, 174

  XIV. THE LAST ROYALIST, 180

  XV. LOVE LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS, 193

  XVI. MRS. CAREY'S HUSBAND, 215

  XVII. AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES, 225

  XVIII. TWO CARDS PLAYED, 243

  XIX. A WOMAN'S END, 252

  XX. "FROM CHAIN TO CHAIN," 258

  XXI. NULLA VESTIGA RETRORSUM, 265

  THE KING'S MEN.

  CHAPTER I.

  RIPON HOUSE.

  There are few Americans who went to England before the late wars butwill remember Ripon House. The curious student of history--a study,perhaps, too little in vogue with us--could find no better example ofthe palace of an old feudal lord. Dating almost from the time of thefirst George--and some even say it was built by the same Wren whodesigned that St. Paul's Cathedral whose ruins we may still see to theeast of London--it frowned upon the miles of private park surroundingit, a marble memorial of feudal monopoly and man's selfish greed. Thevery land about it, to an extent of almost half a county, was owned bythe owners of the castle, and by them rented out upon an annual paymentto such farmers as they chose to favor with a chance to earn theirbread.

  In an ancient room of a still older house which stands some two milesfrom the castle, and had formerly been merely the gatekeeper's lodge(though large enough for several families), a young man was sitting,one late afternoon in early November. The room was warmed by a fire, inthe old fashion; and the young man was gloomily plunging the poker intothe coals, breaking them into oily flakes which sent out fierceflickerings as they burned away. He was dressed in a rough shooting suitof blue velveteen, and his heavy American shoes were crusted with mud.His handsome, boyish face wore an expression of deep anxiety; and hishands seemed to minister to the troubles of his meditation by tumblinghis hair about the contracted forehead, while his lips closed about ashort brier-wood pipe of a kind only used by men. The pipe had gone out,unnoticed by the smoker; and he did not seem to mind the fierce heatthrown out by the broken coals. Above the mantel was the portrait of agentleman in the quaint costume of the latter Victorian age; the absurdstarched collar and shirt, the insignificant cravat, the trousersreaching to the ankles, and the coat and waistcoat of black cloth andfantastic cut, familiar to the readers of the London _Punch_. Thisantedated worthy looked out from the canvas upon the room as if he ownedit; and the mullioned windows and carved oak wainscoting justified hisclaim, even to the very books in the bookcases, which showed anantiquarian taste. Here were the strange old-fashioned satires ofThackeray and the more modern romances of the humorist Dickens; thecrude speculations of the philosopher Spencer, and the one-sided,aristocratic economies of Malthus and Mill; with the feeble rhymes ofLord Tennyson d'Eyncourt, which men, in a time-serving age, calledpoetry.

  Geoffrey Ripon had come to his last legs. And he was one of the fewaristocrats of his generation who had ever (metaphorically speaking)had any legs worth considering. When O'Donovan Rourke had been Presidentof the British Republic, that good-natured Irishman, who had been atschool with Ripon's father, had given him a position in the legation atParis; but when the Radicals overthrew Rourke's government, Ripon losthis place. And Ripon could not but think it hard that he, GeoffreyRipon, by all right and law Earl of Brompton, Viscount Mapledurham inthe peerage of Ireland, etc., etc., should that afternoon have beenfined ten shillings and costs for poaching on what had been his owndomain.

  His great-uncle looked down upon him with that exasperating equanimitythat only a canvas immortality can give--his great-uncle who fell on thefield of Tel-el-Kebir, dead as if the Arab bullet had sped from aworthier foe, in the days when England had a foreign policy and couldspare her soldiers from the coast defence. And his grandfather, whosmirked from another coroneted frame behind him, had been a great leaderin the Liberal party under Gladstone, Lord Liverpool, the grand old manwho stole Beaconsfield's thunder to guard the Suez Canal, that road toIndia which he, like another Moses, had made for their proud legionsthrough the Red Sea.

  And now Ripon was living in his porter's lodge, all that was still hisof the great Ripon estates, with his empty title left him, minus therobes and coronet no longer worn; and his King, George the Fifth, anexile, wandering with his semblance of a court in foreign lands.

  The world moves quickly as it grows older, with an accelerated velocity,like that of a falling stone; and it is hard for us of the present dayto picture the England of King Albert Edward. The restlessness andpoverty of the masses; the agitations in Ireland, feebly, blindlyprotesting with dynamite and other rude weapons against foreignoppression; the shameful monopoly of land, the social haughtiness of thetitled classes, the luxury and profligacy of the court--perhaps even atthe opening of our story, poor England was hardly worse off. But thencame the change. Gradually the bone and sinew of the country soughtrefuge in emigration. The titled classes, after mortgage upon mortgageof their valueless land, were forced to break their entails to selltheir estates. And at last, when the great American Republic, in 1889,cut down the Chinese wall of protection, which so long had surroundedtheir country, even trade succumbed, and England was under-sold in themarkets of the world. Then retrenchment was the cry; universal suffrageelected a parliament which literally cut off the royal princes with ashilling; and the Premier Bradlaugh swamped the House of Lords by thecreation of a battalion of life peers, who abolished the hereditaryHouse and established an elective Senate. It was easy then to call aconstitutional convention, declare the sovereign but the servant andfigure-head of the people, confiscate the royal estates and vote KingAlbert a salary of L10,000 a year.

  Then Russia took advantage of the great struggle between Germany andFrance to seize India, and after the terrible defeat at Cyprus and thesiege of Calcutta the old King of England abdicated in favor of hisgrandson George. But the people clamored for an elective President, andit was nigh twenty years before the opening of our story that KingGeorge had been forced to seek his only safe refuge in America.

  Thus it was that Geoffrey Ripon had come to depend on poaching and thegarden stuff his old servant managed to raise in the two-acre lotsurrounding the lodge. Almost the only modern things in his room werethe guns and fishing tackle in the corners and the electric battery forcharging the cartridges; and now he was judicially informed that he mustpoach no more, the mortgage had been finally foreclosed, and he lookedout of his window upon lands no longer his even in name. It is a sadthing to be ruined, and if ever man was ruined beyond all hope, GeoffreyRipon, Earl of Brompton, was the man; it is hard to feel you a
re thelast of your race, that you are almost an outlaw in your own land--andRipon's king, George the Fifth, was suffered to play out his idle playof royal state, in Boston, Massachusetts. Ripon had never been inAmerica. He pushed back his chair from the fire, as it gave out a heattoo great for any man to stand. He walked to the window, and stoodlooking out upon the long perspective of elms, where the avenuestretched away in the direction of Ripon House. As his eye wandered overthe broad view of park and forest, a carriage, drawn by four horses,insolent in the splendor of its trappings, rolled toward him from thecastle. In that moment it seemed to Ripon that he felt all thebitterness of hatred and envy that might have rankled in the hearts ofall the poor wayfarers who had in eight hundred years peered through thepark gate and looked at those broad acres that his race so long hadheld. The carriage rolled swiftly by him, with a glitter of silverharness and liveries; on one seat were an elderly man and a young girl.As he saw her face Ripon started in surprise. Then, after a moment, hewalked to the table and filled his pipe.

  "Bah!" he said to himself, "it cannot be possible." Again he threwhimself on a chair by the fireplace, and tried to read the _SaturdayReview_. There was a long leader against Richard Lincoln; but as Lincolnwas the one member in the House for whom Geoffrey had any respect, hethrew it aside in disgust. He heard a timid knock at the door.

  "Come in!" growled Geoffrey, as he turned to light his pipe.

  An old family servant, the last survivor of an extinct race, enteredwith a battered silver tray.

  "Please, my lord, a letter from the persons at the castle; one of themis waiting for an answer."

  Reynolds made no distinction between the "persons at the castle" andtheir servants; and he always called it the castle, now that Ripon Housewas the gatekeeper's lodge.

  "I suppose," grunted Geoffrey, as he took the letter, "they want to warnme against poaching. So considerate, after I have been fined tenshillings by their gamekeeper."

  To his surprise the letter had a familiar look; it was addressed to himby his title in the ancient fashion, and was in a handwriting which hethought he should have known in Paris. Tearing open the envelope, heread:

  "MY DEAR LORD BROMPTON: I hear that you are back to your own estate, and you will doubtless be surprised to learn that I am so near you. Papa telephoned over last week for an estate, and here we are, with a complete retinue of servants and a gallery of ancestors--yours, by the way, as I found to my surprise. I felt so sorry when they called you back from Paris; I had no idea I should see you again so soon. Papa wanted to look after his affairs in England; so we have come over again for the winter, and I was delighted to get out of the wild gayety of America for this dear sleepy old country.

  "If you have nothing better to do, will you dine with us to-morrow night? Do not stay away because we are in your old family house. We have no such feelings in America, you know. Richard Lincoln will be here, and Sir John Dacre. Do you know Sir John? I admire him immensely, you must know.

  "Sincerely yours,

  "MARGARET WINDSOR."

  "P. S. The new minister and legation are not received in society. We missed you so much."

  "Maggie Windsor over here," thought Ripon, "with that curious old fatherof hers, taking Ripon House as if it were furnished lodgings." And hethought of the old house and of his great-uncle who fell atTel-el-Kebir, and of King George over the sea in America. But he said tohimself that Maggie Windsor was a nice girl, as he put out his pipe andwent out into the park for a walk.