Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 320
She wrung one hand with a gesture of exasperation, and said rather unreasonably: “I don’t believe they did anything at all. I expect they treated you rottenly, really.”
He seemed to meditate in his heavy way, and then said haltingly, but with an increasing suggestion of more instructed speech — as it were, working to the surface through the professional primness of his upper-servant intonation:
“You see, these things go a bit by comparison. At the only school I was ever sent to they had hardly any meals at all; my family never had any money and I was often hungry all night, and out in the cold as well. You see, it’s all very well to talk about the State and patriotism and the rest. Suppose when I was freezing in the gutter I had gone down on my knees to the great statue of Pavonia Victrix in the Fountain Square and said, ‘Pavonia, give me food’, I suppose the great statue would have stepped down from its pedestal at once and brought me a tray of hot cakes or a pile of ham sandwiches. Suppose it began to snow when I had hardly a rag on my back; I suppose the Flag of Pavonia, flying on the top of the palace, would have come down off its pole to wrap me up like a blanket. At least, I suppose some people think it would. You have to have rather rum experiences to find out that it doesn’t.”
His figure remained heavy and motionless, but his voice took a new and rather indescribable turn or change.
“But I did get food at Peacock Crescent. Those horrible revolutionists, who you say are destroying the whole city, at least prevented me from being destroyed. Suppose, if you like that they treated me like a dog; still, I was a stray dog and a starving dog, and they fed and sheltered me like a dog. You know what a dog would feel about turning on them or deserting them. Is thy servant less than a dog, that he should do this thing?”
Something in the lift of his voice on the Scriptural phrase startled her and made her stare at him with a new curiosity.
“What is your name?” she said.
“My name is John Conrad,” he said quite readily. “I have no family now to speak of, but we were once rather better off in the world than we are at present. But I assure Your Royal Highness there’s no particular mystery about that. Coming down in the world is common enough in these days. Commoner than coming up in the world, which is even worse.”
She spoke in a lowered voice. “If you are really an educated man and a gentleman, you ought to be all the more ashamed to work with this gang of wreckers. It’s all very well to talk about a dog, but it’s not fair. A dog has only got a master, and naturally he sticks to the only duty required of him. A dog hasn’t got a country or a cause or a religion or any general sense of right. But can you, as an educated man, reconcile it with any general sense of right to say you are a dog, and on that excuse fill the whole town with mad dogs?”
He gazed at her with a painful intensity; in some strange fashion the staring and startling social disparity between them had really faded away on the heat of intellectual incompatibility, just as she had tried to wave it away with a gesture when she first made her amazing entry to the prison. As he looked at her a slow and singular change seemed to pass over his face and he seemed to realize some meaning to the situation he had as yet been too stunned to see.
“It’s beyond all possible goodness that you should trouble to talk to me like this,” he said. “You, at least, are more generous to me than the men who only gave me food. You, I admit, have done more than they could ever have done for a man like me. But I don’t recognize it about poor old Pavonia with its peacocks and palaces and police courts, and I wouldn’t give up an inch of my own scruples for them.”
“If you like to put it so,” she said quite steadily, “do it for me.”
“I certainly wouldn’t do it for the others,” he said, “but you see, that’s just where my difficulty comes in. To obey you would be a pleasure, but I don’t believe a bit of what you say about it being a duty. And what sort of a dog is it that won’t do it for duty, but will do it for pleasure.”
“Oh, I hate that obstinate expression you’ve got!” she cried with a curious uncontrollable petulance. “I don’t mind dogs, but I hate bulldogs. They’re always so ugly.”
Then, suddenly altering her tone, the Princess added: “I don’t see why you should be kept kicking your heels in this prison, all for your silly prejudices. They’re bound to give you a long sentence for treason, if they do nothing else, if you will protect these devils who want to blow us all up tomorrow.”
“Very well,” he said in a hard voice. “Then I must make up my mind to be punished for treason because I will not be a traitor.”
Something compact in his curt epigram seemed to savour almost of contempt, and her self-control suddenly gave way before a blaze of really royal anger.
“Very well, then,” she cried, turning furiously towards the door, “you can lie and rot there for treason, because you won’t listen to reason; it’s all one to us, of course, except that your mad, sulky obstinacy may smash us all to smithereens in twenty-four hours. God knows, and I suppose you know, what these blasphemous brutes are going to do to us all. And perhaps God cares, but you don’t. You don’t care for anything or anybody but your own chin and your own brutal pride. I’ve done with you.”
And she flung open the door, incongruously giving another glimpse of the pudding-faced policeman outside; then she vanished through the opening and the door clanged again and the prisoner was left alone in his cell.
He sat down on the plank-bed and put his head in his hands, remaining in this rigid ruminating posture for a long time. Then he rose with a sigh and approached the door once more, for he heard outside it the heavy movements to which he was already and too fully accustomed, and he knew that some other visitor, who would by no means be a beautiful lady, was coming to bother him once more. But on this occasion the official interview was somewhat longer than usual, and of a somewhat different character.
A few hours afterwards, when the Princess was declining, and the King accepting, a glass of Italian vermouth from a tray handed by a footman of a far less disturbing character, the Prime Minister, who was seated opposite in that private apartment of the palace, observed quite casually:
“So it looks as if they may be frustrated after all. I was jolly nervous up to an hour ago, for I swear they had got something big that was just going to burst; all their last proclamations were like the cocking of a rifle before the bang comes. But since this silly footman is going to tell us where they’re hidden, I expect we shall be too quick for them after all. Grimm says—”
The Princess Aurelia Augusta, otherwise Mary, had risen to her feet as if she had received a personal insult.
“What’s all this mean?” she cried. “The footman hasn’t spoken. He refuses absolutely to speak.”
“Your Royal Highness will pardon me,” said the Prime Minister stiffly. “I have the news straight from the Chief of Police. The footman has certainly confessed the facts.”
“It’s not true!” said Her Royal Highness obstinately. “I don’t believe it for a minute.”
She seemed quite indignant about it, and indeed those who retain any capacity for surprise at the mystery of feminine psychology may be surprised to learn that, at her next interview with the prisoner, in the prison, she was very harsh and scornful towards him for having decided upon betraying all that she had told him to betray.
“So that’s the end of all your heroics and stubbornness and sticking out your chin,” she said. “You’re going to save yourself after all, and give up all these poor deluded creatures that are in hiding.”
He threw up his head in the rather startling fashion he had and stared at her with the blank but blazing blue eyes, that had always something about them of vertigo and the empty air, making the spectator dizzy.
“Well,” he said, “I certainly didn’t suppose you regarded them with so much sympathy.”
“I regard them with great sympathy for having to do with you,” she said, in a somewhat vicious manner. “Of course, I don’t agree with them, but I’m quite sorry for them, being hunted and having to trust such people to hide them. I expect it was you who led them into mischief.”
The last clause was perhaps an afterthought. She said it on those sound general feminine principles, which some masculine minds, in moments of annoyance, have thought slightly unprincipled. But she was never more surprised in her life than when he smiled and said:
“Yes, perhaps you are right. It was I who led them into mischief.”
As she looked at him with a painful curiosity, he added: “But remember what you said. If I did them wrong, I did it for you.”
An instant afterwards he burst out in a new and volcanic voice, that she had never heard before from him or from any man.
“Do you suppose I don’t know that it’s all utterly unfair? Why should you have that power, as well as all the other kinds? Why should you have the only unanswerable thing, the face that is unanswerable like God on the Judgement Day? We can call up ignorance against science and impotence against power, but who is going to raise up ugliness against beauty? Who — ?”
He had taken a stride forward, but, what was much stranger, she had herself started and moved forward in response. She was staring into his face as if it had been blasted by a lightning-flash.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “It can’t be that!”
For she had in that instant become aware of an amazing possibility, and the rest of their interview was too wonderful to be believed.
V
THE TERMS OF A TRAITOR
One single thought like a thundercloud brooded over Pavonia, its palace and principal city; the sort of concentration that commonly only possesses some ignorant village where a prophet or fanatic has predicted the instant end of the world. The last proclamations had had their effect; even the most careless were now convinced that at any moment a huge invasion on all the frontiers, or a horrible explosion in the heart of the city, would come at some signal they did not know, and by some gesture they could not arrest. The foreign invasion was felt perhaps as the more maddening of the two but they were all the more bewildered because there had hung over all this mysterious movement the shadow or savour of something foreign. It was admitted that the reputation of Professor Phocus was even greater in other countries than in his own; men began to ask with some irritation where the wealthy pawnbroker had come from, and, with slightly greater hesitation, how he had made his wealth. But nobody doubted that these men had constructed some engine that was about to act with hideous energy. It was in the midst of all this tossing insecurity that the message came that the captive footman would speak. He had actually signed a grave document, which ran: “I can say The Word and stop the work of the Four Destroyers for ever and put them henceforth in your power. But I must name my conditions.”
Whatever may have been the historical facts about the decayed family of John Conrad, there is no doubt that he entered on the scene of a Committee of the State, which was also an audience with the King, with the sort of dignity which does not generally appear in the pomposity of footmen. He approached the small table in the palace, round which were seated the four chief rulers of Pavonia, with a proper gesture of respect but without the least appearance of embarrassment or servility. He bowed to the King and accepted the chair in which the King asked him to be seated, and it was the King who was more embarrassed than the subject. Clovis of Pavonia cleared his throat, looked down his nose reflectively for a moment and then said:
“I hope it is unnecessary for me to add my personal word to any arrangements that may have been made. But I am quite prepared to add it, to avoid any misunderstanding. It is quite understood that you have consented on certain conditions only to reveal what you know, and I shall certainly see that those conditions are fulfilled. It is only reasonable, in consideration of what you regard yourself as sacrificing, that you should receive a really handsome equivalent.”
“May I respectfully ask,” inquired Conrad, “who is to decide exactly what is an equivalent?”
“Your Majesty,” interposed Colonel Grimm, “I do not believe in beating about the bush. We have very little time to spare, if these plotters are really about to spring a mine. I don’t see how it can be denied that the prisoner must be the judge of the equivalent. I have tried to get the truth out of him by other methods which he may or may not think he has a right to resent; in plain words, by intimidation. It is only just to say that they have failed. It is also only just to say that when intimidation fails, there is nothing else but bribery. And the plain common sense of it is that he can name the bribe.”
The Prime Minister coughed and said a little huskily: “That is rather a sweeping statement, but if Mr. Conrad would give us some idea of what he would regard as a reasonable settlement. . . .”
“I shall require,” said John Conrad, “nothing less than ten thousand a year.”
“Really,” said the Prime Minister, in his rather flustered fashion, “this sort of thing seems to me quite extravagant. You could do anything you wanted to do, in your class of life, on much less.”
“You are wrong,” replied Conrad calmly. “My class of life is much more exacting than you suppose. I do not see how I could keep up the position of a Grand Duke of Pavonia on less.”
“Of a Grand . . .” began Mr. Valence, and his voice seemed to fail and fade away.
“Obviously,” said Conrad in a reasonable tone. “It would be a gross disrespect to His Majesty, and to the lineage of one of the most ancient Royal Houses of Europe, to ask His Majesty to allow his own niece to be married to anybody under the rank of a Grand Duke of Pavonia.”
The rest of the company regarded the affable footman much as the King and Court may have regarded Perseus when he turned them all to stone. But Grimm recovered his voice first with a good gross military oath, followed by a demand to know what the devil it was all about.
“I shall not ask for any formal political office in the government of the State,” went on the footman thoughtfully. “But it is only reasonable to expect that a Grand Duke of Pavonia married to a Royal Princess will have a certain amount of influence on the policy of the country. I shall certainly insist on a number of essential reforms, especially directed to a juster treatment of the poor of this city. Your Majesty and gentlemen, if you are at this moment threatened by a thunderbolt from you know not where, and perhaps with the overthrow of your whole nation by foreign invasion and internal revolt, you have very largely yourselves to thank. I will give up to you these revolutionary leaders of whom you talk so much. I will help you to capture Dr. Phocus and Sebastian and Loeb and, if possible, even General Casc. I will give up my companions, but I will not give up my convictions. And when I come to occupy the high national position with which you will shortly honour me, I can promise you that though there will be no revolution, there will be a very drastic reform.”
The Prime Minister rose to his feet in uncontrollable agitation, for professional reformers do not like to hear about drastic reform.
“These suggestions are intolerable,” he cried. “They are fantastic. They are not to be listened to for a moment.”
“They are my terms,” said Conrad gravely. “I am quite ready to go back to prison if you will not accept them. I may say, in so far as I may touch upon such things, that the Lady chiefly involved has already accepted them. But I am quite ready for you to reject them, and I will go back and wait in my prison, and you will sit here and wait in your palace, for you know not what.”
There was a long silence and then Colonel Grimm said very softly: “Oh, ten million howling devils in hell!”
The twilight was settling slowly over the long tapestried apartment, of which the ancient gold was sufficiently faded to have lost the mere glare of vainglory and to take on the grandeur of a rich but reflected flame, as if reflected from mirror to mirror down the endless memories of men. In the great sprawling tapestry covered with giants, which made the little group of modern men look so small at their feet, could be traced the mighty figure of Clovis the First going to his last great victory with the peacock fans carried before him and the Grand Dukes of Pavonia lifting behind him a forest of swords. There was nothing in that room that did not in some way recall the unreplaceable achievement of a special civilization; the busts of Pavonian poets, who could have written only in the Pavonian tongue, filled the niches and corners of the room; the dark glimmer of the bookcases told of a national literature not to be lightly lost or possibly replaced, and here and there a picture like a little window gave a glimpse of the distant but beloved landscapes of their native land. Even the dog that lay before the fire was of the breed of their own mountains, and there was not a man there so mean — no, not even the politician — as not to know that by all these things he lived and with all these things he would die. And under all these things, they fancied they could hear something like the steady ticking of a bomb and they waited for the catch that comes before the deafening death.
At length, in that silence as of the ages, Clovis the Third spoke for Pavonia and all his people, as it was in the days of old. He knew not whether it should be called a surrender or a stroke of victory, but he knew it was necessary and he spoke with a fullness and firmness of voice which had long been rare in him.
“The time is short,” he said, “and there is no other course, I think, but to accept your terms. In return, I understand that you do seriously propose and promise to stop the activities of the man called Sebastian, of Professor Phocus, of Casc and Loeb, as enemies of this State, and to deliver them up to us, to deal with them as we will.”
“I promise,” said John Conrad, and the King rose suddenly to his feet, like one who dissolves an audience.
Nevertheless, most of the company that had formed the Council broke up in a curious condition of mystification and ill-ease. Oddly enough, perhaps, it had no reference to the elements in the case that were really extravagant and even absurd. The incredible parts of the story seemed to have stunned them all into a sort of sobriety, so that they could no longer feel them as incredible. It was not the notion of a lackey out of a villa in Peacock Crescent becoming a Grand Duke of Pavonia or marrying a Pavonian princess. It was not concerned with the contrast between his figure and his fate. Curiously enough, it was concerned with the very contrary. After sitting at the same table with the mysterious Mr. Conrad, none of them felt any longer any particular incongruity between him and such high ambitions. He gave rather the impression of a man familiar, not only with high ambitions, but with high aspirations. He moved with the indescribable poise of those who have never really lost their own social self-respect, and his manners seemed quite as fitted to a Court as those of the rough police officer or the rather prosaic politician. He had given his word very much as the King had given it, as if it were a word of some worth. And it was exactly there that the sediment of mystification remained in the mind of many of the company, and it was the same sort of doubt that had more deeply disturbed the mind of the Princess. It was not that the man did not seem like a Grand Duke, but that he did not seem like an informer. However conventional their ideas might be about the duties of a citizen, they could not, somehow, understand a man of this sort not retaining the darker virtues of a conspirator, or, in more popular phrase, the honour that is supposed to exist among thieves. Colonel Grimm was a policeman, but he was also a soldier, and there were elements in him that did not easily adapt themselves to a gentleman — especially when he was a gentleman — who turned King’s Evidence. As he looked at the grave face and rather graceful figure of the ex-flunkey, he, who fancied himself a judge of men, thought that he could imagine Conrad more easily as a man blowing up the town with dynamite than as a man betraying his accomplices.
