The Royal Visit

by Owen Oliver

THE ROYAL VISIT

By OWEN OLIVER

IT was seven o'clock on an October evening, when the Royal Family of Contendia were rusticating at the royal farm, and the Prince Royal, who was eleven, had just been put to bed. He got out of it, as soon as the bedchamber attendants departed, pulled on a brown dressing-gown, went to the door and listened, with his ear to the keyhole, till their footsteps ceased to be audible. Then he opened the door a little way and, after careful reconnoitring, crept to the stair railings. He further reconnoitred the position from the cover of a settee, and decided that the coast was clear except for the sentry, who would be much easier to elude than a chambermaid. He waited till the sentry was marching away from the staircase, then he cocked his leg over the banisters and slid noiselessly down them. He crouched behind the statue of "some Roman chap" while the sentry walked back and until he turned away again. Then he flitted across the hall. He looked rather like a large bat in the dim light, as he held out his dressing-gown to avoid the risk of tripping over it. He slipped into the royal study and closed the door so quietly that Adolphus IX. did not look up from the royal desk.

He stalked the King in the approved manner of a wild Indian—crept on his hands and knees from the ambush of a sofa to the ambush of an armchair, and from the armchair to the revolving bookcase. He debouched from the bookcase, took the King in the rear, pulled the royal chair round on its swivel, and informed the King that he was a prisoner.

"If I'd had a gun, I'd have shot you easy, gov!" he stated, getting on the royal knee. "Your sentry is no good."

"It seems that my son isn't too good, either," the King observed. He stroked the boy's fair hair.

"Seven's too early to go to bed," the Prince Royal explained. "Mother forgets I'm not a baby now. You're going to talk to her about it, you know. What are you doing, dad?"

"Considering a speech," the King told him.

"Do you like writing speeches?"

"No."

"Why don't you make someone write them for you, then?"

"I do. The Prime Minister wrote this for me. I'm just considering it."

"Is it any good?"

"Umph! I might have made it better if a tiresome boy hadn't disturbed me." He stroked the Prince's hair again.

"You don't really mind, you know. What's it about, dad?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out. When you're King, my boy, remember that the speeches they write for you generally mean something more than they tell you. You must try to discover what it is. That's the King's puzzle … Now, leave those drawers alone!"

"All right, dad. I was only looking … I say, it's jolly rotten, being a King or a Prince Royal."

"You get used to it," the King consoled him.

"Well, I don't. I want to go to the circus. There's an elephant, and two camels or dromedaries—I never know which is which—and a monkey, and a bear; and a lady that wears white trousers without any dress over them. You know? Tight things. And a clown, and—lots of 'em! Can't I go?"

"Not this time, I'm afraid, old man. It's only a travelling concern. There's no royal box or——"

"I don't want any royal box," the boy interrupted. "Royal boxes! Ur-r-r! Bowing and scraping, and mustn't make a noise, and got to be dressed up and—er—princely! You know! I don't want to be a prince. I'd rather be a boy!"

"We are what we are," the King pointed out. "Be thankful you weren't born a camel."

"Why, dad?"

"Camels," said the King, "have two stomachs."

His Majesty's digestion was a worry to the court physician and to himself.

"I'd rather like that," the Prince Royal thought, "because—— I say, what's this thing in here?"

"You leave the drawers alone. You must go back to bed, my son."

"Yes, but—— Didn't you ever think you'd like to go to a real circus?"

"You went to——"

"Yes, yes. I mean a proper one, not a special stunt, like they get up for us. A—er—what do they call it?"

"A command performance?"

"That's the thing I don't mean. But it sounds like it. I know! A common performance. That's it. Didn't you ever want to?"

"I dare say I did," the King owned.

"Go like anybody else, I mean. Not in a royal box. I'd like to sit in a—I don't know what they call it—a place where you can rag!"

"It sounds attractive," the King admitted. "Still, it was a very good performance that you went to last Christmas-time."

"Oh, dad! Why, they left out all the topping bits because they thought mother would disapprove of them! Wasn't she mad? They don't know old mother, do. they? If she hadn't been a queen, wouldn't she have laughed at things!"

The King nodded and smiled.

"I expect you get your funny ideas from her," he remarked. He stroked the fair lair once more. "Of course a command performance is—well, a command performance. Still, some of it was very good, you know, especially the conjurer. I can't make out how he got the money from those people's pockets. Your mother advised the Minister of Finance to take a few lessons from him. Ha, ha!"

"And did he?" the Prince Royal wanted to know.

"Well, he doesn't seem to be getting the money," the King said ruefully. "Yes, that conjurer was good."

"And the dogs who jumped through the paper hoops," the boy added. "Of course that was good. It must be very difficult."

"Very difficult," the King agreed. "I've been trying to get through paper hoops all my life. But you don't know what I mean, eh?"

"They won't let us do things," the boy suggested. "I say, dad"—he whispered in his father's ear—"let's jump through a hoop to-night. You and me—I mean you and I."

"Eh? " said the King. "What hoop?"

"Slip out and go to the circus on our own. You see——"

"Good gracious, boy!"

"They don't half know us here," the Prince Royal pointed out rapidly. He was swift of tongue, like his royal mother. "We've only just come, and haven't been for two years, and you've grown a moustache and beard. And of course I've grown up." He stretched himself and expanded his chest. "Come on, dad! Be a sport!"

The King put his lips in and out several times, smiled a little, stroked his moustache.

"It begins at eight," the Prince told him. "I'll go upstairs and dress. I can dodge them all right. This sentry's no use. You get ready."

He slipped to the door and opened it a little way.

"I'm afraid——" the King began.

"Ss-ssh!" whispered the boy, with his finger to his lip. "I've got to dodge him. It takes some doing, I can tell you! He's just turning——"

The Prince was gone, and the King found himself addressing his objections to the door. He leaned back in his chair and laughed.

"Well," he said, "after all, they can't make a constitutional question of it. But if Adela finds out——" He shook his head. "Well," he decided, "why should anybody find out? I've said that I don't wish to be disturbed, and she's settled down to bridge, and won't leave off till eleven. We'll just slip out of the window. Lucky I haven't dressed. Adela"—that was the Queen's name—"always says that I look like a farmer in these things. … That boy is a young demon—a young demon!"

He nodded approvingly.

The Prince Royal evaded the guards again and regained the royal study unobserved and suitably attired. The King and he climbed out of the window, and crept from bush to bush and dodged the guards. ("I told you they were no use," the Prince Royal observed.) But they found the lodge-keeper walking up and down outside the lodge, smoking a pipe and humming to himself.

"We'll have to go further round and climb the railings," the Prince whispered. "I suppose you can?"

"Ye-es," the King said; "but I don't like that barbed wire on the top."

"Hold it with your handkerchief," the Prince advised. "And mind the tails of your overcoat. I'll show you how to do it."

"Ah!" said the King. (He noted silently that the Prince Royal had jumped through a paper hoop before. Somehow he felt pleased with his son.)

They got over the railings under the shelter of a big tree. The King's coat-tails were a difficulty, but they disentangled them by instalments, and the King got the Prince Royal off a spike.

"Jolly well done, gov!" the Prince complimented him.

"It wasn't so bad," said the King. (Somehow he felt pleased with himself.)

"If the sentries were a bit of good," the Prince Royal remarked, "they'd have shot us. You ought to get some hunters or detectives or Indians—Indians would be best, I think—to train them. But perhaps you don't want them too good? Eh, dad? Are they to keep you in or to keep other people out?"

"I've often wondered," said the King. "If your mother should hear of this, she—I don't know what she'd say to us."

"You never do know what mother will say," the Prince observed; "but I bet she'd say a jolly lot!"

"How do you manage to pick up your slang?" the King asked.

"Scout round and listen," the Prince Royal explained, "and—— I say, you aren't talking as a king, are you? Or a father? Only just—er—talking?"

"Between two gentlemen," the King said solemnly.

The boy nodded gravely.

"Well, there's a boy in the stables at the Palace. I give him threepence for a new word."

"Umph!" said the King. "I hope speaking—as one gentleman to another—you don't buy many really bad words?"

"No-o," the Prince Royal said sadly, "not very many, because—they're sixpence!"

The King shook his head—indeed, the whole royal body shook!

"That," he observed, "is extravagance. Sheer extravagance! And encouraging profiteering! You must stick to the threepenny article."

Some people think that royalties have no sense of humour, but they are mistaken. The Queen nearly had an attack of laughing hysterics when the King told her this conversation.

The King and the Prince Royal walked on until they reached the village, where the great round, lighted tent stood white upon the green. "The Wonder Circus" was spelt in coloured lights above the man who was beating the drum. The Prince Royal felt thirsty. So they entered the village inn, and the King had a mug of beer, and the Prince a glass of ginger ale. He also bought a bag of biscuits and some stale buns for the elephant.

"They say elephants are sensible," he remarked, "but they aren't much judge of tuck."

"They're like some of us, my lad," a dismal-looking oldish man observed. "Don't get much chance. I'd be a better judge of beer if I had more opportunity."

"Perhaps you would like a glass with me?" Adolphus IX. suggested.

The dismal little gentleman accepted the offer at once, and talked to them. His conversation bored the Prince Royal at first, but it interested the King, who thought him the saddest-minded man he had ever happened upon.

"You take a gloomy view of things," he suggested.

"Well," the little man said "look at 'em! Just look at 'em! There the Palace." He pointed through the shelf of bottles and glass biscuit-jars. "Here's the circus." He pointed through the bar window. "There's the King. Here's the clown. Both got to play on the stage, haven't they?"

"True," said the King thoughtfully. "True!"

"And both got to live, and to live you've got to balance things. Balance things, you see. Laugh one time and cry another, so as to even up. Can't have all work and no play, can you, mister? How do they do it? King pulls a long face on his stage, and laughs off it. Clown laughs on the stage, and has his solemn time off. Can't have it all ways. Ain't enough laugh in a man to do it. A man as laughs by profession won't laugh for amusement. No recreation in it. I tell you what I know. … Thank you, sir. I don't mind if I do. … Yes, I know."

"How do you know?" the Prince asked curiously.

"Because," the dismal man said, "I'm the clown! Time to go and change, too."

The Prince Royal gasped, and looked at the little man with reverence.

"Would you," he asked timidly, "would you mind shaking hands?"

They shook hands. The clown hurried off to change, and the King and the Prince went on to the pay booth.

"It isn't every prince," the boy told his father, "who has shaken hands with a clown—a man who can keep people laughing and smiling!"

"A prince," the King observed half to himself, "should try. Their task is the same, really, son—to make people happier. It is only a difference in methods."

They went to the pay desk and found that there were "boxes" of a sort—three or four places parted off with sail-cloth. The King took one, and he and the Prince Royal entered. The orchestra—a piano, a cornet, and a harp—struck up. The ring-master cracked his whip. The clown tumbled into the arena, smiling his professional smile. A horse rushed in and careered round the ring, with a little girl standing on its back. Another followed, bearing a monkey, who persisted in riding with his face toward the tail. The ring-master kept shifting him round, but he always turned back again. The Prince clapped his hands and screamed with laughter, and shouted.

"It isn't every prince," he told his father, "who gets the chance to yell! I wish you'd—what do they call it, dad?—abbeykate, or something like that?"

"Abdicate," the King suggested.

"That's it. Then we could keep a circus! You could be ring-master, and I'd be the clown, and we could teach Dots"—he meant Her Royal Highness Princess Seraphina—"to jump through hoops. She's jolly quick, if she is a bit tubby. I suppose mother could ride without a saddle, couldn't she? She rides jolly well with one. Isn't she good-looking?"

"Your mother," the King said, "is the handsomest queen that——"

"Oh," cried the Prince Royal, "mother! I didn't mean her! I meant—what do they call her?" He consulted the programme. "Diana, the Equestrian Queen. Where's Equestria?"

"Where's your Latin?" the King wanted to know. "It means the queen of horses!"

"Oh-h-h! I thought—— Dad, she's going to jump from one horse to the other! Look! See her stand on one foot! Right on the toe! Encore! Encore! … There couldn't be anybody more wonderful!"

"You haven't seen it all yet," the King reminded him. "You may think the next turn more wonderful still!"

"Never," the Prince Royal declared. "I shall never think that anyone comes up to her."

Nevertheless, the fourth turn ousted the Equestrian Queen from the first place in his affections.

"She's all very well for a woman, dad," he said. "But the Educated Pig. Did you see him when I called out 'D'? Put his foot right on it!"

"Ye-es," said the King, with a sudden chuckle. It seemed to him that the pig walked on all the letters, and that the clown picked up the right one as soon as he reached it. Which reminded him of the way that the Prime Minister formed his policy.

"Ripping!" the Prince Royal pronounced. "I had no idea they could do it. Couldn't I have a little pig? I'm sure I could teach it. Here, you listen! The clown's telling him to bow to the prettiest. … Oh, it isn't fair! The silly clown keeps getting in front of him. He wants the pig to bow to him. … He won't! Look! He's running away." The clown fell over, grabbing at the pig. "Ha, ha, ha! Serves him right. … The pig knew, didn't he? Awfully clever, pigs. If you let me have one What's he doing? … Dad, he's bowed to Diana. Encore! Encore!. … Look at him kissing her! He's got sense, that chap. She is the best, you know, next to the pig! … If you let me have one, I could keep it in the bathroom, and——"

"Umph!" the King said. "It would be very nice, but you'd better not speak of it for a week or two. It would rather give us away if you began talking about educated pigs."

"Ye-es," the Prince Royal admitted thoughtfully, "it would, rather. We'd better wait a week. You might like to have one, too."

"I think not," said the King.

"Well, I might have two."

"We'll see," the King promised. "If you remember, in a week's time——"

"Father," the Prince Royal protested with emotion, "I know I forget a lot of things—lessons and all that—but I'll never forget the Educated Pig!. … What is it now? Um-m-m! Only singing! I've had enough of that at the Opera. … I say, this is better than opera, though. She's better than the lady who made such a noise, and—— Dad, it isn't a real woman. It's a man dressed up! Doesn't he take off women all right? Did you hear that? She—I mean he—hasn't left off talking for a second, and directly her—I mean his—husband tries to say a word he—she—he says, 'If you'll allow me to say a word!' Isn't that like mother? … Dad, what does 'squiffy' mean?"

"It's slang," the King told him. "I think it is—er—an objectionable expression for intoxicated."

"Oh!" said the Prince Royal. "Is it a threepenny one or a sixpenny? … Shan't encore him. He's all right, but he doesn't come up to the pig, or even Diana. If you let me have that pig——"

"S-sh!" said the King. "Here's the next lot."

Some acrobats came next. The Prince Royal was not greatly struck with them. He thought that his gymnasium master could do better. "There's no fake about his stunts, gov," he asserted. "That chap didn't really go over the chairs, only at the side of them."

However, he was pleased with the lady who played a tune on glasses of water.

"I shall have a go at that myself," he decided. "You tell them to let me have the glasses. I'll teach Dots, too. You'll tell them, won't you?"

"Some day," the King promised, "but if we mention it now, mother would guess that you've been to the circus."

"I don't expect she's ever heard of it," the Prince Royal protested. "If she did, she wouldn't think anything about it. It's a jolly good job you're a man. Mother wouldn't understand that boys and girls want to go to circuses, would she?"

"Ah," said the King, "it's never safe to say that your mother doesn't understand anything."

"No-o," said the Prince Royal. "If she was just a woman, instead of a Queen, she'd be jolly clever. I think. … Hulloa! What's that old chap going to talk about? What does he mean by 'esteemed patrons,' dad?"

"People who come to the circus," the King explained. "He's saying—— Eh?"

The King stared, and if he had not been a king, his mouth would have opened with astonishment. For the circus proprietor said this:—

"My Esteemed Patrons,—Those who have done us the honour to patronise this humble establishment to-night—I say 'humble,' but I venture to add unequalled of its kind—will be glad to know that, in a sense, we are favoured with a royal visit."

"I'm—er—sixpen'orthed!" the King muttered.

"Done in!" the Prince murmured.

"In a sense," the proprietor repeated, "we are favoured by the presence of royalty."

The King grasped the rough wooden rail, covered with bunting, which partitioned him off from the arena. The Prince grasped his father's leg.

"Someone spotted us!" he whispered. "I expect it was the Educated Pig."

"A Royal Personage," the proprietor continued, "beloved through the length and breadth of this land—throughout which, I may say in passing, the Wonder Circus has given instructive amusement to thousands—this gracious royal personage is present among us"—the King groaned—"in spirit." The King looked puzzled. "In other words, the—er—exalted royal personage, hearing of our famous entertainment, and realising with royal—er—wisdom the manner in which it appeals to the young——"

"You tell mother that!" the Prince whispered.

"—as also," the proprietor observed, "I am glad to see that it does to those of—er—riper years, this noble and exalted sovereign has—er—paid from the royal privy purse for a number of seats, and—er—not to mince matters, you will notice that block C is occupied by the children of the Orphans' Home. Ladies and gentlemen, those seats were provided by our most Gracious Queen!"

The audience rose and cheered uproariously. No one was more uproarious than the Prince Royal, unless it was the King.

"Your mother," he told his son, "is a most wonderful woman! A wonderful woman! Do you know, if I told her about this, I—upon my word I almost think she'd understand."

"I wish she'd seen the Educated Pig," the Prince Royal murmured, "then perhaps she'd let me have one. You see, she's nearly used to the white mice now. She won't touch them, but—— Dad, look at the monkey!"

The monkey did tricks, and the clown tried to copy them and couldn't. So he got angry with the monkey, and the monkey got angry with him. At last the monkey dressed up as a clown and mocked the proper one; and the clown got very angry and chased the monkey; and the monkey got very angry and chased the clown, who ran away. They told the monkey that his turn was over, but he wouldn't go, and finally the ring-master carried him out.

The Prince laughed till the tears ran down his face.

"I don't think I want a pig," he decided. "I don't believe you can educate them, unless they're special ones. Can I have a monkey?"

He stuck to the monkey right up to the end of the performance, though Sam, the Sagacious Spaniel, made him waver.

"Of course," he said, as they walked home, "a dog is cleverer, but a monkey is more uncommon. That's where it is, dad. … I think a dog is cleverer than anybody understands—even you, or mother."

"It is never safe," the King observed, "to say that your mother doesn't understand anything. Look how she understood that those children would be longing to go to the circus! "

"Ye-es," said the Prince Royal, "but she didn't understand about me. You did." He slipped his arm through his father's. "Circuses make you jolly sleepy," he said. "Perhaps that was why she didn't think I'd better go. Eh?"

"Yes," the King said, "I expect that's what your mother thought. I don't know, I don't know. Perhaps we shall find out some day."

The King found out what the Queen thought, after they had dodged the guards and got safely in, and he had put the Prince Royal to bed. She came in just as he was tucking him in, and revised the tucking, as mothers always do.

"I found you'd left the study," she remarked to the King, "and I thought you might be here. Good night, old son. Do you know one of your mice got out? Clementina, I think it was. She ran into the drawing-room and——"

"Mother "—the Prince sat up in bed—"it isn't—isn't hurt or lost?"

"No, no, dear. It's safe back in its cage."

"Who put it back?" he asked.

"I did," the Queen told him.

"What!" the boy cried. "You? I say, you used to be in such a funk of them!"

The Queen laughed, gave a little shiver.

"I was," she owned. "But you'd have made such a fuss if Clementina had been lost, so I picked her up. You should have heard Lady Honoria scream!"

"I wish I had!" the Prince Royal said regretfully. "You're a jolly good sport, mother. I—I—think, now you've got to understand white mice, you'd soon get used to a m-mon——"

He fell suddenly asleep.

"To what?" the Queen asked.

"He wants a monkey," the King explained. "Boys are—boys."

"So are men," said the Queen, "sometimes! I came to look at you both, and when I found you'd both gone—I guessed. Dol"—that was what she called the King—"we must get one of the maids take 'Dots' on the quiet to-morrow night. Girls are—boys—too! … What did you see and hear?"

"I heard," the King said, "of a gracious Queen, who is beloved through the length and breadth of this land, and I'm hanged if anyone thinks more of her than her husband does, Adela!"

"Do you know," the Queen remarked, "I always had a fancy to see a real circus—not a revised version specially for us. They mightn't alter it very much if we went to-morrow?"

"Umph!" said the King. "I don't know that the man who dresses up as a woman is—er—quite suitable for you to hear, my dear."

"That," said the Queen, "is exactly why I want to hear him."

So the Wonder Circus now heads its bills with the royal arms, and its programmes with a large notice in very black print—

Exactly as performed before the Royal Family on the occasion of Their Majesties' gracious visit.