第 四十 章 · THREE YEARS LATER

THREE YEARS LATER

When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer

felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed

my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine

factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say,

I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.

Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly.

The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so

I must just simply paralyze them--nothing short of that would

answer. You see, I was “bluffing” that last time in the field;

it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion,

if I gave them a chance. So I must not give them time; and I didn't.

I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where

any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in

the advertising columns of the paper.

I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said,

name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up

_against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it_.

I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could do

what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language

of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived

that this was a plain case of “put up, or shut up.” They were

wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave

me no trouble worth mentioning.

Consider the three years sped. Now look around on England. A happy

and prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere,

and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Even

authorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first

in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had been

familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that

old rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything;

but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hanged

the author.

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law;

taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the

phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand

willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working

their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames,

we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial

marine; I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover

America.

We were building several lines of railway, and our line from

Camelot to London was already finished and in operation. I was

shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger

service places of high and distinguished honor. My idea was

to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep

them out of mischief. The plan worked very well, the competition

for the places was hot. The conductor of the 4.33 express was

a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below

the degree of earl. They were good men, every one, but they had

two defects which I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they

wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would “knock down” fare

--I mean rob the company.

There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful

employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all

manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering,

and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective

spreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed in steel and

equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't

persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan,

or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal,

or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for,

they removed him and passed on.

I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly

longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which

were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the

Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins

--not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and

the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding

that upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced,

and given to men and women alike--at any rate to all men, wise

or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found

to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. Arthur was

good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age--that is

to say, forty--and I believed that in that time I could easily

have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager

for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history

of the world--a rounded and complete governmental revolution

without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may

as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it:

I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president

myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found

that out.

Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified

way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with

a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective

chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known

the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it

and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were

dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal

family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful

as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would

have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition

to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably

vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive;

finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other

royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace

of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to

the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. “And as a rule,” said

he, in his neat modern English, “the character of these cats would

be considerably above the character of the average king, and this

would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason

that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. The

worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and

harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties,

and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that

they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted

no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of

a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and

would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would

soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers

would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill

the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should

become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within

forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should

furnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then,

to end no more forever.... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow--fzt!--wow!”

Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be

persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me

almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He

didn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly

rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy,

but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about

it, either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came

flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs

that for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her

in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly:

“Speak, darling, speak! What is it?”

Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly:

“HELLO-CENTRAL!”

“Quick!” I shouted to Clarence; “telephone the king's homeopath

to come!”

In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was

dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the

palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance--membranous

croup! I bent down and whispered:

“Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central.”

She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say:

“Papa.”

That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for

preparations of sulphur, I rousted out the croup-kettle myself;

for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child

is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience.

This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life,

and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh

through the tear-dews on its eye-lashes when even its mother couldn't.

Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great

hall now on his way to the stock-board; he was president of the

stock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought

of Sir Galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knights of

the Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business purposes

now. Seats at it were worth--well, you would never believe the

figure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Launcelot was a bear, and

he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting

ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? He was

the same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing

the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough

for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all

him, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello-Central

for all he was worth. And that was what he did. He shied his

helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick

in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. By this

time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything

was ready.

Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with

unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added

thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the

steam-spout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shape now,

and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch.

Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple

of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us,

and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under

the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the

land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be

a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in his

noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard

of snowy church-warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man,

and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But, of

course Guenever--however, it's no use to cry over what's done and

can't be helped.

Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through,

for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then

he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes

falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy's

lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between

the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared.

And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again

in this world! Lord, what a world of heart-break it is.

The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax

her back to health and strength again. And she must have sea-air.

So we took a man-of-war, and a suite of two hundred and sixty

persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we

stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it

would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little

king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad

to accept. If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we

should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we

made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts

and luxuries from the ship.

At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies,

and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She

would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain

experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine

to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an

escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks

entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve

the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation.

I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time,

and the date was now arriving for their first public effort.

This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue

from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose

my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either

team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of this

sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't

throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course,

I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't

do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the

armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that

was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail

ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer

steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I

ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way,

but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat

and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards

sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his

stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into

port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but

I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please

than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his

last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him

home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived

a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint

somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would

protect him.

Here are the names of the nines:

BESSEMERS ULSTERS

KING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS.

KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS.

KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.

KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE.

KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL.

KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.

KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE. KING MELIODAS OF LIONES.

KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE.

KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.

Umpire--CLARENCE.

The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people;

and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see.

Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring

weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.