The World Set Free Page 13

  policy of his companion. 'In its broader form, sir,' said Firmin;

  'I admit a certain plausibility in this project of Leblanc's, but

  I feel that although it may be advisable to set up some sort of

  general control for International affairs-a sort of Hague Court

  with extended powers-that is no reason whatever for losing sight

  of the principles of national and imperial autonomy.'

  'Firmin,' said the king, 'I am going to set my brother kings a

  good example.'

  Firmin intimated a curiosity that veiled a dread.

  'By chucking all that nonsense,' said the king.

  He quickened his pace as Firmin, who was already a little out of

  breath, betrayed a disposition to reply.

  'I am going to chuck all that nonsense,' said the king, as Firmin

  prepared to speak. 'I am going to fling my royalty and empire on

  the table-and declare at once I don't mean to haggle. It's

  haggling-about rights-has been the devil in human affairs,

  for-always. Iam going to stop this nonsense.'

  Firmin halted abruptly. 'But, sir!' he cried.

  The king stopped six yards ahead of him and looked back at his

  adviser's perspiring visage.

  'Do you reallythink, Firmin, that Iam here as-as an infernal

  politician to put my crown and my flag and my claims and so forth

  in the way of peace? That little Frenchman is right. You know he

  is right as well as I do. Those things are over. We-we kings

  and rulers and representatives have been at the very heart of the

  mischief. Of course we imply separation, and of course

  separation means the threat of war, and of course the threat of

  war means the accumulation of more and more atomic bombs. The old

  game's up. But, I say, we mustn't stand here, you know. The

  world waits. Don't you think the old game's up, Firmin?'

  Firmin adjusted a strap, passed a hand over his wet forehead, and

  followed earnestly. 'I admit, sir,' he said to a receding back,

  'that there has to be some sort of hegemony, some sort of

  Amphictyonic council--'

  'There's got to be one simple government for all the world,' said

  the king over his shoulder.

  'But as for a reckless, unqualified abandonment, sir--'

  'BANG!' cried the king.

  Firmin made no answer to this interruption. But a faint shadow

  of annoyance passed across his heated features.

  'Yesterday,' said the king, by way of explanation, 'the Japanese

  very nearly got San Francisco.'

  'I hadn't heard, sir.'

  'The Americans ran the Japanese aeroplane down into the sea and

  there the bomb got busted.'

  'Under the sea, sir?'

  'Yes. Submarine volcano. The steam is in sight of the

  Californian coast. It was as near as that. And with things like

  this happening, you want me to go up this hill and haggle.

  Consider the effect of that upon my imperial cousin-and all the

  others!'

  'HE will haggle, sir.'

  'Not a bit of it,' said the king.

  'But, sir.'

  'Leblanc won't let him.'

  Firmin halted abruptly and gave a vicious pull at the offending

  strap. 'Sir, he will listen to his advisers,' he said, in a tone

  that in some subtle way seemed to implicate his master with the

  trouble of the knapsack.

  The king considered him.

  'We will go just a little higher,' he said. 'I want to find this

  unoccupied village they spoke of, and then we will drink that

  beer. It can't be far. We will drink the beer and throw away the

  bottles. And then, Firmin, I shall ask you to look at things in a

  more generous light… Because, you know, you must…'

  He turned about and for some time the only sound they made was

  the noise of their boots upon the loose stones of the way and the

  irregular breathing of Firmin.

  At length, as it seemed to Firmin, or quite soon, as it seemed to

  the king, the gradient of the path diminished, the way widened

  out, and they found themselves in a very beautiful place indeed.

  It was one of those upland clusters of sheds and houses that are

  still to be found in the mountains of North Italy, buildings that

  were used only in the high summer, and which it was the custom to

  leave locked up and deserted through all the winter and spring,

  and up to the middle of June. The buildings were of a soft-toned

  gray stone, buried in rich green grass, shadowed by chestnut

  trees and lit by an extraordinary blaze of yellow broom. Never

  had the king seen broom so glorious; he shouted at the light of

  it, for it seemed to give out more sunlight even than it

  received; he sat down impulsively on a lichenous stone, tugged

  out his bread and cheese, and bade Firmin thrust the beer into

  the shaded weeds to cool.

  'The things people miss, Firmin,' he said, 'who go up into the

  air in ships!'

  Firmin looked around him with an ungenial eye. 'You see it at

  its best, sir,' he said, 'before the peasants come here again and

  make it filthy.'

  'It would be beautiful anyhow,' said the king.

  'Superficially, sir,' said Firmin. 'But it stands for a social

  order that is fast vanishing away. Indeed, judging by the grass

  between the stones and in the huts, Iam inclined to doubt if it

  is in use even now.'

  'I suppose,' said the king, 'they would come up immediately the

  hay on this flower meadow is cut. It would be those slow,

  creamy-coloured beasts, I expect, one sees on the roads below,

  and swarthy girls with red handkerchiefs over their black

  hair… It is wonderful to think how long that beautiful old

  life lasted. In the Roman times and long ages before ever the

  rumour of the Romans had come into these parts, men drove their

  cattle up into these places as the summer came on… How haunted

  is this place! There have been quarrels here, hopes, children

  have played here and lived to be old crones and old gaffers, and

  died, and so it has gone on for thousands of lives. Lovers,

  innumerable lovers, have caressed amidst this golden broom…'

  He meditated over a busy mouthful of bread and cheese.

  'We ought to have brought a tankard for that beer,' he said.

  Firmin produced a folding aluminium cup, and the king was pleased

  to drink.

  'I wish, sir,' said Firmin suddenly, 'I could induce you at least

  to delay your decision--'

  'It's no good talking, Firmin,' said the king. 'My mind's as

  clear as daylight.'

  'Sire,' protested Firmin, with his voice full of bread and cheese

  and genuine emotion, 'have you no respect for your kingship?'

  The king paused before he answered with unwonted gravity. 'It's

  just because I have, Firmin, that I won't be a puppet in this

  game of international politics.' He regarded his companion for a

  moment and then remarked: 'Kingship!-what do YOU know of

  kingship, Firmin?

  'Yes,' cried the king to his astonished counsellor. 'For the

  first time in my life Iam going to be a king. Iam going to

  lead, and lead by my own authority. For a dozen generations my

  family has been a set of dummies in the hands of th
eir advisers.

  Advisers! Now Iam going to be a real king-and Iam going

  to-to abolish, dispose of, finish, the crown to which I have

  been a slave. But what a world of paralysing shams this roaring

  stuff has ended! The rigid old world is in the melting-pot again,

  and I, who seemed to be no more than the stuffing inside a regal

  robe, Iam a king among kings. I have to play my part at the head

  of things and put an end to blood and fire and idiot disorder.'

  'But, sir,' protested Firmin.

  'This man Leblanc is right. The whole world has got to be a

  Republic, one and indivisible. You know that, and my duty is to

  make that easy. A king should lead his people; you want me to

  stick on their backs like some Old Man of the Sea. To-day must

  be a sacrament of kings. Our trust for mankind is done with and

  ended. We must part our robes among them, we must part our

  kingship among them, and say to them all, now the king in every

  one must rule the world… Have you no sense of the magnificence

  of this occasion? You want me, Firmin, you want me to go up

  there and haggle like a damned little solicitor for some price,

  some compensation, some qualification…'

  Firmin shrugged his shoulders and assumed an expression of

  despair. Meanwhile, he conveyed, one must eat.

  For a time neither spoke, and the king ate and turned over in his

  mind the phrases of the speech he intended to make to the

  conference. By virtue of the antiquity of his crown he was to

  preside, and he intended to make his presidency memorable.

  Reassured of his eloquence, he considered the despondent and

  sulky Firmin for a space.

  'Firmin,' he said, 'you have idealised kingship.' 'It has been

  my dream, sir,' said Firmin sorrowfully, 'to serve.'

  'At the levers, Firmin,' said the king.

  'You are pleased to be unjust,' said Firmin, deeply hurt.

  'I am pleased to be getting out of it,' said the king.

  'Oh, Firmin,' he went on, 'have you no thought for me? Will you

  never realise that Iam not only flesh and blood but an

  imagination-with its rights. Iam a king in revolt against that

  fetter they put upon my head. Iam a king awake. My reverend

  grandparents never in all their august lives had a waking moment.

  They loved the job that you, you advisers, gave them; they never

  had a doubt of it. It was like giving a doll to a woman who ought

  to have a child. They delighted in processions and opening things

  and being read addresses to, and visiting triplets and

  nonagenarians and all that sort of thing. Incredibly. They used

  to keep albums of cuttings from all the illustrated papers

  showing them at it, and if the press-cutting parcels grew thin

  they were worried. It was all that ever worried them. But there

  is something atavistic in me; I hark back to unconstitutional

  monarchs. They christened me too retrogressively, I think. I

  wanted to get things done. I was bored. I might have fallen into

  vice, most intelligent and energetic princes do, but the palace

  precautions were unusually thorough. I was brought up in the

  purest court the world has ever seen… Alertly pure… So I

  read books, Firmin, and went about asking questions. The thing

  was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later. Perhaps, too,

  very likely I'm not vicious. I don't thinkIam.'

  He reflected. 'No,' he said.

  Firmin cleared his throat. 'I don't think you are, sir,' he

  said. 'You prefer--'

  He stopped short. He had been going to say 'talking.' He

  substituted 'ideas.'

  'That world of royalty!' the king went on. 'In a little while no

  one will understand it any more. It will become a riddle…

  'Among other things, it was a world of perpetual best clothes.

  Everything was in its best clothes for us, and usually wearing

  bunting. With a cinema watching to see we took it properly. If

  you are a king, Firmin, and you go and look at a regiment, it

  instantly stops whatever it is doing, changes into full uniform

  and presents arms. When my august parents went in a train the

  coal in the tender used to be whitened. It did, Firmin, and if

  coal had been white instead of black I have no doubt the

  authorities would have blackened it. That was the spirit of our

  treatment. People were always walking about with their faces to

  us. One never saw anything in profile. One got an impression of

  a world that was insanely focused on ourselves. And when I began

  to poke my little questions into the Lord Chancellor and the

  archbishop and all the rest of them, about what I should see if

  people turned round, the general effect I produced was that I

  wasn't by any means displaying the Royal Tact they had expected

  of me…'

  He meditated for a time.

  'And yet, you know, there is something in the kingship, Firmin.

  It stiffened up my august little grandfather. It gave my

  grandmother a kind of awkward dignity even when she was

  cross-and she was very often cross. They both had a profound

  sense of responsibility. My poor father's health was wretched

  during his brief career; nobody outside the circle knows just how

  he screwed himself up to things. "My people expect it," he used

  to say of this tiresome duty or that. Most of the things they

  made him do were silly-it was part of a bad tradition, but there

  was nothing silly in the way he set about them… The spirit of

  kingship is a fine thing, Firmin; I feel it in my bones; I do not

  know what I might not be if I were not a king. I could die for my

  people, Firmin, and you couldn't. No, don't say you could die for

  me, because I know better. Don't think I forget my kingship,

  Firmin, don't imagine that. Iam a king, a kingly king, by right

  divine. The fact that Iam also a chattering young man makes not

  the slightest difference to that. But the proper text-book for

  kings, Firmin, is none of the court memoirs and Welt-Politik

  books you would have me read; it is old Fraser's Golden Bough.

  Have you read that, Firmin?'

  Firmin had. 'Those were the authentic kings. In the end they

  were cut up and a bit given to everybody. They sprinkled the

  nations-with Kingship.'

  Firmin turned himself round and faced his royal master.

  'What do you intend to do, sir?' he asked. 'If you will not

  listen to me, what do you propose to do this afternoon?'

  The king flicked crumbs from his coat.

  'Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin. Manifestly this

  can only be done by putting all the world under one government.

  Our crowns and flags are in the way. Manifestly they must go.'

  'Yes, sir,' interrupted Firmin, 'but WHAT government? I don't see

  what government you get by a universal abdication!'

  'Well,' said the king, with his hands about his knees, 'WE shall

  be the government.'

  'The conference?' exclaimed Firmin.

  'Who else?' asked the king simply.

  'It's perfectly simple,' he added to Firmin's tremendous silence.

  'But,' cried Firmin, 'you must have sanctions! Will there be no

  form of elec
tion, for example?'

  'Why should there be?' asked the king, with intelligent

  curiosity.

  'The consent of the governed.'

  'Firmin, we are just going to lay down our differences and take

  over government. Without any election at all. Without any

  sanction. The governed will show their consent by silence. If

  any effective opposition arises we shall ask it to come in and

  help. The true sanction of kingship is the grip upon the sceptre.

  We aren't going to worry people to vote for us. I'm certain the

  mass of men does not want to be bothered with such things…

  We'll contrive a way for any one interested to join in. That's

  quite enough in the way of democracy. Perhaps later-when things

  don't matter… We shall govern all right, Firmin. Government

  only becomes difficult when the lawyers get hold of it, and since

  these troubles began the lawyers are shy. Indeed, come to think

  of it, I wonder where all the lawyers are… Where are they? A

  lot, of course, were bagged, some of the worst ones, when they

  blew up my legislature. You never knew the late Lord Chancellor.

  …

  'Necessities bury rights. And create them. Lawyers live on dead

  rights disinterred… We've done with that way of living. We

  won't have more law than a code can cover and beyond that

  government will be free…

  'Before the sun sets to-day, Firmin, trust me, we shall have made

  our abdications, all of us, and declared the World Republic,

  supreme and indivisible. I wonder what my august grandmother

  would have made of it! All my rights!… And then we shall go

  on governing. What else is there to do? All over the world we

  shall declare that there is no longer mine or thine, but ours.

  China, the United States, two-thirds of Europe, will certainly

  fall in and obey. They will have to do so. What else can they

  do? Their official rulers are here with us. They won't be able

  to get together any sort of idea of not obeying us… Then we

  shall declare that every sort of property is held in trust for

  the Republic…'

  'But, sir!' cried Firmin, suddenly enlightened. 'Has this been

  arranged already?'

  'My dear Firmin, do you think we have come here, all of us, to

  talk at large? The talking has been done for half a century.

  Talking and writing. We are here to set the new thing, the

  simple, obvious, necessary thing, going.'

  He stood up.