His Royal Happiness

Chapter I

Prince Alfred's rooms were in Longwall Street, looking over the gardens of Magdalen, which was his college. From his second floor windows he could see the furtive deer slipping among the beeches there ; and his eyes could always wander from the baker's delivery cart to the tangle of light and shade in the green glooms above the college wall. The house had been taken for him; he lived in it with his tutor and establishment, which, on account of His Royal Highness's state of health, was permitted to include a masseur- valet. Beyond that it was nobody but Soames and Mrs. Soames, picked certainly from among the stoutest and most solemn of licensed keepers of lodgings for the young gentlemen of Oxford, but not otherwise remarkable. Soames now looked smarter on Sundays, and Mrs. Soames more conscious at church. That was all ; and it was very excusable, when one thinks of the devotion she put on with her clothes. Mrs. Soames had been a capital choice, and Soames the most unobjectionable corollary, knowing as they did the ways of young gentlemen at Oxford, and divining as they did that those of young royalties would be much the same. Only one mistake Mrs. Soames had made, and it was quite early days when she made it, in sending away, with energetic tongue, the organ-grinder who rested his back against Magdalen wall over the road, and woke discordance under the Royal windows in the name of a long dead comic opera. The Prince, it imme-

B diately appeared, did not approve the action of Mrs. Soames. The organ-grinder must be made to turn his dejected back, and again produce the tune and the monkey. Mrs. Soames being even compelled to reward him in kind with the music of small change. The Prince had no ear to be shattered, liked organ-grinders, liked monkeys. The thing he couldn't and wouldn't stand was the more ambitious programme of a German band. Mrs. Soames soon learned what to send away.

Prince Alfred's rooms were on the second floor. The Hon. Kenneth Talbot had three on the first; the servants divided the attic and expanded below stairs. There were all sorts of holes and corners unoccupied though not unswept ; Mrs. Soames and her char saw to that. It was an old house, with inordinate box-room ; and it had never in all its hundred and fifty years been so well taken care of. There were deep windows, with inside shutters that folded back, in the front rooms, in which Prince Alfred would occasionally sit sideways, his long legs tied up in his long arms, looking down upon the life of the street. His tutor, noting this habit, said nothing, but arranged art-green muslin curtains across the lower sash, stretched between two slender brass rods. The Prince, when these incommoded him, also said nothing, but took out the top brass rod, letting the curtain down upon the window seat, where his boots did not improve it He had been heard to remark of curtains that though they might be pretty they were useless, obstructive things, especially in the day-time, and harboured dust.

The room had been furnished by Mr. Talbot, who was a person of cultivation ; and if Mr. Talbot had lived in it as well as arranged its decoration, it would have been agreeable as well as tasteful. As it was, the engravings of Old Oxford had an air of preciosity, the furniture stood about with a selected look, the Tanagras seemed to wonder why they were there. They quite failed to attach themselves to the young man in the window recess, for whom life had always provided unsuitable accommodation, to be occupied with the temporary, unreconciled air with which he might have passed from one expensive hotel to another. The only place that looked like him was the window recess into which he was so fond of gathering his usually muddy boots. It had a pointed arch and made a simple mediaeval frame above his head. Talbot, who never told him so, admired him in it.

Upon his University entry paper he was Alfred and nothing more. His rank was entered as that of "Nobleman," his father's Christian name John, his native place London — county Middlesex — school, private tutor ; and it was noted that he was admitted by order of the Vice-Chancellor, matriculation no doubt being dispensed with. His royal father was dead, his elder brother John, married just before, shared the throne of England with a young princess of the House of Norway. Prince Victor, his second brother, was at that moment making a tour of the Courts of Europe, absorbed in the question of his own alliance, upon which he held views at once the loftiest and the most expedient. There were no sisters. Of the late King's brothers, one royal Duke represented the Crown in Canada, another in India. The family was held to be well buttressed at home; and its collateral members were freely distributed throughout the Empire, where they more than accomplished that whereto they were sent. The family was happily popular without exertion in the Dominions. At home it was involved in an effort to wear the ideals of an evermore clamorous democracy. The new King John candidly made this the strenuous business of his life; Prince Victor complied distastefully; but this young man at Oxford had no need of either motive or compliance, belonging as he did so simply and profoundly to the human race. This primitive status of his by no means jumped to the eye. He was tall, and his carriage was haughty, sensitive, and his manner was shy ; his features were patrician to the point of austerity. But these were appearances not readily accounted for in his character. Under them his nature was direct and humble. It would have been difficult for him to assume anything, most of all a democratic ideal, since these in a very abstract sense were already an essential part of him. The royal generations since Queen Victoria had given more and more dutiful attention to the popular aspect, as well, perhaps, had more and more truly loved the people; and this passion in the purple of his forbears had endowed the third son of the House with an inclination in such matters which compared with the metal of the demagogue as silver might with pewter. It was no compound or blend of theory and opportunity, but something which he never questioned or thought about, something secreted in him in a natural virgin vein, unsuspected, by almost everybody under an exterior so misleading. Perhaps the fine lines of his face expressed the very purity of it ; and it was only the common eye that was deceived.

Prince Alfred's propensities jumped very well with the time and the general practice, so well that the signs of them were accepted by the Family and its advisers as remarkably and rather precociously politic. Alfie was thought in such matters much more clever and understanding than Vic, who adored parade, and had been known in his youth to steal his brother, the Prince of Wales's equerry, for a whole afternoon. Vic was impossible on the subject of the people ; he swaggered abominably, and was cheered wherever he went. Alfred did not swagger; rather he moped. Long walks with his dog, a dog of no breeding, the most accidental dog, were his chief distraction, when he would meet other passers-by with hunched-up shoulders and a look that defied them to know who he was and take their hats off. There had been a time when a royal undergraduate was not thus molested about his private business; but the age had grown so democratic that numbers of people now insisted upon allowing themselves this liberty. Once he met three ragamuffins and went fishing with worms with them ; but it got into the papers, and after that he shrank even from ragamuffins and worms. On the whole his tutor found him, as a charge, neither difficult nor anxious. His habits were all that could be desired. He never came in smelling of anything worse than beer at the Abingdon pub ; and he was so little amused by the houris of the Corn-market tobacconists that he ordered his cigarettes from London. He had hardly any marked predilections, except for the river Thames and the history of England. He rowed enough to be fairly described among Etonians as a wet bob rather than a dry one, and pulled a fair oar, though not up to the form of his college, which was that year head of the river. In any case he would not have been allowed, on account of his chest, the severe training of the Eights, though the exercise in moderation was recommended, and he had not to be urged to punt. He was forever punting, mostly by himself, though now and then Sir Henry Thorn and a tea-basket might be made out on the reaches of the upper river, weighing down the other end of the craft. Sir Henry was Regius Professor of History, and gave Prince Alfred a private course.

His young pupil bestowed special attention upon the history and more than special affection upon Sir Henry, who was a man oddly unsuited to Oxford in the breadth and initiative of his social views. Kenneth Talbot sometimes said in confidence that if the Prince had been his royal elder brother, he, Talbot, would have preferred some other private course for him — at all events, some other instructor. This reflection was not only futile but beside the point, since the Prince of Wales, who had been sent, by the way, to Cambridge, would have been quite impervious to the ideas of Sir Henry Thorn, except in so far as they might have bored him.

Alfred had his own undergraduate friends, as distinguished from those encouraged by Mr. Talbot. A very ordinary lot, Talbot thought them, though he sensibly considered that this was a point upon w7hich not even a Prince would profit greatly by suggestion, or at all by insistence. The more suitable young men encouraged by Mr. Talbot — Lord Anstruther, Cecil Hamilton and one or two others — privately thought Prince Alfred "not quite up to the part." Any of these could have prompted him in the part, here and there, especially Knollys, whose instinct in Court matters came down to him with the long "o" in his name. This though in fraternal Oxford there could be no "part," or hardly any. Such things are very subtle. The other friends Alfred, son of John, found for himself, never spoke of him in terms of criticism. They may have confided to one another the wish that there was something a fellow could do for him ; but beyond that they simply liked him very much.

Chapter II

That Prince Alfred had a house to himself in Oxford, and a tutor also specially attached, was altogether the doing of his aunt, Princess Georgina, Duchess of Altenburg. The ways of the Royal Family had grown more and more democratic since the dawn of the century, and a good many people, including his royal brother, were in favour of the simplest collegian life for Alfred. But Princess Georgina, who was always drawing the line somewhere, drew it round the old house in Longwall Street looking over the grounds of Magdalen, the Prince's college. She carried Catkin, the valet, on the score of the boy's health, which had always given some anxiety, and the Hon. Kenneth Talbot on the score of his personal influence with Alfred, who was not always "easy." She had to give up the equerry. Even Princess Georgina had in these days to give up something. She mourned that she was always giving up.

When her nephew Alfred went to Oxford the Princess felt that for the time being she gave him up with rather special fortitude. She could not follow him there ; she admitted that he must be abandoned to "the influences of the place," which, happily, the Family had always had reason to trust. She trusted them now, although, when dear Mr. Talbot's reports of Alfie's interests and ambitions reached her, with some misgiving. The idea of Honours — anything that Oxford could do — for a member of the Family struck Princess Georgina as redundant. Here, of course, she crossed diplomatic swords with the tutor, who was naturally delighted with Prince Alfred's desire to excel in the History school ; and again she waived the point. It was, of course, most creditable in dear Alfie, if they could be certain that his health would bear the strain. Only to be applauded. As to other matters, undergraduate friendships and so on, the Duchess could but rejoice that Mr. Talbot was not inclined to treat them too seriously. The tutor could see, at all events, that certain invitations had the honour of being accepted and no others ; he was in effective charge of everything that could wear the air of function. He could also make, without seeming to make them, suitable introductions and opportunities. But preferences he could not control, or hand-grips ; the short pipe or the long walk were difficult to modify. Tact, the pleasantest humour, forbearance — what was the Hon. Kenneth there for but to exhibit these things? He did exhibit them, and all he could do to allay the apprehensions of the Duchess he did.

Three of the ordinary lot, the lot that were not imposed or chosen, were sedately drinking tea in Prince Alfred's rooms. The teapot was black Wedgwood, the cups charming Spode, the tray as good an example of Sheffield as could be found anywhere. And none of these circumstances detracted at all from the toothsomeness of the doughcake, which was equally genuine, and marked Boffin on the under side. Prince Alfred knew Boffin as well as anybody, and helped as much as anybody to keep up his immortal name. He himself was pouring the tea, stretching his hand from where he sat to give the last drop of it to Longworth, from Massachusetts, who held out his cup over the back of the chair he bestrode ; and Prince Alfred tipped the pot at such a determined angle, that the lid dropped into the cup and knocked a three-cornered bit out.

"Now you've done it, Cakes," remarked Longworth, considering the damage.

"It'll mend all right," said Youghall, a Rhodes man, from St. John, New Brunswick, clucking for the piece.

"Permit me," said Manners, politely substituting a tobacco jar upon the saucer. "Improve the flavour." Manners was the third of the three. To Manners belonged prospectively more iron and steel in Yorkshire than he could ever quite know what to do with, but he would always be the third of the three.

"It's slopped a bit into the saucer, but that's only a matter of another cup," said Prince Alfred. "And here it is."

With which he carefully poured the tea out of the damaged cup into a sound one and handed it to Long worth.

"It hasn't made much of a mess, after all," he continued, wiping his fingers on his handkerchief. "I expect it's cooled off a bit though, old chap."

"Jolly good stuff, any way. Might a fellow ask where it comes from ? " Longworth demanded. "It's the best brew I know."

"Blessed if I can tell you. Mrs. Soames — " the housekeeper had come in with fresh Sally Lunns, "where do we get our particular blend? "

"From Rathbone's generally, sir, but all the good shops keep it. Imperial mixture it's called. Why, sir, you've had an accident."

"Yes, I have, Mrs. Soames. I was trying to give this man tea, and between us, though it was Mr. Longworth's fault mostly, we smashed the cup."

"I like that," protested Longworth.

"It will mend," said the Canadian again, "if you take care of the pieces."

"Well, we'll do that," said Alfred. Youghall handed him the fragment. The Prince put it into the saucer and gave the broken cup into the hands of Mrs. Soames, who carried it concernedly away.

"It is always worth while," good Mrs. Soames told them all as she went, "to take care of the pieces."

The young men, having dealt faithfully with the Sally Lunns, began to smoke. Longworth and Youghall were both at Balliol, Manners at New College. The wave of interest in everything Imperial abroad that rose early in the century had reached at last the grey recesses of Oxford ; and Manners was of those who gladly and respectfully consorted with Rhodes scholars and their like, watching their lips for new and stimulating things, responding as a youth might, to the vague and general expectation that placed the hope of the race over-seas. It was through Rhodes men that he made the acquaintance of Prince Alfred, who seemed, as his tutor remarked, quite to "specialize " in them.

"There's wine at Anstruther's to-night. Are you fellows on ? " asked Manners.

"Not me," said Prince Alfred. "My time's getting too short for blow-outs. Three weeks Monday, and Thorn on my back six days out of seven. If I come a purler, it won't be his fault."

"You won't, Cakes," said Longworth. "You'll carry off the history bun all right. You're a chap that ought to be handicapped. You've got it all inside you."

"That be blowed," Alfred told them briefly. "I'm getting in nine hours most days."

They were all of the same year, but none were in for Greats except Manners, who had hopes of a second. Longworth and Youghall had agreed that there must be some pass-men at Balliol and that they might suitably furnish two. They declared themselves simply "over" on business, with no time for trials of strength. Their business was of a more general nature; they wanted, as Longworth put it, to get Oxford into their system, and were doing just as much work as was necessary to that end and no more. Yet they had selected Balliol because they were young men in earnest, and they had always heard of Balliol as the concrete example of how earnest Oxford could be.

" Thorn expects them to burst themselves on the eighteenth century, last half," Prince Alfred went on. "I hope they do. I begin to feel just about ready for 'em there."

"I see you've been browsing a bit outside the fence," said Longworth, taking up a volume dealing with the revolutionary struggle, which was not prescribed by the University.

"You've got to. And the worst of it is, the further you go the further you want to."

"Nobody has ever bottled History," observed Youghall, gently balancing a chair upon his toe.

"You can't bottle a flowing tide," said Prince Alfred. "Dip in it if you like."

"I say," said Longworth, turning pages, "these portraits of the men on both sides must be useful. Look at our friend here " — he held up a fine head of Burke. "Talk of our Declaration of Independence— he made it. They'd call him a Little Englander now. And this courtly old party who couldn't cross his Sovereign "

"We have travelled since then," interrupted Prince Alfred. "I know my brother gets things shoved down his throat occasionally."

It was a mark of their intimacy, the freedom with which Prince Alfred would refer to "my brother."

The privilege was conceded that he should do this and be understood to invite no comment. There would be, as now, an instant of silence, or somebody would say respectfully as Manners now said with a half tone of regret, " I suppose so."

"And look at our people," went on Longworth, turning over Lord North. "Franklin, Sam Adams — there was a gnarled old Calvinist — Hamilton the Dictator. Amongst them they've got the whole show in their faces. On the walls of schools that lot would do very well as a crib."

Alfred got up, walked round the table and regarded the book over Longworth's shoulder with interest.

"Jolly true," he said thoughtfully, as his cigarette ash dropped into the eye of Samuel Adams. It was evidently a new light to him, and he seemed caught by it, stooping to look clearer at the faces under Longworth's hand. Involuntarily the pages slipped over till they showed that principal actor, George the Third ; and the two young men considered the fine, florid portrait together.

"You're not much like him in the face, old dear," said Longworth.

"I don't think I'm much like him any way," said his descendant. "Not that it matters. By the way," he went on with a touch of shyness, "your people have been over there a good while, Lengthy ? I expect some of them carried a musket in those days, didn't they ? "

Longworth looked up with rather a queer smile.

"No, sir. There was only my great-great-granddad, and I am ashamed to say he didn't. But I'm just as proud to tell you why. It was because he was shouldering his gun for the King over here in Europe with the rest of the Royal Americans ; and he couldn't be in two places at once."

There was a laugh from the other two, led by

Manners, who slapped Longworth on the back. Prince Alfred did not laugh, but his face lighted up.

"By Jove! I like to hear that," he said. "He was a brother officer of mine then, your great-great-granddad, or he is now anyhow. It's my regiment — the Imperial Rifles we call ourselves now. I asked for a commission in it, sort of fancying its antecedents. Our dark green kit came out of your forests — one of the few things we had sense enough to keep."

"You asked to join that once American regiment?" said Longworth.

"I did."

" Do I understand — for that reason ? " "For that reason."

The American pressed his lips together and got up.

"Then shake," he said briefly, and held out his hand. "A thing like that makes one wish the blessed thing had never happened," he added lightly, as they "shook," awkwardly enough on Alfred's part.

"Oh, rather not ! " said he. "It had to happen, and personally I'm glad it happened. I don't know any achievement of Englishmen that thrills me more or interests me as much. By Jove ! what a fine executive chance they made for the race."

"It was a fairly general movement," put in Manners. "John Wilkes over here was hammering at the same sort of thing."

"Wilkes was a rascal," said Prince Alfred. "Though rascals have been useful in Parliament before him and since. You can't compare the natural growth that was going on on this side. We were fighting over there for much more than anything Wilkes stood for."

It sounded odd, the "we," even in the freedom of undergraduate intercourse. Arthur Youghall, the Canadian, especially looked a rather doubtful assent. He thought of the Royal Arms in the old church in his native city, and how forbears of his had sailed with them in an open boat from Boston, bidden begone.

" ' We ' were on different sides," he contributed, rather dryly.

"And did that never happen before? " demanded Alfred. "It was we who quarrelled — that's the thing. Couldn't we quarrel if we wanted to ? And be better friends after ? "

"It was a family affair, no doubt about that," said Longworth.

"Wasn't there a little Dutch in it?" suggested Youghall.

"Precious little," said Prince Alfred eagerly. "Our Americans of the eighteenth century were as pure English as the people in any country of England to-day. Fiske will tell you that — you needn't take it from me. And what they did was English too. I'm not supposed to talk politics, as you fellows know. But that's history, I take it ? "

He looked from one to another of them, colouring and hesitating.

"I don't know, my son," chaffed Longworth. "History is only cold politics — do they let you have 'em cold ? Anyhow — what's become of the American tour scheme ? Have they hung it up ? "

"Tabby tells me it's just about through, and that I can as good as count on it," Alfred told him, with a brightened eye. "I was all over the shop in Canada when I was sixteen, and Australia two years later. So I was afraid my uncle would stick out for me to do India this time — he's running the show out there just now. Luckily there's some silly difficulty about precedence. It seems to matter a lot to the Hindoos which elephant I'm on — I'm sure it doesn't to me. Anyhow the climate's not thought right; and it's just about decided that I get the tour I want, once this job's over."

They all looked at him with congratulation, each of them knowing very well what he wanted and how annoying it was to be in doubt about getting it, and Longworth said —

"You'll have the time of your life, Cakes."

Cakes looked suddenly depressed and replied —

"There's a beastly lot to settle first."

"Going incog. ?" asked Manners.

"I want to, but even that's got to be discussed. An invitation's come from Washington — the papers over there got hold of my wanting to come, so I feel I've cadged it. You can't stay with the President incog., I suppose?" He looked hopefully at Longworth. "But I think it would be a better scheme by a long shot."

"You think so," remarked Longworth. "Well — I'd like to see the incog, worn by your Imperial dough that could be preserved for ten minutes in the United States of America."

Chapter III

Prince Alfred having been reminded just in time of an engagement to take tea with the wife of the President of his college, Manners, Youghall and Longworth presently also remembered an afternoon lecture by a returned pro-Consul, and found themselves on the pavement together and turning into the High. They walked soberly along, hatless under a whimpering of rain, their hands thrust into their trouser pockets, their gowns flapping. The undergraduate's gown is, as a point of pride, a matter of form and tradition, never new. Manners's, in this respect, was of the average, reasonably rent. Youghall's hung on his back almost as it had come from the tailor, Longworth's was a rag that would hardly have covered the shoulders of a fish-wife. There were things in the men to match, be sure : Manners was the product of the island, fresh, fair, and good-looking, broadly rather than finely finished, convinced without enthusiasm, humble without subserviency, practical without meanness. He allowed his gown to be torn. After a ragging fray he surveyed the result with satisfaction. It would never be taken for the garment of a smug ; but he would not, to that end, directly damage it. Youghall was the hard-earned Canadian. His was a queer, ugly, faithful face, with a square chin of power and initiative. One would have said no charm until he spoke, and then the wide, mobile mouth somehow produced it, showing whatever was in him of deep and tender, quiet and sure, that had come out of that northern dominion, held with so much hardship by generations lonely and ignored. You saw that he was slow ; you felt that he was resourceful and that his mind was already occupied with matters simple and big, so occupied as to leave little room for anything else, and none for such an unjustified importance as a ragged gown where a whole one was as available. Youghall would take reasonable care of his gown. It was as likely to be on its peg as any of his other clothes.

Longworth's gown would brook no second. It may have been made of English cloth by an Oxford tailor, but it was an American garment. Since gowns were to be shabby there would be none shabbier. It would be thus with the policies of his life ; he would always contemn the cost, would find always a pleasure in being reckless about it. It was an attractive personality, Longworth's people looked twice as he swung along between the other two. His head was eighteenth century American, the noble type, familiar with grace and dialectics and the use of gunpowder. A long, lean face it was, almost cadaverous, with a chiselled nose, sensitive mouth, clean brow, and bunch of irresistibly waving hair above it. An idealist's face, now or then or ever, but bearing the unmistakable stamp of days when purpose in New England was pitched high. They talked about the Prince, as they often did, leaving him, with all the freedom of loyalty.

"I suppose that note reminding him about Mrs. Magdalen was from Tabby," said Longworth, stooping to give a side-long caress, as he passed, to a shop cat that blinked on a doorstep.

"I wish she heard you," grunted Manners.

"He's very respectful," remarked Youghall. "For him. He might have said 'Mother Magdalen,' or ' Ma Magdalen,' and been just as alliterative and less polite." c

"I beg her pardon," said the chidden Longworth, "Madame Magdalen, and from her appearance I should say a charming lady. But what must it be to have a collar and a chain, and a Tabby at the other end, like Cakes ? "

"They get used to it," explained Manners. "Sort of brought up by hand that way, you know. Fearfully superior persons in charge from the month. It's a profession just to live, for a Royalty."

"Did you notice how he coloured when he got it," asked Youghall. "Went red as a coal, and looked frightfully sick with himself."

"Cakes is always forgetting," said Longworth, "I guess he doesn't find it much of a profession, just to live, according to other people's ideas. He wants to be alive at the same time."