第69章 Chapter 25(4)

"Sire,the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements and qualifications for military command,and doth hold his case open for decision after due examination of his competitor."The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations of nobility himself.So there was a tie in military qualifications that far.

He stood aside a moment,and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:

"Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?""She came of the highest landed gentry,yet she was not noble;she was gracious and pure and charitable,of a blameless life and character,insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the best lady in the land.""That will do.Stand down."He called up the competing lordling again,and asked:"What was the rank and condition of the great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your great house?""She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born.""Ah,this,indeed,is true nobility,this is the right and perfect intermixture.

The lieutenancy is yours,fair lord.Hold it not in contempt;it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine."I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation.I had promised myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph,and this was the outcome!

I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the face.

I told him to go home and be patient,this wasn't the end.

I had a private audience with the king,and made a proposition.I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities,and he couldn't have done a wiser thing.It would also be a good idea to add five hundred officers to it;in fact,add as many officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the country,even if there should finally be five times as many officers as privates in it;and thus make it the crack regiment,the envied regiment,the King's Own regiment,and entitled to fight on its own hook and in its own way,and go whither it would and come when it pleased,in time of war,and be utterly swell and independent.This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the nobility,and they would all be satisfied and happy.Then we would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace materials,and officer it with nobodies,as was proper --nobodies selected on a basis of mere efficiency --and we would make this regiment toe the line,allow it no aristocratic freedom from restraint,and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering,to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to go off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good time,it could go without uneasiness,knowing that matters were in safe hands behind it,and business going to be continued at the old stand,same as usual.

The king was charmed with the idea.

When I noticed that,it gave me a valuable notion.I thought I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last.You see,the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race and very fruitful.Whenever a child was born to any of these --and it was pretty often --there was wild joy in the nation's mouth,and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart.

The joy was questionable,but the grief was honest.Because the event meant another call for a Royal Grant.Long was the list of these royalties,and they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury and a menace to the crown.Yet Arthur could not believe this latter fact,and he would not listen to any of my various projects for substituting something in the place of the royal grants.If I could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for one of these outlying scions from his own pocket,I could have made a grand to-do over it,and it would have had a good effect with the nation;but no,he wouldn't hear of such a thing.

He had something like a religious passion for royal grant;he seemed to look upon it as a sort of sacred swag,and one could not irritate him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that venerable institution.

If I ventured to cautiously hint that there was not another respectable family in England that would humble itself to hold out the hat --however,that is as far as I ever got;he always cut me short there,and peremptorily,too.

But I believed I saw my chance at last.I would form this crack regiment out of officers alone --not a single private.Half of it should consist of nobles,who should fill all the places up to Major-General,and serve gratis and pay their own expenses;and they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood.These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-General up to Field Marshal,and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and fed by the state.Moreover --and this was the master stroke --it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which I would presently invent),and they and they only in all England should be so addressed.

Finally,all princes of the blood should have free choice;join that regiment,get that great title,and renounce the royal grant,or stay out and receive a grant.Neatest touch of all:unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be BORN into the regiment,and start fair,with good wages and a permanent situation,upon due notice from the parents.

All the boys would join,I was sure of that;so,all existing grants would be relinquished;that the newly born would always join was equally certain.Within sixty days that quaint and bizarre anomaly,the Royal Grant,would cease to be a living fact,and take its place among the curiosities of the past.