He continued his pacings. Suddenly he came to a dead stop. He was standing in front of a large mirror. For the first time since he was seventeen he had seen his face without whiskers. His eyes still fixed on his reflection, he beckoned the Chancellor to approach.
"Come here," he said, clutching him by the arm. "You see that?" He pointed to the reflection. "That is what I look like? The mirror hasn't made a mistake of any kind? That is really and truly what I look like?"
"Yes, sire."
For a little while the King continued to gaze fascinated at his reflection, and then he turned on the Chancellor.
"You coward!" he said. "You weak–kneed, jelly–souled, paper–livered imitation of a man! You cringe to a King who looks like that! Why, you ought to kick me."
The Chancellor remembered that he had one kick owing to him. He drew back his foot, and then a thought occurred to him.
"You might kick me back," he pointed out.
"I certainly should," said the King.
The Chancellor hesitated a moment.
"I think," he said, "that these private quarrels in the face of the common enemy are to be deplored."
The King looked at him, gave a short laugh, and went on walking up and down.
"That face again," he sighed as he came opposite the mirror. "No, it's no good; I can never be King like this. I shall abdicate."
"But, your Majesty, this is a very terrible decision. Could not your Majesty live in retirement until your Majesty had grown your Majesty's whiskers again? Surely this is―"
The King came to a stand opposite him and looked down on him gravely.
"Chancellor," he said, "those whiskers which you have just seen fluttering in the breeze have been for more than forty years my curse. For more than forty years I have had to live up to those whiskers, behaving, not as my temperament, which is a kindly, indeed a genial one, bade me to behave, but as those whiskers insisted I should behave. Arrogant, hasty–tempered, over–bearing—these are the qualities which have been demanded of the owner of those whiskers. I played a part which was difficult at first; of late, it has, alas! been more easy. Yet it has never been my true nature that you have seen."
He paused and looked silently at himself in the glass.
"But, your Majesty," said the Chancellor eagerly, "why choose this moment to abdicate? Think how your country will welcome this new King whom you have just revealed to me. And yet," he added regretfully, "it would not be quite the same."
The King turned round to him.
"There spoke a true Barodian," he said. "It would not be the same. Barodians have come to expect certain qualities from their rulers, and they would be lost without them. A new King might accustom them to other ways, but they are used to me, and they would not like me different. No, Chancellor, I shall abdicate. Do not wear so sad a face for me. I am looking forward to my new life with the greatest of joy."
The Chancellor was not looking sad for him; he was looking sad for himself, thinking that perhaps a new King might like changes in Chancellors equally with changes in manners or whiskers.
"But what will you do?" he asked.
"I shall be a simple subject of the new King, earning my living by my own toil."
The Chancellor raised his eyebrows at this.
"I suppose you think," said the King haughtily, "that I have not the intelligence to earn my own living."
The Chancellor with a cough remarked that the very distinguished qualities which made an excellent King did not always imply the corresponding—er—and so on.
"That shows how little you know about it. Just to give one example. I happen to know that I have in me the makings of an excellent swineherd."
"A swineherd?"
"The man who—er—herds the swine. It may surprise you to hear that, posing as a swineherd, I have conversed with another of the profession upon his own subject, without his suspecting the truth. It is just such a busy outdoor life as I should enjoy. One herds and one milks, and one milks, and—er—herds, and so it goes on day after day." A happy smile, the first the Chancellor had ever seen there, spread itself over his features. He clapped the Chancellor playfully on the back and added, "I shall simply love it."
The Chancellor was amazed. What a story for his dinner–parties when the war was over!
"How will you announce it?" he asked, and his tone struck a happy mean between the tones in which you address a monarch and a pig–minder respectively.
"That will be your duty. Now that I have shaken off the curse of those whiskers, I am no longer a proud man, but even a swineherd would not care for it to get about that he had been forcibly shaved while sleeping. That this should be the last incident recorded of me in Barodian history is unbearable. You will announce therefore that I have been slain in fair combat, though at the dead of night, by the King of Euralia, and that my whiskers fly over his royal tent as a symbol of his victory." He winked at the Chancellor and added, "It might as well get about that some one had stolen my Magic Sword that evening."
The Chancellor was speechless with admiration and approval of the plan. Like his brother of Euralia, he too was longing to get home again. The war had arisen over a personal insult to the King. If the King was no longer King, why should the war go on?
"I think," said the future swineherd, "that I shall send a Note over to the King of Euralia, telling him my decision. To–night, when it is dark, I shall steal away and begin my new life. There seems to be no reason why the people should not go back to their homes to–morrow. By the way, that guard outside there knows that I wasn't killed last night; that's rather awkward."
"I think," said the Chancellor, who was already picturing his return home, and was not going to be done out of it by a common sentry, "I think I could persuade him that you were killed last night."
"Oh, well, then, that's all right." He drew a ring from his finger. "Perhaps this will help him to be persuaded. Now leave me while I write to the King of Euralia."
It was a letter which Merriwig was decidedly glad to get. It announced bluntly that the war was over, and added that the King of Barodia proposed to abdicate. His son would rule in his stead, but he was a harmless fool, and the King of Euralia need not bother about him. The King would be much obliged if he would let it get about that the whiskers had been won in a fair fight; this would really be more to the credit of both of them. Personally he was glad to be rid of the things, but one has one's dignity. He was now retiring into private life, and if it were rumoured abroad that he had been killed by the King of Euralia matters would be much more easy to arrange.
Merriwig slept late after his long night abroad, and he found this Note waiting for him when he awoke. He summoned the Chancellor at once.
"What have you done about those—er—trophies?" he asked.
"They are fluttering from your flagstaff, sire, at this moment."
"Ah! And what do my people say?"
"They are roaring with laughter, sire, at the whimsical nature of the jest."
"Yes, but what do they say?"
"Some say that your Majesty, with great cunning, ventured privily in the night and cut them off while he slept; others, that with great bravery you defeated him in mortal combat and carried them away as the spoils of the victor."
"Oh! And what did you say?"
The Chancellor looked reproachful.
"Naturally, your Majesty, I have not spoken with them."
"Ah, well, I have been thinking it over in the night, and I remember now that I did kill him. You understand?"
"Your Majesty's skill in sword play will be much appreciated by the people."
"Quite so," said the King hastily. "Well, that's all—I'm getting up now. And we're all going home to–morrow."