it was an evening party; and something someone had said to me had started me talking about a subject that to me is full of fascination, the subject of old religions, forsaken gods. the truth (for all religions have some of it), the wisdom, the beauty, of the religions of countries to which i travel have not the same appeal for me; for one only notices in them their tyranny and intolerance and the abject servitude that they claim from thought; but when a dynasty has been dethroned in heaven and goes forgotten and outcast even among men, one's eyes no longer dazzled by its power find something very wistful in the faces of fallen gods suppliant to be remembered, something almost tearfully beautiful, like a long warm summer twilight fading gently away after some day memorable in the story of earthly wars. between what zeus, for instance, has been once and the half-remembered tale he is today there lies a space so great that there is no change of fortune known to man whereby we may measure the height down which he has fallen. and it is the same with many another god at whom once the ages trembled and the twentieth century treats as an old wives' tale. the fortitude that such a fall demands is surely more than human.
some such things as these i was saying, and being upon a subject that much attracts me i possibly spoke too loudly, certainly i was not aware that standing close behind me was no less a person than the ex-king of eritivaria, the thirty islands of the east, or i would have moderated my voice and moved away a little to give him more room. i was not aware of his presence until his satellite, one who had fallen with him into exile but still revolved about him, told me that his master desired to know me; and so to my surprise i was presented though neither of them even knew my name. and that was how i came to be invited by the ex-king to dine at his club.
at the time i could only account for his wishing to know me by supposing that he found in his own exiled condition some likeness to the fallen fortunes of the gods of whom i talked unwitting of his presence; but now i know that it was not of himself he was thinking when he asked me to dine at that club.
the club would have been the most imposing building in any street in london, but in that obscure mean quarter of london in which they had built it it appeared unduly enormous. lifting right up above those grotesque houses and built in that greek style that we call georgian, there was something olympian about it. to my host an unfashionable street could have meant nothing, through all his youth wherever he had gone had become fashionable the moment he went there; words like the east end could have had no meaning to him.
whoever built that house had enormous wealth and cared nothing for fashion, perhaps despised it. as i stood gazing at the magnificent upper windows draped with great curtains, indistinct in the evening, on which huge shadows flickered my host attracted my attention from the doorway, and so i went in and met for the second time the ex-king of eritivaria.
in front of us a stairway of rare marble led upwards, he took me through a side-door and downstairs and we came to a banqueting-hall of great magnificence. a long table ran up the middle of it, laid for quite twenty people, and i noticed the peculiarity that instead of chairs there were thrones for everyone except me, who was the only guest and for whom there was an ordinary chair. my host explained to me when we all sat down that everyone who belonged to that club was by rights a king.
in fact none was permitted, he told me, to belong to the club until his claim to a kingdom made out in writing had been examined and allowed by those whose duty it was. the whim of a populace or the candidate's own misrule were never considered by the investigators, nothing counted with them but heredity and lawful descent from kings, all else was ignored. at that table there were those who had once reigned themselves, others lawfully claimed descent from kings that the world had forgotten, the kingdoms claimed by some had even changed their names. hatzgurh, the mountain kingdom, is almost regarded as mythical.
i have seldom seen greater splendour than that long hall provided below the level of the street. no doubt by day it was a little sombre, as all basements are, but at night with its great crystal chandeliers, and the glitter of heirlooms that had gone into exile, it surpassed the splendour of palaces that have only one king. they had come to london suddenly most of those kings, or their fathers before them, or forefathers; some had come away from their kingdoms by night, in a light sleigh, flogging the horses, or had galloped clear with morning over the border, some had trudged roads for days from their capital in disguise, yet many had had time just as they left to snatch up some small thing without price in markets, for the sake of old times as they said, but quite as much, i thought, with an eye to the future. and there these treasures glittered on that long table in the banqueting-hall of the basement of that strange club. merely to see them was much, but to hear their story that their owners told was to go back in fancy to epic times on the romantic border of fable and fact, where the heroes of history fought with the gods of myth. the famous silver horses of gilgianza were there climbing their sheer mountain, which they did by miraculous means before the time of the goths. it was not a large piece of silver but its workmanship outrivalled the skill of the bees.
a yellow emperor had brought out of the east a piece of that incomparable porcelain that had made his dynasty famous though all their deeds are forgotten, it had the exact shade of the right purple.
and there was a little golden statuette of a dragon stealing a diamond from a lady, the dragon had the diamond in his claws, large and of the first water. there had been a kingdom whose whole constitution and history were founded on the legend, from which alone its kings had claimed their right to the scepter, that a dragon stole a diamond from a lady. when its last king left that country, because his favorite general used a peculiar formation under the fire of artillery, he brought with him the little ancient image that no longer proved him a king outside that singular club.
there was the pair of amethyst cups of the turbaned king of foo, the one that he drank from himself, and the one that he gave to his enemies, eye could not tell which was which.
all these things the ex-king of eritivaria showed me, telling me a marvelous tale of each; of his own he had brought nothing, except the mascot that used once to sit on the top of the water tube of his favorite motor.
i have not outlined a tenth of the splendour of that table, i had meant to come again and examine each piece of plate and make notes of its history; had i known that this was the last time i should wish to enter that club i should have looked at its treasures more attentively, but now as the wine went round and the exiles began to talk i took my eyes from the table and listened to strange tales of their former state.
he that has seen better times has usually a poor tale to tell, some mean and trivial thing has been his undoing, but they that dined in that basement had mostly fallen like oaks on nights of abnormal tempest, had fallen mightily and shaken a nation. those who had not been kings themselves, but claimed through an exiled ancestor, had stories to tell of even grander disaster, history seeming to have mellowed their dynasty's fate as moss grows over an oak a great while fallen. there were no jealousies there as so often there are among kings, rivalry must have ceased with the loss of their navies and armies, and they showed no bitterness against those that had turned them out, one speaking of the error of his prime minister by which he had lost his throne as "poor old friedrich's heaven-sent gift of tactlessness."
they gossiped pleasantly of many things, the tittle-tattle we all had to know when we were learning history, and many a wonderful story i might have heard, many a side light on mysterious wars had i not made use of one unfortunate word. that word was "upstairs."
the ex-king of eritivaria having pointed out to me those unparalleled heirlooms to which i have alluded, and many more besides, hospitably asked me if there was anything else that i would care to see, he meant the pieces of plate that they had in the cupboards, the curiously graven swords of other princes, historic jewels, legendary seals, but i who had had a glimpse of their marvelous staircase, whose balustrade i believed to be solid gold and wondering why in such a stately house they chose to dine in the basement, mentioned the word "upstairs." a profound hush came down on the whole assembly, the hush that might greet levity in a cathedral.
"upstairs!" he gasped. "we cannot go upstairs."
i perceived that what i had said was an ill-chosen thing. i tried to excuse myself but knew not how.
"of course," i muttered, "members may not take guests upstairs."
"members!" he said to me. "we are not the members!"
there was such reproof in his voice that i said no more, i looked at him questioningly, perhaps my lips moved, i may have said "what are you?" a great surprise had come on me at their attitude.
"we are the waiters," he said.
that i could not have known, here at last was honest ignorance that i had no need to be ashamed of, the very opulence of their table denied it.
"then who are the members?" i asked.
such a hush fell at that question, such a hush of genuine awe, that all of a sudden a wild thought entered my head, a thought strange and fantastic and terrible. i gripped my host by the wrist and hushed my voice.
"are they too exiles?" i asked.
twice as he looked in my face he gravely nodded his head.
i left that club very swiftly indeed, never to see it again, scarcely pausing to say farewell to those menial kings, and as i left the door a great window opened far up at the top of the house and a flash of lightning streamed from it and killed a dog.
