It was to the sound of the patter of bare feet, on the polished floor
of his bedroom, followed by suppressed gurgles of joyous laughter, that
the King awoke, in the morning. Bright sunshine was streaming into
the room, through the still open window door. Button and Bill, their
faces rosy with health and sleep, and their hair still tousled, as it
had come from their pillows, engagingly droll little figures in their
diminutive sleeping suits, stood at his bedside, watching him with
shining, mischievous eyes. As he sat up in bed, they flung themselves
at him, with triumphant shouts, wriggling and swarming all over him, as
they essayed to smother him, under his own bedclothes and pillows.
At the end of two or three hilarious, and vivid moments of mimic
fight, the King brought the heavy artillery of his bolster to bear
on his enemies, smiting them cunningly in the "safe places" of their
wriggling, deliciously fresh little bodies, and so driving them, inch
by inch, down to the foot of the bed, where, still laughing and
gurgling gloriously, they rolled themselves up, to evade his blows,
like a couple of young hedgehogs.
Then the King flung his bolster on to the floor, and, reaching out
his arms, took his enemies captive, tucking them, one under each arm,
and holding them there, kicking and protesting, but wholly willing
prisoners.
Button, at this point, although suspended under the King's left arm,
more or less in mid-air, contrived to wriggle his right hand free, and
held it out gravely, to be shaken. On the strength of his seven years,
Button had lately given up kissing in public, and begun to affect the
formal manner of the man of the world, in matters of courtesy, as
shrewdly observed in Uncle Bond.
"Good morning, my boy," he remarked, in Uncle Bond's blandest manner.
In order to shake Button's hand, the King was compelled to release Bill
from his prison, under his right arm. Bill, whose happy fate it was
to be still only five, the true golden age, had no man of the world
pretensions, no sense of shame in his affections. Breaking ruthlessly
into Button's formal greeting, he flung both his chubby arms round
the King's neck, pulled his head down to be kissed, and then hugged
him, with all the force in his lithe little body, chanting in a voice
absurdly like Judith's the while--
"Diana's got a foal, all legs and stumpy tail, and a white star on its
face. We're making the hay. There's a wren's nest in the garden. It's
past six o'clock, and it's a lovely summer morning, and you've got to
get up, Uncle Alfred."
From some dusty pigeonhole in his memory, where it had lain since his
own far-away childhood, there floated out into the King's mind, a
phrase, a sentence--
"And I said I will not put forth mine hand to touch my King, for he is
the Lord's Anointed."
It was a phrase, a sentence, which he could trace back to the Bible
lessons, which had been as faithfully and remorselessly delivered, on
Sunday afternoons, in the Royal nursery, as in any other nursery of the
period, when the strict discipline in such matters, derived originally
from the now well-nigh forgotten Victorian era, had not been altogether
relaxed. It was a phrase, a sentence, which had impressed itself upon
his childish imagination, and had, for years, stood between him, and
his father, the King. His father had been the Lord's Anointed. As a
child he had not dared to put forth his hand to touch him! For years,
he had lived in awe, almost in fear, of his own father. Perhaps this
was why, even down to the day of his death, the King had always seemed
to him to be a man apart, isolated, lonely, remote. Perhaps this
was partly why, he himself, now that he was King, was so constantly
conscious of his own intolerable isolation.
"And I said I will not put forth mine hand to touch my King, for he is
the Lord's Anointed."
If Button and Bill, particularly Bill, whose chubby arms were, even
now, tightening around him, knew his real identity, knew that he was
the King, "the Lord's Anointed," not a fairy tale King, not a King
of their own childish play, but _the_ King, in whose procession they
had thought Uncle Alfred might have a place, would not they live in
awe of him, would not they fear him, would not the present delightful
spontaneity, the fearlessness, the frank embraces, of their intercourse
with him, be irreparably injured?
Yes. His decision of the night before must stand.
Button and Bill must never know, Judith and Uncle Bond must never
know, his real identity.
At that moment, Judith knocked at the bedroom door.
"Good morning, Alfred. The bathroom is yours, and the Imps, if you
don't mind having them with you, and letting them have a splash," she
called out cheerily. "But no flood in the passage, this morning, mind!
Breakfast in half an hour, on the verandah. We shall be by ourselves.
Uncle Bond has had another bad night. 'Cynthia' has failed him again.
He daren't face eggs and bacon in public, he says. Hurry up, Imps. Big
sponge, floating soap, and bath towels, at the double."
"I'm first!" Button shrieked, making a wild dive for the door.
"I'd rather be last!" Bill explained, quite unconcerned, lingering to
give the King a final hug.
"If I'm last, I shall be able to float 'Ironclad Willie,' and
'Snuffles,' shan't I? They haven't had a swim--for _ever_ so long--poor
dears."
'Ironclad Willie,' and 'Snuffles,' were a large china fish, and a small
china duck, which Bill sometimes forgot, and sometimes remembered at
bath time.
A hilarious, crowded, half hour followed. It was a half hour lit up,
for the King, by the blended innocence and mischief which shone in the
Imps' eyes, a half hour set to music for him by the Imps' gurgling
chuckles, and radiant, childish laughter. First came the bathroom,
where the Imps splashed and twisted in the bath, their brown, wriggling
little bodies as lithe and supple as those of young eels; where Bill,
lost in a huge bath towel, demanded assistance in drying all the back
places and corners; where Button solemnly lathered his chin, just
as Uncle Alfred lathered his chin; where Bill was, for one terrible
moment, in imminent peril of his life, as he grabbed at the case of
shining razors. Then came the bedroom again, where odd, queer-shaped
little garments had to be turned right side out, and buttons and
strings had to be fastened, and tied. Innocency, fearlessness, trust,
mischief, and laughter were inextricably mingled in it all, with
laughter predominating, the radiant laughter of the happy child,
ignorant of evil.
All this was all as it had always been, and, for that reason, it all
made a more poignant appeal, than ever before, this morning, to the
King.
Breakfast was served, as Judith had promised, out on the sunlit
verandah.
One glance at Judith, as he approached the breakfast table, assured the
King that it was the old Judith with whom he had to deal.
Dressed in white, and as fresh and cool as the morning, Judith was
already in her place, at the head of the table, hospitably entrenched
behind the coffee pot.
She looked up at the King, with her customary little nod, and friendly
smile.
"You slept? You are rested? It was dreamless sleep? Good boy!" she said.
And she poured out his coffee.
From that moment, they fell, easily and naturally, into their usual
routine.
Intimate conversation, with the Imps at the table, was out of the
question. An occasional glance, a sympathetic smile, was all that
could pass between them. The King was well content to have it so. He
was pleasantly conscious that the accord between them, which had been
so inexplicably broken, for a time, the night before, was completely
restored. Their friendship was unimpaired. Nothing else mattered.
Looking at Judith, cool, competent, and self-contained, as she was, he
found himself almost doubting the actuality of the emotional crisis of
the night before. Had that scene in the night nursery been a dream? A
mere figment of his own fevered, disordered imagination?
The birds whistled, and called cheerily from the sunlit greenness of
the garden.
The Imps chattered like magpies as they attacked their porridge.
It was a merry, informal, delightfully domestic meal.
This, it seemed to the King, was his only real life. That other life
of his in the palace, guarded, night and day, by the soldiery, and the
police, was the illusion, was the dream.
But the meal was, inevitably, a hurried one, and it ended, abruptly,
and all too soon, when Judith rose suddenly to her feet, and drove the
Imps before her, along the verandah, to say good morning to Diana's
foal in the paddock.
No word of farewell was spoken.
It had become an understood thing, part of the usual routine, that the
King should never say good-bye.
Left alone, the King leant back in his chair, and filled, and lit, his
pipe. He always lingered for awhile, beside the disordered breakfast
table, on these occasions, so that he could savour to the full, the
peace, the quietness, and the beauty of his surroundings. He had learnt
to store up such impressions in his memory, so that he could invoke
them, for his own encouragement, in his darker hours. And, it was more
than probable, that if he waited a few minutes, Uncle Bond would come
out to speak to him. A sentence or two, from Judith's talk the night
before, recurred to him now. Uncle Bond, really worried, was a new, and
strange, phenomenon. If he could cheer the little man up, as Judith had
suggested, he would be glad. He owed a great deal to Uncle Bond.
A thrush, perched at the top of a tall fir tree, near the house,
whistled blithely.
The minutes passed.
Uncle Bond did not come.
At last, the King glanced reluctantly at his watch. It was seven
o'clock. It was time for him to go. He must be back in the palace by
eight o'clock, at the latest. He stood up. Then, conscious of a keen
sense of disappointment at not seeing Uncle Bond, over and above the
depression which he always felt when the moment came for him to leave
Paradise, he stepped down off the verandah, and moved slowly round the
side of the house, through the sunlit garden, towards the garage.
He had no hope of seeing Judith, or even the Imps, again. They would
stay in the paddock, or in the hayfields beyond, until he had driven
away, clear of the house, and the garden.