CHAPTER IV
N a bush, close up to the house, a nightingale was in full song. Further away, from one of the trees beyond the shadowy garden lawn, another nightingale replied. It was as if the two birds were singing against each other for mastery, pouring out, in a wild, throbbing ecstasy, the one after the other, twin cascades of lovely, liquid, matchless notes.
Judith was sitting on the moonlit verandah.
The King laughed softly to himself, when he saw her.
As usual, he had lost!
She rose to her feet, to receive him, as he approached, and so stood, tall and slender, just as she had stood on that first, memorable night, a year ago, framed in the ghostly white blossoms of the clematis creeper, which covered the verandah pillars and rail. She was wearing an evening gown of some material in white satin which had a glossy sheen that shone almost as brightly as the moonlight against the dark background of the silent house. She was bareheaded, and the light, night breeze had ruffled one or two tresses of her luxuriant jet black hair. Her beautiful, vivid face was flushed. Her deep, dark, mysterious eyes were aglow. Her lips were parted in a little smile of mingled humour and triumph.
"I knew that you would come tonight," she said.
The King stepped up on to the verandah, to her side.
"I had to come," he confessed.
"It is a long time, a week, ten days, since you were here."
"I am not my own master. I have been—very busy. They have given me—promotion!"
"The Service! Always the Service!" Judith cried.
"It is the King's Service," the King replied.
"I know! I would not have it otherwise, even if I could," Judith murmured. "I am glad, and proud, that you have been very busy; that they have given you—promotion; that you serve—the King! And, tonight, you are wearing his colours?"
As she spoke, she put out her hand, and deftly rearranged the long ribbons of the red, white, and blue rosette, which the audacious Doris had pinned to his coat, earlier in the night.
"And, tonight, I am wearing his colours," the King replied. "When the storm, that they say is coming, really breaks, the King will need all his friends."
With a quick, abrupt movement, which seemed to indicate a sudden change of mood, Judith laid her hands on his shoulders, and turned him a little to the right, so that the moonlight fell full upon his face.
"Yes. You have changed. Your—promotion—has made a difference," she murmured. "You speak gravely. You look older. You are more serious. And there are little lines, and wrinkles, and a frown there, that was never there before."
The King drew in his breath sharply.
The light pressure of Judith's hands on his shoulders, and the sudden acute sense of her nearness which it brought him, disturbed him strangely.
This was a mistake. This was dangerous. And it was unlike Judith. It was not Judith's way.
All at once Judith seemed to divine his distress.
She turned from him quickly.
"Come and see the Imps," she said, "I was just going in, to look at them, when you arrived."
Light of foot, and slender, and tall, she moved off then, on tiptoe, without waiting for him, along the shadowy verandah, towards the open window-door of the night nursery near by.
Conscious of a relief, of which he was somehow ashamed, the King followed her, obediently, on tiptoe in turn.
In the night nursery, the nightlight, which protected Button and Bill from the evil machinations of ghosts and goblins, was burning dimly, in its saucer, on the mantelpiece, but a shaft of bright moonlight revealed the two cots, at the far end of the room, in which the children lay, fast asleep, side by side. Judith was already bending over the foot of the cots, when the King entered the room. She looked round at him, finger on lip, as he approached. Button, flushed and rosy, stirred in his sleep, and flung one small arm out of bed, across the snow-white counterpane. Bill, cherubic and chubby, heroically lying on, lest he should suck, his thumb, never moved.
"They have had a wonderful day," Judith whispered. "We ran our flag up, this morning, in honour of the King, and I tried to make them understand about the Coronation. Bill wanted to know if Uncle Alfred would be in the procession! They would do nothing else for the rest of the day, but play at being King. You see, they took their crowns to bed with them."
She pointed to two crowns, crude, homemade, cardboard toys, covered with gilt and silver paper, which lay, one on each pillow, beside the sleeping children.
A strange thrill, a chill of presentiment, a sense of some impending crisis, which, it seemed, he was powerless to prevent, which he must make no attempt to prevent, ran through the King. He shivered. Then he leant over the cots, and, very carefully, lest he should wake him, picked up the crown which lay on Button's pillow.
The crude, grotesque, cardboard toy made a poignant appeal to him.
Inevitably this toy cardboard crown reminded the King of that other Crown, from which, even here in Paradise, it seemed, he could not escape, that other Crown which had been placed on his head at the climax of the long and exhausting Coronation ceremony, not many hours back. That other Crown had been heavy. This was light. That other Crown had been fashioned by cunning artists in metal, out of the enduring materials judged most precious by man. This crown had been laboriously patched together by the untried fingers of a child, out of the flimsy, worthless materials furnished by a nursery cupboard. And yet, of the two crowns, was the one more valuable, more worth possessing, than the other? Both were symbols. That other Crown was the symbol of a heavy burden, of a great responsibility. This toy crown was the symbol of a child's fertile imagination, and happy play. Both were pageantry. The one was the pageantry of a lifetime's isolation, and labour. The other was the pageantry of a child's happy play, for a single summer day.
The irony of the contrast, the irony of his own position, gripped the King, with a thrill of something akin to physical pain.
With the absurd, toy cardboard crown still in his hand, he turned, and looked at Judith.
A dimly realized, instinctive rather than conscious, desire for sympathy prompted his look.
And Judith failed him.
It was not what she did. It was not what she said. She did nothing. She said nothing. And yet, in one of those strange flashes of intuition, which come, at times, to the least sensitive of men, the King was aware that Judith was not herself; that the accord which had hitherto always existed between them was broken; and that he and she had suddenly become—antagonistic.
Judith stood with her hands resting lightly on the brass rail at the foot of Button's cot. Outwardly her attitude was wholly passive. None the less, as he gazed at her, the King's intuitive conviction of their new antagonism deepened.
An odd, tense, little pause ensued.
Then, suddenly, Judith turned, and looked at him.
A wonderful look. A look which amazed, and dumbfounded the King. A look, not of antagonism, as he had anticipated, but, welling up from the depths of her dark, mysterious eyes, a look which spoke, unmistakably, of a woman's tenderness, sympathy, surrender, love.
For a breathless moment or two, they stood thus, facing each other.
Then Judith bent down, hurriedly, over the cots once again.
"If you will go out on to the verandah, Alfred, I will join you there, in a minute or two," she said.
Her voice was husky, tremulous, low.
Mechanically, the King replaced the absurd toy cardboard crown, which he was still holding in his hand, on Button's pillow. Then, dazed, and like a man in a dream, he swung slowly round on his heel, and passed back, through the room, out to the verandah again.
The nightingales were still singing in the garden. The air was heavy with the rich scent of some night-blossoming stock, set in one of the flowerbeds immediately below the verandah rail. The moon was afloat in a little sea of luminous, billowy, drifting clouds.
The King sat down in one of the large, wicker work chairs, which always stood on the verandah.
He was glad to sit down.
He was trembling from head to foot—
It was for rest, and quiet, and peace, that he had run out to see Judith, and between them, all in a moment, they had blundered, together, into the thick of an emotional crisis.
How? Why?
It was all an inexplicable mystery to him.
Where was the white line Judith had always drawn round herself? Where was the barrier of physical reserve she had always maintained inviolable between them? From the first moment of his arrival, he realized now, in some odd way, almost in spite of herself as it were, she had been—alluring!
A strange, new Judith!
A sudden, queer feeling of resentment stirred within the King.
He had been so sure of Judith!
She had placed him in an impossible, an intolerable position.
No. That was unfair, unjust. Judith was not to blame. Judith did not know—how could she know?—the peculiar difficulties, the inexorable limitations, imposed upon him by his Royal rank. She did not know—how could she know?—that friendship was all he could accept from, all he could offer, to, any woman. To Judith, he was merely a young naval officer, whose frequent visits, whose unmistakable delight in her society, could have only one meaning.
He alone was to blame. By his own act, by his own deliberate concealment of his real identity, he had made this crisis inevitable from the first.
What attitude was he to adopt towards Judith now? Could he ignore what had happened? Could he hope that Judith would allow him to ignore what had happened? Or had the time come when he must reveal his real identity to Judith at last? Would she believe him? If she believed him, would she be able to forgive his deception? And, even if she forgave him, would not the shadow thrown by his Royal rank irretrievably injure his intimacy with her, with the Imps, and with Uncle Bond? All the spontaneity, the ease, and the naturalness of their relationship would be at an end.
No. Whatever happened he could not risk that.
Judith and Uncle Bond, were the only people he had ever known who had received him, who had accepted him, for what he was himself, the man who remained when all the adventitious trappings of Royalty had been discarded. Judith and Uncle Bond, were the only people he ever met, who treated him as an equal. As an equal? Judith, and Uncle Bond, quite rightly, often treated him as their inferior, their inferior in knowledge, in experience, in wisdom.
The King leant back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He was suddenly very weary. The reaction following all that he had been through the last twenty-four hours was heavy upon him. Difficult and dangerous moments, he realized, lay immediately in front of him. And he was in no condition to meet either difficulty or danger. What he wanted now was rest—
It was some little time before Judith reappeared on the verandah. When she did reappear she brought with her a tray on which stood decanters, and glasses, and biscuits, and fruit. A picnic meal, like the one which he had enjoyed on that first memorable night twelve months ago, had become, whenever possible, a feature of the ordinary routine of the King's visits.
Judith set down her tray on a wicker work table which stood beside the King.
The King did not look round. He could not, he dare not, face Judith.
Judith slipped behind his chair.
"I am sorry, Alfred," she said. "I blame myself. It was my fault. It ought not to have happened, tonight, of all nights. You were absolutely worn out, already, weren't you? I might, I ought to, have remembered that. I want you to forget all about it, if you can. Now, how long can you stay?"
A great wave of relief swept over the King.
Judith was herself again.
This was the old Judith.
"I shall have to leave at seven o'clock in the morning, as usual. I must be back in town by eight o'clock at the latest," he said.
"Then you must have a drink, and something to eat, at once," Judith, the old Judith, announced taking absolute command of him again, from that moment, as was her wont. "We'll stay out here, and listen to the nightingales, for half an hour, if you like. I am glad they are singing for you, tonight. And then, and then you will go straight to bed."
Drawing another chair up to the table, as she spoke, she sat down. Then she proceeded to wait upon him with the easy, unembarrassed grace which gave such an intimate charm to all her hospitality.
"Whisky and soda? And a biscuit? Or will you smoke?" she asked.
"I am too tired to smoke. I am almost too tired to drink, I think," the King murmured.
Judith looked at him keenly.
"What you want is sleep, Alfred," she said. "Drink this! It will do you good. Don't bother to talk. I'll do the talking."
The King took the glass which Judith held out to him, and drank, as he was told.
Then he leant further back still in his chair.
He had reached a point, he was suddenly conscious now, not far removed from complete exhaustion.
In a little while, Judith, as she had promised, began to talk.
"You will see Uncle Bond, in the morning, of course," she remarked. "You will do him good. He is in rather a bad way, just at present, poor old dear. The new serial seems to be giving him a lot of trouble. 'Cynthia St. Claire' isn't functioning properly, at the moment. He's locked himself up, for several nights now, without any result. He says it doesn't seem to matter how many candles he lights. 'Cynthia' still eludes him. It really is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde business with him, you know. If he is to do any work, he has to be 'Cynthia St. Claire,' and not James Bond. It is plain James Bond we prefer, of course. But it is 'Cynthia' who makes all the money, you know.
"The worst of it is, in spite of what Uncle Bond says, I am afraid it isn't all 'Cynthia's' fault this time. He's been running up to town, and knocking about the clubs, a good deal lately. That is nearly always a sign that he is trying to dodge 'Cynthia.' It is almost as if he had got something on his mind. Seeing you will do him good. He always gets what he calls a flow on, when you have been over. He wants it badly now. The new story is three instalments behind the time-table already. Part of his trouble, I think, is that he is working on a plain heroine. He does them alternately, you know. One Plain. The next Ringlets. This one, I understand, is very plain. He misses the chance, I believe, of filling in with purple passages of personal description. You have read some of Uncle Bond's stuff, haven't you? Officially, I am not allowed to. Unofficially, of course, I read every word of it I can get hold of. It's wonderful how he keeps it up, isn't it? And, every now and then, in spite of 'Cynthia,' he slips in something, without knowing it, which only James Bond could have written. All sorts of unexpected people read him, you know. He says it is the name, and not the stuff, that does the trick. I think that it is the stuff. People like romance. Uncle Bond gives it to them."
At that moment, the sleep, of which the King stood in such dire need, long overdue as it was, touched his eyelids.
Judith shot out her arm, and skilfully retrieved the half empty glass, which all but fell from his hand.
A little later, when he awoke with a start, conscious of the strange refreshment which even a moment's sleep brings, he found that Judith's hand was in his.
"It has been a wonderful summer," Judith murmured. "If the sun did not shine again, for months, we should have no right to complain. First the lilac, and the chestnuts, and the hawthorn; then the laburnum and the rhododendrons; and now the wild roses are beginning to show in the hedges. The skylarks singing at dawn; the cuckoo calling all day; the thrushes and the blackbirds whistling in the hot afternoon; and the nightingales, singing at night, as they are singing now! The bright sun in the morning, the blue sky, and the green of the trees. The haymakers at work in the fields. The whir of the haycutting machine. The Imps tumbling over each other in the hay, and calling to me. Diana's foal in the paddock, all long legs, and short tail. The wren's nest in the garden, with six little wrens in it for Jenny Wren to feed. The afternoon sunlight on the trees; Uncle Bond in the garden, chuckling over his roses; the sunset; the young rabbits, with their white bob-tails, scuttling in and out of the hedges; a patter of rain on the leaves; the breeze in the trees; the twilight; the cool of the evening; and then the blue of the night sky, the stars, and the golden moon, in a bed of billowy, drifting clouds. The scent of the hayfields, the scent of the flowers; and the nightingales singing, in the garden, as they are singing now!
"The nightingales are singing about it all. Can you hear what they say? I have been trying to put the nightingales' song into words. Listen! Those long, liquid notes—"
The night air was heavy with the scent of the night-blossoming stock, in the flowerbed, immediately below the verandah rail. The nightingales sang as if at the climax of their rivalry for mastery. A huge owl lumbered, rather than flew, across the shadowy garden.
For a moment, it seemed to the King, as if the verandah, the house, the garden, and even the night sky, stood away from them, receded, and that he and Judith were alone, together, in infinite space.
The moment passed.
Judith stood up.
"Bed!" she said, speaking with the note of smiling, kindly discipline, with which she ruled the Imps, and, when she chose, even Uncle Bond and himself. "You will be able to sleep now, Alfred."
The King rose obediently to his feet to find, with a certain dull, dazed surprise, that he was stiff and sore, and hardly able to stand.
Dazed as he was, he did not fail to see the look of sharp anxiety which shone, for a moment, in Judith's eyes.
"Lean on me, old man!" she exclaimed. "You are done up. I'll see you to your room. They have been working you too hard. Do they never think of—the man—in your Service?"
She put out her arm, as she spoke, and slipped it skilfully round his shoulders.
And so, glad of Judith's support, and only restfully conscious of her nearness now, the King moved off slowly along the verandah towards the room, at the far end of the silent, darkened house, which had come to be regarded as his room, and, as such, was strictly reserved, "in perpetuity," for his use alone.
"Here you are!" Judith announced, at last, halting at the open window door of the room. "You will be able to manage by yourself now, won't you? You must sleep now, Alfred. Dreamless sleep! Every minute of it! The Imps will call you, as usual, in the morning. Good-night."
A minute or two later, the King found himself alone, inside the room, sitting on the edge of the bed, with an urgent desire for sleep rising within him.
The fresh, fragrant night air blew softly into the room, through the open window door, beyond which he could see, as he sat on the edge of the bed, the gently swaying branches of the garden trees, silhouetted against the dark blue background of the moonlit sky.
The nightingales were still singing in the garden.
Yes. He could sleep here.
The room itself invited rest, induced sleep. Plainly, although comfortably furnished, and decorated throughout in a soothing tint of grey, the room had a spaciousness, even an emptiness, which was far more to the King's taste, than the ornate fittings of that other bedroom of his in the palace, where sleep so often eluded him. Beyond the absolutely necessary furniture, there was nothing in the room, save the few essential toilet trifles which he kept there. Nothing was ever altered in, nothing was ever moved from, this room, in his absence. It had all become congenial, friendly, familiar.
The King undressed, mechanically, in the moonlight, and put on the sleeping suit which lay ready to his hand, on the bed, at his side.
Then he got into bed.
His last thought was one of gratitude to, and renewed confidence in, Judith. How she had humoured, how she had managed him, coaxing and cajoling him, as if he had been a sick child, along the shadowy road to sleep. The emotional crisis which had arisen so inexplicably between them had, as inexplicably spent its force harmlessly. Their friendship was unimpaired. Nothing was altered between them. Nothing was to be altered. Judith had emphasized that. The Imps were to wake him, in the morning, as usual. He was to see Uncle Bond. All was to be as it had always been. He was glad. He had no wish for, he shrank instinctively from the thought of, any changes, here, in Paradise.
But now he must sleep. Dreamless sleep.
And so, he fell asleep.
He slept, at once, so soundly, that he never stirred, when, in a little while, Judith slipped noiselessly into the room. Crossing to the bed, she stood, for a moment or two, looking down at him, with all the unfathomable tenderness in her dark, mysterious eyes, which she had asked him to forget, which she had made him forget.
Suddenly, she leant over the bed, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
Then she slipped quickly out of the room, once again.