CHAPTER V
T 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.