But while Parliament talked vacuously within, outside came rumblings of storm; the discontent of certain sections of the community with conditions unsettled or unattended to was gathering to a head. And on the third day after the session had opened, Charlotte said to her father with rather a tragic look, "Papa, do you know what is going to happen to-night?" And then she told him.
It was those Women Chartists again.
The King had been true to his word, he had made inquiries; in a way he had even "looked into the matter," and had received from the right and official quarter bland assurances that there was nothing in it—merely a general obstreperousness and a wish to cause trouble to the police. But his conscience, which so often ran away with him, was still troubled; and so when the evening came he sent once again for the newly appointed Home Minister; and in reply to rather anxious questions was given confidently to understand that the police arrangements were quite adequate for the occasion, that everything would be done as quietly and as leniently as possible; and that no edge of the disturbance would in any case be allowed to overflow in the direction of the royal palace. As he listened to the cocksure tone of this new minister, and the almost patronizing air with which he exposed his official fitness for the post so recently conferred on him, the King ceased to ask questions—let the man talk himself out,—and then, when silence seemed to give consent, got rid of him.
It was now time that he should go to dress for dinner, but the motive force was absent. He stood for a while considering, then went to the window, and opening it let in the distant hum of the city traffic.
All sounded as usual, pleasant, busy, peaceable. Yet if what his daughter told him was true, within half-an-hour those quietly-sounding streets would be thronged with thousands upon thousands waiting for the arrival of the women to claim their old historical right of petition; and serried lines of police—thousands of them also—would be standing to bar their way, whatever direction they might go in quest of the governing authority. And in the hands of these women would be petitions personally addressed to himself; yet never had any minister put to him the question whether he would be willing to receive them and hear what they had to say; such an idea seemed not to have entered their heads—or was it the fear lest such a reception might give the cause too great an importance in the public eye? Here, once again, then, proof met him of the conspiracy of modern government constantly going on to bring about disconnection between the Crown and the real life-needs and aspirations of the people. Suffocating traditions closed him round making a cypher of him—to himself a scorn and a derision, and a monster unto many—just as much, by this denial of petition, a breaker of his Crown oath as those who in the past had paid penalty for it with their lives!
There outside, in the nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps below, and emergent like a full moon on a misty sky the face of the great Parliament clock dawned luminous to his gaze.
So long he stood, and listened, and waited, that before he closed the window again the clock had told the three-quarters to eight. Then he hesitated no more; passing out of his study and down to a lower corridor he came presently to the cloak lobby, and selecting a rough full-length overcoat, a motor cap, and from a drawer a pair of clouded snow-glasses, arrayed himself in these, and with flaps drawn down and coat collar turned high, passed out by a small side-entrance which led on to the terrace.
Chill air and a bosom of darkness received him; through the thick barrier of trees skirting the walled precincts scarcely a light winked; only the large domed conservatory behind him threw a pale radiance before his feet as he crossed the terrace and moved off by a winding path in the direction of a small postern concealed in shrubbery.
As he quitted the grass, the sound of his own footfalls upon firm gravel made him guiltily afraid; and it was not without some moral effort that he, a king in his own domain, kept himself from stepping back secretively to the turfed edge. Suppressing the inclination, he proceeded at a smart pace, and coming presently to the door with a slip-latch on its inner side he opened it and passed through.
At the sound of opening a policeman stationed outside turned and stood passively regarding him; his muffled appearance seemed sufficiently in keeping with the uses to which this particular exit was put by others to awaken neither suspicion nor surprise. With a half-waggish air of respect the man touched his helmet. "Good-evening, sir," said he, as though there subsisted between the habitués of that door and himself a sort of understanding.