"Humbly showeth that by your Majesty's Ministers law and justice are delayed, and prayeth that your Gracious Majesty will so order and govern that your faithful subjects' grievances may forthwith be sought and inquired into, and remedy granted thereto by Act of Parliament. And your petitioners will ever pray."
That was all. What the grievances might be was not stated. He knew that to hear argument for or against a given case was outside the functions of the Crown; but he knew equally well that to order inquiry to be made lay still within his right, though every minister in the Cabinet except one would seek to deny it to him. And so he sat looking at the crumpled sheet which meant so much to so many thousands of lives; and slowly the night went by.
Long before the first chitter of awakening birds, and before the first hint of light had crept into the east, he heard outside the slow stir of the city's life breaking back from short uneasy slumber. With stiffened limbs he got up from his chair, for the room had grown cold and his body ached with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening and corners draped into shade.
Halfway across this elevation he paused to look down into the vast chamber below. At some point among its chandeliers burned a small pinhole of light that revealed in a strange dimness various forms of furniture, showing monstrous and uncouth in their night attire. Night-gowns rather than pajamas seemed the general wear; only a few legs were to be seen. In this, its sleeping aspect, the place was certainly more harmonious and more chaste than by day; mirrors and pictures loomed from the white walls with a mystery that would disappear when the lusters contained their light; and the King lingered to take in the pleasant strangeness of it all, and to wonder what was this new quality which so attracted him.
As he did so his ear caught from without a faint reverberation of muffled sound; even and regular in its beat, it drew near.
At the far end a door was thrown open; a flush of light entered the chamber, and there came following it a troop of men wearing felt slippers and long linen aprons, and bearing upon their shoulders brooms, feather-heads, wash-leathers, brushes, dusters, steps, vacuum-cleaners, and other mysterious instruments of an uninterpretable form.
With the regularity and precision of a drilled army, and with no word spoken, they moved forward to the attack. Curtains were drawn, cords pulled, blinds raised, steps mounted. Lusters jingled to the touch of feathers, cornices shed down their minute particles of dust to the Charybdian maw of traveling gramophone. Over the carpet metallic cow-catchers wheezed and groaned with a loud trundling of wheels, and departed processionally to the chamber beyond. Then by a triple process, simultaneously conducted, the furniture-sheets were lifted, drawn off, and folded; a large wicker-table on wheels received and bore them away. A cloud of light skirmishers followed after; and over every cushion and seat and polished surface plied their manicurist skill. Then a storming-party escaladed the gallery from below and the King, to avoid the embarrassment of an encounter with a body of servitors who had not the pleasure of his acquaintance, was at last obliged to retire.
But what a wonderful machine had been here revealed to his gaze—manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of wear or the marks of muddy boots? Yet never before had any thought on the matter occurred to him. And what if some fine day those insects, fired by revolutionary zeal, had taken it to heart to rise up in their dozens by those escalading ladders to the first story and rush the private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed! What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm, very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every November? Did that really meet and counter modern methods of conspiracy and assassination, or the growing dangers of labor unrest? He very much doubted it.
And so, with his head very full of the wonder, the order, and the underlying disturbance of it all, he passed on to his own inner chamber, and had now something to tell the Queen as to how their immediate domestic affairs were conducted which should entirely put aside all awkward questions as to what he had been doing the evening before and where he had spent the night.
But, as a matter of fact, sleek officialdom had sheltered the Queen from all anxiety, and she had not a notion that the King had been anywhere except to some consultation with ministers, and thence late to bed.