The cheering redoubled—
And so, with the Duke in as prominent a place as the King could give him, as prominent a place as his own, the carriage moved on, through the dust and the clamour, and the wild cheering, into the heart of the town—
By this time, the heat, the glitter and the glare, and the frenzied enthusiasm which surged all about him, had begun to tell upon the King. The physical strain of it all became almost unendurable, deadening the impressions which for some few minutes had been so vivid, so clear. The thousand, flushed, smiling faces, the thousand eyes troubled him no more. The crowd became a mere blurred, dark, clamorous mass, swaying to and fro, on either side of him. Only the Duke remained distinct, individual, standing bolt upright beside him in the carriage, impassive, immovable, a rock to lean upon, physically, and morally, as he smiled and bowed, this way and that, with unseeing eyes—
How long the torture of this later stage of their journey lasted, the King never knew. It had become torture now. All sense of time, and distance, and place left him. He had no clear idea of the route which the carriage followed. His body ached from head to foot. The roaring of the crowd was a mere whisper to the roaring within his own ears. He leant more and more heavily upon the Duke—
At last, at the end of an eternity of effort, an eternity of strained endurance, the carriage swung through Trafalgar Square, and so passed, under the lavishly decorated Admiralty Arch, into the Mall.
The white front of the palace, at the far end of the Mall, was now in sight.
This sudden, abrupt glimpse of the palace, and the promise of ultimate release and rest it afforded, served to arouse the King, and revived his interest, momentarily, in his immediate surroundings.
In the Mall, the Coronation flags still hung, flaunting and gay, in the sunlight. On either side of the road, the stands from which the guests of the Government had viewed the Coronation procession were once again crowded with people, whose enthusiasm was as wild, and whose cheering was as loud, as the carriage moved slowly past them, as that at any other point along the whole route.
One detail in the riot of colour, and the tumult, about him, caught the King's attention.
The road was no longer lined by the police, and the military. In their place stood men in every variety of civilian dress, alike alone in this, that every one of them was wearing war medals proudly displayed, in the majority of cases on very threadbare coats.