Once, on a winter evening of fog-thickened darkness, when he had been driving out to see Judith, as he was driving now, the King had grown uncertain of his route. Coming to this signpost, he had been glad to halt, to verify his position. Clambering up the post, with the ready agility of the sailor, he had struck a match, to discover that the signpost had been used, by some unknown humorist, to perpetrate a jest, with which he had found himself in instant, serious, and wholehearted sympathy. The ordinary place names had been obliterated on the signpost fingers. In lieu of them had been painted, in rude, black letters, on the finger pointing to London, "To Hades," and, on the opposite finger, pointing north, out into the open country, "To Paradise."
The King headed the car now "To Paradise," with an uplifting of the heart, which never failed him, on this portion of the road.
A little later, he became aware that he was passing the site of his former breakdown, the breakdown which had first led him, a year ago, to Judith.
He knew then that he had run out of Middlesex into Hertfordshire.
Soon the familiar turning of the narrow, tree shadowed lane, on the left of the road, came into view. Swinging the car into the lane, the King, once again, slackened his speed. He drove now with special care. It had become part of a charming game, that he and Judith played, that he should try to drive down the lane, and up to the house, without her hearing his approach. Somehow, he hardly ever won. Somehow, Judith was always on the alert, always expecting him.
But tonight, it almost seemed, in view of the unusual lateness of his arrival, as if he might score one of his rare successes. The car ran smoothly, and all but silently, down the narrow lane. At the bottom, at the house, the carriage gate, as usual, stood wide open. In the moonlit drive, the rhododendron bushes and the laburnum trees were in full blossom, just as they had been on that memorable first night, a year ago. The King drove straight up the drive, and round the side of the silent, darkened house, to the garage beyond. The garage door, like the carriage gate, stood wide open. Here, in Paradise, apparently, there was no need to guard against motor thieves.
The King turned the car, and backed it into the garage, beside Uncle Bond's huge Daimler. The silence which followed his shutting off of the engine, was profound, the essential night silence of the country. Flinging off his thick, leather motor coat, his hat, and his goggles, he tossed them, one after the other, into the car. Then he left the garage, and moved quickly back round the side of the house, treading, whenever possible, on the grassy borders of the garden flower beds, lest the sound of his footsteps should reach Judith, and so warn her of his approach.
CHAPTER IV
