Sweeping along the Mall, and under the lavishly decorated Admiralty Arch, the car ran out into Trafalgar Square, without a check. But here, almost at once, the King had to pull up abruptly. The policeman, on point duty, at the top of Whitehall, had his arm held out against all eastbound traffic. Irritated by, and chafing under, the delay, the King was compelled to apply his brakes, and run the car into position, in the long queue of waiting vehicles, which had already gathered behind the policeman's all powerful arm.
A moment later, looking up from his brakes, as the car came to a standstill, he became aware that he had pulled up immediately beneath the equestrian statue of Charles the First.
Here was an odd, an amusing—a superstitious man might even have said an ominous—coincidence.
Had not the storm which was about to break, broken before, long ago, in this man's reign?
And had not this man been engulfed by the storm?
The King looked up at the statue with a sudden flash of quickened, sober interest.
Had not this man, alone, amongst all his predecessors been compelled to drain the poisonous cup of revolution to the very dregs?
There had been no lightning conductor, no Duke of Northborough, no strong man, sure of himself, and of his purpose, ready, and eager, to take the full shock of the lightning flash, in this man's day.
But there had been. The Earl of Strafford. And Charles—Charles the Martyr, did not some people still call him?—had torn his lightning conductor down with his own hands. He had failed Strafford. He had abandoned him to his enemies. With his own hand, he had signed Strafford's, and so, in a sense, his own, death warrant.
And he, himself—if this was an omen?