“It ought to be dropped,” she said, “unless you can get Mr. Herne to act the King himself. He is the only person who knows or cares what it’s all about.”

“God bless my soul,” was the helpful comment of Mr. Herne.

“I don’t know what you people imagine it’s all about,” went on Olive with some bitterness. “You seem to have turned it all into a sort of opera–a comic opera. Well, I don’t know anything about it, in the way he does; but I did mean something by it, for all that. Oh, I don’t imagine I can express it properly–not half so well as any old song like the one that says ‘Will ye no come back again?’ or ‘When the King enjoys his own again.’”

“That’s Jacobite,” Archer explained kindly. “Mixing up the periods a bit, eh?”

“I don’t know what King it is who ought to come back, any more than anybody else does,” answered Olive steadily. “King Arthur or King Richard or King Charles or somebody. But Mr. Herne does know something about what those men meant by a king. I rather wish Mr. Herne really were King of England.”

Julian Archer threw back his head and hooted with delighted laughter. There was something exaggerated and almost unnatural about his laughter; like the shrill mockery with which men have received prophecies.

“But look here,” protested the more practical Rosamund, “even supposing Mr. Herne could act the King, then who is going to take his own part, that we had such a bother about before?”

Olive Ashley turned her back once more and appeared to resume tidying up her paints.

“Oh,” she said, rather abruptly, “I could arrange that. A friend of mine will take it on if you like.”

The others stared at her in some wonder; and then Rosamund said: “Hadn’t we better consult Monkey about this? He knows such a lot of people.”

“I’m sorry,” returned Olive, still tidying up, “I’m afraid I’ve sent him off on a job of my own. He very kindly offered to get one of my paints for me.”

And indeed it was true that, while the social circle was settling down (to the bewilderment of Mr. Archer) into a sort of acceptance of the idea of Mr. Herne’s coronation, their friend Douglas Murrel was in the very act of setting out upon an expedition which was to have a curious effect upon all their fortunes. Olive Ashley had asked him to discover whether a particular pigment was still procurable at the artist’s colourmen’s. But he had all the cheerful bachelor’s exaggerated love of adventure, and especially of preparations for adventure. Just as he had started on his nocturnal round with Mr. Braintree with a general sense that the night would last for ever, so he set out on his little commission for Miss Ashley with a general assumption that it would lead him to the end of the world. And indeed it did perhaps in some sense lead him to the end of the world; or perhaps to the beginning of another one. He took out a considerable sum of money from the bank; he stuffed his pockets with tobacco and flasks and pocket-knives as if he were going to the North Pole. Most intelligent men play this childish game with themselves in one form or another; but he was certainly carrying it rather far and acting as if he expected to meet ogres and dragons when he walked up the street.

And, sure enough, no sooner had he stepped outside the old Gothic gateway of Seawood than he came face to face with a prodigy. He might almost have said a monster. A figure was entering the house as he was leaving it; a figure at once fearfully unfamiliar. He struggled with some confusion of identity; as in a nightmare. Then he sank into a stupefied certainty; for the figure was that of Mr. John Braintree; and he had shaved off his beard.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MISADVENTURES OF MONKEY

Murrel stood staring in the porch at the figure which appeared dark against the outer landscape; and all the fanciful part of him, which was largely subconscious, was stirred by half serious fancies. No black cat or white crow or piebald horse or any such proverbial prodigy could have been so inscrutable an omen at the beginning of his journey as this strange appearance of the Shaven Syndicalist. Meanwhile Braintree stared back at him with a hardihood almost amounting to hostility, despite their mutual affection; he could no longer thrust out his beard, but he thrust out his chin so as to make it seem equally big and aggressive.

But Murrel only said genially, “You are coming to help us, I hope.” He was a tactful person and he did not say, “You are coming to help us, after all.” But he understood in a flash all that had happened; he understood Olive Ashley’s country walks and her abstraction and the way in which her curious social experiment had come to a crisis. Poor Braintree had been caught on the rebound, in the reaction after his depressing experiment as a drunken reveller. He might have easily gone on bullying her along with all the other nobs, so long as he had the sensation of marching into their palace with the populace behind him. But since the night when Murrel himself had sown the seed of doubt about his friend’s democratic status, the latter had become merely an intensely sensitive and rather introspective individual; and one on whom graciousness and a delicate sympathy were certainly not altogether thrown away. Murrel understood all about it, except perhaps the end of it, which remained rather cloudy; but he did not allow the faintest trace of intelligence to appear in his tone of voice.

“Yes,” replied Braintree stolidly, “Miss Ashley told me somebody had to come in and help. I wonder you don’t do it yourself.”

“Not much,” replied Murrel. “I said at the beginning that if they would insult me by calling me a stage-manager, at least I wasn’t wicked enough to be an actor-manager. Since then Julian Archer has taken over all the managing there is lying about. Besides, Miss Ashley has another sort of commission in my case.”

“Indeed?” inquired Braintree. “Now I come to look at you, you look as if you were going out to seek your fortunes in the goldfields or somewhere.” And he eyed with some wonder the equipment of his friend, who carried a knapsack, a resolute looking walking-stick and a leather belt apparently supporting a sheath-knife.

“Yes,” said Murrel, “I am armed to the teeth. I am going on active service–going to the Front.” Then after a pause he added, “The truth is I’m going shopping.”

“Oh,” said the wondering Braintree.

“Say good-bye to my friends, old fellow,” said Murrel with some emotion. “If I fall in the first charge at the Bargain Counter, say that my last thought was fixed firmly on Julian Archer. Put up a little stone on the spot where I fell, and when the Spring Sales come back with all their birds and flowers, remember me. Farewell. I wish you luck.”

And waving his resolute walking-stick in the air with gestures of benediction, he betook himself briskly along the path through the park, leaving the dark figure in the porch looking rather doubtfully after him.

The birds of spring, which he had just invoked so pathetically, were indeed singing in the bright plantation of little trees through which he went; the light green tufts of leafage had themselves something of the look of sprouting feathers. It was one of those moments in the year when the world seems to be growing wings. The trees seemed to stand on tiptoe as if ready to soar into the air, in the wake of the great pink and white cloud that went before him overhead like a cherubic herald in the sky. Something childish in his memories awoke; and he could almost have fancied that he was a fairy prince and his clumsy walking-stick was a sword. Then he remembered that his enterprise was not to take him into forests and valleys but into the labyrinth of commonplace and cockney towns; and his plain and pleasant and shrewd face was wrinkled with a laugh of irony.