THE KING WHO WENT ON STRIKE THE KING WHO WENT ON STRIKE BY PEARSON CHOATE Author of "Men Limited: An Impertinence" "And those things do best please me That befal preposterously." Puck "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Act. III. Scene II. NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1924 Copyright, 1924 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN U.S.A. VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC. BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK "Is it not strange so few Kings abdicate; and none yet heard of has been known to commit suicide? Fritz the First, of Prussia, alone tried it, and they cut the rope." "The French Revolution, A History." Part I. Book VII. Chapter XI _Thomas Carlyle_ THE KING WHO WENT ON STRIKE CHAPTER I The King leant against the stone balustrade, which runs round the roof of Buckingham Palace, and looked about him. All around him, above him, and below him, the night was ablaze with a myriad lights. Loyal Londoners, in accordance with their custom, were closing their Coronation celebrations with illuminations, with fireworks, and with good-humoured horse-play in the crowded streets. In spite of gloomy predictions to the contrary, the proverbial Coronation weather of the last day or two had not failed. A radiant June day had given place to a wonderful June night. Here, on the palace roof, high up above the tumult and the shouting the night air was cool and fragrant. The King rested his elbows on the broad top of the carved stone balustrade. He was very weary. But he was glad to be out in the open air once again. And he was gladder still, at last, to be alone-- "A tall, fair, goodlooking young man, still in the early twenties, with an open, almost boyish face": "A young man of athletic build, clean-shaven, and very like his dead brother, the Prince, but lacking, perhaps, something of the Prince's personal distinction, and charm": "Thick, fair, curly hair, blue eyes, and a happy, smiling mouth": "A typical young English naval officer, with an eager, boyish face, unclouded, as yet, by any shadow of his high destiny"--it was in phrases such as these that the descriptive writers in the newspapers had described, more or less adequately, the new King's outward appearance. What he was inwardly, what the inner man thought, and felt, and suffered, was not within their province, or their knowledge. At the moment, his outward appearance was completed by an easy fitting, black, smoking jacket, plain evening dress trousers, and a pair of shabby dancing pumps, into which he had changed immediately after the state banquet, which had been the final ordeal of his long and exhausting official day. It was characteristic of the inner man, about whom so little was known, that he should have been thus impatient to throw off the gorgeous uniform, and the many unearned decorations, which the banquet had necessitated. It was characteristic of him, too, that he should be bareheaded, now, and drawing absently at a pipe, which he had forgotten to fill--