BOOK V

I. THE EMPIRE OF NOTTING HILL 259

II. THE LAST BATTLE 279

III. TWO VOICES 291

_ILLUSTRATIONS_

IN THE DARK ENTRANCE THERE APPEARED A FLAMING FIGURE _Frontispiece_

_To face page_

CITY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED WITH

VEAL CUTLETS 16

"I'M THE KING OF THE CASTLE" 70

"I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING" 104

MAP OF THE SEAT OF WAR 190

KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH DIGNITY 220

"A FINE EVENING, SIR," SAID THE CHEMIST 264

"WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE!" 296

BOOK I

_THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL_

CHAPTER I--_Introductory Remarks on the Art of Prophecy_

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been

playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do

it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep

to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in

Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen

very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say

about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait

until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go

and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes,

however, it is great fun.

For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the

childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world

done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable. They stoned the

false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets

with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individually, men may present a

more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But

humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men

are men, but Man is a woman.

But in the beginning of the twentieth century the game of Cheat the

Prophet was made far more difficult than it had ever been before. The

reason was, that there were so many prophets and so many prophecies,

that it was difficult to elude all their ingenuities. When a man did

something free and frantic and entirely his own, a horrible thought

struck him afterwards; it might have been predicted. Whenever a duke

climbed a lamp-post, when a dean got drunk, he could not be really

happy, he could not be certain that he was not fulfilling some

prophecy. In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see

the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was

quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in

crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high

post in the State. And all these clever men were at work giving

accounts of what would happen in the next age, all quite clear, all

quite keen-sighted and ruthless, and all quite different. And it

seemed that the good old game of hoodwinking your ancestors could not

really be managed this time, because the ancestors neglected meat and

sleep and practical politics, so that they might meditate day and

night on what their descendants would be likely to do.

But the way the prophets of the twentieth century went to work was

this. They took something or other that was certainly going on in

their time, and then said that it would go on more and more until

something extraordinary happened. And very often they added that in

some odd place that extraordinary thing had happened, and that it

showed the signs of the times.

Thus, for instance, there were Mr. H. G. Wells and others, who thought

that science would take charge of the future; and just as the

motor-car was quicker than the coach, so some lovely thing would be

quicker than the motor-car; and so on for ever. And there arose from

their ashes Dr. Quilp, who said that a man could be sent on his

machine so fast round the world that he could keep up a long, chatty

conversation in some old-world village by saying a word of a sentence

each time he came round. And it was said that the experiment had been

tried on an apoplectic old major, who was sent round the world so fast

that there seemed to be (to the inhabitants of some other star) a

continuous band round the earth of white whiskers, red complexion and

tweeds--a thing like the ring of Saturn.

Then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter,

who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live

simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed

by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocohontas College), who said that men were

immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and

continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with

the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a

field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians

said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one

would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian,

but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called

it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted

that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then

came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the

pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble.

[Illustration: CITY MEN OUT ON ALL FOURS IN A FIELD COVERED WITH VEAL

CUTLETS.]

And on the other hand, some people were predicting that the lines of

kinship would become narrower and sterner. There was Mr. Cecil Rhodes,

who thought that the one thing of the future was the British Empire,

and that there would be a gulf between those who were of the Empire

and those who were not, between the Chinaman in Hong Kong and the

Chinaman outside, between the Spaniard on the Rock of Gibraltar and

the Spaniard off it, similar to the gulf between man and the lower

animals. And in the same way his impetuous friend, Dr. Zoppi ("the

Paul of Anglo-Saxonism"), carried it yet further, and held that, as a

result of this view, cannibalism should be held to mean eating a

member of the Empire, not eating one of the subject peoples, who

should, he said, be killed without needless pain. His horror at the

idea of eating a man in British Guiana showed how they misunderstood

his stoicism who thought him devoid of feeling. He was, however, in a

hard position; as it was said that he had attempted the experiment,

and, living in London, had to subsist entirely on Italian

organ-grinders. And his end was terrible, for just when he had begun,

Sir Paul Swiller read his great paper at the Royal Society, proving

that the savages were not only quite right in eating their enemies,

but right on moral and hygienic grounds, since it was true that the

qualities of the enemy, when eaten, passed into the eater. The notion

that the nature of an Italian organ-man was irrevocably growing and

burgeoning inside him was almost more than the kindly old professor

could bear.

There was Mr. Benjamin Kidd, who said that the growing note of our

race would be the care for and knowledge of the future. His idea was

developed more powerfully by William Borker, who wrote that passage

which every schoolboy knows by heart, about men in future ages weeping

by the graves of their descendants, and tourists being shown over the

scene of the historic battle which was to take place some centuries

afterwards.

And Mr. Stead, too, was prominent, who thought that England would in

the twentieth century be united to America; and his young lieutenant,

Graham Podge, who included the states of France, Germany, and Russia

in the American Union, the State of Russia being abbreviated to Ra.

There was Mr. Sidney Webb, also, who said that the future would see a

continuously increasing order and neatness in the life of the people,

and his poor friend Fipps, who went mad and ran about the country with

an axe, hacking branches off the trees whenever there were not the

same number on both sides.

All these clever men were prophesying with every variety of ingenuity

what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way, by taking

something they saw "going strong," as the saying is, and carrying it

as far as ever their imagination could stretch. This, they said, was

the true and simple way of anticipating the future. "Just as," said

Dr. Pellkins, in a fine passage,--"just as when we see a pig in a

litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law

of the Inscrutable it will some day be larger than an elephant,--just

as we know, when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more

thickly in a garden, that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow

taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight, so we

know and reverently acknowledge, that when any power in human politics

has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go

on until it reaches to the sky."

And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people

(engaged in the old game of Cheat the Prophet) in a quite

unprecedented difficulty. It seemed really hard to do anything without

fulfilling some of their prophecies.

But there was, nevertheless, in the eyes of labourers in the streets,

of peasants in the fields, of sailors and children, and especially

women, a strange look that kept the wise men in a perfect fever of

doubt. They could not fathom the motionless mirth in their eyes. They

still had something up their sleeve; they were still playing the game

of Cheat the Prophet.

Then the wise men grew like wild things, and swayed hither and

thither, crying, "What can it be? What can it be? What will London be

like a century hence? Is there anything we have not thought of? Houses

upside down--more hygienic, perhaps? Men walking on hands--make feet

flexible, don't you know? Moon ... motor-cars ... no heads...." And so

they swayed and wondered until they died and were buried nicely.

Then the people went and did what they liked. Let me no longer conceal

the painful truth. The people had cheated the prophets of the

twentieth century. When the curtain goes up on this story, eighty

years after the present date, London is almost exactly like what it is

now.

CHAPTER II--_The Man in Green_

Very few words are needed to explain why London, a hundred years

hence, will be very like it is now, or rather, since I must slip into

a prophetic past, why London, when my story opens, was very like it

was in those enviable days when I was still alive.

The reason can be stated in one sentence. The people had absolutely

lost faith in revolutions. All revolutions are doctrinal--such as the

French one, or the one that introduced Christianity. For it stands to

common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and

compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something

positive and divine. Now, England, during this century, lost all

belief in this. It believed in a thing called Evolution. And it said,

"All theoretic changes have ended in blood and ennui. If we change, we

must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. Nature's revolutions

are the only successful ones. There has been no conservative reaction

in favour of tails."

And some things did change. Things that were not much thought of

dropped out of sight. Things that had not often happened did not

happen at all. Thus, for instance, the actual physical force ruling

the country, the soldiers and police, grew smaller and smaller, and at

last vanished almost to a point. The people combined could have swept

the few policemen away in ten minutes: they did not, because they did

not believe it would do them the least good. They had lost faith in

revolutions.

Democracy was dead; for no one minded the governing class governing.

England was now practically a despotism, but not an hereditary one.

Some one in the official class was made King. No one cared how: no one

cared who. He was merely an universal secretary.

In this manner it happened that everything in London was very quiet.

That vague and somewhat depressed reliance upon things happening as

they have always happened, which is with all Londoners a mood, had

become an assumed condition. There was really no reason for any man

doing anything but the thing he had done the day before.

There was therefore no reason whatever why the three young men who had

always walked up to their Government office together should not walk

up to it together on this particular wintry and cloudy morning.

Everything in that age had become mechanical, and Government clerks

especially. All those clerks assembled regularly at their posts. Three

of those clerks always walked into town together. All the

neighbourhood knew them: two of them were tall and one short. And on

this particular morning the short clerk was only a few seconds late to

join the other two as they passed his gate: he could have overtaken

them in three strides; he could have called after them easily. But he

did not.

For some reason that will never be understood until all souls are

judged (if they are ever judged; the idea was at this time classed

with fetish worship) he did not join his two companions, but walked

steadily behind them. The day was dull, their dress was dull,

everything was dull; but in some odd impulse he walked through street

after street, through district after district, looking at the backs of

the two men, who would have swung round at the sound of his voice.

Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and

it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times,

you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you

are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

So the short Government official looked at the coat-tails of the tall

Government officials, and through street after street, and round

corner after corner, saw only coat-tails, coat-tails, and again

coat-tails--when, he did not in the least know why, something happened

to his eyes.

Two black dragons were walking backwards in front of him. Two black

dragons were looking at him with evil eyes. The dragons were walking

backwards it was true, but they kept their eyes fixed on him none the

less. The eyes which he saw were, in truth, only the two buttons at

the back of a frock-coat: perhaps some traditional memory of their

meaningless character gave this half-witted prominence to their gaze.

The slit between the tails was the nose-line of the monster: whenever

the tails flapped in the winter wind the dragons licked their lips. It

was only a momentary fancy, but the small clerk found it imbedded in

his soul ever afterwards. He never could again think of men in

frock-coats except as dragons walking backwards. He explained

afterwards, quite tactfully and nicely, to his two official friends,

that (while feeling an inexpressible regard for each of them) he could

not seriously regard the face of either of them as anything but a

kind of tail. It was, he admitted, a handsome tail--a tail elevated in

the air. But if, he said, any true friend of theirs wished to see

their faces, to look into the eyes of their soul, that friend must be

allowed to walk reverently round behind them, so as to see them from

the rear. There he would see the two black dragons with the blind

eyes.

But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the

small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles--they changed

the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know--that

adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord

of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like

song. He had scarcely noticed the weather before, but with the four

dead eyes glaring at him he looked round and realised the strange dead

day.

The morning was wintry and dim, not misty, but darkened with that

shadow of cloud or snow which steeps everything in a green or copper

twilight. The light there is on such a day seems not so much to come

from the clear heavens as to be a phosphorescence clinging to the

shapes themselves. The load of heaven and the clouds is like a load of

waters, and the men move like fishes, feeling that they are on the

floor of a sea. Everything in a London street completes the fantasy;

the carriages and cabs themselves resemble deep-sea creatures with

eyes of flame. He had been startled at first to meet two dragons. Now

he found he was among deep-sea dragons possessing the deep sea.

The two young men in front were like the small young man himself,

well-dressed. The lines of their frock-coats and silk hats had that

luxuriant severity which makes the modern fop, hideous as he is, a

favourite exercise of the modern draughtsman; that element which Mr.

Max Beerbohm has admirably expressed in speaking of "certain

congruities of dark cloth and the rigid perfection of linen."

They walked with the gait of an affected snail, and they spoke at the

longest intervals, dropping a sentence at about every sixth lamp-post.

They crawled on past the lamp-posts; their mien was so immovable that

a fanciful description might almost say, that the lamp-posts crawled

past the men, as in a dream. Then the small man suddenly ran after

them and said--

"I want to get my hair cut. I say, do you know a little shop anywhere

where they cut your hair properly? I keep on having my hair cut, but

it keeps on growing again."

One of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist.

"Why, here is a little place," cried the small man, with a sort of

imbecile cheerfulness, as the bright bulging window of a fashionable

toilet-saloon glowed abruptly out of the foggy twilight. "Do you know,

I often find hair-dressers when I walk about London. I'll lunch with

you at Cicconani's. You know, I'm awfully fond of hair-dressers'

shops. They're miles better than those nasty butchers'." And he

disappeared into the doorway.

The man called James continued to gaze after him, a monocle screwed

into his eye.

"What the devil do you make of that fellow?" he asked his companion, a

pale young man with a high nose.

The pale young man reflected conscientiously for some minutes, and

then said--

"Had a knock on his head when he was a kid, I should think."

"No, I don't think it's that," replied the Honourable James Barker.

"I've sometimes fancied he was a sort of artist, Lambert."

"Bosh!" cried Mr. Lambert, briefly.

"I admit I can't make him out," resumed Barker, abstractedly; "he

never opens his mouth without saying something so indescribably

half-witted that to call him a fool seems the very feeblest attempt at

characterisation. But there's another thing about him that's rather

funny. Do you know that he has the one collection of Japanese lacquer

in Europe? Have you ever seen his books? All Greek poets and mediæval

French and that sort of thing. Have you ever been in his rooms? It's

like being inside an amethyst. And he moves about in all that and

talks like--like a turnip."

"Well, damn all books. Your blue books as well," said the ingenuous

Mr. Lambert, with a friendly simplicity. "You ought to understand such

things. What do you make of him?"

"He's beyond me," returned Barker. "But if you asked me for my

opinion, I should say he was a man with a taste for nonsense, as they

call it--artistic fooling, and all that kind of thing. And I seriously

believe that he has talked nonsense so much that he has half

bewildered his own mind and doesn't know the difference between sanity

and insanity. He has gone round the mental world, so to speak, and

found the place where the East and the West are one, and extreme

idiocy is as good as sense. But I can't explain these psychological

games."

"You can't explain them to me," replied Mr. Wilfrid Lambert, with

candour.

As they passed up the long streets towards their restaurant the copper

twilight cleared slowly to a pale yellow, and by the time they reached

it they stood discernible in a tolerable winter daylight. The

Honourable James Barker, one of the most powerful officials in the

English Government (by this time a rigidly official one), was a lean

and elegant young man, with a blank handsome face and bleak blue eyes.

He had a great amount of intellectual capacity, of that peculiar kind

which raises a man from throne to throne and lets him die loaded with

honours without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a

single man. Wilfrid Lambert, the youth with the nose which appeared to

impoverish the rest of his face, had also contributed little to the

enlargement of the human spirit, but he had the honourable excuse of

being a fool.

Lambert would have been called a silly man; Barker, with all his

cleverness, might have been called a stupid man. But mere silliness

and stupidity sank into insignificance in the presence of the awful

and mysterious treasures of foolishness apparently stored up in the

small figure that stood waiting for them outside Cicconani's. The

little man, whose name was Auberon Quin, had an appearance compounded

of a baby and an owl. His round head, round eyes, seemed to have been

designed by nature playfully with a pair of compasses. His flat dark

hair and preposterously long frock-coat gave him something of the look

of a child's "Noah." When he entered a room of strangers, they mistook

him for a small boy, and wanted to take him on their knees, until he

spoke, when they perceived that a boy would have been more

intelligent.

"I have been waiting quite a long time," said Quin, mildly. "It's

awfully funny I should see you coming up the street at last."

"Why?" asked Lambert, staring. "You told us to come here yourself."

"My mother used to tell people to come to places," said the sage.

They were about to turn into the restaurant with a resigned air, when

their eyes were caught by something in the street. The weather, though

cold and blank, was now quite clear, and across the dull brown of the

wood pavement and between the dull grey terraces was moving something

not to be seen for miles round--not to be seen perhaps at that time in

England--a man dressed in bright colours. A small crowd hung on the

man's heels.

He was a tall stately man, clad in a military uniform of brilliant

green, splashed with great silver facings. From the shoulder swung a

short green furred cloak, somewhat like that of a Hussar, the lining

of which gleamed every now and then with a kind of tawny crimson. His

breast glittered with medals; round his neck was the red ribbon and

star of some foreign order; and a long straight sword, with a blazing

hilt, trailed and clattered along the pavement. At this time the

pacific and utilitarian development of Europe had relegated all such

customs to the Museums. The only remaining force, the small but

well-organised police, were attired in a sombre and hygienic manner.

But even those who remembered the last Life Guards and Lancers who

disappeared in 1912 must have known at a glance that this was not, and

never had been, an English uniform; and this conviction would have

been heightened by the yellow aquiline face, like Dante carved in

bronze, which rose, crowned with white hair, out of the green military

collar, a keen and distinguished, but not an English face.

The magnificence with which the green-clad gentleman walked down the

centre of the road would be something difficult to express in human

language. For it was an ingrained simplicity and arrogance, something

in the mere carriage of the head and body, which made ordinary moderns

in the street stare after him; but it had comparatively little to do

with actual conscious gestures or expression. In the matter of these

merely temporary movements, the man appeared to be rather worried and

inquisitive, but he was inquisitive with the inquisitiveness of a

despot and worried as with the responsibilities of a god. The men who

lounged and wondered behind him followed partly with an astonishment

at his brilliant uniform, that is to say, partly because of that

instinct which makes us all follow one who looks like a madman, but

far more because of that instinct which makes all men follow (and

worship) any one who chooses to behave like a king. He had to so

sublime an extent that great quality of royalty--an almost imbecile

unconsciousness of everybody, that people went after him as they do

after kings--to see what would be the first thing or person he would

take notice of. And all the time, as we have said, in spite of his

quiet splendour, there was an air about him as if he were looking for

somebody; an expression of inquiry.

Suddenly that expression of inquiry vanished, none could tell why, and

was replaced by an expression of contentment. Amid the rapt attention

of the mob of idlers, the magnificent green gentleman deflected

himself from his direct course down the centre of the road and walked

to one side of it. He came to a halt opposite to a large poster of

Colman's Mustard erected on a wooden hoarding. His spectators almost

held their breath.

He took from a small pocket in his uniform a little penknife; with

this he made a slash at the stretched paper. Completing the rest of

the operation with his fingers, he tore off a strip or rag of paper,

yellow in colour and wholly irregular in outline. Then for the first

time the great being addressed his adoring onlookers--

"Can any one," he said, with a pleasing foreign accent, "lend me a

pin?"

Mr. Lambert, who happened to be nearest, and who carried innumerable

pins for the purpose of attaching innumerable buttonholes, lent him

one, which was received with extravagant but dignified bows, and

hyperboles of thanks.

The gentleman in green, then, with every appearance of being

gratified, and even puffed up, pinned the piece of yellow paper to

the green silk and silver-lace adornments of his breast. Then he

turned his eyes round again, searching and unsatisfied.

"Anything else I can do, sir?" asked Lambert, with the absurd

politeness of the Englishman when once embarrassed.

"Red," said the stranger, vaguely, "red."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I beg yours also, Señor," said the stranger, bowing. "I was wondering

whether any of you had any red about you."

"Any red about us?--well really--no, I don't think I have--I used to

carry a red bandanna once, but--"

"Barker," asked Auberon Quin, suddenly, "where's your red cockatoo?

Where's your red cockatoo?"

"What do you mean?" asked Barker, desperately. "What cockatoo? You've

never seen me with any cockatoo!"

"I know," said Auberon, vaguely mollified. "Where's it been all the

time?"

Barker swung round, not without resentment.

"I am sorry, sir," he said, shortly but civilly, "none of us seem to

have anything red to lend you. But why, if one may ask--"

"I thank you, Señor, it is nothing. I can, since there is nothing

else, fulfil my own requirements."

And standing for a second of thought with the penknife in his hand, he

stabbed his left palm. The blood fell with so full a stream that it

struck the stones without dripping. The foreigner pulled out his

handkerchief and tore a piece from it with his teeth. The rag was

immediately soaked in scarlet.

"Since you are so generous, Señor," he said, "another pin, perhaps."

Lambert held one out, with eyes protruding like a frog's.

The red linen was pinned beside the yellow paper, and the foreigner

took off his hat.

"I have to thank you all, gentlemen," he said; and wrapping the

remainder of the handkerchief round his bleeding hand, he resumed his

walk with an overwhelming stateliness.

While all the rest paused, in some disorder, little Mr. Auberon Quin

ran after the stranger and stopped him, with hat in hand. Considerably

to everybody's astonishment, he addressed him in the purest Spanish--

"Señor," he said in that language, "pardon a hospitality, perhaps

indiscreet, towards one who appears to be a distinguished, but a

solitary guest in London. Will you do me and my friends, with whom

you have held some conversation, the honour of lunching with us at the

adjoining restaurant?"

The man in the green uniform had turned a fiery colour of pleasure at

the mere sound of his own language, and he accepted the invitation

with that profusion of bows which so often shows, in the case of the

Southern races, the falsehood of the notion that ceremony has nothing

to do with feeling.

"Señor," he said, "your language is my own; but all my love for my

people shall not lead me to deny to yours the possession of so

chivalrous an entertainer. Let me say that the tongue is Spanish but

the heart English." And he passed with the rest into Cicconani's.

"Now, perhaps," said Barker, over the fish and sherry, intensely

polite, but burning with curiosity, "perhaps it would be rude of me to

ask why you did that?"

"Did what, Señor?" asked the guest, who spoke English quite well,

though in a manner indefinably American.

"Well," said the Englishman, in some confusion, "I mean tore a strip

off a hoarding and ... er ... cut yourself ... and...."

"To tell you that, Señor," answered the other, with a certain sad

pride, "involves merely telling you who I am. I am Juan del Fuego,

President of Nicaragua."

The manner with which the President of Nicaragua leant back and drank

his sherry showed that to him this explanation covered all the facts

observed and a great deal more. Barker's brow, however, was still a

little clouded.

"And the yellow paper," he began, with anxious friendliness, "and the

red rag...."

"The yellow paper and the red rag," said Fuego, with indescribable

grandeur, "are the colours of Nicaragua."

"But Nicaragua ..." began Barker, with great hesitation, "Nicaragua is

no longer a...."

"Nicaragua has been conquered like Athens. Nicaragua has been annexed

like Jerusalem," cried the old man, with amazing fire. "The Yankee and

the German and the brute powers of modernity have trampled it with the

hoofs of oxen. But Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is an idea."

Auberon Quin suggested timidly, "A brilliant idea."

"Yes," said the foreigner, snatching at the word. "You are right,

generous Englishman. An idea _brillant_, a burning thought. Señor,

you asked me why, in my desire to see the colours of my country, I

snatched at paper and blood. Can you not understand the ancient

sanctity of colours? The Church has her symbolic colours. And think of

what colours mean to us--think of the position of one like myself, who

can see nothing but those two colours, nothing but the red and the

yellow. To me all shapes are equal, all common and noble things are in

a democracy of combination. Wherever there is a field of marigolds and

the red cloak of an old woman, there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a

field of poppies and a yellow patch of sand, there is Nicaragua.

Wherever there is a lemon and a red sunset, there is my country.

Wherever I see a red pillar-box and a yellow sunset, there my heart

beats. Blood and a splash of mustard can be my heraldry. If there be

yellow mud and red mud in the same ditch, it is better to me than

white stars."

"And if," said Quin, with equal enthusiasm, "there should happen to be

yellow wine and red wine at the same lunch, you could not confine

yourself to sherry. Let me order some Burgundy, and complete, as it

were, a sort of Nicaraguan heraldry in your inside."

Barker was fiddling with his knife, and was evidently making up his

mind to say something, with the intense nervousness of the amiable

Englishman.

"I am to understand, then," he said at last, with a cough, "that you,

ahem, were the President of Nicaragua when it made its--er--one must,

of course, agree--its quite heroic resistance to--er--"

The ex-President of Nicaragua waved his hand.

"You need not hesitate in speaking to me," he said. "I'm quite fully

aware that the whole tendency of the world of to-day is against

Nicaragua and against me. I shall not consider it any diminution of

your evident courtesy if you say what you think of the misfortunes

that have laid my republic in ruins."

Barker looked immeasurably relieved and gratified.

"You are most generous, President," he said, with some hesitation over

the title, "and I will take advantage of your generosity to express

the doubts which, I must confess, we moderns have about such things

as--er--the Nicaraguan independence."

"So your sympathies are," said Del Fuego, quite calmly, "with the big

nation which--"

"Pardon me, pardon me, President," said Barker, warmly; "my sympathies

are with no nation. You misunderstand, I think, the modern intellect.

We do not disapprove of the fire and extravagance of such

commonwealths as yours only to become more extravagant on a larger

scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua because we think Britain ought to

be more Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small nationalities because

we wish large nationalities to have all their smallness, all their

uniformity of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit. If I differ

with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not

because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because

civilisation was against you. We moderns believe in a great

cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of

all the absorbed peoples--"

"The Señor will forgive me," said the President. "May I ask the Señor

how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?"

"I never catch a wild horse," replied Barker, with dignity.

"Precisely," said the other; "and there ends your absorption of the

talents. That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you

say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all

peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin

Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or

schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says,

'This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a

Bedouin to teach him.' You say your civilisation will include all

talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when

the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have

learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua

we had a way of catching wild horses--by lassooing the fore

feet--which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are

going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to

say what I have always said, that something went from the world when

Nicaragua was civilised."

"Something, perhaps," replied Barker, "but that something a mere

barbarian dexterity. I do not know that I could chip flints as well as

a primeval man, but I know that civilisation can make these knives

which are better, and I trust to civilisation."

"You have good authority," answered the Nicaraguan. "Many clever men

like you have trusted to civilisation. Many clever Babylonians, many

clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me,

in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what

there is particularly immortal about yours?"

"I think you do not quite understand, President, what ours is,"

answered Barker. "You judge it rather as if England was still a poor

and pugnacious island; you have been long out of Europe. Many things

have happened."

"And what," asked the other, "would you call the summary of those

things?"

"The summary of those things," answered Barker, with great animation,

"is that we are rid of the superstitions, and in becoming so we have

not merely become rid of the superstitions which have been most

frequently and most enthusiastically so described. The superstition of

big nationalities is bad, but the superstition of small nationalities

is worse. The superstition of reverencing our own country is bad, but

the superstition of reverencing other people's countries is worse. It

is so everywhere, and in a hundred ways. The superstition of monarchy

is bad, and the superstition of aristocracy is bad, but the

superstition of democracy is the worst of all."

The old gentleman opened his eyes with some surprise.

"Are you, then," he said, "no longer a democracy in England?"

Barker laughed.

"The situation invites paradox," he said. "We are, in a sense, the

purest democracy. We have become a despotism. Have you not noticed how

continually in history democracy becomes despotism? People call it the

decay of democracy. It is simply its fulfilment. Why take the trouble

to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable John

Robinsons, when you can take one John Robinson with the same intellect

or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it? The old

idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all

men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring

democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. Why

should we not choose out of them one as much as another. All that we

want for Government is a man not criminal and insane, who can rapidly

look over some petitions and sign some proclamations. To think what

time was wasted in arguing about the House of Lords, Tories saying it

ought to be preserved because it was clever, and Radicals saying it

ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one

saw that it was right because it was stupid, because that chance mob

of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood, were a great

democratic protest against the Lower House, against the eternal

insolence of the aristocracy of talents. We have established now in

England, the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped, the

dull popular despotism without illusions. We want one man at the head

of our State, not because he is brilliant or virtuous, but because he

is one man and not a chattering crowd. To avoid the possible chance of

hereditary diseases or such things, we have abandoned hereditary

monarchy. The King of England is chosen like a juryman upon an

official rotation list. Beyond that the whole system is quietly

despotic, and we have not found it raise a murmur."

"Do you really mean," asked the President, incredulously, "that you

choose any ordinary man that comes to hand and make him despot--that

you trust to the chance of some alphabetical list...."

"And why not?" cried Barker. "Did not half the historical nations

trust to the chance of the eldest sons of eldest sons, and did not

half of them get on tolerably well? To have a perfect system is

impossible; to have a system is indispensable. All hereditary

monarchies were a matter of luck: so are alphabetical monarchies. Can

you find a deep philosophical meaning in the difference between the

Stuarts and the Hanoverians? Believe me, I will undertake to find a

deep philosophical meaning in the contrast between the dark tragedy of

the A's, and the solid success of the B's."

"And you risk it?" asked the other. "Though the man may be a tyrant or

a cynic or a criminal."

"We risk it," answered Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he

is a tyrant--he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a

cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a

criminal--by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check

on his criminality. In short, by substituting despotism we have put a

total check on one criminal and a partial check on all the rest."

The Nicaraguan old gentleman leaned over with a queer expression in

his eyes.

"My church, sir," he said, "has taught me to respect faith. I do not

wish to speak with any disrespect of yours, however fantastic. But do

you really mean that you will trust to the ordinary man, the man who

may happen to come next, as a good despot?"

"I do," said Barker, simply. "He may not be a good man. But he will be

a good despot. For when he comes to a mere business routine of

government he will endeavour to do ordinary justice. Do we not assume

the same thing in a jury?"

The old President smiled.

"I don't know," he said, "that I have any particular objection in

detail to your excellent scheme of Government. My only objection is a

quite personal one. It is, that if I were asked whether I would belong

to it, I should ask first of all, if I was not permitted, as an

alternative, to be a toad in a ditch. That is all. You cannot argue

with the choice of the soul."

"Of the soul," said Barker, knitting his brows, "I cannot pretend to

say anything, but speaking in the interests of the public--"

Mr. Auberon Quin rose suddenly to his feet.

"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "I will step out for a

moment into the air."

"I'm so sorry, Auberon," said Lambert, good-naturedly; "do you feel

bad?"

"Not bad exactly," said Auberon, with self-restraint; "rather good, if

anything. Strangely and richly good. The fact is, I want to reflect a

little on those beautiful words that have just been uttered.

'Speaking,' yes, that was the phrase, 'speaking in the interests of

the public.' One cannot get the honey from such things without being

alone for a little."

"Is he really off his chump, do you think?" asked Lambert.

The old President looked after him with queerly vigilant eyes.

"He is a man, I think," he said, "who cares for nothing but a joke. He

is a dangerous man."

Lambert laughed in the act of lifting some maccaroni to his mouth.

"Dangerous!" he said. "You don't know little Quin, sir!"

"Every man is dangerous," said the old man without moving, "who cares

only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself."

And with a pleasant smile he finished his coffee and rose, bowing

profoundly, passed out into the fog, which had again grown dense and

sombre. Three days afterwards they heard that he had died quietly in

lodgings in Soho.

* * * * *

Drowned somewhere else in the dark sea of fog was a little figure

shaking and quaking, with what might at first sight have seemed terror

or ague: but which was really that strange malady, a lonely laughter.

He was repeating over and over to himself with a rich accent--"But

speaking in the interests of the public...."

CHAPTER III--_The Hill of Humour_

"In a little square garden of yellow roses, beside the sea," said

Auberon Quin, "there was a Nonconformist minister who had never been

to Wimbledon. His family did not understand his sorrow or the strange

look in his eyes. But one day they repented their neglect, for they

heard that a body had been found on the shore, battered, but wearing

patent leather boots. As it happened, it turned out not to be the

minister at all. But in the dead man's pocket there was a return

ticket to Maidstone."

There was a short pause as Quin and his friends Barker and Lambert

went swinging on through the slushy grass of Kensington Gardens. Then

Auberon resumed.

"That story," he said reverently, "is the test of humour."

They walked on further and faster, wading through higher grass as they

began to climb a slope.

"I perceive," continued Auberon, "that you have passed the test, and

consider the anecdote excruciatingly funny; since you say nothing.

Only coarse humour is received with pot-house applause. The great

anecdote is received in silence, like a benediction. You felt pretty

benedicted, didn't you, Barker?"

"I saw the point," said Barker, somewhat loftily.

"Do you know," said Quin, with a sort of idiot gaiety, "I have lots of

stories as good as that. Listen to this one."

And he slightly cleared his throat.

"Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist.

'There,' people of wide experience would say, 'There goes the

sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.' Once this was said so that he

overheard it: it was said by an actuary, under a sunset of mauve and

grey. Polycarp turned upon him. 'Sallow!' he cried fiercely, 'sallow!

_Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes._' It was said that no

actuary ever made game of Dr. Polycarp again."

Barker nodded with a simple sagacity. Lambert only grunted.

"Here is another," continued the insatiable Quin. "In a hollow of the

grey-green hills of rainy Ireland, lived an old, old woman, whose

uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race. But in her grey-green

hollows, she knew nothing of this: she didn't know that there was a

Boat Race. Also she did not know that she had an uncle. She had heard

of nobody at all, except of George the First, of whom she had heard (I

know not why), and in whose historical memory she put her simple

trust. And by and by in God's good time, it was discovered that this

uncle of hers was not really her uncle, and they came and told her so.

She smiled through her tears, and said only, 'Virtue is its own

reward.'"

Again there was a silence, and then Lambert said--

"It seems a bit mysterious."

"Mysterious!" cried the other. "The true humour is mysterious. Do you

not realise the chief incident of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries?"

"And what's that?" asked Lambert, shortly.

"It is very simple," replied the other. "Hitherto it was the ruin of a

joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a

joke that people do not see it. Humour, my friends, is the one

sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly

afraid of. Look at that tree."

His interlocutors looked vaguely towards a beech that leant out

towards them from the ridge of the hill.

"If," said Mr. Quin, "I were to say that you did not see the great

truths of science exhibited by that tree, though they stared any man

of intellect in the face, what would you think or say? You would

merely regard me as a pedant with some unimportant theory about

vegetable cells. If I were to say that you did not see in that tree

the vile mismanagement of local politics, you would dismiss me as a

Socialist crank with some particular fad about public parks. If I were

to say that you were guilty of the supreme blasphemy of looking at

that tree and not seeing in it a new religion, a special revelation of

God, you would simply say I was a mystic, and think no more about me.

But if"--and he lifted a pontifical hand--"if I say that you cannot

see the humour of that tree, and that I see the humour of it--my God!

you will roll about at my feet."

He paused a moment, and then resumed.

"Yes; a sense of humour, a weird and delicate sense of humour, is the

new religion of mankind! It is towards that men will strain themselves

with the asceticism of saints. Exercises, spiritual exercises, will be

set in it. It will be asked, 'Can you see the humour of this iron

railing?' or 'Can you see the humour of this field of corn? Can you

see the humour of the stars? Can you see the humour of the sunsets?'

How often I have laughed myself to sleep over a violet sunset."

"Quite so," said Mr. Barker, with an intelligent embarrassment.

"Let me tell you another story. How often it happens that the M.P.'s

for Essex are less punctual than one would suppose. The least punctual

Essex M.P., perhaps, was James Wilson, who said, in the very act of

plucking a poppy--"

Lambert suddenly faced round and struck his stick into the ground in a

defiant attitude.

"Auberon," he said, "chuck it. I won't stand it. It's all bosh."

Both men stared at him, for there was something very explosive about

the words, as if they had been corked up painfully for a long time.

"You have," began Quin, "no--"

"I don't care a curse," said Lambert, violently, "whether I have 'a

delicate sense of humour' or not. I won't stand it. It's all a

confounded fraud. There's no joke in those infernal tales at all. You

know there isn't as well as I do."

"Well," replied Quin, slowly, "it is true that I, with my rather

gradual mental processes, did not see any joke in them. But the finer

sense of Barker perceived it."

Barker turned a fierce red, but continued to stare at the horizon.

"You ass," said Lambert; "why can't you be like other people? Why

can't you say something really funny, or hold your tongue? The man who

sits on his hat in a pantomime is a long sight funnier than you are."

Quin regarded him steadily. They had reached the top of the ridge and

the wind struck their faces.

"Lambert," said Auberon, "you are a great and good man, though I'm

hanged if you look it. You are more. You are a great revolutionist or

deliverer of the world, and I look forward to seeing you carved in

marble between Luther and Danton, if possible in your present

attitude, the hat slightly on one side. I said as I came up the hill

that the new humour was the last of the religions. You have made it

the last of the superstitions. But let me give you a very serious

warning. Be careful how you ask me to do anything _outré_, to imitate

the man in the pantomime, and to sit on my hat. Because I am a man

whose soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly. And for

twopence I'd do it."

"Do it, then," said Lambert, swinging his stick impatiently. "It would

be funnier than the bosh you and Barker talk."

Quin, standing on the top of the hill, stretched his hand out towards

the main avenue of Kensington Gardens.

"Two hundred yards away," he said, "are all your fashionable

acquaintances with nothing on earth to do but to stare at each other

and at us. We are standing upon an elevation under the open sky, a

peak as it were of fantasy, a Sinai of humour. We are in a great

pulpit or platform, lit up with sunlight, and half London can see us.

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness

which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man."

"I don't know what you are talking about," said Lambert,

contemptuously. "I only know I'd rather you stood on your silly head,

than talked so much."

"Auberon! for goodness' sake ..." cried Barker, springing forward; but

he was too late. Faces from all the benches and avenues were turned in

their direction. Groups stopped and small crowds collected; and the

sharp sunlight picked out the whole scene in blue, green and black,

like a picture in a child's toy-book. And on the top of the small

hill Mr. Auberon Quin stood with considerable athletic neatness upon

his head, and waved his patent-leather boots in the air.

"For God's sake, Quin, get up, and don't be an idiot," cried Barker,

wringing his hands; "we shall have the whole town here."

"Yes, get up, get up, man," said Lambert, amused and annoyed. "I was

only fooling; get up."

Auberon did so with a bound, and flinging his hat higher than the

trees, proceeded to hop about on one leg with a serious expression.

Barker stamped wildly.

"Oh, let's get home, Barker, and leave him," said Lambert; "some of

your proper and correct police will look after him. Here they come!"

Two grave-looking men in quiet uniforms came up the hill towards them.

One held a paper in his hand.

"There he is, officer," said Lambert, cheerfully; "we ain't

responsible for him."

The officer looked at the capering Mr. Quin with a quiet eye.

"We have not come, gentlemen," he said, "about what I think you are

alluding to. We have come from head-quarters to announce the

selection of His Majesty the King. It is the rule, inherited from the

old _régime_, that the news should be brought to the new Sovereign

immediately, wherever he is; so we have followed you across Kensington

Gardens."

Barker's eyes were blazing in his pale face. He was consumed with

ambition throughout his life. With a certain dull magnanimity of the

intellect he had really believed in the chance method of selecting

despots. But this sudden suggestion, that the selection might have

fallen upon him, unnerved him with pleasure.

"Which of us," he began, and the respectful official interrupted him.

"Not you, sir, I am sorry to say. If I may be permitted to say so, we

know your services to the Government, and should be very thankful if

it were. The choice has fallen...."

"God bless my soul!" said Lambert, jumping back two paces. "Not me.

Don't say I'm autocrat of all the Russias."

"No, sir," said the officer, with a slight cough and a glance towards

Auberon, who was at that moment putting his head between his legs and

making a noise like a cow; "the gentleman whom we have to congratulate

seems at the moment--er--er--occupied."

"Not Quin!" shrieked Barker, rushing up to him; "it can't be. Auberon,

for God's sake pull yourself together. You've been made King!"

With his head still upside down between his legs, Mr. Quin answered

modestly--

"I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim to equal the great men who

have previously swayed the sceptre of Britain. Perhaps the only

peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably the first monarch

that ever spoke out his soul to the people of England with his head

and body in this position. This may in some sense give me, to quote a

poem that I wrote in my youth--

A nobler office on the earth

Than valour, power of brain, or birth

Could give the warrior kings of old.

The intellect clarified by this posture--"

Lambert and Barker made a kind of rush at him.

"Don't you understand?" cried Lambert. "It's not a joke. They've

really made you King. By gosh! they must have rum taste."

"The great Bishops of the Middle Ages," said Quin, kicking his legs in

the air, as he was dragged up more or less upside down, "were in the

habit of refusing the honour of election three times and then

accepting it. A mere matter of detail separates me from those great

men. I will accept the post three times and refuse it afterwards. Oh!

I will toil for you, my faithful people! You shall have a banquet of

humour."

By this time he had been landed the right way up, and the two men were

still trying in vain to impress him with the gravity of the situation.

"Did you not tell me, Wilfrid Lambert," he said, "that I should be of

more public value if I adopted a more popular form of humour? And when

should a popular form of humour be more firmly riveted upon me than

now, when I have become the darling of a whole people? Officer," he

continued, addressing the startled messenger, "are there no ceremonies

to celebrate my entry into the city?"

"Ceremonies," began the official, with embarrassment, "have been more

or less neglected for some little time, and--"

Auberon Quin began gradually to take off his coat.

"All ceremony," he said, "consists in the reversal of the obvious.

Thus men, when they wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women.

Kindly help me on with this coat." And he held it out.

"But, your Majesty," said the officer, after a moment's bewilderment

and manipulation, "you're putting it on with the tails in front."

"The reversal of the obvious," said the King, calmly, "is as near as

we can come to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead on."

The rest of that afternoon and evening was to Barker and Lambert a

nightmare, which they could not properly realise or recall. The King,

with his coat on the wrong way, went towards the streets that were

awaiting him, and the old Kensington Palace which was the Royal

residence. As he passed small groups of men, the groups turned into

crowds, and gave forth sounds which seemed strange in welcoming an

autocrat. Barker walked behind, his brain reeling, and, as the crowds

grew thicker and thicker, the sounds became more and more unusual. And

when he had reached the great market-place opposite the church,

Barker knew that he had reached it, though he was roods behind,

because a cry went up such as had never before greeted any of the

kings of the earth.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I--_The Charter of the Cities_

Lambert was standing bewildered outside the door of the King's

apartments amid the scurry of astonishment and ridicule. He was just

passing out into the street, in a dazed manner, when James Barker

dashed by him.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To stop all this foolery, of course," replied Barker; and he

disappeared into the room.

He entered it headlong, slamming the door, and slapping his

incomparable silk hat on the table. His mouth opened, but before he

could speak, the King said--

"Your hat, if you please."

Fidgetting with his fingers, and scarcely knowing what he was doing,

the young politician held it out.

The King placed it on his own chair, and sat on it.

"A quaint old custom," he explained, smiling above the ruins. "When

the King receives the representatives of the House of Barker, the hat

of the latter is immediately destroyed in this manner. It represents

the absolute finality of the act of homage expressed in the removal

of it. It declares that never until that hat shall once more appear

upon your head (a contingency which I firmly believe to be remote)

shall the House of Barker rebel against the Crown of England."

Barker stood with clenched fist, and shaking lip.

"Your jokes," he began, "and my property--" and then exploded with an

oath, and stopped again.

"Continue, continue," said the King, waving his hands.

"What does it all mean?" cried the other, with a gesture of passionate

rationality. "Are you mad?"

"Not in the least," replied the King, pleasantly. "Madmen are always

serious; they go mad from lack of humour. You are looking serious

yourself, James."

"Why can't you keep it to your own private life?" expostulated the

other. "You've got plenty of money, and plenty of houses now to play

the fool in, but in the interests of the public--"

"Epigrammatic," said the King, shaking his finger sadly at him. "None

of your daring scintillations here. As to why I don't do it in

private, I rather fail to understand your question. The answer is of

comparative limpidity. I don't do it in private, because it is funnier

to do it in public. You appear to think that it would be amusing to be

dignified in the banquet hall and in the street, and at my own

fireside (I could procure a fireside) to keep the company in a roar.

But that is what every one does. Every one is grave in public, and

funny in private. My sense of humour suggests the reversal of this; it

suggests that one should be funny in public, and solemn in private. I

desire to make the State functions, parliaments, coronations, and so

on, one roaring old-fashioned pantomime. But, on the other hand, I

shut myself up alone in a small store-room for two hours a day, where

I am so dignified that I come out quite ill."

By this time Barker was walking up and down the room, his frock coat

flapping like the black wings of a bird.

"Well, you will ruin the country, that's all," he said shortly.

"It seems to me," said Auberon, "that the tradition of ten centuries

is being broken, and the House of Barker is rebelling against the

Crown of England. It would be with regret (for I admire your

appearance) that I should be obliged forcibly to decorate your head

with the remains of this hat, but--"

"What I can't understand," said Barker flinging up his fingers with a

feverish American movement, "is why you don't care about anything else

but your games."

The King stopped sharply in the act of lifting the silken remnants,

dropped them, and walked up to Barker, looking at him steadily.

"I made a kind of vow," he said, "that I would not talk seriously,

which always means answering silly questions. But the strong man will

always be gentle with politicians.

'The shape my scornful looks deride

Required a God to form;'

if I may so theologically express myself. And for some reason I cannot

in the least understand, I feel impelled to answer that question of

yours, and to answer it as if there were really such a thing in the

world as a serious subject. You ask me why I don't care for anything

else. Can you tell me, in the name of all the gods you don't believe

in, why I should care for anything else?"

"Don't you realise common public necessities?" cried Barker. "Is it

possible that a man of your intelligence does not know that it is

every one's interest--"

"Don't you believe in Zoroaster? Is it possible that you neglect

Mumbo-Jumbo?" returned the King, with startling animation. "Does a man

of your intelligence come to me with these damned early Victorian

ethics? If, on studying my features and manner, you detect any

particular resemblance to the Prince Consort, I assure you you are

mistaken. Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you--did he ever convince

anybody--did he ever for one mad moment convince himself--that it must

be to the interest of the individual to feel a public spirit? Do you

believe that, if you rule your department badly, you stand any more

chance, or one half of the chance, of being guillotined, that an

angler stands of being pulled into the river by a strong pike? Herbert

Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason that he refrained

from wearing feathers in his hair, because he was an English gentleman

with different tastes. I am an English gentleman with different

tastes. He liked philosophy. I like art. He liked writing ten books on

the nature of human society. I like to see the Lord Chamberlain

walking in front of me with a piece of paper pinned to his coat-tails.

It is my humour. Are you answered? At any rate, I have said my last

serious word to-day, and my last serious word I trust for the

remainder of my life in this Paradise of Fools. The remainder of my

conversation with you to-day, which I trust will be long and

stimulating, I propose to conduct in a new language of my own by means

of rapid and symbolic movements of the left leg." And he began to

pirouette slowly round the room with a preoccupied expression.

Barker ran round the room after him, bombarding him with demands and

entreaties. But he received no response except in the new language. He

came out banging the door again, and sick like a man coming on shore.

As he strode along the streets he found himself suddenly opposite

Cicconani's restaurant, and for some reason there rose up before him

the green fantastic figure of the Spanish General, standing, as he had

seen him last, at the door, with the words on his lips, "You cannot

argue with the choice of the soul."

The King came out from his dancing with the air of a man of business

legitimately tired. He put on an overcoat, lit a cigar, and went out

into the purple night.

[Illustration: "I'M KING OF THE CASTLE."]

"I will go," he said, "and mingle with the people."

He passed swiftly up a street in the neighbourhood of Notting Hill,

when suddenly he felt a hard object driven into his waistcoat. He

paused, put up his single eye-glass, and beheld a boy with a wooden

sword and a paper cocked hat, wearing that expression of awed

satisfaction with which a child contemplates his work when he has hit

some one very hard. The King gazed thoughtfully for some time at his

assailant, and slowly took a note-book from his breast-pocket.

"I have a few notes," he said, "for my dying speech;" and he turned

over the leaves. "Dying speech for political assassination; ditto, if

by former friend--h'm, h'm. Dying speech for death at hands of injured

husband (repentant). Dying speech for same (cynical). I am not quite

sure which meets the present...."

"I'm the King of the Castle," said the boy, truculently, and very

pleased with nothing in particular.

The King was a kind-hearted man, and very fond of children, like all

people who are fond of the ridiculous.

"Infant," he said, "I'm glad you are so stalwart a defender of your

old inviolate Notting Hill. Look up nightly to that peak, my child,

where it lifts itself among the stars so ancient, so lonely, so

unutterably Notting. So long as you are ready to die for the sacred

mountain, even if it were ringed with all the armies of Bayswater--"

The King stopped suddenly, and his eyes shone.

"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps the noblest of all my conceptions. A

revival of the arrogance of the old mediæval cities applied to our

glorious suburbs. Clapham with a city guard. Wimbledon with a city

wall. Surbiton tolling a bell to raise its citizens. West Hampstead

going into battle with its own banner. It shall be done. I, the King,

have said it." And, hastily presenting the boy with half a crown,

remarking, "For the war-chest of Notting Hill," he ran violently home

at such a rate of speed that crowds followed him for miles. On

reaching his study, he ordered a cup of coffee, and plunged into

profound meditation upon the project. At length he called his

favourite Equerry, Captain Bowler, for whom he had a deep affection,

founded principally upon the shape of his whiskers.

"Bowler," he said, "isn't there some society of historical research,

or something of which I am an honorary member?"

"Yes, sir," said Captain Bowler, rubbing his nose, "you are a member

of 'The Encouragers of Egyptian Renaissance,' and 'The Teutonic Tombs

Club,' and 'The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities,'

and--"

"That is admirable," said the King. "The London Antiquities does my

trick. Go to the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities and

speak to their secretary, and their sub-secretary, and their

president, and their vice-president, saying, 'The King of England is

proud, but the honorary member of the Society for the Recovery of

London Antiquities is prouder than kings. I should like to tell you of

certain discoveries I have made touching the neglected traditions of

the London boroughs. The revelations may cause some excitement,

stirring burning memories and touching old wounds in Shepherd's Bush

and Bayswater, in Pimlico and South Kensington. The King hesitates,

but the honorary member is firm. I approach you invoking the vows of

my initiation, the Sacred Seven Cats, the Poker of Perfection, and the

Ordeal of the Indescribable Instant (forgive me if I mix you up with

the Clan-na-Gael or some other club I belong to), and ask you to

permit me to read a paper at your next meeting on the "Wars of the

London Boroughs."' Say all this to the Society, Bowler. Remember it

very carefully, for it is most important, and I have forgotten it

altogether, and send me another cup of coffee and some of the cigars

that we keep for vulgar and successful people. I am going to write my

paper."

The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities met a month after

in a corrugated iron hall on the outskirts of one of the southern

suburbs of London. A large number of people had collected there under

the coarse and flaring gas-jets when the King arrived, perspiring and

genial. On taking off his great-coat, he was perceived to be in

evening dress, wearing the Garter. His appearance at the small table,

adorned only with a glass of water, was received with respectful

cheering.

The chairman (Mr. Huggins) said that he was sure that they had all

been pleased to listen to such distinguished lecturers as they had

heard for some time past (hear, hear). Mr. Burton (hear, hear), Mr.

Cambridge, Professor King (loud and continued cheers), our old friend

Peter Jessop, Sir William White (loud laughter), and other eminent

men, had done honour to their little venture (cheers). But there were

other circumstances which lent a certain unique quality to the present

occasion (hear, hear). So far as his recollection went, and in

connection with the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities it

went very far (loud cheers), he did not remember that any of their

lecturers had borne the title of King. He would therefore call upon

King Auberon briefly to address the meeting.

The King began by saying that this speech might be regarded as the

first declaration of his new policy for the nation. "At this supreme

hour of my life I feel that to no one but the members of the Society

for the Recovery of London Antiquities can I open my heart (cheers).

If the world turns upon my policy, and the storms of popular hostility

begin to rise (no, no), I feel that it is here, with my brave

Recoverers around me, that I can best meet them, sword in hand" (loud

cheers).

His Majesty then went on to explain that, now old age was creeping

upon him, he proposed to devote his remaining strength to bringing

about a keener sense of local patriotism in the various municipalities

of London. How few of them knew the legends of their own boroughs!

How many there were who had never heard of the true origin of the Wink

of Wandsworth! What a large proportion of the younger generation in

Chelsea neglected to perform the old Chelsea Chuff! Pimlico no longer

pumped the Pimlies. Battersea had forgotten the name of Blick.

There was a short silence, and then a voice said "Shame!"

The King continued: "Being called, however unworthily, to this high

estate, I have resolved that, so far as possible, this neglect shall

cease. I desire no military glory. I lay claim to no constitutional

equality with Justinian or Alfred. If I can go down to history as the

man who saved from extinction a few old English customs, if our

descendants can say it was through this man, humble as he was, that

the Ten Turnips are still eaten in Fulham, and the Putney parish

councillor still shaves one half of his head, I shall look my great

fathers reverently but not fearfully in the face when I go down to the

last house of Kings."

The King paused, visibly affected, but collecting himself, resumed

once more.

"I trust that to very few of you, at least, I need dwell on the

sublime origins of these legends. The very names of your boroughs

bear witness to them. So long as Hammersmith is called Hammersmith,

its people will live in the shadow of that primal hero, the

Blacksmith, who led the democracy of the Broadway into battle till he

drove the chivalry of Kensington before him and overthrew them at that

place which in honour of the best blood of the defeated aristocracy is

still called Kensington Gore. Men of Hammersmith will not fail to

remember that the very name of Kensington originated from the lips of

their hero. For at the great banquet of reconciliation held after the

war, when the disdainful oligarchs declined to join in the songs of

the men of the Broadway (which are to this day of a rude and popular

character), the great Republican leader, with his rough humour, said

the words which are written in gold upon his monument, 'Little birds

that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing.' So that the

Eastern Knights were called Cansings or Kensings ever afterwards. But

you also have great memories, O men of Kensington! You showed that you

could sing, and sing great war-songs. Even after the dark day of

Kensington Gore, history will not forget those three Knights who

guarded your disordered retreat from Hyde Park (so called from your

hiding there), those three Knights after whom Knightsbridge is named.

Nor will it forget the day of your re-emergence, purged in the fire of

calamity, cleansed of your oligarchic corruptions, when, sword in

hand, you drove the Empire of Hammersmith back mile by mile, swept it

past its own Broadway, and broke it at last in a battle so long and

bloody that the birds of prey have left their name upon it. Men have

called it, with austere irony, the Ravenscourt. I shall not, I trust,

wound the patriotism of Bayswater, or the lonelier pride of Brompton,

or that of any other historic township, by taking these two special

examples. I select them, not because they are more glorious than the

rest, but partly from personal association (I am myself descended from

one of the three heroes of Knightsbridge), and partly from the

consciousness that I am an amateur antiquarian, and cannot presume to

deal with times and places more remote and more mysterious. It is not

for me to settle the question between two such men as Professor Hugg

and Sir William Whisky as to whether Notting Hill means Nutting Hill

(in allusion to the rich woods which no longer cover it), or whether

it is a corruption of Nothing-ill, referring to its reputation among

the ancients as an Earthly Paradise. When a Podkins and a Jossy

confess themselves doubtful about the boundaries of West Kensington

(said to have been traced in the blood of Oxen), I need not be ashamed

to confess a similar doubt. I will ask you to excuse me from further

history, and to assist me with your encouragement in dealing with the

problem which faces us to-day. Is this ancient spirit of the London

townships to die out? Are our omnibus conductors and policemen to lose

altogether that light which we see so often in their eyes, the dreamy

light of

'Old unhappy far-off things

And battles long ago'

--to quote the words of a little-known poet who was a friend of my

youth? I have resolved, as I have said, so far as possible, to

preserve the eyes of policemen and omnibus conductors in their present

dreamy state. For what is a state without dreams? And the remedy I

propose is as follows:--

"To-morrow morning at twenty-five minutes past ten, if Heaven spares

my life, I purpose to issue a Proclamation. It has been the work of my

life, and is about half finished. With the assistance of a whisky and

soda, I shall conclude the other half to-night, and my people will

receive it to-morrow. All these boroughs where you were born, and hope

to lay your bones, shall be reinstated in their ancient

magnificence,--Hammersmith, Kensington, Bayswater, Chelsea, Battersea,

Clapham, Balham, and a hundred others. Each shall immediately build a

city wall with gates to be closed at sunset. Each shall have a city

guard, armed to the teeth. Each shall have a banner, a coat-of-arms,

and, if convenient, a gathering cry. I will not enter into the details

now, my heart is too full. They will be found in the proclamation

itself. You will all, however, be subject to enrolment in the local

city guards, to be summoned together by a thing called the Tocsin, the

meaning of which I am studying in my researches into history.

Personally, I believe a tocsin to be some kind of highly paid

official. If, therefore, any of you happen to have such a thing as a

halberd in the house, I should advise you to practise with it in the

garden."

Here the King buried his face in his handkerchief and hurriedly left

the platform, overcome by emotions.

The members of the Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities rose

in an indescribable state of vagueness. Some were purple with

indignation; an intellectual few were purple with laughter; the great

majority found their minds a blank. There remains a tradition that one

pale face with burning blue eyes remained fixed upon the lecturer, and

after the lecture a red-haired boy ran out of the room.

CHAPTER II--_The Council of the Provosts_

The King got up early next morning and came down three steps at a time

like a schoolboy. Having eaten his breakfast hurriedly, but with an

appetite, he summoned one of the highest officials of the Palace, and

presented him with a shilling. "Go and buy me," he said, "a shilling

paint-box, which you will get, unless the mists of time mislead me, in

a shop at the corner of the second and dirtier street that leads out

of Rochester Row. I have already requested the Master of the

Buckhounds to provide me with cardboard. It seemed to me (I know not

why) that it fell within his department."

The King was happy all that morning with his cardboard and his

paint-box. He was engaged in designing the uniforms and coats-of-arms

for the various municipalities of London. They gave him deep and no

inconsiderable thought. He felt the responsibility.

"I cannot think," he said, "why people should think the names of

places in the country more poetical than those in London. Shallow

romanticists go away in trains and stop in places called

Hugmy-in-the-Hole, or Bumps-on-the-Puddle. And all the time they

could, if they liked, go and live at a place with the dim, divine name

of St. John's Wood. I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not.

I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to

come upon a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle.

But all these things can be imagined by remaining reverently in the

Harrow train."

And he thoughtfully retouched his design for the head-dress of the

halberdier of St. John's Wood, a design in black and red, compounded

of a pine tree and the plumage of an eagle. Then he turned to another

card. "Let us think of milder matters," he said. "Lavender Hill! Could

any of your glebes and combes and all the rest of it produce so

fragrant an idea? Think of a mountain of lavender lifting itself in

purple poignancy into the silver skies and filling men's nostrils with

a new breath of life--a purple hill of incense. It is true that upon

my few excursions of discovery on a halfpenny tram I have failed to

hit the precise spot. But it must be there; some poet called it by

its name. There is at least warrant enough for the solemn purple

plumes (following the botanical formation of lavender) which I have

required people to wear in the neighbourhood of Clapham Junction. It

is so everywhere, after all. I have never been actually to

Southfields, but I suppose a scheme of lemons and olives represent

their austral instincts. I have never visited Parson's Green, or seen

either the Green or the Parson, but surely the pale-green shovel-hats

I have designed must be more or less in the spirit. I must work in the

dark and let my instincts guide me. The great love I bear to my people

will certainly save me from distressing their noble spirit or

violating their great traditions."

As he was reflecting in this vein, the door was flung open, and an

official announced Mr. Barker and Mr. Lambert.

Mr. Barker and Mr. Lambert were not particularly surprised to find the

King sitting on the floor amid a litter of water-colour sketches. They

were not particularly surprised because the last time they had called

on him they had found him sitting on the floor, surrounded by a litter

of children's bricks, and the time before surrounded by a litter of

wholly unsuccessful attempts to make paper darts. But the trend of

the royal infant's remarks, uttered from amid this infantile chaos,

was not quite the same affair.

For some time they let him babble on, conscious that his remarks meant

nothing. And then a horrible thought began to steal over the mind of

James Barker. He began to think that the King's remarks did not mean

nothing.

"In God's name, Auberon," he suddenly volleyed out, startling the

quiet hall, "you don't mean that you are really going to have these

city guards and city walls and things?"

"I am, indeed," said the infant, in a quiet voice. "Why shouldn't I

have them? I have modelled them precisely on your political

principles. Do you know what I've done, Barker? I've behaved like a

true Barkerian. I've ... but perhaps it won't interest you, the

account of my Barkerian conduct."

"Oh, go on, go on," cried Barker.

"The account of my Barkerian conduct," said Auberon, calmly, "seems

not only to interest, but to alarm you. Yet it is very simple. It

merely consists in choosing all the provosts under any new scheme by

the same principle by which you have caused the central despot to be

appointed. Each provost, of each city, under my charter, is to be

appointed by rotation. Sleep, therefore, my Barker, a rosy sleep."

Barker's wild eyes flared.

"But, in God's name, don't you see, Quin, that the thing is quite

different? In the centre it doesn't matter so much, just because the

whole object of despotism is to get some sort of unity. But if any

damned parish can go to any damned man--"

"I see your difficulty," said King Auberon, calmly. "You feel that

your talents may be neglected. Listen!" And he rose with immense

magnificence. "I solemnly give to my liege subject, James Barker, my

special and splendid favour, the right to override the obvious text of

the Charter of the Cities, and to be, in his own right, Lord High

Provost of South Kensington. And now, my dear James, you are all

right. Good day."

"But--" began Barker.

"The audience is at an end, Provost," said the King, smiling.

How far his confidence was justified, it would require a somewhat

complicated description to explain. "The Great Proclamation of the

Charter of the Free Cities" appeared in due course that morning, and

was posted by bill-stickers all over the front of the Palace, the King

assisting them with animated directions, and standing in the middle of

the road, with his head on one side, contemplating the result. It was

also carried up and down the main thoroughfares by sandwichmen, and

the King was, with difficulty, restrained from going out in that

capacity himself, being, in fact, found by the Groom of the Stole and

Captain Bowler, struggling between two boards. His excitement had

positively to be quieted like that of a child.

The reception which the Charter of the Cities met at the hands of the

public may mildly be described as mixed. In one sense it was popular

enough. In many happy homes that remarkable legal document was read

aloud on winter evenings amid uproarious appreciation, when everything

had been learnt by heart from that quaint but immortal old classic,

Mr. W. W. Jacobs. But when it was discovered that the King had every

intention of seriously requiring the provisions to be carried out, of

insisting that the grotesque cities, with their tocsins and city

guards, should really come into existence, things were thrown into a

far angrier confusion. Londoners had no particular objection to the

King making a fool of himself, but they became indignant when it

became evident that he wished to make fools of them; and protests

began to come in.

The Lord High Provost of the Good and Valiant City of West Kensington

wrote a respectful letter to the King, explaining that upon State

occasions it would, of course, be his duty to observe what formalities

the King thought proper, but that it was really awkward for a decent

householder not to be allowed to go out and put a post-card in a

pillar-box without being escorted by five heralds, who announced, with

formal cries and blasts of a trumpet, that the Lord High Provost

desired to catch the post.

The Lord High Provost of North Kensington, who was a prosperous

draper, wrote a curt business note, like a man complaining of a

railway company, stating that definite inconvenience had been caused

him by the presence of the halberdiers, whom he had to take with him

everywhere. When attempting to catch an omnibus to the City, he had

found that while room could have been found for himself, the

halberdiers had a difficulty in getting in to the vehicle--believe

him, theirs faithfully.

The Lord High Provost of Shepherd's Bush said his wife did not like

men hanging round the kitchen.

The King was always delighted to listen to these grievances,

delivering lenient and kingly answers, but as he always insisted, as

the absolute _sine qua non_, that verbal complaints should be

presented to him with the fullest pomp of trumpets, plumes, and

halberds, only a few resolute spirits were prepared to run the

gauntlet of the little boys in the street.

Among these, however, was prominent the abrupt and business-like

gentleman who ruled North Kensington. And he had before long, occasion

to interview the King about a matter wider and even more urgent than

the problem of the halberdiers and the omnibus. This was the great

question which then and for long afterwards brought a stir to the

blood and a flush to the cheek of all the speculative builders and

house agents from Shepherd's Bush to the Marble Arch, and from

Westbourne Grove to High Street, Kensington. I refer to the great

affair of the improvements in Notting Hill. The scheme was conducted

chiefly by Mr. Buck, the abrupt North Kensington magnate, and by Mr.

Wilson, the Provost of Bayswater. A great thoroughfare was to be

driven through three boroughs, through West Kensington, North

Kensington and Notting Hill, opening at one end into Hammersmith

Broadway, and at the other into Westbourne Grove. The negotiations,

buyings, sellings, bullying and bribing took ten years, and by the end

of it Buck, who had conducted them almost single-handed, had proved

himself a man of the strongest type of material energy and material

diplomacy. And just as his splendid patience and more splendid

impatience had finally brought him victory, when workmen were already

demolishing houses and walls along the great line from Hammersmith, a

sudden obstacle appeared that had neither been reckoned with nor

dreamed of, a small and strange obstacle, which, like a speck of grit

in a great machine, jarred the whole vast scheme and brought it to a

stand-still, and Mr. Buck, the draper, getting with great impatience

into his robes of office and summoning with indescribable disgust his

halberdiers, hurried over to speak to the King.

Ten years had not tired the King of his joke. There were still new

faces to be seen looking out from the symbolic head-gears he had

designed, gazing at him from amid the pastoral ribbons of Shepherd's

Bush or from under the sombre hoods of the Blackfriars Road. And the

interview which was promised him with the Provost of North Kensington

he anticipated with a particular pleasure, for "he never really

enjoyed," he said, "the full richness of the mediæval garments unless

the people compelled to wear them were very angry and business-like."

Mr. Buck was both. At the King's command the door of the

audience-chamber was thrown open and a herald appeared in the purple

colours of Mr. Buck's commonwealth emblazoned with the Great Eagle

which the King had attributed to North Kensington, in vague

reminiscence of Russia, for he always insisted on regarding North

Kensington as some kind of semi-arctic neighbourhood. The herald

announced that the Provost of that city desired audience of the King.

"From North Kensington?" said the King, rising graciously. "What news

does he bring from that land of high hills and fair women? He is

welcome."

The herald advanced into the room, and was immediately followed by

twelve guards clad in purple, who were followed by an attendant

bearing the banner of the Eagle, who was followed by another attendant

bearing the keys of the city upon a cushion, who was followed by Mr.

Buck in a great hurry. When the King saw his strong animal face and

steady eyes, he knew that he was in the presence of a great man of

business, and consciously braced himself.

"Well, well," he said, cheerily coming down two or three steps from a

daïs, and striking his hands lightly together, "I am glad to see you.

Never mind, never mind. Ceremony is not everything."

"I don't understand your Majesty," said the Provost, stolidly.

"Never mind, never mind," said the King, gaily. "A knowledge of Courts

is by no means an unmixed merit; you will do it next time, no doubt."

The man of business looked at him sulkily from under his black brows

and said again without show of civility--

"I don't follow you."

"Well, well," replied the King, good-naturedly, "if you ask me I don't

mind telling you, not because I myself attach any importance to these

forms in comparison with the Honest Heart. But it is usual--it is

usual--that is all, for a man when entering the presence of Royalty to

lie down on his back on the floor and elevating his feet towards

heaven (as the source of Royal power) to say three times 'Monarchical

institutions improve the manners.' But there, there--such pomp is far

less truly dignified than your simple kindliness."

The Provost's face was red with anger, and he maintained silence.

"And now," said the King, lightly, and with the exasperating air of a

man softening a snub; "what delightful weather we are having! You must

find your official robes warm, my Lord. I designed them for your own

snow-bound land."

"They're as hot as hell," said Buck, briefly. "I came here on

business."

"Right," said the King, nodding a great number of times with quite

unmeaning solemnity; "right, right, right. Business, as the sad glad

old Persian said, is business. Be punctual. Rise early. Point the pen

to the shoulder. Point the pen to the shoulder, for you know not

whence you come nor why. Point the pen to the shoulder, for you know

not when you go nor where."

The Provost pulled a number of papers from his pocket and savagely

flapped them open.

"Your Majesty may have heard," he began, sarcastically, "of

Hammersmith and a thing called a road. We have been at work ten years

buying property and getting compulsory powers and fixing compensation

and squaring vested interests, and now at the very end, the thing is

stopped by a fool. Old Prout, who was Provost of Notting Hill, was a

business man, and we dealt with him quite satisfactorily. But he's

dead, and the cursed lot has fallen on a young man named Wayne, who's

up to some game that's perfectly incomprehensible to me. We offer him

a better price than any one ever dreamt of, but he won't let the road

go through. And his Council seems to be backing him up. It's midsummer

madness."

The King, who was rather inattentively engaged in drawing the

Provost's nose with his finger on the window-pane, heard the last two

words.

"What a perfect phrase that is!" he said. "'Midsummer madness'!"

"The chief point is," continued Buck, doggedly, "that the only part

that is really in question is one dirty little street--Pump Street--a

street with nothing in it but a public-house and a penny toy-shop, and

that sort of thing. All the respectable people of Notting Hill have

accepted our compensation. But the ineffable Wayne sticks out over

Pump Street. Says he's Provost of Notting Hill. He's only Provost of

Pump Street."

"A good thought," replied Auberon. "I like the idea of a Provost of

Pump Street. Why not let him alone?"

"And drop the whole scheme!" cried out Buck, with a burst of brutal

spirit. "I'll be damned if we do. No. I'm for sending in workmen to

pull down without more ado."

"Strike for the purple Eagle!" cried the King, hot with historical

associations.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Buck, losing his temper altogether.

"If your Majesty would spend less time in insulting respectable people

with your silly coats-of-arms, and more time over the business of the

nation--"

The King's brow wrinkled thoughtfully.

"The situation is not bad," he said; "the haughty burgher defying the

King in his own Palace. The burgher's head should be thrown back and

the right arm extended; the left may be lifted towards Heaven, but

that I leave to your private religious sentiment. I have sunk back in

this chair, stricken with baffled fury. Now again, please."

Buck's mouth opened like a dog's, but before he could speak another

herald appeared at the door.

"The Lord High Provost of Bayswater," he said, "desires an audience."

"Admit him," said Auberon. "This _is_ a jolly day."

The halberdiers of Bayswater wore a prevailing uniform of green, and

the banner which was borne after them was emblazoned with a green

bay-wreath on a silver ground, which the King, in the course of his

researches into a bottle of champagne, had discovered to be the quaint

old punning cognisance of the city of Bayswater.

"It is a fit symbol," said the King, "your immortal bay-wreath. Fulham

may seek for wealth, and Kensington for art, but when did the men of

Bayswater care for anything but glory?"

Immediately behind the banner, and almost completely hidden by it,

came the Provost of the city, clad in splendid robes of green and

silver with white fur and crowned with bay. He was an anxious little

man with red whiskers, originally the owner of a small sweet-stuff

shop.

"Our cousin of Bayswater," said the King, with delight; "what can we

get for you?" The King was heard also distinctly to mutter, "Cold

beef, cold 'am, cold chicken," his voice dying into silence.

"I came to see your Majesty," said the Provost of Bayswater, whose

name was Wilson, "about that Pump Street affair."

"I have just been explaining the situation to his Majesty," said Buck,

curtly, but recovering his civility. "I am not sure, however, whether

his Majesty knows how much the matter affects you also."

"It affects both of us, yer see, yer Majesty, as this scheme was

started for the benefit of the 'ole neighbourhood. So Mr. Buck and me

we put our 'eads together--"

The King clasped his hands.

"Perfect!" he cried in ecstacy. "Your heads together! I can see it!

Can't you do it now? Oh, do do it now!"

A smothered sound of amusement appeared to come from the halberdiers,

but Mr. Wilson looked merely bewildered, and Mr. Buck merely

diabolical.

"I suppose," he began bitterly, but the King stopped him with a

gesture of listening.

"Hush," he said, "I think I hear some one else coming. I seem to hear

another herald, a herald whose boots creak."

As he spoke another voice cried from the doorway--

"The Lord High Provost of South Kensington desires an audience."

"The Lord High Provost of South Kensington!" cried the King. "Why,

that is my old friend James Barker! What does he want, I wonder? If

the tender memories of friendship have not grown misty, I fancy he

wants something for himself, probably money. How are you, James?"

Mr. James Barker, whose guard was attired in a splendid blue, and

whose blue banner bore three gold birds singing, rushed, in his blue

and gold robes, into the room. Despite the absurdity of all the

dresses, it was worth noticing that he carried his better than the

rest, though he loathed it as much as any of them. He was a gentleman,

and a very handsome man, and could not help unconsciously wearing even

his preposterous robe as it should be worn. He spoke quickly, but with

the slight initial hesitation he always showed in addressing the King,

due to suppressing an impulse to address his old acquaintance in the

old way.

"Your Majesty--pray forgive my intrusion. It is about this man in Pump

Street. I see you have Buck here, so you have probably heard what is

necessary. I--"

The King swept his eyes anxiously round the room, which now blazed

with the trappings of three cities.

"There is one thing necessary," he said.

"Yes, your Majesty," said Mr. Wilson of Bayswater, a little eagerly.

"What does yer Majesty think necessary?"

"A little yellow," said the King, firmly. "Send for the Provost of

West Kensington."

Amid some materialistic protests he was sent for, and arrived with his

yellow halberdiers in his saffron robes, wiping his forehead with a

handkerchief. After all, placed as he was, he had a good deal to say

on the matter.

"Welcome, West Kensington," said the King. "I have long wished to see

you touching that matter of the Hammersmith land to the south of the

Rowton House. Will you hold it feudally from the Provost of

Hammersmith? You have only to do him homage by putting his left arm

in his overcoat and then marching home in state."

"No, your Majesty; I'd rather not," said the Provost of West

Kensington, who was a pale young man with a fair moustache and

whiskers, who kept a successful dairy.

The King struck him heartily on the shoulder.

"The fierce old West Kensington blood," he said; "they are not wise

who ask it to do homage."

Then he glanced again round the room. It was full of a roaring sunset

of colour, and he enjoyed the sight, possible to so few artists--the

sight of his own dreams moving and blazing before him. In the

foreground the yellow of the West Kensington liveries outlined itself

against the dark blue draperies of South Kensington. The crests of

these again brightened suddenly into green as the almost woodland

colours of Bayswater rose behind them. And over and behind all, the

great purple plumes of North Kensington showed almost funereal and

black.

"There is something lacking," said the King--"something lacking. What

can--Ah, there it is! there it is!"

In the doorway had appeared a new figure, a herald in flaming red. He

cried in a loud but unemotional voice--

"The Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires an audience."

CHAPTER III--_Enter a Lunatic_

The King of the Fairies, who was, it is to be presumed, the godfather

of King Auberon, must have been very favourable on this particular day

to his fantastic godchild, for with the entrance of the guard of the

Provost of Notting Hill there was a certain more or less inexplicable

addition to his delight. The wretched navvies and sandwich-men who

carried the colours of Bayswater or South Kensington, engaged merely

for the day to satisfy the Royal hobby, slouched into the room with a

comparatively hang-dog air, and a great part of the King's

intellectual pleasure consisted in the contrast between the arrogance

of their swords and feathers and the meek misery of their faces. But

these Notting Hill halberdiers in their red tunics belted with gold

had the air rather of an absurd gravity. They seemed, so to speak, to

be taking part in the joke. They marched and wheeled into position

with an almost startling dignity and discipline.

They carried a yellow banner with a great red lion, named by the King

as the Notting Hill emblem, after a small public-house in the

neighbourhood, which he once frequented.

Between the two lines of his followers there advanced towards the King

a tall, red-haired young man, with high features and bold blue eyes.

He would have been called handsome, but that a certain indefinable air

of his nose being too big for his face, and his feet for his legs,

gave him a look of awkwardness and extreme youth. His robes were red,

according to the King's heraldry, and, alone among the Provosts, he

was girt with a great sword. This was Adam Wayne, the intractable

Provost of Notting Hill.

The King flung himself back in his chair, and rubbed his hands.

"What a day, what a day!" he said to himself. "Now there'll be a row.

I'd no idea it would be such fun as it is. These Provosts are so very

indignant, so very reasonable, so very right. This fellow, by the look

in his eyes, is even more indignant than the rest. No sign in those

large blue eyes, at any rate, of ever having heard of a joke. He'll

remonstrate with the others, and they'll remonstrate with him, and

they'll all make themselves sumptuously happy remonstrating with me."

"Welcome, my Lord," he said aloud. "What news from the Hill of a

Hundred Legends? What have you for the ear of your King? I know that

troubles have arisen between you and these others, our cousins, but

these troubles it shall be our pride to compose. And I doubt not, and

cannot doubt, that your love for me is not less tender, no less

ardent, than theirs."

Mr. Buck made a bitter face, and James Barker's nostrils curled;

Wilson began to giggle faintly, and the Provost of West Kensington

followed in a smothered way. But the big blue eyes of Adam Wayne never

changed, and he called out in an odd, boyish voice down the hall--

"I bring homage to my King. I bring him the only thing I have--my

sword."

And with a great gesture he flung it down on the ground, and knelt on

one knee behind it.

There was a dead silence.

"I beg your pardon," said the King, blankly.

"You speak well, sire," said Adam Wayne, "as you ever speak, when you

say that my love is not less than the love of these. Small would it be

if it were not more. For I am the heir of your scheme--the child of

the great Charter. I stand here for the rights the Charter gave me,

and I swear, by your sacred crown, that where I stand, I stand fast."

[Illustration: "I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING."]

The eyes of all five men stood out of their heads.

Then Buck said, in his jolly, jarring voice: "Is the whole world mad?"

The King sprang to his feet, and his eyes blazed.

"Yes," he cried, in a voice of exultation, "the whole world is mad,

but Adam Wayne and me. It is true as death what I told you long ago,

James Barker, seriousness sends men mad. You are mad, because you care

for politics, as mad as a man who collects tram tickets. Buck is mad,

because he cares for money, as mad as a man who lives on opium. Wilson

is mad, because he thinks himself right, as mad as a man who thinks

himself God Almighty. The Provost of West Kensington is mad, because

he thinks he is respectable, as mad as a man who thinks he is a

chicken. All men are mad but the humorist, who cares for nothing and

possesses everything. I thought that there was only one humorist in

England. Fools!--dolts!--open your cows' eyes; there are two! In

Notting Hill--in that unpromising elevation--there has been born an

artist! You thought to spoil my joke, and bully me out of it, by

becoming more and more modern, more and more practical, more and more

bustling and rational. Oh, what a feast it was to answer you by

becoming more and more august, more and more gracious, more and more

ancient and mellow! But this lad has seen how to bowl me out. He has

answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has

lifted the only shield I cannot break, the shield of an impenetrable

pomposity. Listen to him. You have come, my Lord, about Pump Street?"

"About the city of Notting Hill," answered Wayne, proudly, "of which

Pump Street is a living and rejoicing part."

"Not a very large part," said Barker, contemptuously.

"That which is large enough for the rich to covet," said Wayne,

drawing up his head, "is large enough for the poor to defend."

The King slapped both his legs, and waved his feet for a second in the

air.

"Every respectable person in Notting Hill," cut in Buck, with his

cold, coarse voice, "is for us and against you. I have plenty of

friends in Notting Hill."

"Your friends are those who have taken your gold for other men's

hearthstones, my Lord Buck," said Provost Wayne. "I can well believe

they are your friends."

"They've never sold dirty toys, anyhow," said Buck, laughing shortly.

"They've sold dirtier things," said Wayne, calmly: "they have sold

themselves."

"It's no good, my Buckling," said the King, rolling about on his

chair. "You can't cope with this chivalrous eloquence. You can't cope

with an artist. You can't cope with the humorist of Notting Hill. Oh,

_Nunc dimittis_--that I have lived to see this day! Provost Wayne, you

stand firm?"

"Let them wait and see," said Wayne. "If I stood firm before, do you

think I shall weaken now that I have seen the face of the King? For I

fight for something greater, if greater there can be, than the

hearthstones of my people and the Lordship of the Lion. I fight for

your royal vision, for the great dream you dreamt of the League of the

Free Cities. You have given me this liberty. If I had been a beggar

and you had flung me a coin, if I had been a peasant in a dance and

you had flung me a favour, do you think I would have let it be taken

by any ruffians on the road? This leadership and liberty of Notting

Hill is a gift from your Majesty, and if it is taken from me, by God!

it shall be taken in battle, and the noise of that battle shall be

heard in the flats of Chelsea and in the studios of St. John's Wood."

"It is too much--it is too much," said the King. "Nature is weak. I

must speak to you, brother artist, without further disguise. Let me

ask you a solemn question. Adam Wayne, Lord High Provost of Notting

Hill, don't you think it splendid?"

"Splendid!" cried Adam Wayne. "It has the splendour of God."

"Bowled out again," said the King. "You will keep up the pose.

Funnily, of course, it is serious. But seriously, isn't it funny?"

"What?" asked Wayne, with the eyes of a baby.

"Hang it all, don't play any more. The whole business--the Charter of

the Cities. Isn't it immense?"

"Immense is no unworthy word for that glorious design."