but splendid sanity. He groped madly for the wall and found it.
Struggling with crawling fingers along it, he found a side opening and
retreated into it with the remnants of his men. Their adventures
during that prodigious night are not to be described. They did not
know whether they were going towards or away from the enemy. Not
knowing where they themselves were, or where their opponents were, it
was mere irony to ask where was the rest of their army. For a thing
had descended upon them which London does not know--darkness, which
was before the stars were made, and they were as much lost in it as if
they had been made before the stars. Every now and then, as those
frightful hours wore on, they buffeted in the darkness against living
men, who struck at them and at whom they struck, with an idiot fury.
When at last the grey dawn came, they found they had wandered back to
the edge of the Uxbridge Road. They found that in those horrible
eyeless encounters, the North Kensingtons and the Bayswaters and the
West Kensingtons had again and again met and butchered each other, and
they heard that Adam Wayne was barricaded in Pump Street.
CHAPTER II--_The Correspondent of the Court Journal_
Journalism had become, like most other such things in England under
the cautious government and philosophy represented by James Barker,
somewhat sleepy and much diminished in importance. This was partly due
to the disappearance of party government and public speaking, partly
to the compromise or dead-lock which had made foreign wars impossible,
but mostly, of course, to the temper of the whole nation which was
that of a people in a kind of back-water. Perhaps the most well known
of the remaining newspapers was the _Court Journal_, which was
published in a dusty but genteel-looking office just out of Kensington
High Street. For when all the papers of a people have been for years
growing more and more dim and decorous and optimistic, the dimmest and
most decorous and most optimistic is very likely to win. In the
journalistic competition which was still going on at the beginning of
the twentieth century, the final victor was the _Court Journal_.
For some mysterious reason the King had a great affection for hanging
about in the _Court Journal_ office, smoking a morning cigarette and
looking over files. Like all ingrainedly idle men, he was very fond of
lounging and chatting in places where other people were doing work.
But one would have thought that, even in the prosaic England of his
day, he might have found a more bustling centre.
On this particular morning, however, he came out of Kensington Palace
with a more alert step and a busier air than usual. He wore an
extravagantly long frock-coat, a pale-green waistcoat, a very full and
_dégagé_ black tie, and curious yellow gloves. This was his uniform as
Colonel of a regiment of his own creation, the 1st Decadents Green. It
was a beautiful sight to see him drilling them. He walked quickly
across the Park and the High Street, lighting his cigarette as he
went, and flung open the door of the _Court Journal_ office.
"You've heard the news, Pally--you've heard the news?" he said.
The Editor's name was Hoskins, but the King called him Pally, which
was an abbreviation of Paladium of our Liberties.
"Well, your Majesty," said Hoskins, slowly (he was a worried,
gentlemanly looking person, with a wandering brown beard)--"well,
your Majesty, I have heard rather curious things, but I--"
"You'll hear more of them," said the King, dancing a few steps of a
kind of negro shuffle. "You'll hear more of them, my blood-and-thunder
tribune. Do you know what I am going to do for you?"
"No, your Majesty," replied the Paladium, vaguely.
"I'm going to put your paper on strong, dashing, enterprising lines,"
said the King. "Now, where are your posters of last night's defeat?"
"I did not propose, your Majesty," said the Editor, "to have any
posters exactly--"
"Paper, paper!" cried the King, wildly; "bring me paper as big as a
house. I'll do you posters. Stop, I must take my coat off." He began
removing that garment with an air of set intensity, flung it playfully
at Mr. Hoskins' head, entirely enveloping him, and looked at himself
in the glass. "The coat off," he said, "and the hat on. That looks
like a sub-editor. It is indeed the very essence of sub-editing.
Well," he continued, turning round abruptly, "come along with that
paper."
The Paladium had only just extricated himself reverently from the
folds of the King's frock-coat, and said bewildered--
"I am afraid, your Majesty--"
"Oh, you've got no enterprise," said Auberon. "What's that roll in the
corner? Wall-paper? Decorations for your private residence? Art in the
home, Pally? Fling it over here, and I'll paint such posters on the
back of it that when you put it up in your drawing-room you'll paste
the original pattern against the wall." And the King unrolled the
wall-paper, spreading it over the whole floor. "Now give me the
scissors," he cried, and took them himself before the other could
stir.
He slit the paper into about five pieces, each nearly as big as a
door. Then he took a big blue pencil, and went down on his knees on
the dusty oil-cloth and began to write on them, in huge letters--
"FROM THE FRONT.
GENERAL BUCK DEFEATED.
DARKNESS, DANGER, AND DEATH.
WAYNE SAID TO BE IN PUMP STREET.
FEELING IN THE CITY."
He contemplated it for some time, with his head on one side, and got
up, with a sigh.
"Not quite intense enough," he said--"not alarming. I want the _Court
Journal_ to be feared as well as loved. Let's try something more
hard-hitting." And he went down on his knees again. After sucking the
blue pencil for some time, he began writing again busily. "How will
this do?" he said--
"WAYNE'S WONDERFUL VICTORY."
"I suppose," he said, looking up appealingly, and sucking the
pencil--"I suppose we couldn't say 'wictory'--'Wayne's wonderful
wictory'? No, no. Refinement, Pally, refinement. I have it."
"WAYNE WINS.
ASTOUNDING FIGHT IN THE DARK.
_The gas-lamps in their courses fought against Buck._"
"(Nothing like our fine old English translation.) What else can we
say? Well, anything to annoy old Buck;" and he added, thoughtfully, in
smaller letters--
"Rumoured Court-martial on General Buck."
"Those will do for the present," he said, and turned them both face
downwards. "Paste, please."
The Paladium, with an air of great terror, brought the paste out of an
inner room.
The King slabbed it on with the enjoyment of a child messing with
treacle. Then taking one of his huge compositions fluttering in each
hand, he ran outside, and began pasting them up in prominent positions
over the front of the office.
"And now," said Auberon, entering again with undiminished
vivacity--"now for the leading article."
He picked up another of the large strips of wall-paper, and, laying it
across a desk, pulled out a fountain-pen and began writing with
feverish intensity, reading clauses and fragments aloud to himself,
and rolling them on his tongue like wine, to see if they had the pure
journalistic flavour.
"The news of the disaster to our forces in Notting Hill, awful as it
is--awful as it is--(no, distressing as it is), may do some good if it
draws attention to the what's-his-name inefficiency (scandalous
inefficiency, of course) of the Government's preparations. In our
present state of information, it would be premature (what a jolly
word!)--it would be premature to cast any reflections upon the conduct
of General Buck, whose services upon so many stricken fields (ha,
ha!), and whose honourable scars and laurels, give him a right to have
judgment upon him at least suspended. But there is one matter on which
we must speak plainly. We have been silent on it too long, from
feelings, perhaps of mistaken caution, perhaps of mistaken loyalty.
This situation would never have arisen but for what we can only call
the indefensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say such things,
but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from
Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress
we may cause to any individual, even the most exalted. At this crucial
moment of our country, the voice of the People demands with a single
tongue, 'Where is the King?' What is he doing while his subjects tear
each other in pieces in the streets of a great city? Are his
amusements and his dissipations (of which we cannot pretend to be
ignorant) so engrossing that he can spare no thought for a perishing
nation? It is with a deep sense of our responsibility that we warn
that exalted person that neither his great position nor his
incomparable talents will save him in the hour of delirium from the
fate of all those who, in the madness of luxury or tyranny, have met
the English people in the rare day of its wrath."
"I am now," said the King, "going to write an account of the battle by
an eye-witness." And he picked up a fourth sheet of wall-paper. Almost
at the same moment Buck strode quickly into the office. He had a
bandage round his head.
"I was told," he said, with his usual gruff civility, "that your
Majesty was here."
"And of all things on earth," cried the King, with delight, "here is
an eye-witness! An eye-witness who, I regret to observe, has at
present only one eye to witness with. Can you write us the special
article, Buck? Have you a rich style?"
Buck, with a self-restraint which almost approached politeness, took
no notice whatever of the King's maddening geniality.
"I took the liberty, your Majesty," he said shortly, "of asking Mr.
Barker to come here also."
As he spoke, indeed, Barker came swinging into the office, with his
usual air of hurry.
"What is happening now?" asked Buck, turning to him with a kind of
relief.
"Fighting still going on," said Barker. "The four hundred from West
Kensington were hardly touched last night. They hardly got near the
place. Poor Wilson's Bayswater men got cut about, though. They fought
confoundedly well. They took Pump Street once. What mad things do
happen in the world. To think that of all of us it should be little
Wilson with the red whiskers who came out best."
The King made a note on his paper--
"_Romantic Conduct of Mr. Wilson_."
"Yes," said Buck; "it makes one a bit less proud of one's _h's_."
The King suddenly folded or crumpled up the paper, and put it in his
pocket.
"I have an idea," he said. "I will be an eye-witness. I will write you
such letters from the Front as will be more gorgeous than the real
thing. Give me my coat, Paladium. I entered this room a mere King of
England. I leave it, Special War Correspondent of the _Court Journal_.
It is useless to stop me, Pally; it is vain to cling to my knees,
Buck; it is hopeless, Barker, to weep upon my neck. 'When duty
calls'--the remainder of the sentiment escapes me. You will receive my
first article this evening by the eight-o'clock post."
And, running out of the office, he jumped upon a blue Bayswater
omnibus that went swinging by.
"Well," said Barker, gloomily, "well."
"Barker," said Buck, "business may be lower than politics, but war is,
as I discovered last night, a long sight more like business. You
politicians are such ingrained demagogues that even when you have a
despotism you think of nothing but public opinion. So you learn to
tack and run, and are afraid of the first breeze. Now we stick to a
thing and get it. And our mistakes help us. Look here! at this moment
we've beaten Wayne."
"Beaten Wayne," repeated Barker.
"Why the dickens not?" cried the other, flinging out his hands. "Look
here. I said last night that we had them by holding the nine
entrances. Well, I was wrong. We should have had them but for a
singular event--the lamps went out. But for that it was certain. Has
it occurred to you, my brilliant Barker, that another singular event
has happened since that singular event of the lamps going out?"
"What event?" asked Barker.
"By an astounding coincidence, the sun has risen," cried out Buck,
with a savage air of patience. "Why the hell aren't we holding all
those approaches now, and passing in on them again? It should have
been done at sunrise. The confounded doctor wouldn't let me go out.
You were in command."
Barker smiled grimly.
"It is a gratification to me, my dear Buck, to be able to say that we
anticipated your suggestions precisely. We went as early as possible
to reconnoitre the nine entrances. Unfortunately, while we were
fighting each other in the dark, like a lot of drunken navvies, Mr.
Wayne's friends were working very hard indeed. Three hundred yards
from Pump Street, at every one of those entrances, there is a
barricade nearly as high as the houses. They were finishing the last,
in Pembridge Road, when we arrived. Our mistakes," he cried bitterly,
and flung his cigarette on the ground. "It is not we who learn from
them."
There was a silence for a few moments, and Barker lay back wearily in
a chair. The office clock ticked exactly in the stillness.
At length Barker said suddenly--
"Buck, does it ever cross your mind what this is all about? The
Hammersmith to Maida Vale thoroughfare was an uncommonly good
speculation. You and I hoped a great deal from it. But is it worth it?
It will cost us thousands to crush this ridiculous riot. Suppose we
let it alone?"
"And be thrashed in public by a red-haired madman whom any two doctors
would lock up?" cried out Buck, starting to his feet. "What do you
propose to do, Mr. Barker? To apologise to the admirable Mr. Wayne? To
kneel to the Charter of the Cities? To clasp to your bosom the flag of
the Red Lion? To kiss in succession every sacred lamp-post that saved
Notting Hill? No, by God! My men fought jolly well--they were beaten
by a trick. And they'll fight again."
"Buck," said Barker, "I always admired you. And you were quite right
in what you said the other day."
"In what?"
"In saying," said Barker, rising quietly, "that we had all got into
Adam Wayne's atmosphere and out of our own. My friend, the whole
territorial kingdom of Adam Wayne extends to about nine streets, with
barricades at the end of them. But the spiritual kingdom of Adam Wayne
extends, God knows where--it extends to this office, at any rate. The
red-haired madman whom any two doctors would lock up is filling this
room with his roaring, unreasonable soul. And it was the red-haired
madman who said the last word you spoke."
Buck walked to the window without replying. "You understand, of
course," he said at last, "I do not dream of giving in."
* * * * *
The King, meanwhile, was rattling along on the top of his blue
omnibus. The traffic of London as a whole had not, of course, been
greatly disturbed by these events, for the affair was treated as a
Notting Hill riot, and that area was marked off as if it had been in
the hands of a gang of recognised rioters. The blue omnibuses simply
went round as they would have done if a road were being mended, and
the omnibus on which the correspondent of the _Court Journal_ was
sitting swept round the corner of Queen's Road, Bayswater.
The King was alone on the top of the vehicle, and was enjoying the
speed at which it was going.
"Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said, patting the omnibus
encouragingly, "fleetest of all thy bounding tribe. Are thy relations
with thy driver, I wonder, those of the Bedouin and his steed? Does he
sleep side by side with thee--"
His meditations were broken by a sudden and jarring stoppage. Looking
over the edge, he saw that the heads of the horses were being held
by men in the uniform of Wayne's army, and heard the voice of an
officer calling out orders.
[Illustration: KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH DIGNITY.]
King Auberon descended from the omnibus with dignity. The guard or
picket of red halberdiers who had stopped the vehicle did not number
more than twenty, and they were under the command of a short, dark,
clever-looking young man, conspicuous among the rest as being clad in
an ordinary frock-coat, but girt round the waist with a red sash and a
long seventeenth-century sword. A shiny silk hat and spectacles
completed the outfit in a pleasing manner.
"To whom have I the honour of speaking?" said the King, endeavouring
to look like Charles I., in spite of personal difficulties.
The dark man in spectacles lifted his hat with equal gravity.
"My name is Bowles," he said. "I am a chemist. I am also a captain of
O company of the army of Notting Hill. I am distressed at having to
incommode you by stopping the omnibus, but this area is covered by our
proclamation, and we intercept all traffic. May I ask to whom I have
the honour--Why, good gracious, I beg your Majesty's pardon. I am
quite overwhelmed at finding myself concerned with the King."
Auberon put up his hand with indescribable grandeur.
"Not with the King," he said; "with the special war correspondent of
the _Court Journal_."
"I beg your Majesty's pardon," began Mr. Bowles, doubtfully.
"Do you call me Majesty? I repeat," said Auberon, firmly, "I am a
representative of the press. I have chosen, with a deep sense of
responsibility, the name of Pinker. I should desire a veil to be drawn
over the past."
"Very well, sir," said Mr. Bowles, with an air of submission, "in our
eyes the sanctity of the press is at least as great as that of the
throne. We desire nothing better than that our wrongs and our glories
should be widely known. May I ask, Mr. Pinker, if you have any
objection to being presented to the Provost and to General Turnbull?"
"The Provost I have had the honour of meeting," said Auberon, easily.
"We old journalists, you know, meet everybody. I should be most
delighted to have the same honour again. General Turnbull, also, it
would be a gratification to know. The younger men are so interesting.
We of the old Fleet Street gang lose touch with them."
"Will you be so good as to step this way?" said the leader of O
company.
"I am always good," said Mr. Pinker. "Lead on."
CHAPTER III--_The Great Army of South Kensington_
The article from the special correspondent of the _Court Journal_
arrived in due course, written on very coarse copy-paper in the King's
arabesque of handwriting, in which three words filled a page, and yet
were illegible. Moreover, the contribution was the more perplexing at
first, as it opened with a succession of erased paragraphs. The writer
appeared to have attempted the article once or twice in several
journalistic styles. At the side of one experiment was written, "Try
American style," and the fragment began--
"The King must go. We want gritty men. Flapdoodle is all very ...;"
and then broke off, followed by the note, "Good sound journalism
safer. Try it."
The experiment in good sound journalism appeared to begin--
"The greatest of English poets has said that a rose by any ..."
This also stopped abruptly. The next annotation at the side was almost
undecipherable, but seemed to be something like--
"How about old Steevens and the _mot juste_? E.g...."
"Morning winked a little wearily at me over the curt edge of Campden
Hill and its houses with their sharp shadows. Under the abrupt black
cardboard of the outline, it took some little time to detect colours;
but at length I saw a brownish yellow shifting in the obscurity, and I
knew that it was the guard of Swindon's West Kensington army. They are
being held as a reserve, and lining the whole ridge above the
Bayswater Road. Their camp and their main force is under the great
Waterworks Tower on Campden Hill. I forgot to say that the Waterworks
Tower looked swart.
"As I passed them and came over the curve of Silver Street, I saw the
blue cloudy masses of Barker's men blocking the entrance to the
high-road like a sapphire smoke (good). The disposition of the allied
troops, under the general management of Mr. Wilson, appears to be as
follows: The Yellow army (if I may so describe the West
Kensingtonians) lies, as I have said, in a strip along the ridge, its
furthest point westward being the west side of Campden Hill Road, its
furthest point eastward the beginning of Kensington Gardens. The Green
army of Wilson lines the Notting Hill High Road itself from Queen's
Road to the corner of Pembridge Road, curving round the latter, and
extending some three hundred yards up towards Westbourne Grove.
Westbourne Grove itself is occupied by Barker of South Kensington. The
fourth side of this rough square, the Queen's Road side, is held by
some of Buck's Purple warriors.
"The whole resembles some ancient and dainty Dutch flower-bed. Along
the crest of Campden Hill lie the golden crocuses of West Kensington.
They are, as it were, the first fiery fringe of the whole. Northward
lies our hyacinth Barker, with all his blue hyacinths. Round to the
south-west run the green rushes of Wilson of Bayswater, and a line of
violet irises (aptly symbolised by Mr. Buck) complete the whole. The
argent exterior ... (I am losing the style. I should have said
'Curving with a whisk' instead of merely 'Curving.' Also I should have
called the hyacinths 'sudden.' I cannot keep this up. War is too rapid
for this style of writing. Please ask office-boy to insert _mots
justes_.)
"The truth is that there is nothing to report. That commonplace
element which is always ready to devour all beautiful things (as the
Black Pig in the Irish Mythology will finally devour the stars and
gods); that commonplace element, as I say, has in its Black Piggish
way devoured finally the chances of any romance in this affair; that
which once consisted of absurd but thrilling combats in the streets,
has degenerated into something which is the very prose of warfare--it
has degenerated into a siege. A siege may be defined as a peace plus
the inconvenience of war. Of course Wayne cannot hold out. There is no
more chance of help from anywhere else than of ships from the moon.
And if old Wayne had stocked his street with tinned meats till all his
garrison had to sit on them, he couldn't hold out for more than a
month or two. As a matter of melancholy fact, he has done something
rather like this. He has stocked his street with food until there must
be uncommonly little room to turn round. But what is the good? To hold
out for all that time and then to give in of necessity, what does it
mean? It means waiting until your victories are forgotten, and then
taking the trouble to be defeated. I cannot understand how Wayne can
be so inartistic.
"And how odd it is that one views a thing quite differently when one
knows it is defeated! I always thought Wayne was rather fine. But now,
when I know that he is done for, there seem to be nothing else but
Wayne. All the streets seem to point at him, all the chimneys seem to
lean towards him. I suppose it is a morbid feeling; but Pump Street
seems to be the only part of London that I feel physically. I suppose,
I say, that it is morbid. I suppose it is exactly how a man feels
about his heart when his heart is weak. 'Pump Street'--the heart is a
pump. And I am drivelling.
"Our finest leader at the front is, beyond all question, General
Wilson. He has adopted alone among the other Provosts the uniform of
his own halberdiers, although that fine old sixteenth-century garb was
not originally intended to go with red side-whiskers. It was he who,
against a most admirable and desperate defence, broke last night into
Pump Street and held it for at least half an hour. He was afterwards
expelled from it by General Turnbull, of Notting Hill, but only after
desperate fighting and the sudden descent of that terrible darkness
which proved so much more fatal to the forces of General Buck and
General Swindon.
"Provost Wayne himself, with whom I had, with great good fortune, a
most interesting interview, bore the most eloquent testimony to the
conduct of General Wilson and his men. His precise words are as
follows: 'I have bought sweets at his funny little shop when I was
four years old, and ever since. I never noticed anything, I am ashamed
to say, except that he talked through his nose, and didn't wash
himself particularly. And he came over our barricade like a devil from
hell.' I repeated this speech to General Wilson himself, with some
delicate improvements, and he seemed pleased with it. He does not,
however, seem pleased with anything so much just now as he is with the
wearing of a sword. I have it from the front on the best authority
that General Wilson was not completely shaved yesterday. It is
believed in military circles that he is growing a moustache....
"As I have said, there is nothing to report. I walk wearily to the
pillar-box at the corner of Pembridge Road to post my copy. Nothing
whatever has happened, except the preparations for a particularly long
and feeble siege, during which I trust I shall not be required to be
at the Front. As I glance up Pembridge Road in the growing dusk, the
aspect of that road reminds me that there is one note worth adding.
General Buck has suggested, with characteristic acumen, to General
Wilson that, in order to obviate the possibility of such a catastrophe
as overwhelmed the allied forces in the last advance on Notting Hill
(the catastrophe, I mean, of the extinguished lamps), each soldier
should have a lighted lantern round his neck. This is one of the
things which I really admire about General Buck. He possesses what
people used to mean by 'the humility of the man of science,' that is,
he learns steadily from his mistakes. Wayne may score off him in some
other way, but not in that way. The lanterns look like fairy lights as
they curve round the end of Pembridge Road.
* * * * *
"_Later_.--I write with some difficulty, because the blood will run
down my face and make patterns on the paper. Blood is a very beautiful
thing; that is why it is concealed. If you ask why blood runs down my
face, I can only reply that I was kicked by a horse. If you ask me
what horse, I can reply with some pride that it was a war-horse. If
you ask me how a war-horse came on the scene in our simple pedestrian
warfare, I am reduced to the necessity, so painful to a special
correspondent, of recounting my experiences.
"I was, as I have said, in the very act of posting my copy at the
pillar-box, and of glancing as I did so up the glittering curve of
Pembridge Road, studded with the lights of Wilson's men. I don't know
what made me pause to examine the matter, but I had a fancy that the
line of lights, where it melted into the indistinct brown twilight,
was more indistinct than usual. I was almost certain that in a certain
stretch of the road where there had been five lights there were now
only four. I strained my eyes; I counted them again, and there were
only three. A moment after there were only two; an instant after only
one; and an instant after that the lanterns near to me swung like
jangled bells, as if struck suddenly. They flared and fell; and for
the moment the fall of them was like the fall of the sun and stars out
of heaven. It left everything in a primal blindness. As a matter of
fact, the road was not yet legitimately dark. There were still red
rays of a sunset in the sky, and the brown gloaming was still warmed,
as it were, with a feeling as of firelight. But for three seconds
after the lanterns swung and sank, I saw in front of me a blackness
blocking the sky. And with the fourth second I knew that this
blackness which blocked the sky was a man on a great horse; and I was
trampled and tossed aside as a swirl of horsemen swept round the
corner. As they turned I saw that they were not black, but scarlet;
they were a sortie of the besieged, Wayne riding ahead.
"I lifted myself from the gutter, blinded with blood from a very
slight skin-wound, and, queerly enough, not caring either for the
blindness or for the slightness of the wound. For one mortal minute
after that amazing cavalcade had spun past, there was dead stillness
on the empty road. And then came Barker and all his halberdiers
running like devils in the track of them. It had been their business
to guard the gate by which the sortie had broken out; but they had not
reckoned, and small blame to them, on cavalry. As it was, Barker and
his men made a perfectly splendid run after them, almost catching
Wayne's horses by the tails.
"Nobody can understand the sortie. It consists only of a small number
of Wayne's garrison. Turnbull himself, with the vast mass of it, is
undoubtedly still barricaded in Pump Street. Sorties of this kind are
natural enough in the majority of historical sieges, such as the siege
of Paris in 1870, because in such cases the besieged are certain of
some support outside. But what can be the object of it in this case?
Wayne knows (or if he is too mad to know anything, at least Turnbull
knows) that there is not, and never has been, the smallest chance of
support for him outside; that the mass of the sane modern inhabitants
of London regard his farcical patriotism with as much contempt as they
do the original idiotcy that gave it birth--the folly of our miserable
King. What Wayne and his horsemen are doing nobody can even
conjecture. The general theory round here is that he is simply a
traitor, and has abandoned the besieged. But all such larger but yet
more soluble riddles are as nothing compared to the one small but
unanswerable riddle: Where did they get the horses?
* * * * *
"_Later_.--I have heard a most extraordinary account of the origin of
the appearance of the horses. It appears that that amazing person,
General Turnbull, who is now ruling Pump Street in the absence of
Wayne, sent out, on the morning of the declaration of war, a vast
number of little boys (or cherubs of the gutter, as we pressmen say),
with half-crowns in their pockets, to take cabs all over London. No
less than a hundred and sixty cabs met at Pump Street; were
commandeered by the garrison. The men were set free, the cabs used to
make barricades, and the horses kept in Pump Street, where they were
fed and exercised for several days, until they were sufficiently
rapid and efficient to be used for this wild ride out of the town. If
this is so, and I have it on the best possible authority, the method
of the sortie is explained. But we have no explanation of its object.
Just as Barker's Blues were swinging round the corner after them, they
were stopped, but not by an enemy; only by the voice of one man, and
he a friend. Red Wilson of Bayswater ran alone along the main road
like a madman, waving them back with a halberd snatched from a
sentinel. He was in supreme command, and Barker stopped at the corner,
staring and bewildered. We could hear Wilson's voice loud and distinct
out of the dusk, so that it seemed strange that the great voice should
come out of the little body. 'Halt, South Kensington! Guard this
entry, and prevent them returning. I will pursue. Forward, the Green
Guards!'
"A wall of dark blue uniforms and a wood of pole-axes was between me
and Wilson, for Barker's men blocked the mouth of the road in two
rigid lines. But through them and through the dusk I could hear the
clear orders and the clank of arms, and see the green army of Wilson
marching by towards the west. They were our great fighting-men. Wilson
had filled them with his own fire; in a few days they had become
veterans. Each of them wore a silver medal of a pump, to boast that
they alone of all the allied armies had stood victorious in Pump
Street.
"I managed to slip past the detachment of Barker's Blues, who are
guarding the end of Pembridge Road, and a sharp spell of running
brought me to the tail of Wilson's green army as it swung down the
road in pursuit of the flying Wayne. The dusk had deepened into almost
total darkness; for some time I only heard the throb of the marching
pace. Then suddenly there was a cry, and the tall fighting men were
flung back on me, almost crushing me, and again the lanterns swung and
jingled, and the cold nozzles of great horses pushed into the press of
us. They had turned and charged us.
"'You fools!' came the voice of Wilson, cleaving our panic with a
splendid cold anger. 'Don't you see? the horses have no riders!'
"It was true. We were being plunged at by a stampede of horses with
empty saddles. What could it mean? Had Wayne met some of our men and
been defeated? Or had he flung these horses at us as some kind of ruse
or mad new mode of warfare, such as he seemed bent on inventing? Or
did he and his men want to get away in disguise? Or did they want to
hide in houses somewhere?
"Never did I admire any man's intellect (even my own) so much as I did
Wilson's at that moment. Without a word, he simply pointed the halberd
(which he still grasped) to the southern side of the road. As you
know, the streets running up to the ridge of Campden Hill from the
main road are peculiarly steep, they are more like sudden flights of
stairs. We were just opposite Aubrey Road, the steepest of all; up
that it would have been far more difficult to urge half-trained horses
than to run up on one's feet.
"'Left wheel!' hallooed Wilson. 'They have gone up here,' he added to
me, who happened to be at his elbow.
"'Why?' I ventured to ask.
"'Can't say for certain,' replied the Bayswater General. 'They've gone
up here in a great hurry, anyhow. They've simply turned their horses
loose, because they couldn't take them up. I fancy I know. I fancy
they're trying to get over the ridge to Kensingston or Hammersmith, or
somewhere, and are striking up here because it's just beyond the end
of our line. Damned fools, not to have gone further along the road,
though. They've only just shaved our last outpost. Lambert is hardly
four hundred yards from here. And I've sent him word.'
"'Lambert!' I said. 'Not young Wilfrid Lambert--my old friend.'
"'Wilfrid Lambert's his name,' said the General; 'used to be a "man
about town;" silly fellow with a big nose. That kind of man always
volunteers for some war or other; and what's funnier, he generally
isn't half bad at it. Lambert is distinctly good. The yellow West
Kensingtons I always reckoned the weakest part of the army; but he has
pulled them together uncommonly well, though he's subordinate to
Swindon, who's a donkey. In the attack from Pembridge Road the other
night he showed great pluck.'
"'He has shown greater pluck than that,' I said. 'He has criticised my
sense of humour. That was his first engagement.'
"This remark was, I am sorry to say, lost on the admirable commander
of the allied forces. We were in the act of climbing the last half of
Aubrey Road, which is so abrupt a slope that it looks like an
old-fashioned map leaning up against the wall. There are lines of
little trees, one above the other, as in the old-fashioned map.
"We reached the top of it, panting somewhat, and were just about to
turn the corner by a place called (in chivalrous anticipation of our
wars of sword and axe) Tower Creçy, when we were suddenly knocked in
the stomach (I can use no other term) by a horde of men hurled back
upon us. They wore the red uniform of Wayne; their halberds were
broken; their foreheads bleeding; but the mere impetus of their
retreat staggered us as we stood at the last ridge of the slope.
"'Good old Lambert!' yelled out suddenly the stolid Mr. Wilson of
Bayswater, in an uncontrollable excitement. 'Damned jolly old Lambert!
He's got there already! He's driving them back on us! Hurrah! hurrah!
Forward, the Green Guards!'
"We swung round the corner eastwards, Wilson running first,
brandishing the halberd--
"Will you pardon a little egotism? Every one likes a little egotism,
when it takes the form, as mine does in this case, of a disgraceful
confession. The thing is really a little interesting, because it shows
how the merely artistic habit has bitten into men like me. It was the
most intensely exciting occurrence that had ever come to me in my
life; and I was really intensely excited about it. And yet, as we
turned that corner, the first impression I had was of something that
had nothing to do with the fight at all. I was stricken from the sky
as by a thunderbolt, by the height of the Waterworks Tower on Campden
Hill. I don't know whether Londoners generally realise how high it
looks when one comes out, in this way, almost immediately under it.
For the second it seemed to me that at the foot of it even human war
was a triviality. For the second I felt as if I had been drunk with
some trivial orgie, and that I had been sobered by the shock of that
shadow. A moment afterwards, I realised that under it was going on
something more enduring than stone, and something wilder than the
dizziest height--the agony of man. And I knew that, compared to that,
this overwhelming tower was itself a triviality; it was a mere stalk
of stone which humanity could snap like a stick.
"I don't know why I have talked so much about this silly old
Waterworks Tower, which at the very best was only a tremendous
background. It was that, certainly, a sombre and awful landscape,
against which our figures were relieved. But I think the real reason
was, that there was in my own mind so sharp a transition from the
tower of stone to the man of flesh. For what I saw first when I had
shaken off, as it were, the shadow of the tower, was a man, and a man
I knew.
"Lambert stood at the further corner of the street that curved round
the tower, his figure outlined in some degree by the beginning of
moonrise. He looked magnificent, a hero; but he looked something much
more interesting than that. He was, as it happened, in almost
precisely the same swaggering attitude in which he had stood nearly
fifteen years ago, when he swung his walking-stick and struck it into
the ground, and told me that all my subtlety was drivel. And, upon my
soul, I think he required more courage to say that than to fight as he
does now. For then he was fighting against something that was in the
ascendant, fashionable, and victorious. And now he is fighting (at the
risk of his life, no doubt) merely against something which is already
dead, which is impossible, futile; of which nothing has been more
impossible and futile than this very sortie which has brought him into
contact with it. People nowadays allow infinitely too little for the
psychological sense of victory as a factor in affairs. Then he was
attacking the degraded but undoubtedly victorious Quin; now he is
attacking the interesting but totally extinguished Wayne.
"His name recalls me to the details of the scene. The facts were
these. A line of red halberdiers, headed by Wayne, were marching up
the street, close under the northern wall, which is, in fact, the
bottom of a sort of dyke or fortification of the Waterworks. Lambert
and his yellow West Kensingtons had that instant swept round the
corner and had shaken the Waynites heavily, hurling back a few of the
more timid, as I have just described, into our very arms. When our
force struck the tail of Wayne's, every one knew that all was up with
him. His favourite military barber was struck down. His grocer was
stunned. He himself was hurt in the thigh, and reeled back against the
wall. We had him in a trap with two jaws. 'Is that you?' shouted
Lambert, genially, to Wilson, across the hemmed-in host of Notting
Hill. 'That's about the ticket,' replied General Wilson; 'keep them
under the wall.'
"The men of Notting Hill were falling fast. Adam Wayne threw up his
long arms to the wall above him, and with a spring stood upon it; a
gigantic figure against the moon. He tore the banner out of the hands
of the standard-bearer below him, and shook it out suddenly above our
heads, so that it was like thunder in the heavens.
"'Round the Red Lion!' he cried. 'Swords round the Red Lion! Halberds
round the Red Lion! They are the thorns round rose.'
"His voice and the crack of the banner made a momentary rally, and
Lambert, whose idiotic face was almost beautiful with battle, felt it
as by an instinct, and cried--
"'Drop your public-house flag, you footler! Drop it!'
"'The banner of the Red Lion seldom stoops,' said Wayne, proudly,
letting it out luxuriantly on the night wind.
"The next moment I knew that poor Adam's sentimental theatricality had
cost him much. Lambert was on the wall at a bound, his sword in his
teeth, and had slashed at Wayne's head before he had time to draw his
sword, his hands being busy with the enormous flag. He stepped back
only just in time to avoid the first cut, and let the flag-staff fall,
so that the spear-blade at the end of it pointed to Lambert.
"'The banner stoops,' cried Wayne, in a voice that must have startled
streets. 'The banner of Notting Hill stoops to a hero.' And with the
words he drove the spear-point and half the flag-staff through
Lambert's body and dropped him dead upon the road below, a stone upon
the stones of the street.
"'Notting Hill! Notting Hill!' cried Wayne, in a sort of divine rage.
'Her banner is all the holier for the blood of a brave enemy! Up on
the wall, patriots! Up on the wall! Notting Hill!'
"With his long strong arm he actually dragged a man up on to the wall
to be silhouetted against the moon, and more and more men climbed up
there, pulled themselves and were pulled, till clusters and crowds of
the half-massacred men of Pump Street massed upon the wall above us.
"'Notting Hill! Notting Hill!' cried Wayne, unceasingly.
"'Well, what about Bayswater?' said a worthy working-man in Wilson's
army, irritably. 'Bayswater for ever!'
"'We have won!' cried Wayne, striking his flag-staff in the ground.
'Bayswater for ever! We have taught our enemies patriotism!'
"'Oh, cut these fellows up and have done with it!' cried one of
Lambert's lieutenants, who was reduced to something bordering on
madness by the responsibility of succeeding to the command.
"'Let us by all means try,' said Wilson, grimly; and the two armies
closed round the third.
* * * * *
"I simply cannot describe what followed. I am sorry, but there is such
a thing as physical fatigue, as physical nausea, and, I may add, as
physical terror. Suffice it to say that the above paragraph was
written about 11 p.m., and that it is now about 2 a.m., and that the
battle is not finished, and is not likely to be. Suffice it further to
say that down the steep streets which lead from the Waterworks Tower
to the Notting Hill High Road, blood has been running, and is running,
in great red serpents, that curl out into the main thoroughfare and
shine in the moon.
* * * * *
"_Later._--The final touch has been given to all this terrible
futility. Hours have passed; morning has broken; men are still swaying
and fighting at the foot of the tower and round the corner of Aubrey
Road; the fight has not finished. But I know it is a farce.
"News has just come to show that Wayne's amazing sortie, followed by
the amazing resistance through a whole night on the wall of the
Waterworks, is as if it had not been. What was the object of that
strange exodus we shall probably never know, for the simple reason
that every one who knew will probably be cut to pieces in the course
of the next two or three hours.
"I have heard, about three minutes ago, that Buck and Buck's methods
have won after all. He was perfectly right, of course, when one comes
to think of it, in holding that it was physically impossible for a
street to defeat a city. While we thought he was patrolling the
eastern gates with his Purple army; while we were rushing about the
streets and waving halberds and lanterns; while poor old Wilson was
scheming like Moltke and fighting like Achilles to entrap the wild
Provost of Notting Hill--Mr. Buck, retired draper, has simply driven
down in a hansom cab and done something about as plain as butter and
about as useful and nasty. He has gone down to South Kensington,
Brompton, and Fulham, and by spending about four thousand pounds of
his private means, has raised an army of nearly as many men; that is
to say, an army big enough to beat, not only Wayne, but Wayne and all
his present enemies put together. The army, I understand, is encamped
along High Street, Kensington, and fills it from the Church to Addison
Road Bridge. It is to advance by ten different roads uphill to the
north.
"I cannot endure to remain here. Everything makes it worse than it
need be. The dawn, for instance, has broken round Campden Hill;
splendid spaces of silver, edged with gold, are torn out of the sky.
Worse still, Wayne and his men feel the dawn; their faces, though
bloody and pale, are strangely hopeful ... insupportably pathetic.
Worst of all, for the moment they are winning. If it were not for Buck
and the new army they might just, and only just, win.
"I repeat, I cannot stand it. It is like watching that wonderful play
of old Maeterlinck's (you know my partiality for the healthy, jolly
old authors of the nineteenth century), in which one has to watch the
quiet conduct of people inside a parlour, while knowing that the very
men are outside the door whose word can blast it all with tragedy. And
this is worse, for the men are not talking, but writhing and bleeding
and dropping dead for a thing that is already settled--and settled
against them. The great grey masses of men still toil and tug and
sway hither and thither around the great grey tower; and the tower is
still motionless, as it will always be motionless. These men will be
crushed before the sun is set; and new men will arise and be crushed,
and new wrongs done, and tyranny will always rise again like the sun,
and injustice will always be as fresh as the flowers of spring. And
the stone tower will always look down on it. Matter, in its brutal
beauty, will always look down on those who are mad enough to consent
to die, and yet more mad, since they consent to live."
* * * * *
Thus ended abruptly the first and last contribution of the Special
Correspondent of the _Court Journal_ to that valued periodical.
The Correspondent himself, as has been said, was simply sick and
gloomy at the last news of the triumph of Buck. He slouched sadly down
the steep Aubrey Road, up which he had the night before run in so
unusual an excitement, and strolled out into the empty dawn-lit main
road, looking vaguely for a cab. He saw nothing in the vacant space
except a blue-and-gold glittering thing, running very fast, which
looked at first like a very tall beetle, but turned out, to his great
astonishment, to be Barker.
"Have you heard the good news?" asked that gentleman.
"Yes," said Quin, with a measured voice. "I have heard the glad
tidings of great joy. Shall we take a hansom down to Kensington? I see
one over there."
They took the cab, and were, in four minutes, fronting the ranks of
the multitudinous and invincible army. Quin had not spoken a word all
the way, and something about him had prevented the essentially
impressionable Barker from speaking either.
The great army, as it moved up Kensington High Street, calling many
heads to the numberless windows, for it was long indeed--longer than
the lives of most of the tolerably young--since such an army had been
seen in London. Compared with the vast organisation which was now
swallowing up the miles, with Buck at its head as leader, and the King
hanging at its tail as journalist, the whole story of our problem was
insignificant. In the presence of that army the red Notting Hills and
the green Bayswaters were alike tiny and straggling groups. In its
presence the whole struggle round Pump Street was like an ant-hill
under the hoof of an ox. Every man who felt or looked at that
infinity of men knew that it was the triumph of Buck's brutal
arithmetic. Whether Wayne was right or wrong, wise or foolish, was
quite a fair matter for discussion. But it was a matter of history. At
the foot of Church Street, opposite Kensington Church, they paused in
their glowing good humour.
"Let us send some kind of messenger or herald up to them," said Buck,
turning to Barker and the King. "Let us send and ask them to cave in
without more muddle."
"What shall we say to them?" said Barker, doubtfully.
"The facts of the case are quite sufficient," rejoined Buck. "It is
the facts of the case that make an army surrender. Let us simply say
that our army that is fighting their army, and their army that is
fighting our army, amount altogether to about a thousand men. Say that
we have four thousand. It is very simple. Of the thousand fighting,
they have at the very most, three hundred, so that, with those three
hundred, they have now to fight four thousand seven hundred men. Let
them do it if it amuses them."
And the Provost of North Kensington laughed.
The herald who was despatched up Church Street in all the pomp of the
South Kensington blue and gold, with the Three Birds on his tabard,
was attended by two trumpeters.
"What will they do when they consent?" asked Barker, for the sake of
saying something in the sudden stillness of that immense army.
"I know my Wayne very well," said Buck, laughing. "When he submits he
will send a red herald flaming with the Lion of Notting Hill. Even
defeat will be delightful to him, since it is formal and romantic."
The King, who had strolled up to the head of the line, broke silence
for the first time.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said, "if he defied you, and didn't send the
herald after all. I don't think you do know your Wayne quite so well
as you think."
"All right, your Majesty," said Buck, easily; "if it isn't
disrespectful, I'll put my political calculations in a very simple
form. I'll lay you ten pounds to a shilling the herald comes with the
surrender."
"All right," said Auberon. "I may be wrong, but it's my notion of Adam
Wayne that he'll die in his city, and that, till he is dead, it will
not be a safe property."
"The bet's made, your Majesty," said Buck.
Another long silence ensued, in the course of which Barker alone, amid
the motionless army, strolled and stamped in his restless way.
Then Buck suddenly leant forward.
"It's taking your money, your Majesty," he said. "I knew it was. There
comes the herald from Adam Wayne."
"It's not," cried the King, peering forward also. "You brute, it's a
red omnibus."
"It's not," said Buck, calmly; and the King did not answer, for down
the centre of the spacious and silent Church Street was walking,
beyond question, the herald of the Red Lion, with two trumpeters.
Buck had something in him which taught him how to be magnanimous. In
his hour of success he felt magnanimous towards Wayne, whom he really
admired; magnanimous towards the King, off whom he had scored so
publicly; and, above all, magnanimous towards Barker, who was the
titular leader of this vast South Kensington army, which his own
talent had evoked.
"General Barker," he said, bowing, "do you propose now to receive the
message from the besieged?"
Barker bowed also, and advanced towards the herald.
"Has your master, Mr. Adam Wayne, received our request for surrender?"
he asked.
The herald conveyed a solemn and respectful affirmative.
Barker resumed, coughing slightly, but encouraged.
"What answer does your master send?"
The herald again inclined himself submissively, and answered in a kind
of monotone.
"My message is this. Adam Wayne, Lord High Provost of Notting Hill,
under the charter of King Auberon and the laws of God and all mankind,
free and of a free city, greets James Barker, Lord High Provost of
South Kensington, by the same rights free and honourable, leader of
the army of the South. With all friendly reverence, and with all
constitutional consideration, he desires James Barker to lay down his
arms, and the whole army under his command to lay down their arms
also."
Before the words were ended the King had run forward into the open
space with shining eyes. The rest of the staff and the forefront of
the army were literally struck breathless. When they recovered they
began to laugh beyond restraint; the revulsion was too sudden.
"The Lord High Provost of Notting Hill," continued the herald, "does
not propose, in the event of your surrender, to use his victory for
any of those repressive purposes which others have entertained against
him. He will leave you your free laws and your free cities, your flags
and your governments. He will not destroy the religion of South
Kensington, or crush the old customs of Bayswater."
An irrepressible explosion of laughter went up from the forefront of
the great army.
"The King must have had something to do with this humour," said Buck,
slapping his thigh. "It's too deliciously insolent. Barker, have a
glass of wine."
And in his conviviality he actually sent a soldier across to the
restaurant opposite the church and brought out two glasses for a
toast.
When the laughter had died down, the herald continued quite
monotonously--
"In the event of your surrendering your arms and dispersing under the
superintendence of our forces, these local rights of yours shall be
carefully observed. In the event of your not doing so, the Lord High
Provost of Notting Hill desires to announce that he has just captured
the Waterworks Tower, just above you, on Campden Hill, and that within
ten minutes from now, that is, on the reception through me of your
refusal, he will open the great reservoir and flood the whole valley
where you stand in thirty feet of water. God save King Auberon!"
Buck had dropped his glass and sent a great splash of wine over the
road.
"But--but--" he said; and then by a last and splendid effort of his
great sanity, looked the facts in the face.
"We must surrender," he said. "You could do nothing against fifty
thousand tons of water coming down a steep hill, ten minutes hence. We
must surrender. Our four thousand men might as well be four. _Vicisti
Galilæe!_ Perkins, you may as well get me another glass of wine."
In this way the vast army of South Kensington surrendered and the
Empire of Notting Hill began. One further fact in this connection is
perhaps worth mentioning--the fact that, after his victory, Adam Wayne
caused the great tower on Campden Hill to be plated with gold and
inscribed with a great epitaph, saying that it was the monument of
Wilfrid Lambert, the heroic defender of the place, and surmounted with
a statue, in which his large nose was done something less than justice
to.
BOOK V
CHAPTER I--_The Empire of Notting Hill_
On the evening of the third of October, twenty years after the great
victory of Notting Hill, which gave it the dominion of London, King
Auberon came, as of old, out of Kensington Palace.
He had changed little, save for a streak or two of grey in his hair,
for his face had always been old, and his step slow, and, as it were,
decrepit.
If he looked old, it was not because of anything physical or mental.
It was because he still wore, with a quaint conservatism, the
frock-coat and high hat of the days before the great war. "I have
survived the Deluge," he said. "I am a pyramid, and must behave as
such."
As he passed up the street the Kensingtonians, in their picturesque
blue smocks, saluted him as a King, and then looked after him as a
curiosity. It seemed odd to them that men had once worn so elvish an
attire.
The King, cultivating the walk attributed to the oldest inhabitant
("Gaffer Auberon" his friends were now confidentially desired to call
him), went toddling northward. He paused, with reminiscence in his
eye, at the Southern Gate of Notting Hill, one of those nine great
gates of bronze and steel, wrought with reliefs of the old battles, by
the hand of Chiffy himself.
"Ah!" he said, shaking his head and assuming an unnecessary air of
age, and a provincialism of accent--"Ah! I mind when there warn't none
of this here."
He passed through the Ossington Gate, surmounted by a great lion,
wrought in red copper on yellow brass, with the motto, "Nothing Ill."
The guard in red and gold saluted him with his halberd.
It was about sunset, and the lamps were being lit. Auberon paused to
look at them, for they were Chiffy's finest work, and his artistic eye
never failed to feast on them. In memory of the Great Battle of the
Lamps, each great iron lamp was surmounted by a veiled figure, sword
in hand, holding over the flame an iron hood or extinguisher, as if
ready to let it fall if the armies of the South and West should again
show their flags in the city. Thus no child in Notting Hill could play
about the streets without the very lamp-posts reminding him of the
salvation of his country in the dreadful year.
"Old Wayne was right in a way," commented the King. "The sword does
make things beautiful. It has made the whole world romantic by now.
And to think people once thought me a buffoon for suggesting a
romantic Notting Hill. Deary me, deary me! (I think that is the
expression)--it seems like a previous existence."
Turning a corner, he found himself in Pump Street, opposite the four
shops which Adam Wayne had studied twenty years before. He entered
idly the shop of Mr. Mead, the grocer. Mr. Mead was somewhat older,
like the rest of the world, and his red beard, which he now wore with
a moustache, and long and full, was partly blanched and discoloured.
He was dressed in a long and richly embroidered robe of blue, brown,
and crimson, interwoven with an Eastern complexity of pattern, and
covered with obscure symbols and pictures, representing his wares
passing from hand to hand and from nation to nation. Round his neck
was the chain with the Blue Argosy cut in turquoise, which he wore as
Grand Master of the Grocers. The whole shop had the sombre and
sumptuous look of its owner. The wares were displayed as prominently
as in the old days, but they were now blended and arranged with a
sense of tint and grouping, too often neglected by the dim grocers of
those forgotten days. The wares were shown plainly, but shown not so
much as an old grocer would have shown his stock, but rather as an
educated virtuoso would have shown his treasures. The tea was stored
in great blue and green vases, inscribed with the nine indispensable
sayings of the wise men of China. Other vases of a confused orange and
purple, less rigid and dominant, more humble and dreamy, stored
symbolically the tea of India. A row of caskets of a simple silvery
metal contained tinned meats. Each was wrought with some rude but
rhythmic form, as a shell, a horn, a fish, or an apple, to indicate
what material had been canned in it.
"Your Majesty," said Mr. Mead, sweeping an Oriental reverence. "This
is an honour to me, but yet more an honour to the city."
Auberon took off his hat.
"Mr. Mead," he said, "Notting Hill, whether in giving or taking, can
deal in nothing but honour. Do you happen to sell liquorice?"
"Liquorice, sire," said Mr. Mead, "is not the least important of our
benefits out of the dark heart of Arabia."
And going reverently towards a green and silver canister, made in the
form of an Arabian mosque, he proceeded to serve his customer.
"I was just thinking, Mr. Mead," said the King, reflectively, "I don't
know why I should think about it just now, but I was just thinking of
twenty years ago. Do you remember the times before the war?"
The grocer, having wrapped up the liquorice sticks in a piece of paper
(inscribed with some appropriate sentiment), lifted his large grey
eyes dreamily, and looked at the darkening sky outside.
"Oh yes, your Majesty," he said. "I remember these streets before the
Lord Provost began to rule us. I can't remember how we felt very well.
All the great songs and the fighting change one so; and I don't think
we can really estimate all we owe to the Provost; but I can remember
his coming into this very shop twenty-two years ago, and I remember
the things he said. The singular thing is that, as far as I remember,
I thought the things he said odd at that time. Now it's the things
that I said, as far as I can recall them, that seem to me odd--as odd
as a madman's antics."
"Ah!" said the King; and looked at him with an unfathomable quietness.
"I thought nothing of being a grocer then," he said. "Isn't that odd
enough for anybody? I thought nothing of all the wonderful places that
my goods come from, and wonderful ways that they are made. I did not
know that I was for all practical purposes a king with slaves spearing
fishes near the secret pool, and gathering fruits in the islands under
the world. My mind was a blank on the thing. I was as mad as a
hatter."
The King turned also, and stared out into the dark, where the great
lamps that commemorated the battle were already flaming.
"And is this the end of poor old Wayne?" he said, half to himself. "To
inflame every one so much that he is lost himself in the blaze. Is
this his victory that he, my incomparable Wayne, is now only one in a
world of Waynes? Has he conquered and become by conquest commonplace?
Must Mr. Mead, the grocer, talk as high as he? Lord! what a strange
world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble
to go mad!"
And he went dreamily out of the shop.
He paused outside the next one almost precisely as the Provost had
done two decades before.
[Illustration: "A FINE EVENING, SIR," SAID THE CHEMIST.]
"How uncommonly creepy this shop looks!" he said. "But yet somehow
encouragingly creepy, invitingly creepy. It looks like something in a
jolly old nursery story in which you are frightened out of your skin,
and yet know that things always end well. The way those low sharp
gables are carved like great black bat's wings folded down, and the
way those queer-coloured bowls underneath are made to shine like
giants eye-balls. It looks like a benevolent warlock's hut. It is
apparently a chemist's."
Almost as he spoke, Mr. Bowles, the chemist, came to his shop door in
a long black velvet gown and hood, monastic as it were, but yet with a
touch of the diabolic. His hair was still quite black, and his face
even paler than of old. The only spot of colour he carried was a red
star cut in some precious stone of strong tint, hung on his breast. He
belonged to the Society of the Red Star of Charity, founded on the
lamps displayed by doctors and chemists.
"A fine evening, sir," said the chemist. "Why, I can scarcely be
mistaken in supposing it to be your Majesty. Pray step inside and
share a bottle of sal-volatile, or anything that may take your fancy.
As it happens, there is an old acquaintance of your Majesty's in my
shop carousing (if I may be permitted the term) upon that beverage at
this moment."
The King entered the shop, which was an Aladdin's garden of shades and
hues, for as the chemist's scheme of colour was more brilliant than
the grocer's scheme, so it was arranged with even more delicacy and
fancy. Never, if the phrase may be employed, had such a nosegay of
medicines been presented to the artistic eye.
But even the solemn rainbow of that evening interior was rivalled or
even eclipsed by the figure standing in the centre of the shop. His
form, which was a large and stately one, was clad in a brilliant blue
velvet, cut in the richest Renaissance fashion, and slashed so as to
show gleams and gaps of a wonderful lemon or pale yellow. He had
several chains round his neck, and his plumes, which were of several
tints of bronze and gold, hung down to the great gold hilt of his long
sword. He was drinking a dose of sal-volatile, and admiring its opal
tint. The King advanced with a slight mystification towards the tall
figure, whose face was in shadow; then he said--
"By the Great Lord of Luck, Barker!"
The figure removed his plumed cap, showing the same dark head and
long, almost equine face which the King had so often seen rising out
of the high collar of Bond Street. Except for a grey patch on each
temple, it was totally unchanged.
"Your Majesty," said Barker, "this is a meeting nobly retrospective, a
meeting that has about it a certain October gold. I drink to old
days;" and he finished his sal-volatile with simple feeling.
"I am delighted to see you again, Barker," said the King. "It is
indeed long since we met. What with my travels in Asia Minor, and my
book having to be written (you have read my 'Life of Prince Albert for
Children,' of course?), we have scarcely met twice since the Great
War. That is twenty years ago."
"I wonder," said Barker, thoughtfully, "if I might speak freely to
your Majesty?"
"Well," said Auberon, "it's rather late in the day to start speaking
respectfully. Flap away, my bird of freedom."
"Well, your Majesty," replied Barker, lowering his voice, "I don't
think it will be so long to the next war."
"What do you mean?" asked Auberon.
"We will stand this insolence no longer," burst out Barker, fiercely.
"We are not slaves because Adam Wayne twenty years ago cheated us with
a water-pipe. Notting Hill is Notting Hill; it is not the world. We
in South Kensington, we also have memories--ay, and hopes. If they
fought for these trumpery shops and a few lamp-posts, shall we not
fight for the great High Street and the sacred Natural History
Museum?"
"Great Heavens!" said the astounded Auberon. "Will wonders never
cease? Have the two greatest marvels been achieved? Have you turned
altruistic, and has Wayne turned selfish? Are you the patriot, and he
the tyrant?"
"It is not from Wayne himself altogether that the evil comes,"
answered Barker. "He, indeed, is now mostly wrapped in dreams, and
sits with his old sword beside the fire. But Notting Hill is the
tyrant, your Majesty. Its Council and its crowds have been so
intoxicated by the spreading over the whole city of Wayne's old ways
and visions, that they try to meddle with every one, and rule every
one, and civilise every one, and tell every one what is good for him.
I do not deny the great impulse which his old war, wild as it seemed,
gave to the civic life of our time. It came when I was still a young
man, and I admit it enlarged my career. But we are not going to see
our own cities flouted and thwarted from day to day because of
something Wayne did for us all nearly a quarter of a century ago. I am
just waiting here for news upon this very matter. It is rumoured that
Notting Hill has vetoed the statue of General Wilson they are putting
up opposite Chepstow Place. If that is so, it is a black and white
shameless breach of the terms on which we surrendered to Turnbull
after the battle of the Tower. We were to keep our own customs and
self-government. If that is so--"
"It is so," said a deep voice; and both men turned round.
A burly figure in purple robes, with a silver eagle hung round his
neck and moustaches almost as florid as his plumes, stood in the
doorway.
"Yes," he said, acknowledging the King's start, "I am Provost Buck,
and the news is true. These men of the Hill have forgotten that we
fought round the Tower as well as they, and that it is sometimes
foolish, as well as base, to despise the conquered."
"Let us step outside," said Barker, with a grim composure.
Buck did so, and stood rolling his eyes up and down the lamp-lit
street.
"I would like to have a go at smashing all this," he muttered,
"though I am over sixty. I would like--"
His voice ended in a cry, and he reeled back a step, with his hands to
his eyes, as he had done in those streets twenty years before.
"Darkness!" he cried--"darkness again! What does it mean?"
For in truth every lamp in the street had gone out, so that they could
not see even each other's outline, except faintly. The voice of the
chemist came with startling cheerfulness out of the density.
"Oh, don't you know?" he said. "Did they never tell you this is the
Feast of the Lamps, the anniversary of the great battle that almost
lost and just saved Notting Hill? Don't you know, your Majesty, that
on this night twenty-one years ago we saw Wilson's green uniforms
charging down this street, and driving Wayne and Turnbull back upon
the gas-works, fighting with their handful like fiends from hell? And
that then, in that great hour, Wayne sprang through a window of the
gas-works, with one blow of his hand brought darkness on the whole
city, and then with a cry like a lion's, that was heard through four
streets, flew at Wilson's men, sword in hand, and swept them,
bewildered as they were, and ignorant of the map, clear out of the
sacred street again? And don't you know that upon that night every
year all lights are turned out for half an hour while we sing the
Notting Hill anthem in the darkness? Hark! there it begins."
Through the night came a crash of drums, and then a strong swell of
human voices--
"When the world was in the balance, there was night on Notting Hill,
(There was night on Notting Hill): it was nobler than the day;
On the cities where the lights are and the firesides glow,
From the seas and from the deserts came the thing we did not know,
Came the darkness, came the darkness, came the darkness on the foe,
And the old guard of God turned to bay.
For the old guard of God turns to bay, turns to bay,
And the stars fall down before it ere its banners fall to-day:
For when armies were around us as a howling and a horde,
When falling was the citadel and broken was the sword,
The darkness came upon them like the Dragon of the Lord,
When the old guard of God turned to bay."
The voices were just uplifting themselves in a second verse when they
were stopped by a scurry and a yell. Barker had bounded into the
street with a cry of "South Kensington!" and a drawn dagger. In less
time than a man could blink, the whole packed street was full of
curses and struggling. Barker was flung back against the shop-front,
but used the second only to draw his sword as well as his dagger, and
calling out, "This is not the first time I've come through the thick
of you," flung himself again into the press. It was evident that he
had drawn blood at last, for a more violent outcry arose, and many
other knives and swords were discernible in the faint light. Barker,
after having wounded more than one man, seemed on the point of being
flung back again, when Buck suddenly stepped out into the street. He
had no weapon, for he affected rather the peaceful magnificence of the
great burgher, than the pugnacious dandyism which had replaced the old
sombre dandyism in Barker. But with a blow of his clenched fist he
broke the pane of the next shop, which was the old curiosity shop,
and, plunging in his hand, snatched a kind of Japanese scimitar, and
calling out, "Kensington! Kensington!" rushed to Barker's assistance.
Barker's sword was broken, but he was laying about him with his
dagger. Just as Buck ran up, a man of Notting Hill struck Barker down,
but Buck struck the man down on top of him, and Barker sprang up
again, the blood running down his face.
Suddenly all these cries were cloven by a great voice, that seemed to
fall out of heaven. It was terrible to Buck and Barker and the King,
from its seeming to come out the empty skies; but it was more terrible
because it was a familiar voice, and one which at the same time they
had not heard for so long.
"Turn up the lights," said the voice from above them, and for a moment
there was no reply, but only a tumult.
"In the name of Notting Hill and of the great Council of the City,
turn up the lights."
There was again a tumult and a vagueness for a moment, then the whole
street and every object in it sprang suddenly out of the darkness, as
every lamp sprang into life. And looking up they saw, standing upon a
balcony near the roof of one of the highest houses, the figure and the
face of Adam Wayne, his red hair blowing behind him, a little streaked
with grey.
"What is this, my people?" he said. "Is it altogether impossible to
make a thing good without it immediately insisting on being wicked?
The glory of Notting Hill in having achieved its independence, has
been enough for me to dream of for many years, as I sat beside the
fire. Is it really not enough for you, who have had so many other
affairs to excite and distract you? Notting Hill is a nation. Why
should it condescend to be a mere Empire? You wish to pull down the
statue of General Wilson, which the men of Bayswater have so rightly
erected in Westbourne Grove. Fools! Who erected that statue? Did
Bayswater erect it? No. Notting Hill erected it. Do you not see that
it is the glory of our achievement that we have infected the other
cities with the idealism of Notting Hill? It is we who have created
not only our own side, but both sides of this controversy. O too
humble fools, why should you wish to destroy your enemies? You have
done something more to them. You have created your enemies. You wish
to pull down that gigantic silver hammer, which stands, like an
obelisk, in the centre of the Broadway of Hammersmith. Fools! Before
Notting Hill arose, did any person passing through Hammersmith
Broadway expect to see there a gigantic silver hammer? You wish to
abolish the great bronze figure of a knight standing upon the
artificial bridge at Knightsbridge. Fools! Who would have thought of
it before Notting Hill arose? I have even heard, and with deep pain I
have heard it, that the evil eye of our imperial envy has been cast
towards the remote horizon of the west, and that we have objected to
the great black monument of a crowned raven, which commemorates the
skirmish of Ravenscourt Park. Who created all these things? Were they
there before we came? Cannot you be content with that destiny which
was enough for Athens, which was enough for Nazareth? the destiny, the
humble purpose, of creating a new world. Is Athens angry because
Romans and Florentines have adopted her phraseology for expressing
their own patriotism? Is Nazareth angry because as a little village it
has become the type of all little villages out of which, as the Snobs
say, no good can come? Has Athens asked every one to wear the chlamys?
Are all followers of the Nazarene compelled to wear turbans. No! but
the soul of Athens went forth and made men drink hemlock, and the soul
of Nazareth went forth and made men consent to be crucified. So has
the soul of Notting Hill gone forth and made men realise what it is to
live in a city. Just as we inaugurated our symbols and ceremonies, so
they have inaugurated theirs; and are you so mad as to contend against
them? Notting Hill is right; it has always been right. It has moulded
itself on its own necessities, its own _sine quâ non_; it has accepted
its own ultimatum. Because it is a nation it has created itself; and
because it is a nation it can destroy itself. Notting Hill shall
always be the judge. If it is your will because of this matter of
General Wilson's statue to make war upon Bayswater--"
A roar of cheers broke in upon his words, and further speech was
impossible. Pale to the lips, the great patriot tried again and again
to speak; but even his authority could not keep down the dark and
roaring masses in the street below him. He said something further, but
it was not audible. He descended at last sadly from the garret in
which he lived, and mingled with the crowd at the foot of the houses.
Finding General Turnbull, he put his hand on his shoulder with a queer
affection and gravity, and said--
"To-morrow, old man, we shall have a new experience, as fresh as the
flowers of spring. We shall be defeated. You and I have been through
three battles together, and have somehow or other missed this peculiar
delight. It is unfortunate that we shall not probably be able to
exchange our experiences, because, as it most annoyingly happens, we
shall probably both be dead."
Turnbull looked dimly surprised.
"I don't mind so much about being dead," he said, "but why should you
say that we shall be defeated?"
"The answer is very simple," replied Wayne, calmly. "It is because we
ought to be defeated. We have been in the most horrible holes before
now; but in all those I was perfectly certain that the stars were on
our side, and that we ought to get out. Now I know that we ought not
to get out; and that takes away from me everything with which I won."
As Wayne spoke he started a little, for both men became aware that a
third figure was listening to them--a small figure with wondering
eyes.
"Is it really true, my dear Wayne," said the King, interrupting, "that
you think you will be beaten to-morrow?"
"There can be no doubt about it whatever," replied Adam Wayne; "the
real reason is the one of which I have just spoken. But as a
concession to your materialism, I will add that they have an organised
army of a hundred allied cities against our one. That in itself,
however, would be unimportant."
Quin, with his round eyes, seemed strangely insistent.
"You are quite sure," he said, "that you must be beaten?"
"I am afraid," said Turnbull, gloomily, "that there can be no doubt
about it."
"Then," cried the King, flinging out his arms, "give me a halberd!
Give me a halberd, somebody! I desire all men to witness that I,
Auberon, King of England, do here and now abdicate, and implore the
Provost of Notting Hill to permit me to enlist in his army. Give me a
halberd!"
He seized one from some passing guard, and, shouldering it, stamped
solemnly after the shouting columns of halberdiers which were, by this
time, parading the streets. He had, however, nothing to do with the
wrecking of the statue of General Wilson, which took place before
morning.
CHAPTER II--_The Last Battle_
The day was cloudy when Wayne went down to die with all his army in
Kensington Gardens; it was cloudy again when that army had been
swallowed up by the vast armies of a new world. There had been an
almost uncanny interval of sunshine, in which the Provost of Notting
Hill, with all the placidity of an onlooker, had gazed across to the
hostile armies on the great spaces of verdure opposite; the long
strips of green and blue and gold lay across the park in squares and
oblongs like a proposition in Euclid wrought in a rich embroidery. But
the sunlight was a weak and, as it were, a wet sunlight, and was soon
swallowed up. Wayne spoke to the King, with a queer sort of coldness
and languor, as to the military operations. It was as he had said the
night before--that being deprived of his sense of an impracticable
rectitude, he was, in effect, being deprived of everything. He was out
of date, and at sea in a mere world of compromise and competition, of
Empire against Empire, of the tolerably right and the tolerably wrong.
When his eye fell on the King, however, who was marching very gravely
with a top hat and a halberd, it brightened slightly.
"Well, your Majesty," he said, "you at least ought to be proud to-day.
If your children are fighting each other, at least those who win are
your children. Other kings have distributed justice, you have
distributed life. Other kings have ruled a nation, you have created
nations. Others have made kingdoms, you have begotten them. Look at
your children, father!" and he stretched his hand out towards the
enemy.
Auberon did not raise his eyes.
"See how splendidly," cried Wayne, "the new cities come on--the new
cities from across the river. See where Battersea advances over
there--under the flag of the Lost Dog; and Putney--don't you see the
Man on the White Boar shining on their standard as the sun catches it?
It is the coming of a new age, your Majesty. Notting Hill is not a
common empire; it is a thing like Athens, the mother of a mode of
life, of a manner of living, which shall renew the youth of the
world--a thing like Nazareth. When I was young I remember, in the old
dreary days, wiseacres used to write books about how trains would get
faster, and all the world be one empire, and tram-cars go to the moon.
And even as a child I used to say to myself, 'Far more likely that we
shall go on the crusades again, or worship the gods of the city.' And
so it has been. And I am glad, though this is my last battle."
Even as he spoke there came a crash of steel from the left, and he
turned his head.
"Wilson!" he cried, with a kind of joy. "Red Wilson has charged our
left. No one can hold him in; he eats swords. He is as keen a soldier
as Turnbull, but less patient--less really great. Ha! and Barker is
moving. How Barker has improved; how handsome he looks! It is not all
having plumes; it is also having a soul in one's daily life. Ha!"
And another crash of steel on the right showed that Barker had closed
with Notting Hill on the other side.
"Turnbull is there!" cried Wayne. "See him hurl them back! Barker is
checked! Turnbull charges--wins! But our left is broken. Wilson has
smashed Bowles and Mead, and may turn our flank. Forward, the
Provost's Guard!"
And the whole centre moved forward, Wayne's face and hair and sword
flaming in the van.
The King ran suddenly forward.
The next instant a great jar that went through it told that it had met
the enemy. And right over against them through the wood of their own
weapons Auberon saw the Purple Eagle of Buck of North Kensington.
On the left Red Wilson was storming the broken ranks, his little green
figure conspicuous even in the tangle of men and weapons, with the
flaming red moustaches and the crown of laurel. Bowles slashed at his
head and tore away some of the wreath, leaving the rest bloody, and,
with a roar like a bull's, Wilson sprang at him, and, after a rattle
of fencing, plunged his point into the chemist, who fell, crying,
"Notting Hill!" Then the Notting Hillers wavered, and Bayswater swept
them back in confusion. Wilson had carried everything before him.
On the right, however, Turnbull had carried the Red Lion banner with a
rush against Barker's men, and the banner of the Golden Birds bore up
with difficulty against it. Barker's men fell fast. In the centre
Wayne and Buck were engaged, stubborn and confused. So far as the
fighting went, it was precisely equal. But the fighting was a farce.
For behind the three small armies with which Wayne's small army was
engaged lay the great sea of the allied armies, which looked on as yet
as scornful spectators, but could have broken all four armies by
moving a finger.
Suddenly they did move. Some of the front contingents, the pastoral
chiefs from Shepherd's Bush, with their spears and fleeces, were seen
advancing, and the rude clans from Paddington Green. They were
advancing for a very good reason. Buck, of North Kensington, was
signalling wildly; he was surrounded, and totally cut off. His
regiments were a struggling mass of people, islanded in a red sea of
Notting Hill.
The allies had been too careless and confident. They had allowed
Barker's force to be broken to pieces by Turnbull, and the moment that
was done, the astute old leader of Notting Hill swung his men round
and attacked Buck behind and on both sides. At the same moment Wayne
cried, "Charge!" and struck him in front like a thunderbolt.
Two-thirds of Buck's men were cut to pieces before their allies could
reach them. Then the sea of cities came on with their banners like
breakers, and swallowed Notting Hill for ever. The battle was not
over, for not one of Wayne's men would surrender, and it lasted till
sundown, and long after. But it was decided; the story of Notting Hill
was ended.
When Turnbull saw it, he ceased a moment from fighting, and looked
round him. The evening sunlight struck his face; it looked like a
child's.
"I have had my youth," he said. Then, snatching an axe from a man, he
dashed into the thick of the spears of Shepherd's Bush, and died
somewhere far in the depths of their reeling ranks. Then the battle
roared on; every man of Notting Hill was slain before night.
Wayne was standing by a tree alone after the battle. Several men
approached him with axes. One struck at him. His foot seemed partly to
slip; but he flung his hand out, and steadied himself against the
tree.
Barker sprang after him, sword in hand, and shaking with excitement.
"How large now, my lord," he cried, "is the Empire of Notting Hill?"
Wayne smiled in the gathering dark.
"Always as large as this," he said, and swept his sword round in a
semicircle of silver.
Barker dropped, wounded in the neck; and Wilson sprang over his body
like a tiger-cat, rushing at Wayne. At the same moment there came
behind the Lord of the Red Lion a cry and a flare of yellow, and a
mass of the West Kensington halberdiers ploughed up the slope,
knee-deep in grass, bearing the yellow banner of the city before them,
and shouting aloud.
At the same second Wilson went down under Wayne's sword, seemingly
smashed like a fly. The great sword rose again like a bird, but Wilson
seemed to rise with it, and, his sword being broken, sprang at Wayne's
throat like a dog. The foremost of the yellow halberdiers had reached
the tree and swung his axe above the struggling Wayne. With a curse
the King whirled up his own halberd, and dashed the blade in the man's
face. He reeled and rolled down the slope, just as the furious Wilson
was flung on his back again. And again he was on his feet, and again
at Wayne's throat. Then he was flung again, but this time laughing
triumphantly. Grasped in his hand was the red and yellow favour that
Wayne wore as Provost of Notting Hill. He had torn it from the place
where it had been carried for twenty-five years.
With a shout the West Kensington men closed round Wayne, the great
yellow banner flapping over his head.
"Where is your favour now, Provost?" cried the West Kensington leader.
And a laugh went up.
Adam struck at the standard-bearer and brought him reeling forward. As
the banner stooped, he grasped the yellow folds and tore off a shred.
A halberdier struck him on the shoulder, wounding bloodily.
"Here is one colour!" he cried, pushing the yellow into his belt; "and
here!" he cried, pointing to his own blood--"here is the other."
At the same instant the shock of a sudden and heavy halberd laid the
King stunned or dead. In the wild visions of vanishing consciousness,
he saw again something that belonged to an utterly forgotten time,
something that he had seen somewhere long ago in a restaurant. He saw,
with his swimming eyes, red and yellow, the colours of Nicaragua.
Quin did not see the end. Wilson, wild with joy, sprang again at Adam
Wayne, and the great sword of Notting Hill was whirled above once
more. Then men ducked instinctively at the rushing noise of the sword
coming down out of the sky, and Wilson of Bayswater was smashed and
wiped down upon the floor like a fly. Nothing was left of him but a
wreck; but the blade that had broken him was broken. In dying he had
snapped the great sword and the spell of it; the sword of Wayne was
broken at the hilt. One rush of the enemy carried Wayne by force
against the tree. They were too close to use halberd or even sword;
they were breast to breast, even nostrils to nostrils. But Buck got
his dagger free.
"Kill him!" he cried, in a strange stifled voice. "Kill him! Good or
bad, he is none of us! Do not be blinded by the face!... God! have we
not been blinded all along!" and he drew his arm back for a stab, and
seemed to close his eyes.
Wayne did not drop the hand that hung on to the tree-branch. But a
mighty heave went over his breast and his whole huge figure, like an
earthquake over great hills. And with that convulsion of effort he
rent the branch out of the tree, with tongues of torn wood; and,
swaying it once only, he let the splintered club fall on Buck,
breaking his neck. The planner of the Great Road fell face foremost
dead, with his dagger in a grip of steel.
"For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother," said Wayne, in
his strange chant, "there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of
the world."
The packed men made another lurch or heave towards him; it was almost
too dark to fight clearly. He caught hold of the oak again, this time
getting his hand into a wide crevice and grasping, as it were, the
bowels of the tree. The whole crowd, numbering some thirty men, made a
rush to tear him away from it; they hung on with all their weight and
numbers, and nothing stirred. A solitude could not have been stiller
than that group of straining men. Then there was a faint sound.
"His hand is slipping," cried two men in exultation.
"You don't know much of him," said another, grimly (a man of the old
war). "More likely his bone cracks."
"It is neither--by God, it is neither!" said one of the first two.
"What is it, then?" asked the second.
"The tree is falling," he replied.
"As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," said Wayne's voice out of the
darkness, and it had the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had
had throughout, of coming from a great distance, from before or after
the event. Even when he was struggling like an eel or battering like a
madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the tree falleth, so shall it
lie," he said. "Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence
of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what
is the only happiness, what is the only universality. I am clinging to
something. Let it fall, and there let it lie. Fools, you go about and
see the kingdoms of the earth, and are liberal and wise and
cosmopolitan, which is all that the devil can give you--all that he
could offer to Christ, only to be spurned away. I am doing what the
truly wise do. When a child goes out into the garden and takes hold of
a tree, saying, 'Let this tree be all I have,' that moment its roots
take hold on hell and its branches on the stars. The joy I have is
what the lover knows when a woman is everything. It is what a savage
knows when his idol is everything. It is what I know when Notting Hill
is everything. I have a city. Let it stand or fall."
As he spoke, the turf lifted itself like a living thing, and out of it
rose slowly, like crested serpents, the roots of the oak. Then the
great head of the tree, that seemed a green cloud among grey ones,
swept the sky suddenly like a broom, and the whole tree heeled over
like a ship, smashing every one in its fall.
CHAPTER III--_Two Voices_
In a place in which there was total darkness for hours, there was also
for hours total silence. Then a voice spoke out of the darkness, no
one could have told from where, and said aloud--
"So ends the Empire of Notting Hill. As it began in blood, so it ended
in blood, and all things are always the same."
And there was silence again, and then again there was a voice, but it
had not the same tone; it seemed that it was not the same voice.
"If all things are always the same, it is because they are always
heroic. If all things are always the same, it is because they are
always new. To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is
given a little power--the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow
up the stars. If age after age that power comes upon men, whatever
gives it to them is great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean--an
empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever makes men feel young is great--a
great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God
there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new
things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and improvements and
change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the
old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that
many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not
feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of
change who does not feel upon his neck the vast weight of the
weariness of the universe. But we who do the old things are fed by
nature with a perpetual infancy. No man who is in love thinks that any
one has been in love before. No woman who has a child thinks that
there have been such things as children. No people that fight for
their own city are haunted with the burden of the broken empires. Yes,
O dark voice, the world is always the same, for it is always
unexpected."
A little gust of wind blew through the night, and then the first voice
answered--
"But in this world there are some, be they wise or foolish, whom
nothing intoxicates. There are some who see all your disturbances like
a cloud of flies. They know that while men will laugh at your Notting
Hill, and will study and rehearse and sing of Athens and Jerusalem,
Athens and Jerusalem were silly suburbs like your Notting Hill. They
know that the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only drearily
and respectably amused as they move upon it."
"They are philosophers or they are fools," said the other voice. "They
are not men. Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in
something fresher than progress--in the fact that with every baby a
new sun and a new moon are made. If our ancient humanity were a single
man, it might perhaps be that he would break down under the memory of
so many loyalties, under the burden of so many diverse heroisms, under
the load and terror of all the goodness of men. But it has pleased God
so to isolate the individual soul that it can only learn of all other
souls by hearsay, and to each one goodness and happiness come with the
youth and violence of lightning, as momentary and as pure. And the
doom of failure that lies on all human systems does not in real fact
affect them any more than the worms of the inevitable grave affect a
children's game in a meadow. Notting Hill has fallen; Notting Hill has
died. But that is not the tremendous issue. Notting Hill has lived."
"But if," answered the other voice, "if what is achieved by all these
efforts be only the common contentment of humanity, why do men so
extravagantly toil and die in them? Has nothing been done by Notting
Hill than any chance clump of farmers or clan of savages would not
have done without it? What might have been done to Notting Hill if the
world had been different may be a deep question; but there is a
deeper. What could have happened to the world if Notting Hill had
never been?"
The other voice replied--
"The same that would have happened to the world and all the starry
systems if an apple-tree grew six apples instead of seven; something
would have been eternally lost. There has never been anything in the
world absolutely like Notting Hill. There will never be anything quite
like it to the crack of doom. I cannot believe anything but that God
loved it as He must surely love anything that is itself and
unreplaceable. But even for that I do not care. If God, with all His
thunders, hated it, I loved it."
And with the voice a tall, strange figure lifted itself out of the
_débris_ in the half-darkness.
The other voice came after a long pause, and as it were hoarsely.
"But suppose the whole matter were really a hocus-pocus. Suppose that
whatever meaning you may choose in your fancy to give to it, the real
meaning of the whole was mockery. Suppose it was all folly. Suppose--"
"I have been in it," answered the voice from the tall and strange
figure, "and I know it was not."
A smaller figure seemed half to rise in the dark.
"Suppose I am God," said the voice, "and suppose I made the world in
idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the
idiot fireworks of an everlasting schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the
moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast
and sneering giant, opened alternately in a never-ending wink. Suppose
the trees, in my eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools. Suppose
Socrates and Charlemagne are to me only beasts, made funnier by
walking on their hind legs. Suppose I am God, and having made things,
laugh at them."
"And suppose I am man," answered the other. "And suppose that I give
the answer that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not laugh back at
you, do not blaspheme you, do not curse you. But suppose, standing up
straight under the sky, with every power of my being, I thank you for
the fools' paradise you have made. Suppose I praise you, with a
literal pain of ecstasy, for the jest that has brought me so terrible
a joy. If we have taken the child's games, and given them the
seriousness of a Crusade, if we have drenched your grotesque Dutch
garden with the blood of martyrs, we have turned a nursery into a
temple. I ask you, in the name of Heaven, who wins?"
The sky close about the crests of the hills and trees was beginning to
turn from black to grey, with a random suggestion of the morning. The
slight figure seemed to crawl towards the larger one, and the voice
was more human.
"But suppose, friend," it said, "suppose that, in a bitterer and more
real sense, it was all a mockery. Suppose that there had been, from
the beginning of these great wars, one who watched them with a sense
that is beyond expression, a sense of detachment, of responsibility,
of irony, of agony. Suppose that there were one who knew it was all a
joke."
The tall figure answered--
"He could not know it. For it was not all a joke."
And a gust of wind blew away some clouds that sealed the sky-line, and
showed a strip of silver behind his great dark legs. Then the other
voice came, having crept nearer still.
[Illustration: "WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE."]
"Adam Wayne," it said, "there are men who confess only in _articulo
mortis_; there are people who blame themselves only when they can no
longer help others. I am one of them. Here, upon the field of the
bloody end of it all, I come to tell you plainly what you would never
understand before. Do you know who I am?"
"I know you, Auberon Quin," answered the tall figure, "and I shall be
glad to unburden your spirit of anything that lies upon it."
"Adam Wayne," said the other voice, "of what I have to say you cannot
in common reason be glad to unburden me. Wayne, it was all a joke.
When I made these cities, I cared no more for them than I care for a
centaur, or a merman, or a fish with legs, or a pig with feathers, or
any other absurdity. When I spoke to you solemnly and encouragingly
about the flag of your freedom and the peace of your city, I was
playing a vulgar practical joke on an honest gentleman, a vulgar
practical joke that has lasted for twenty years. Though no one could
believe it of me, perhaps, it is the truth that I am a man both timid
and tender-hearted. I never dared in the early days of your hope, or
the central days of your supremacy, to tell you this; I never dared to
break the colossal calm of your face. God knows why I should do it
now, when my farce has ended in tragedy and the ruin of all your
people! But I say it now. Wayne, it was done as a joke."
There was silence, and the freshening breeze blew the sky clearer and
clearer, leaving great spaces of the white dawn.
At last Wayne said, very slowly--
"You did it all only as a joke?"
"Yes," said Quin, briefly.
"When you conceived the idea," went on Wayne, dreamily, "of an army
for Bayswater and a flag for Notting Hill, there was no gleam, no
suggestion in your mind that such things might be real and
passionate?"
"No," answered Auberon, turning his round white face to the morning
with a dull and splendid sincerity; "I had none at all."
Wayne sprang down from the height above him and held out his hand.
"I will not stop to thank you," he said, with a curious joy in his
voice, "for the great good for the world you have actually wrought.
All that I think of that I have said to you a moment ago, even when I
thought that your voice was the voice of a derisive omnipotence, its
laughter older than the winds of heaven. But let me say what is
immediate and true. You and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us
throughout our lives been again and again called mad. And we are mad.
We are mad, because we are not two men, but one man. We are mad,
because we are two lobes of the same brain, and that brain has been
cloven in two. And if you ask for the proof of it, it is not hard to
find. It is not merely that you, the humorist, have been in these dark
days stripped of the joy of gravity. It is not merely that I, the
fanatic, have had to grope without humour. It is that, though we seem
to be opposite in everything, we have been opposite like man and
woman, aiming at the same moment at the same practical thing. We are
the father and the mother of the Charter of the Cities."
Quin looked down at the _débris_ of leaves and timber, the relics of
the battle and stampede, now glistening in the growing daylight, and
finally said--
"Yet nothing can alter the antagonism--the fact that I laughed at
these things and you adored them."
Wayne's wild face flamed with something god-like, as he turned it to
be struck by the sunrise.
"I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something that
is outside us, something that you and I have all our lives perhaps
taken too little account of. The equal and eternal human being will
alter that antagonism, for the human being sees no real antagonism
between laughter and respect, the human being, the common man, whom
mere geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god. When dark
and dreary days come, you and I are necessary, the pure fanatic, the
pure satirist. We have between us remedied a great wrong. We have
lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every one who knows
mankind knows to be immeasurably more common than the commonplace. But
in healthy people there is no war between us. We are but the two lobes
of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are everywhere. The
cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are full of blasphemous
grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the child, the lover
laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the husband, the friend
at the friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too long separated; let us
go out together. You have a halberd and I a sword, let us start our
wanderings over the world. For we are its two essentials. Come, it is
already day."
In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a moment. Then he made the
formal salute with his halberd, and they went away together into the
unknown world.
THE END
_Mr. Lane's New Fiction_
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