The Napoleon of Notting Hill Page 10

  CHAPTER II--_The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull_

  After two more interviews with shopmen, however, the patriot'sconfidence in his own psychological diplomacy began vaguely to wane.Despite the care with which he considered the peculiar rationale andthe peculiar glory of each separate shop, there seemed to be somethingunresponsive about the shopmen. Whether it was a dark resentmentagainst the uninitiate for peeping into their masonic magnificence, hecould not quite conjecture.

  His conversation with the man who kept the shop of curiosities hadbegun encouragingly. The man who kept the shop of curiosities had,indeed, enchanted him with a phrase. He was standing drearily at thedoor of his shop, a wrinkled man with a grey pointed beard, evidentlya gentleman who had come down in the world.

  "And how does your commerce go, you strange guardian of the past?"said Wayne, affably.

  "Well, sir, not very well," replied the man, with that patient voiceof his class which is one of the most heart-breaking things in theworld. "Things are terribly quiet."

  Wayne's eyes shone suddenly.

  "A great saying," he said, "worthy of a man whose merchandise is humanhistory. Terribly quiet; that is in two words the spirit of this age,as I have felt it from my cradle. I sometimes wondered how many otherpeople felt the oppression of this union between quietude and terror.I see blank well-ordered streets and men in black moving aboutinoffensively, sullenly. It goes on day after day, day after day, andnothing happens; but to me it is like a dream from which I might wakescreaming. To me the straightness of our life is the straightness of athin cord stretched tight. Its stillness is terrible. It might snapwith a noise like thunder. And you who sit, amid the _debris_ of thegreat wars, you who sit, as it were, upon a battlefield, you know thatwar was less terrible than this evil peace; you know that the idlelads who carried those swords under Francis or Elizabeth, the rudeSquire or Baron who swung that mace about in Picardy or Northumberlandbattles, may have been terribly noisy, but were not like us, terriblyquiet."

  Whether it was a faint embarrassment of conscience as to the originalsource and date of the weapons referred to, or merely an engraineddepression, the guardian of the past looked, if anything, a littlemore worried.

  "But I do not think," continued Wayne, "that this horrible silence ofmodernity will last, though I think for the present it will increase.What a farce is this modern liberality! Freedom of speech meanspractically, in our modern civilisation, that we must only talk aboutunimportant things. We must not talk about religion, for that isilliberal; we must not talk about bread and cheese, for that istalking shop; we must not talk about death, for that is depressing; wemust not talk about birth, for that is indelicate. It cannot last.Something must break this strange indifference, this strange dreamyegoism, this strange loneliness of millions in a crowd. Something mustbreak it. Why should it not be you and I? Can you do nothing else butguard relics?"

  The shopman wore a gradually clearing expression, which would have ledthose unsympathetic with the cause of the Red Lion to think that thelast sentence was the only one to which he had attached any meaning.

  "I am rather old to go into a new business," he said, "and I don'tquite know what to be, either."

  "Why not," said Wayne, gently having reached the crisis of hisdelicate persuasion--"why not be a colonel?"

  It was at this point, in all probability, that the interview began toyield more disappointing results. The man appeared inclined at firstto regard the suggestion of becoming a colonel as outside the sphereof immediate and relevant discussion. A long exposition of theinevitable war of independence, coupled with the purchase of adoubtful sixteenth-century sword for an exaggerated price, seemed toresettle matters. Wayne left the shop, however, somewhat infected withthe melancholy of its owner.

  That melancholy was completed at the barber's.

  "Shaving, sir?" inquired that artist from inside his shop.

  "War!" replied Wayne, standing on the threshold.

  "I beg your pardon," said the other, sharply.

  "War!" said Wayne, warmly. "But not for anything inconsistent with thebeautiful and the civilised arts. War for beauty. War for society. Warfor peace. A great chance is offered you of repelling that slanderwhich, in defiance of the lives of so many artists, attributespoltroonery to those who beautify and polish the surface of our lives.Why should not hairdressers be heroes? Why should not--"

  "Now, you get out," said the barber, irascibly. "We don't want any ofyour sort here. You get out."

  And he came forward with the desperate annoyance of a mild person whenenraged.

  Adam Wayne laid his hand for a moment on the sword, then dropped it.

  "Notting Hill," he said, "will need her bolder sons;" and he turnedgloomily to the toy-shop.

  It was one of those queer little shops so constantly seen in the sidestreets of London, which must be called toy-shops only because toysupon the whole predominate; for the remainder of goods seem to consistof almost everything else in the world--tobacco, exercise-books,sweet-stuff, novelettes, halfpenny paper clips, halfpenny pencilsharpeners, bootlaces, and cheap fireworks. It also sold newspapers,and a row of dirty-looking posters hung along the front of it.

  "I am afraid," said Wayne, as he entered, "that I am not getting onwith these tradesmen as I should. Is it that I have neglected to riseto the full meaning of their work? Is there some secret buried in eachof these shops which no mere poet can discover?"

  He stepped to the counter with a depression which he rapidly conqueredas he addressed the man on the other side of it,--a man of shortstature, and hair prematurely white, and the look of a large baby.

  "Sir," said Wayne, "I am going from house to house in this street ofours, seeking to stir up some sense of the danger which now threatensour city. Nowhere have I felt my duty so difficult as here. For thetoy-shop keeper has to do with all that remains to us of Eden beforethe first wars began. You sit here meditating continually upon thewants of that wonderful time when every staircase leads to the stars,and every garden-path to the other end of nowhere. Is itthoughtlessly, do you think, that I strike the dark old drum of perilin the paradise of children? But consider a moment; do not condemn mehastily. Even that paradise itself contains the rumour or beginning ofthat danger, just as the Eden that was made for perfection containedthe terrible tree. For judge childhood, even by your own arsenal ofits pleasures. You keep bricks; you make yourself thus, doubtless,the witness of the constructive instinct older than the destructive.You keep dolls; you make yourself the priest of that divine idolatry.You keep Noah's Arks; you perpetuate the memory of the salvation ofall life as a precious, an irreplaceable thing. But do you keep only,sir, the symbols of this prehistoric sanity, this childish rationalityof the earth? Do you not keep more terrible things? What are thoseboxes, seemingly of lead soldiers, that I see in that glass case? Arethey not witnesses to that terror and beauty, that desire for a lovelydeath, which could not be excluded even from the immortality of Eden?Do not despise the lead soldiers, Mr. Turnbull."

  "I don't," said Mr. Turnbull, of the toy-shop, shortly, but with greatemphasis.

  "I am glad to hear it," replied Wayne. "I confess that I feared for mymilitary schemes the awful innocence of your profession. How, Ithought to myself, will this man, used only to the wooden swords thatgive pleasure, think of the steel swords that give pain? But I am atleast partly reassured. Your tone suggests to me that I have at leastthe entry of a gate of your fairyland--the gate through which thesoldiers enter, for it cannot be denied--I ought, sir, no longer todeny, that it is of soldiers that I come to speak. Let your gentleemployment make you merciful towards the troubles of the world. Letyour own silvery experience tone down our sanguine sorrows. For thereis war in Notting Hill."

  The little toy-shop keeper sprang up suddenly, slapping his fat handslike two fans on the counter.

  "War?" he cried. "Not really, sir? Is it true? Oh, what a joke! Oh,what a sight for sore eyes!"

  Wayne was almost taken aback by this outburst.

&nbs
p; "I am delighted," he stammered. "I had no notion--"

  He sprang out of the way just in time to avoid Mr. Turnbull, who tooka flying leap over the counter and dashed to the front of the shop.

  "You look here, sir," he said; "you just look here."

  He came back with two of the torn posters in his hand which wereflapping outside his shop.

  "Look at those, sir," he said, and flung them down on the counter.

  Wayne bent over them, and read on one--

  "LAST FIGHTING.REDUCTION OF THE CENTRAL DERVISH CITY.REMARKABLE, ETC."

  On the other he read--

  "LAST SMALL REPUBLIC ANNEXED.NICARAGUAN CAPITAL SURRENDERS AFTER AMONTH'S FIGHTING.GREAT SLAUGHTER."

  Wayne bent over them again, evidently puzzled; then he looked at thedates. They were both dated in August fifteen years before.

  "Why do you keep these old things?" he said, startled entirely out ofhis absurd tact of mysticism. "Why do you hang them outside yourshop?"

  "Because," said the other, simply, "they are the records of the lastwar. You mentioned war just now. It happens to be my hobby."

  Wayne lifted his large blue eyes with an infantile wonder.

  "Come with me," said Turnbull, shortly, and led him into a parlour atthe back of the shop.

  In the centre of the parlour stood a large deal table. On it were setrows and rows of the tin and lead soldiers which were part of theshopkeeper's stock. The visitor would have thought nothing of it if ithad not been for a certain odd grouping of them, which did not seemeither entirely commercial or entirely haphazard.

  "You are acquainted, no doubt," said Turnbull, turning his big eyesupon Wayne--"you are acquainted, no doubt, with the arrangement of theAmerican and Nicaraguan troops in the last battle;" and he waved hishand towards the table.

  "I am afraid not," said Wayne. "I--"

  "Ah! you were at that time occupied too much, perhaps, with theDervish affair. You will find it in this corner." And he pointed to apart of the floor where there was another arrangement of children'ssoldiers grouped here and there.

  "You seem," said Wayne, "to be interested in military matters."

  "I am interested in nothing else," answered the toy-shop keeper,simply.

  Wayne appeared convulsed with a singular, suppressed excitement.

  "In that case," he said, "I may approach you with an unusual degreeof confidence. Touching the matter of the defence of Notting Hill,I--"

  "Defence of Notting Hill? Yes, sir. This way, sir," said Turnbull,with great perturbation. "Just step into this side room;" and he ledWayne into another apartment, in which the table was entirely coveredwith an arrangement of children's bricks. A second glance at it toldWayne that the bricks were arranged in the form of a precise andperfect plan of Notting Hill. "Sir," said Turnbull, impressively, "youhave, by a kind of accident, hit upon the whole secret of my life. Asa boy, I grew up among the last wars of the world, when Nicaragua wastaken and the dervishes wiped out. And I adopted it as a hobby, sir,as you might adopt astronomy or bird-stuffing. I had no ill-will toany one, but I was interested in war as a science, as a game. Andsuddenly I was bowled out. The big Powers of the world, havingswallowed up all the small ones, came to that confounded agreement,and there was no more war. There was nothing more for me to do but todo what I do now--to read the old campaigns in dirty old newspapers,and to work them out with tin soldiers. One other thing had occurredto me. I thought it an amusing fancy to make a plan of how thisdistrict or ours ought to be defended if it were ever attacked. Itseems to interest you too."

  "If it were ever attacked," repeated Wayne, awed into an almostmechanical enunciation. "Mr. Turnbull, it is attacked. Thank Heaven, Iam bringing to at least one human being the news that is at bottom theonly good news to any son of Adam. Your life has not been useless.Your work has not been play. Now, when the hair is already grey onyour head, Turnbull, you shall have your youth. God has not destroyed,He has only deferred it. Let us sit down here, and you shall explainto me this military map of Notting Hill. For you and I have to defendNotting Hill together."

  Mr. Turnbull looked at the other for a moment, then hesitated, andthen sat down beside the bricks and the stranger. He did not riseagain for seven hours, when the dawn broke.

  * * * * *

  The headquarters of Provost Adam Wayne and his Commander-in-Chiefconsisted of a small and somewhat unsuccessful milk-shop at the cornerof Pump Street. The blank white morning had only just begun to breakover the blank London buildings when Wayne and Turnbull were to befound seated in the cheerless and unswept shop. Wayne had somethingfeminine in his character; he belonged to that class of persons whoforget their meals when anything interesting is in hand. He had hadnothing for sixteen hours but hurried glasses of milk, and, with aglass standing empty beside him, he was writing and sketching anddotting and crossing out with inconceivable rapidity with a pencil anda piece of paper. Turnbull was of that more masculine type in which asense of responsibility increases the appetite, and with hissketch-map beside him he was dealing strenuously with a pile ofsandwiches in a paper packet, and a tankard of ale from the tavernopposite, whose shutters had just been taken down. Neither of themspoke, and there was no sound in the living stillness except thescratching of Wayne's pencil and the squealing of an aimless-lookingcat. At length Wayne broke the silence by saying--

  "Seventeen pounds eight shillings and ninepence."

  Turnbull nodded and put his head in the tankard.

  "That," said Wayne, "is not counting the five pounds you tookyesterday. What did you do with it?"

  "Ah, that is rather interesting!" replied Turnbull, with his mouthfull. "I used that five pounds in a kindly and philanthropic act."

  Wayne was gazing with mystification in his queer and innocent eyes.

  "I used that five pounds," continued the other, "in giving no lessthan forty little London boys rides in hansom cabs."

  "Are you insane?" asked the Provost.

  "It is only my light touch," returned Turnbull. "These hansom-cabrides will raise the tone--raise the tone, my dear fellow--of ourLondon youths, widen their horizon, brace their nervous system, makethem acquainted with the various public monuments of our great city.Education, Wayne, education. How many excellent thinkers have pointedout that political reform is useless until we produce a culturedpopulace. So that twenty years hence, when these boys are grown up--"

  "Mad!" said Wayne, laying down his pencil; "and five pounds gone!"

  "You are in error," explained Turnbull. "You grave creatures can neverbe brought to understand how much quicker work really goes with theassistance of nonsense and good meals. Stripped of its decorativebeauties, my statement was strictly accurate. Last night I gave fortyhalf-crowns to forty little boys, and sent them all over London totake hansom cabs. I told them in every case to tell the cabman tobring them to this spot. In half an hour from now the declaration ofwar will be posted up. At the same time the cabs will have begun tocome in, you will have ordered out the guard, the little boys willdrive up in state, we shall commandeer the horses for cavalry, use thecabs for barricade, and give the men the choice between serving in ourranks and detention in our basements and cellars. The little boys wecan use as scouts. The main thing is that we start the war with anadvantage unknown in all the other armies--horses. And now," he said,finishing his beer, "I will go and drill the troops."

  And he walked out of the milk-shop, leaving the Provost staring.

  A minute or two afterwards, the Provost laughed. He only laughed onceor twice in his life, and then he did it in a queer way as if it werean art he had not mastered. Even he saw something funny in thepreposterous coup of the half-crowns and the little boys. He did notsee the monstrous absurdity of the whole policy and the whole war. Heenjoyed it seriously as a crusade, that is, he enjoyed it far morethan any joke can be enjoyed. Turnbull enjoyed it partly as a joke,even more perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated--modernityand monotony and civilisation. To break up the v
ast machinery ofmodern life and use the fragments as engines of war, to make thebarricade of omnibuses and points of vantage of chimney-pots, was tohim a game worth infinite risk and trouble. He had that rational anddeliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peaceof the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short lifeand a merry one.