The Napoleon of Notting Hill Page 11

  CHAPTER III--_The Experiment of Mr. Buck_

  An earnest and eloquent petition was sent up to the King signed withthe names of Wilson, Barker, Buck, Swindon, and others. It urged thatat the forthcoming conference to be held in his Majesty's presencetouching the final disposition of the property in Pump Street, itmight be held not inconsistent with political decorum and with theunutterable respect they entertained for his Majesty if they appearedin ordinary morning dress, without the costume decreed for them asProvosts. So it happened that the company appeared at that council infrock-coats and that the King himself limited his love of ceremony toappearing (after his not unusual manner), in evening dress with oneorder--in this case not the Garter, but the button of the Club of OldClipper's Best Pals, a decoration obtained (with difficulty) from ahalfpenny boy's paper. Thus also it happened that the only spot ofcolour in the room was Adam Wayne, who entered in great dignity withthe great red robes and the great sword.

  "We have met," said Auberon, "to decide the most arduous of modernproblems. May we be successful." And he sat down gravely.

  Buck turned his chair a little, and flung one leg over the other.

  "Your Majesty," he said, quite good-humouredly, "there is only onething I can't understand, and that is why this affair is not settledin five minutes. Here's a small property which is worth a thousand tous and is not worth a hundred to any one else. We offer the thousand.It's not business-like, I know, for we ought to get it for less, andit's not reasonable and it's not fair on us, but I'm damned if I cansee why it's difficult."

  "The difficulty may be very simply stated," said Wayne. "You may offera million and it will be very difficult for you to get Pump Street."

  "But look here, Mr. Wayne," cried Barker, striking in with a kind ofcold excitement. "Just look here. You've no right to take up aposition like that. You've a right to stand out for a bigger price,but you aren't doing that. You're refusing what you and every sane manknows to be a splendid offer simply from malice or spite--it must bemalice or spite. And that kind of thing is really criminal; it'sagainst the public good. The King's Government would be justified inforcing you."

  With his lean fingers spread on the table, he stared anxiously atWayne's face, which did not move.

  "In forcing you ... it would," he repeated.

  "It shall," said Buck, shortly, turning to the table with a jerk. "Wehave done our best to be decent."

  Wayne lifted his large eyes slowly.

  "Was it my Lord Buck," he inquired, "who said that the King of England'shall' do something?"

  Buck flushed and said testily--

  "I mean it must--it ought to. As I say, we've done our best to begenerous; I defy any one to deny it. As it is, Mr. Wayne, I don't wantto say a word that's uncivil. I hope it's not uncivil to say that youcan be, and ought to be, in gaol. It is criminal to stop public worksfor a whim. A man might as well burn ten thousand onions in his frontgarden or bring up his children to run naked in the street, as do whatyou say you have a right to do. People have been compelled to sellbefore now. The King could compel you, and I hope he will."

  "Until he does," said Wayne, calmly, "the power and government ofthis great nation is on my side and not yours, and I defy you to defyit."

  "In what sense," cried Barker, with his feverish eyes and hands, "isthe Government on your side?"

  With one ringing movement Wayne unrolled a great parchment on thetable. It was decorated down the sides with wild water-colour sketchesof vestrymen in crowns and wreaths.

  "The Charter of the Cities," he began.

  Buck exploded in a brutal oath and laughed.

  "That tomfool's joke. Haven't we had enough--"

  "And there you sit," cried Wayne, springing erect and with a voicelike a trumpet, "with no argument but to insult the King before hisface."

  Buck rose also with blazing eyes.

  "I am hard to bully," he began--and the slow tones of the King struckin with incomparable gravity--

  "My Lord Buck, I must ask you to remember that your King is present.It is not often that he needs to protect himself among his subjects."

  Barker turned to him with frantic gestures.

  "For God's sake don't back up the madman now," he implored. "Haveyour joke another time. Oh, for Heaven's sake--"

  "My Lord Provost of South Kensington," said King Auberon, steadily, "Ido not follow your remarks, which are uttered with a rapidity unusualat Court. Nor do your well-meant efforts to convey the rest with yourfingers materially assist me. I say that my Lord Provost of NorthKensington, to whom I spoke, ought not in the presence of hisSovereign to speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign's ordinances. Doyou disagree?"

  Barker turned restlessly in his chair, and Buck cursed withoutspeaking. The King went on in a comfortable voice--

  "My Lord Provost of Notting Hill, proceed."

  Wayne turned his blue eyes on the King, and to every one's surprisethere was a look in them not of triumph, but of a certain childishdistress.

  "I am sorry, your Majesty," he said; "I fear I was more than equallyto blame with the Lord Provost of North Kensington. We were debatingsomewhat eagerly, and we both rose to our feet. I did so first, I amashamed to say. The Provost of North Kensington is, therefore,comparatively innocent. I beseech your Majesty to address your rebukechiefly, at least, to me. Mr. Buck is not innocent, for he did nodoubt, in the heat of the moment, speak disrespectfully. But the restof the discussion he seems to me to have conducted with great goodtemper."

  Buck looked genuinely pleased, for business men are all simple-minded,and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics. The King,for some reason, looked, for the first time in his life, ashamed.

  "This very kind speech of the Provost of Notting Hill," began Buck,pleasantly, "seems to me to show that we have at least got on to afriendly footing. Now come, Mr. Wayne. Five hundred pounds have beenoffered to you for a property you admit not to be worth a hundred.Well, I am a rich man and I won't be outdone in generosity. Let us sayfifteen hundred pounds, and have done with it. And let us shakehands;" and he rose, glowing and laughing.

  "Fifteen hundred pounds," whispered Mr. Wilson of Bayswater; "can wedo fifteen hundred pounds?"

  "I'll stand the racket," said Buck, heartily. "Mr. Wayne is agentleman and has spoken up for me. So I suppose the negotiations areat an end."

  Wayne bowed.

  "They are indeed at an end. I am sorry I cannot sell you theproperty."

  "What?" cried Mr. Barker, starting to his feet.

  "Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the King.

  "I have, I have," cried Buck, springing up also; "I said--"

  "Mr. Buck has spoken correctly," said the King; "the negotiations areat an end."

  All the men at the table rose to their feet; Wayne alone rose withoutexcitement.

  "Have I, then," he said, "your Majesty's permission to depart? I havegiven my last answer."

  "You have it," said Auberon, smiling, but not lifting his eyes fromthe table. And amid a dead silence the Provost of Notting Hill passedout of the room.

  "Well?" said Wilson, turning round to Barker--"well?"

  Barker shook his head desperately.

  "The man ought to be in an asylum," he said. "But one thing isclear--we need not bother further about him. The man can be treated asmad."

  "Of course," said Buck, turning to him with sombre decisiveness."You're perfectly right, Barker. He is a good enough fellow, but hecan be treated as mad. Let's put it in simple form. Go and tell anytwelve men in any town, go and tell any doctor in any town, that thereis a man offered fifteen hundred pounds for a thing he could sellcommonly for four hundred, and that when asked for a reason for notaccepting it he pleads the inviolate sanctity of Notting Hill andcalls it the Holy Mountain. What would they say? What more can we haveon our side than the common sense of everybody? On what else do alllaws rest? I'll tell you, Barker, what's better than any furtherdiscussion. Let's send in workmen on the spot to pull down PumpStreet. And if
old Wayne says a word, arrest him as a lunatic. That'sall."

  Barker's eyes kindled.

  "I always regarded you, Buck, if you don't mind my saying so, as avery strong man. I'll follow you."

  "So, of course, will I," said Wilson.

  Buck rose again impulsively.

  "Your Majesty," he said, glowing with popularity, "I beseech yourMajesty to consider favourably the proposal to which we have committedourselves. Your Majesty's leniency, our own offers, have fallen invain on that extraordinary man. He may be right. He may be God. Hemay be the devil. But we think it, for practical purposes, moreprobable that he is off his head. Unless that assumption were actedon, all human affairs would go to pieces. We act on it, and we proposeto start operations in Notting Hill at once."

  The King leaned back in his chair.

  "The Charter of the Cities ...," he said with a rich intonation.

  But Buck, being finally serious, was also cautious, and did not againmake the mistake of disrespect.

  "Your Majesty," he said, bowing, "I am not here to say a word againstanything your Majesty has said or done. You are a far better educatedman than I, and no doubt there were reasons, upon intellectualgrounds, for those proceedings. But may I ask you and appeal to yourcommon good-nature for a sincere answer? When you drew up the Charterof the Cities, did you contemplate the rise of a man like Adam Wayne?Did you expect that the Charter--whether it was an experiment, or ascheme of decoration, or a joke--could ever really come to this--tostopping a vast scheme of ordinary business, to shutting up a road,to spoiling the chances of cabs, omnibuses, railway stations, todisorganising half a city, to risking a kind of civil war? Whateverwere your objects, were they that?"

  Barker and Wilson looked at him admiringly; the King more admiringlystill.

  "Provost Buck," said Auberon, "you speak in public uncommonly well. Igive you your point with the magnanimity of an artist. My scheme didnot include the appearance of Mr. Wayne. Alas! would that my poeticpower had been great enough."

  "I thank your Majesty," said Buck, courteously, but quickly. "YourMajesty's statements are always clear and studied; therefore I maydraw a deduction. As the scheme, whatever it was, on which you setyour heart did not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne, it willsurvive his removal. Why not let us clear away this particular PumpStreet, which does interfere with our plans, and which does not, byyour Majesty's own statement, interfere with yours."

  "Caught out!" said the King, enthusiastically and quite impersonally,as if he were watching a cricket match.

  "This man Wayne," continued Buck, "would be shut up by any doctors inEngland. But we only ask to have it put before them. Meanwhile noone's interests, not even in all probability his own, can be reallydamaged by going on with the improvements in Notting Hill. Not ourinterests, of course, for it has been the hard and quiet work of tenyears. Not the interests of Notting Hill, for nearly all its educatedinhabitants desire the change. Not the interests of your Majesty, foryou say, with characteristic sense, that you never contemplated therise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his own interests, for theman has a kind heart and many talents, and a couple of good doctorswould probably put him righter than all the free cities and sacredmountains in creation. I therefore assume, if I may use so bold aword, that your Majesty will not offer any obstacle to our proceedingwith the improvements."

  And Mr. Buck sat down amid subdued but excited applause among theallies.

  "Mr. Buck," said the King, "I beg your pardon, for a number ofbeautiful and sacred thoughts, in which you were generally classifiedas a fool. But there is another thing to be considered. Suppose yousend in your workmen, and Mr. Wayne does a thing regrettable indeed,but of which, I am sorry to say, I think him quite capable--knockstheir teeth out?"

  "I have thought of that, your Majesty," said Mr. Buck, easily, "and Ithink it can simply be guarded against. Let us send in a strong guardof, say, a hundred men--a hundred of the North Kensington Halberdiers"(he smiled grimly), "of whom your Majesty is so fond. Or say a hundredand fifty. The whole population of Pump Street, I fancy, is only abouta hundred."

  "Still they might stand together and lick you," said the King,dubiously.

  "Then say two hundred," said Buck, gaily.

  "It might happen," said the King, restlessly, "that one Notting Hillerfought better than two North Kensingtons."

  "It might," said Buck, coolly; "then say two hundred and fifty."

  The King bit his lip.

  "And if they are beaten too?" he said viciously.

  "Your Majesty," said Buck, and leaned back easily in his chair,"suppose they are. If anything be clear, it is clear that all fightingmatters are mere matters of arithmetic. Here we have a hundred andfifty, say, of Notting Hill soldiers. Or say two hundred. If one ofthem can fight two of us--we can send in, not four hundred, but sixhundred, and smash him. That is all. It is out of all immediateprobability that one of them could fight four of us. So what I say isthis. Run no risks. Finish it at once. Send in eight hundred men andsmash him--smash him almost without seeing him. And go on with theimprovements."

  And Mr. Buck pulled out a bandanna and blew his nose.

  "Do you know, Mr. Buck," said the King, staring gloomily at the table,"the admirable clearness of your reason produces in my mind asentiment which I trust I shall not offend you by describing as anaspiration to punch your head. You irritate me sublimely. What can itbe in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense?"

  "But your Majesty," said Barker, eagerly and suavely, "does not refuseour proposals?"

  "My dear Barker, your proposals are as damnable as your manners. Iwant to have nothing to do with them. Suppose I stopped themaltogether. What would happen?"

  Barker answered in a very low voice--

  "Revolution."

  The King glanced quickly at the men round the table. They were alllooking down silently: their brows were red.

  He rose with a startling suddenness, and an unusual pallor.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "you have overruled me. Therefore I can speakplainly. I think Adam Wayne, who is as mad as a hatter, worth morethan a million of you. But you have the force, and, I admit, thecommon sense, and he is lost. Take your eight hundred halberdiers andsmash him. It would be more sportsmanlike to take two hundred."

  "More sportsmanlike," said Buck, grimly, "but a great deal lesshumane. We are not artists, and streets purple with gore do not catchour eye in the right way."

  "It is pitiful," said Auberon. "With five or six times their number,there will be no fight at all."

  "I hope not," said Buck, rising and adjusting his gloves. "We desireno fight, your Majesty. We are peaceable business men."

  "Well," said the King, wearily, "the conference is at an end at last."

  And he went out of the room before any one else could stir.

  * * * * *

  Forty workmen, a hundred Bayswater Halberdiers, two hundred fromSouth, and three from North Kensington, assembled at the foot ofHolland Walk and marched up it, under the general direction of Barker,who looked flushed and happy in full dress. At the end of theprocession a small and sulky figure lingered like an urchin. It wasthe King.

  "Barker," he said at length, appealingly, "you are an old friend ofmine--you understand my hobbies as I understand yours. Why can't youlet it alone? I hoped that such fun might come out of this Waynebusiness. Why can't you let it alone? It doesn't really so much matterto you--what's a road or so? For me it's the one joke that may save mefrom pessimism. Take fewer men and give me an hour's fun. Really andtruly, James, if you collected coins or humming-birds, and I could buyone with the price of your road, I would buy it. I collectincidents--those rare, those precious things. Let me have one. Pay afew pounds for it. Give these Notting Hillers a chance. Let themalone."

  "Auberon," said Barker, kindly, forgetting all royal titles in a raremoment of sincerity, "I do feel what you mean. I have had moments whenthese hobbies have hit me. I have had moments when I have sympathise
dwith your humours. I have had moments, though you may not easilybelieve it, when I have sympathised with the madness of Adam Wayne.But the world, Auberon, the real world, is not run on these hobbies.It goes on great brutal wheels of facts--wheels on which you are thebutterfly; and Wayne is the fly on the wheel."

  Auberon's eyes looked frankly at the other's.

  "Thank you, James; what you say is true. It is only a parentheticalconsolation to me to compare the intelligence of flies somewhatfavourably with the intelligence of wheels. But it is the nature offlies to die soon, and the nature of wheels to go on for ever. Go onwith the wheel. Good-bye, old man."

  And James Barker went on, laughing, with a high colour, slapping hisbamboo on his leg.

  The King watched the tail of the retreating regiment with a look ofgenuine depression, which made him seem more like a baby than ever.Then he swung round and struck his hands together.

  "In a world without humour," he said, "the only thing to do is to eat.And how perfect an exception! How can these people strike dignifiedattitudes, and pretend that things matter, when the totalludicrousness of life is proved by the very method by which it issupported? A man strikes the lyre, and says, 'Life is real, life isearnest,' and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into ahole in his head. I think Nature was indeed a little broad in herhumour in these matters. But we all fall back on the pantomime, as Ihave in this municipal affair. Nature has her farces, like the act ofeating or the shape of the kangaroo, for the more brutal appetite. Shekeeps her stars and mountains for those who can appreciate somethingmore subtly ridiculous." He turned to his equerry. "But, as I said'eating,' let us have a picnic like two nice little children. Just runand bring me a table and a dozen courses or so, and plenty ofchampagne, and under these swinging boughs, Bowler, we will return toNature."

  It took about an hour to erect in Holland Lane the monarch's simplerepast, during which time he walked up and down and whistled, butstill with an unaffected air of gloom. He had really been done out ofa pleasure he had promised himself, and had that empty and sickenedfeeling which a child has when disappointed of a pantomime. When heand the equerry had sat down, however, and consumed a fair amount ofdry champagne, his spirits began mildly to revive.

  "Things take too long in this world," he said. "I detest all thisBarkerian business about evolution and the gradual modification ofthings. I wish the world had been made in six days, and knocked topieces again in six more. And I wish I had done it. The joke's goodenough in a broad way, sun and moon and the image of God, and allthat, but they keep it up so damnably long. Did you ever long for amiracle, Bowler?"

  "No, sir," said Bowler, who was an evolutionist, and had beencarefully brought up.

  "Then I have," answered the King. "I have walked along a street withthe best cigar in the cosmos in my mouth, and more Burgundy inside methan you ever saw in your life, and longed that the lamp-post wouldturn into an elephant to save me from the hell of blank existence.Take my word for it, my evolutionary Bowler, don't you believe peoplewhen they tell you that people sought for a sign, and believed inmiracles because they were ignorant. They did it because they werewise, filthily, vilely wise--too wise to eat or sleep or put on theirboots with patience. This seems delightfully like a new theory of theorigin of Christianity, which would itself be a thing of no meanabsurdity. Take some more wine."

  The wind blew round them as they sat at their little table, with itswhite cloth and bright wine-cups, and flung the tree-tops of HollandPark against each other, but the sun was in that strong temper whichturns green into gold. The King pushed away his plate, lit a cigarslowly, and went on--

  "Yesterday I thought that something next door to a really entertainingmiracle might happen to me before I went to amuse the worms. To seethat red-haired maniac waving a great sword, and making speeches tohis incomparable followers, would have been a glimpse of that Land ofYouth from which the Fates shut us out. I had planned some quitedelightful things. A Congress of Knightsbridge with a treaty, andmyself in the chair, and perhaps a Roman triumph, with jolly oldBarker led in chains. And now these wretched prigs have gone andstamped out the exquisite Mr. Wayne altogether, and I suppose theywill put him in a private asylum somewhere in their damned humane way.Think of the treasures daily poured out to his unappreciative keeper!I wonder whether they would let me be his keeper. But life is a vale.Never forget at any moment of your existence to regard it in the lightof a vale. This graceful habit, if not acquired in youth--"

  The King stopped, with his cigar lifted, for there had slid into hiseyes the startled look of a man listening. He did not move for a fewmoments; then he turned his head sharply towards the high, thin, andlath-like paling which fenced certain long gardens and similar spacesfrom the lane. From behind it there was coming a curious scramblingand scraping noise, as of a desperate thing imprisoned in this box ofthin wood. The King threw away his cigar, and jumped on to the table.From this position he saw a pair of hands hanging with a hungry clutchon the top of the fence. Then the hands quivered with a convulsiveeffort, and a head shot up between them--the head of one of theBayswater Town Council, his eyes and whiskers wild with fear. He swunghimself over, and fell on the other side on his face, and groanedopenly and without ceasing. The next moment the thin, taut wood of thefence was struck as by a bullet, so that it reverberated like a drum,and over it came tearing and cursing, with torn clothes and brokennails and bleeding faces, twenty men at one rush. The King sprang fivefeet clear off the table on to the ground. The moment after the tablewas flung over, sending bottles and glasses flying, and the _debris_was literally swept along the ground by that stream of men pouringpast, and Bowler was borne along with them, as the King said in hisfamous newspaper article, "like a captured bride." The great fenceswung and split under the load of climbers that still scaled andcleared it. Tremendous gaps were torn in it by this living artillery;and through them the King could see more and more frantic faces, as ina dream, and more and more men running. They were as miscellaneous asif some one had taken the lid off a human dustbin. Some wereuntouched, some were slashed and battered and bloody, some weresplendidly dressed, some tattered and half naked, some were in thefantastic garb of the burlesque cities, some in the dullest moderndress. The King stared at all of them, but none of them looked at theKing. Suddenly he stepped forward.

  "Barker," he said, "what is all this?"

  "Beaten," said the politician--"beaten all to hell!" And he plungedpast with nostrils shaking like a horse's, and more and more menplunged after him.

  Almost as he spoke, the last standing strip of fence bowed andsnapped, flinging, as from a catapult, a new figure upon the road. Hewore the flaming red of the halberdiers of Notting Hill, and on hisweapon there was blood, and in his face victory. In another momentmasses of red glowed through the gaps of the fence, and the pursuers,with their halberds, came pouring down the lane. Pursued and pursuersalike swept by the little figure with the owlish eyes, who had nottaken his hands out of his pockets.

  The King had still little beyond the confused sense of a man caught ina torrent--the feeling of men eddying by. Then something happenedwhich he was never able afterwards to describe, and which we cannotdescribe for him. Suddenly in the dark entrance, between the brokengates of a garden, there appeared framed a flaming figure.

  Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back, and his mane likea lion's, stood with his great sword point upwards, the red raiment ofhis office flapping round him like the red wings of an archangel. Andthe King saw, he knew not how, something new and overwhelming. Thegreat green trees and the great red robes swung together in the wind.The sword seemed made for the sunlight. The preposterous masquerade,born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. Thiswas the normal, this was sanity, this was nature; and he himself,with his rationality and his detachment and his black frock-coat, hewas the exception and the accident--a blot of black upon a world ofcrimson and gold.

  BOOK IV