The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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