The Napoleon of Notting Hill
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
Galilaee!_ 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.
"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