The Napoleon of Notting Hill
the banner which was borne after them was emblazoned with a green
bay-wreath on a silver ground, which the King, in the course of his
researches into a bottle of champagne, had discovered to be the quaint
old punning cognisance of the city of Bayswater.
"It is a fit symbol," said the King, "your immortal bay-wreath. Fulham
may seek for wealth, and Kensington for art, but when did the men of
Bayswater care for anything but glory?"
Immediately behind the banner, and almost completely hidden by it,
came the Provost of the city, clad in splendid robes of green and
silver with white fur and crowned with bay. He was an anxious little
man with red whiskers, originally the owner of a small sweet-stuff
shop.
"Our cousin of Bayswater," said the King, with delight; "what can we
get for you?" The King was heard also distinctly to mutter, "Cold
beef, cold 'am, cold chicken," his voice dying into silence.
"I came to see your Majesty," said the Provost of Bayswater, whose
name was Wilson, "about that Pump Street affair."
"I have just been explaining the situation to his Majesty," said Buck,
curtly, but recovering his civility. "I am not sure, however, whether
his Majesty knows how much the matter affects you also."
"It affects both of us, yer see, yer Majesty, as this scheme was
started for the benefit of the 'ole neighbourhood. So Mr. Buck and me
we put our 'eads together--"
The King clasped his hands.
"Perfect!" he cried in ecstacy. "Your heads together! I can see it!
Can't you do it now? Oh, do do it now!"
A smothered sound of amusement appeared to come from the halberdiers,
but Mr. Wilson looked merely bewildered, and Mr. Buck merely
diabolical.
"I suppose," he began bitterly, but the King stopped him with a
gesture of listening.
"Hush," he said, "I think I hear some one else coming. I seem to hear
another herald, a herald whose boots creak."
As he spoke another voice cried from the doorway--
"The Lord High Provost of South Kensington desires an audience."
"The Lord High Provost of South Kensington!" cried the King. "Why,
that is my old friend James Barker! What does he want, I wonder? If
the tender memories of friendship have not grown misty, I fancy he
wants something for himself, probably money. How are you, James?"
Mr. James Barker, whose guard was attired in a splendid blue, and
whose blue banner bore three gold birds singing, rushed, in his blue
and gold robes, into the room. Despite the absurdity of all the
dresses, it was worth noticing that he carried his better than the
rest, though he loathed it as much as any of them. He was a gentleman,
and a very handsome man, and could not help unconsciously wearing even
his preposterous robe as it should be worn. He spoke quickly, but with
the slight initial hesitation he always showed in addressing the King,
due to suppressing an impulse to address his old acquaintance in the
old way.
"Your Majesty--pray forgive my intrusion. It is about this man in Pump
Street. I see you have Buck here, so you have probably heard what is
necessary. I--"
The King swept his eyes anxiously round the room, which now blazed
with the trappings of three cities.
"There is one thing necessary," he said.
"Yes, your Majesty," said Mr. Wilson of Bayswater, a little eagerly.
"What does yer Majesty think necessary?"
"A little yellow," said the King, firmly. "Send for the Provost of
West Kensington."
Amid some materialistic protests he was sent for, and arrived with his
yellow halberdiers in his saffron robes, wiping his forehead with a
handkerchief. After all, placed as he was, he had a good deal to say
on the matter.
"Welcome, West Kensington," said the King. "I have long wished to see
you touching that matter of the Hammersmith land to the south of the
Rowton House. Will you hold it feudally from the Provost of
Hammersmith? You have only to do him homage by putting his left arm
in his overcoat and then marching home in state."
"No, your Majesty; I'd rather not," said the Provost of West
Kensington, who was a pale young man with a fair moustache and
whiskers, who kept a successful dairy.
The King struck him heartily on the shoulder.
"The fierce old West Kensington blood," he said; "they are not wise
who ask it to do homage."
Then he glanced again round the room. It was full of a roaring sunset
of colour, and he enjoyed the sight, possible to so few artists--the
sight of his own dreams moving and blazing before him. In the
foreground the yellow of the West Kensington liveries outlined itself
against the dark blue draperies of South Kensington. The crests of
these again brightened suddenly into green as the almost woodland
colours of Bayswater rose behind them. And over and behind all, the
great purple plumes of North Kensington showed almost funereal and
black.
"There is something lacking," said the King--"something lacking. What
can--Ah, there it is! there it is!"
In the doorway had appeared a new figure, a herald in flaming red. He
cried in a loud but unemotional voice--
"The Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires an audience."
CHAPTER III--_Enter a Lunatic_
The King of the Fairies, who was, it is to be presumed, the godfather
of King Auberon, must have been very favourable on this particular day
to his fantastic godchild, for with the entrance of the guard of the
Provost of Notting Hill there was a certain more or less inexplicable
addition to his delight. The wretched navvies and sandwich-men who
carried the colours of Bayswater or South Kensington, engaged merely
for the day to satisfy the Royal hobby, slouched into the room with a
comparatively hang-dog air, and a great part of the King's
intellectual pleasure consisted in the contrast between the arrogance
of their swords and feathers and the meek misery of their faces. But
these Notting Hill halberdiers in their red tunics belted with gold
had the air rather of an absurd gravity. They seemed, so to speak, to
be taking part in the joke. They marched and wheeled into position
with an almost startling dignity and discipline.
They carried a yellow banner with a great red lion, named by the King
as the Notting Hill emblem, after a small public-house in the
neighbourhood, which he once frequented.
Between the two lines of his followers there advanced towards the King
a tall, red-haired young man, with high features and bold blue eyes.
He would have been called handsome, but that a certain indefinable air
of his nose being too big for his face, and his feet for his legs,
gave him a look of awkwardness and extreme youth. His robes were red,
according to the King's heraldry, and, alone among the Provosts, he
was girt with a great sword. This was Adam Wayne, the intractable
Provost of Notting Hill.
The King flung himself back in his chair, and rubbed his hands.
"What a day, what a day!" he said to himself. "Now there'll be a row.
I'd no idea it would be such fun as it is. These Provosts are so very
indignant, so very reasonable, so very right. This fellow, by the look
in his eyes, is even more indignant than the rest. No sign in those
large blue eyes, at any rate, of ever having heard of a joke. He'll
remonstrate with the others, and they'll remonstrate with him, and
they'll all make themselves sumptuously happy remonstrating with me."
"Welcome, my Lord," he said aloud. "What news from the Hill of a
Hundred Legends? What have you for the ear of your King? I know that
troubles have arisen between you and these others, our cousins, but
these troubles it shall be our pride to compose. And I doubt not, and
cannot doubt, that your love for me is not less tender, no less
ardent, than theirs."
Mr. Buck made a bitter face, and James Barker's nostrils curled;
Wilson began to giggle faintly, and the Provost of West Kensington
followed in a smothered way. But the big blue eyes of Adam Wayne never
changed, and he called out in an odd, boyish voice down the hall--
"I bring homage to my King. I bring him the only thing I have--my
sword."
And with a great gesture he flung it down on the ground, and knelt on
one knee behind it.
There was a dead silence.
"I beg your pardon," said the King, blankly.
"You speak well, sire," said Adam Wayne, "as you ever speak, when you
say that my love is not less than the love of these. Small would it be
if it were not more. For I am the heir of your scheme--the child of
the great Charter. I stand here for the rights the Charter gave me,
and I swear, by your sacred crown, that where I stand, I stand fast."
The eyes of all five men stood out of their heads.
Then Buck said, in his jolly, jarring voice: "Is the whole world mad?"
The King sprang to his feet, and his eyes blazed.
"Yes," he cried, in a voice of exultation, "the whole world is mad,
but Adam Wayne and me. It is true as death what I told you long ago,
James Barker, seriousness sends men mad. You are mad, because you care
for politics, as mad as a man who collects tram tickets. Buck is mad,
because he cares for money, as mad as a man who lives on opium. Wilson
is mad, because he thinks himself right, as mad as a man who thinks
himself God Almighty. The Provost of West Kensington is mad, because
he thinks he is respectable, as mad as a man who thinks he is a
chicken. All men are mad but the humorist, who cares for nothing and
possesses everything. I thought that there was only one humorist in
England. Fools!--dolts!--open your cows' eyes; there are two! In
Notting Hill--in that unpromising elevation--there has been born an
artist! You thought to spoil my joke, and bully me out of it, by
becoming more and more modern, more and more practical, more and more
bustling and rational. Oh, what a feast it was to answer you by
becoming more and more august, more and more gracious, more and more
ancient and mellow! But this lad has seen how to bowl me out. He has
answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has
lifted the only shield I cannot break, the shield of an impenetrable
pomposity. Listen to him. You have come, my Lord, about Pump Street?"
"About the city of Notting Hill," answered Wayne, proudly, "of which
Pump Street is a living and rejoicing part."
"Not a very large part," said Barker, contemptuously.
"That which is large enough for the rich to covet," said Wayne,
drawing up his head, "is large enough for the poor to defend."
The King slapped both his legs, and waved his feet for a second in the
air.
"Every respectable person in Notting Hill," cut in Buck, with his
cold, coarse voice, "is for us and against you. I have plenty of
friends in Notting Hill."
"Your friends are those who have taken your gold for other men's
hearthstones, my Lord Buck," said Provost Wayne. "I can well believe
they are your friends."
"They've never sold dirty toys, anyhow," said Buck, laughing shortly.
"They've sold dirtier things," said Wayne, calmly: "they have sold
themselves."
"It's no good, my Buckling," said the King, rolling about on his
chair. "You can't cope with this chivalrous eloquence. You can't cope
with an artist. You can't cope with the humorist of Notting Hill. Oh,
_Nunc dimittis_--that I have lived to see this day! Provost Wayne, you
stand firm?"
"Let them wait and see," said Wayne. "If I stood firm before, do you
think I shall weaken now that I have seen the face of the King? For I
fight for something greater, if greater there can be, than the
hearthstones of my people and the Lordship of the Lion. I fight for
your royal vision, for the great dream you dreamt of the League of the
Free Cities. You have given me this liberty. If I had been a beggar
and you had flung me a coin, if I had been a peasant in a dance and