The Napoleon of Notting Hill

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For the next ten minutes Buck walked up and down silently beside the
motionless clump of his two hundred. He had not changed his appearance
in any way, except to sling across his yellow overcoat a case with a
revolver in it. So that his light-clad modern figure showed up oddly
beside the pompous purple uniforms of his halberdiers, which darkly
but richly coloured the black night.

At length a shrill trumpet rang from some way up the street; it was
the signal of advance. Buck briefly gave the word, and the whole
purple line, with its dimly shining steel, moved up the side alley.
Before it was a slope of street, long, straight, and shining in the
dark. It was a sword pointed at Pump Street, the heart at which nine
other swords were pointed that night.

A quarter of an hour's silent marching brought them almost within
earshot of any tumult in the doomed citadel. But still there was no
sound and no sign of the enemy. This time, at any rate, they knew that
they were closing in on it mechanically, and they marched on under the
lamplight and the dark without any of that eerie sense of ignorance
which Barker had felt when entering the hostile country by one avenue
alone.

"Halt--point arms!" cried Buck, suddenly, and as he spoke there came a
clatter of feet tumbling along the stones. But the halberds were
levelled in vain. The figure that rushed up was a messenger from the
contingent of the North.

"Victory, Mr. Buck!" he cried, panting; "they are ousted. Provost
Wilson of Bayswater has taken Pump Street."

Buck ran forward in his excitement.

"Then, which way are they retreating? It must be either by St. Luke's
to meet Swindon, or by the Gas Company to meet us. Run like mad to
Swindon, and see that the yellows are holding the St. Luke's Road. We
will hold this, never fear. We have them in an iron trap. Run!"

As the messenger dashed away into the darkness, the great guard of
North Kensington swung on with the certainty of a machine. Yet
scarcely a hundred yards further their halberd-points again fell in
line gleaming in the gaslight; for again a clatter of feet was heard
on the stones, and again it proved to be only the messenger.

"Mr. Provost," he said, "the yellow West Kensingtons have been
holding the road by St. Luke's for twenty minutes since the capture of
Pump Street. Pump Street is not two hundred yards away; they cannot be
retreating down that road."

"Then they are retreating down this," said Provost Buck, with a final
cheerfulness, "and by good fortune down a well-lighted road, though it
twists about. Forward!"

As they moved along the last three hundred yards of their journey,
Buck fell, for the first time in his life, perhaps, into a kind of
philosophical reverie, for men of his type are always made kindly, and
as it were melancholy, by success.

"I am sorry for poor old Wayne, I really am," he thought. "He spoke up
splendidly for me at that Council. And he blacked old Barker's eye
with considerable spirit. But I don't see what a man can expect when
he fights against arithmetic, to say nothing of civilisation. And what
a wonderful hoax all this military genius is! I suspect I've just
discovered what Cromwell discovered, that a sensible tradesman is the
best general, and that a man who can buy men and sell men can lead and
kill them. The thing's simply like adding up a column in a ledger. If
Wayne has two hundred men, he can't put two hundred men in nine
places at once. If they're ousted from Pump Street they're flying
somewhere. If they're not flying past the church they're flying past
the Works. And so we have them. We business men should have no chance
at all except that cleverer people than we get bees in their bonnets
that prevent them from reasoning properly--so we reason alone. And so
I, who am comparatively stupid, see things as God sees them, as a vast
machine. My God, what's this?" and he clapped his hands to his eyes
and staggered back.

Then through the darkness he cried in a dreadful voice--

"Did I blaspheme God? I am struck blind."

"What?" wailed another voice behind him, the voice of a certain
Wilfred Jarvis of North Kensington.

"Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!"

"I'm blind too!" cried Jarvis, in an agony.

"Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind them; "we're all blind.
The lamps have gone out."

"The lamps! But why? where?" cried Buck, turning furiously in the
darkness. "How are we to get on? How are we to chase the enemy? Where
have they gone?"

"The enemy went--" said the rough voice behind, and then stopped
doubtfully.

"Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a madman.

"They went," said the gruff voice, "past the Gas Works, and they've
used their chance."

"Great God!" thundered Buck, and snatched at his revolver; "do you
mean they've turned out--"

But almost before he had spoken the words, he was hurled like a stone
from catapult into the midst of his own men.

"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried frightful voices out of the
darkness, and they seemed to come from all sides, for the men of North
Kensington, unacquainted with the road, had lost all their bearings in
the black world of blindness.

"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried the invisible people, and the
invaders were hewn down horribly with black steel, with steel that
gave no glint against any light.

* * * * *

Buck, though badly maimed with the blow of a halberd, kept an angry
but splendid sanity. He groped madly for the wall and found it.
Struggling with crawling fingers along it, he found a side opening and
retreated into it with the remnants of his men. Their adventures
during that prodigious night are not to be described. They did not
know whether they were going towards or away from the enemy. Not
knowing where they themselves were, or where their opponents were, it
was mere irony to ask where was the rest of their army. For a thing
had descended upon them which London does not know--darkness, which
was before the stars were made, and they were as much lost in it as if
they had been made before the stars. Every now and then, as those
frightful hours wore on, they buffeted in the darkness against living
men, who struck at them and at whom they struck, with an idiot fury.
When at last the grey dawn came, they found they had wandered back to
the edge of the Uxbridge Road. They found that in those horrible
eyeless encounters, the North Kensingtons and the Bayswaters and the
West Kensingtons had again and again met and butchered each other, and
they heard that Adam Wayne was barricaded in Pump Street.

CHAPTER II--_The Correspondent of the Court Journal_

Journalism had become, like most other such things in England under
the cautious government and philosophy represented by James Barker,
somewhat sleepy and much diminished in importance. This was partly due
to the disappearance of party government and public speaking, partly
to the compromise or dead-lock which had made foreign wars impossible,
but mostly, of course, to the temper of the whole nation which was
that of a people in a kind of back-water. Perhaps the most well known
of the remaining newspapers was the _Court Journal_, which was
published in a dusty but genteel-looking office just out of Kensington
High Street. For when all the papers of a people have been for years
growing more and more dim and decorous and optimistic, the dimmest and
most decorous and most optimistic is very likely to win. In the
journalistic competition which was still going on at the beginning of
the twentieth century, the final victor was the _Court Journal_.

For some mysterious reason the King had a great affection for hanging
about in the _Court Journal_ office, smoking a morning cigarette and
looking over files. Like all ingrainedly idle men, he was very fond of
lounging and chatting in places where other people were doing work.
But one would have thought that, even in the prosaic England of his
day, he might have found a more bustling centre.

On this particular morning, however, he came out of Kensington Palace
with a more alert step and a busier air than usual. He wore an
extravagantly long frock-coat, a pale-green waistcoat, a very full and
_degage_ black tie, and curious yellow gloves. This was his uniform as
Colonel of a regiment of his own creation, the 1st Decadents Green. It
was a beautiful sight to see him drilling them. He walked quickly
across the Park and the High Street, lighting his cigarette as he
went, and flung open the door of the _Court Journal_ office.

"You've heard the news, Pally--you've heard the news?" he said.

The Editor's name was Hoskins, but the King called him Pally, which
was an abbreviation of Paladium of our Liberties.

"Well, your Majesty," said Hoskins, slowly (he was a worried,
gentlemanly looking person, with a wandering brown beard)--"well,
your Majesty, I have heard rather curious things, but I--"

"You'll hear more of them," said the King, dancing a few steps of a
kind of negro shuffle. "You'll hear more of them, my blood-and-thunder
tribune. Do you know what I am going to do for you?"

"No, your Majesty," replied the Paladium, vaguely.

"I'm going to put your paper on strong, dashing, enterprising lines,"
said the King. "Now, where are your posters of last night's defeat?"

"I did not propose, your Majesty," said the Editor, "to have any
posters exactly--"

"Paper, paper!" cried the King, wildly; "bring me paper as big as a
house. I'll do you posters. Stop, I must take my coat off." He began
removing that garment with an air of set intensity, flung it playfully
at Mr. Hoskins' head, entirely enveloping him, and looked at himself
in the glass. "The coat off," he said, "and the hat on. That looks
like a sub-editor. It is indeed the very essence of sub-editing.
Well," he continued, turning round abruptly, "come along with that
paper."

The Paladium had only just extricated himself reverently from the
folds of the King's frock-coat, and said bewildered--

"I am afraid, your Majesty--"

"Oh, you've got no enterprise," said Auberon. "What's that roll in the
corner? Wall-paper? Decorations for your private residence? Art in the
home, Pally? Fling it over here, and I'll paint such posters on the
back of it that when you put it up in your drawing-room you'll paste
the original pattern against the wall." And the King unrolled the
wall-paper, spreading it over the whole floor. "Now give me the
scissors," he cried, and took them himself before the other could
stir.

He slit the paper into about five pieces, each nearly as big as a
door. Then he took a big blue pencil, and went down on his knees on
the dusty oil-cloth and began to write on them, in huge letters--

"FROM THE FRONT.
GENERAL BUCK DEFEATED.
DARKNESS, DANGER, AND DEATH.
WAYNE SAID TO BE IN PUMP STREET.
FEELING IN THE CITY."

He contemplated it for some time, with his head on one side, and got
up, with a sigh.

"Not quite intense enough," he said--"not alarming. I want the _Court
Journal_ to be feared as well as loved. Let's try something more
hard-hitting." And he went down on his knees again. After sucking the
blue pencil for some time, he began writing again busily. "How will
this do?" he said--

"WAYNE'S WONDERFUL VICTORY."

"I suppose," he said, looking up appealingly, and sucking the
pencil--"I suppose we couldn't say 'wictory'--'Wayne's wonderful
wictory'? No, no. Refinement, Pally, refinement. I have it."

"WAYNE WINS.
ASTOUNDING FIGHT IN THE DARK.
_The gas-lamps in their courses fought against Buck._"

"(Nothing like our fine old English translation.) What else can we
say? Well, anything to annoy old Buck;" and he added, thoughtfully, in
smaller letters--

"Rumoured Court-martial on General Buck."

"Those will do for the present," he said, and turned them both face
downwards. "Paste, please."

The Paladium, with an air of great terror, brought the paste out of an
inner room.

The King slabbed it on with the enjoyment of a child messing with
treacle. Then taking one of his huge compositions fluttering in each
hand, he ran outside, and began pasting them up in prominent positions
over the front of the office.

"And now," said Auberon, entering again with undiminished
vivacity--"now for the leading article."

He picked up another of the large strips of wall-paper, and, laying it
across a desk, pulled out a fountain-pen and began writing with
feverish intensity, reading clauses and fragments aloud to himself,
and rolling them on his tongue like wine, to see if they had the pure
journalistic flavour.

"The news of the disaster to our forces in Notting Hill, awful as it
is--awful as it is--(no, distressing as it is), may do some good if it
draws attention to the what's-his-name inefficiency (scandalous
inefficiency, of course) of the Government's preparations. In our
present state of information, it would be premature (what a jolly
word!)--it would be premature to cast any reflections upon the conduct
of General Buck, whose services upon so many stricken fields (ha,
ha!), and whose honourable scars and laurels, give him a right to have
judgment upon him at least suspended. But there is one matter on which
we must speak plainly. We have been silent on it too long, from
feelings, perhaps of mistaken caution, perhaps of mistaken loyalty.
This situation would never have arisen but for what we can only call
the indefensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say such things,
but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from
Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress
we may cause to any individual, even the most exalted. At this crucial
moment of our country, the voice of the People demands with a single
tongue, 'Where is the King?' What is he doing while his subjects tear
each other in pieces in the streets of a great city? Are his
amusements and his dissipations (of which we cannot pretend to be
ignorant) so engrossing that he can spare no thought for a perishing
nation? It is with a deep sense of our responsibility that we warn
that exalted person that neither his great position nor his
incomparable talents will save him in the hour of delirium from the
fate of all those who, in the madness of luxury or tyranny, have met
the English people in the rare day of its wrath."

"I am now," said the King, "going to write an account of the battle by
an eye-witness." And he picked up a fourth sheet of wall-paper. Almost
at the same moment Buck strode quickly into the office. He had a
bandage round his head.

"I was told," he said, with his usual gruff civility, "that your
Majesty was here."

"And of all things on earth," cried the King, with delight, "here is
an eye-witness! An eye-witness who, I regret to observe, has at
present only one eye to witness with. Can you write us the special
article, Buck? Have you a rich style?"

Buck, with a self-restraint which almost approached politeness, took
no notice whatever of the King's maddening geniality.

"I took the liberty, your Majesty," he said shortly, "of asking Mr.
Barker to come here also."

As he spoke, indeed, Barker came swinging into the office, with his
usual air of hurry.

"What is happening now?" asked Buck, turning to him with a kind of
relief.

"Fighting still going on," said Barker. "The four hundred from West
Kensington were hardly touched last night. They hardly got near the
place. Poor Wilson's Bayswater men got cut about, though. They fought
confoundedly well. They took Pump Street once. What mad things do
happen in the world. To think that of all of us it should be little
Wilson with the red whiskers who came out best."

The King made a note on his paper--

"_Romantic Conduct of Mr. Wilson_."

"Yes," said Buck; "it makes one a bit less proud of one's _h's_."

The King suddenly folded or crumpled up the paper, and put it in his
pocket.

"I have an idea," he said. "I will be an eye-witness. I will write you
such letters from the Front as will be more gorgeous than the real
thing. Give me my coat, Paladium. I entered this room a mere King of
England. I leave it, Special War Correspondent of the _Court Journal_.
It is useless to stop me, Pally; it is vain to cling to my knees,
Buck; it is hopeless, Barker, to weep upon my neck. 'When duty
calls'--the remainder of the sentiment escapes me. You will receive my
first article this evening by the eight-o'clock post."

And, running out of the office, he jumped upon a blue Bayswater
omnibus that went swinging by.

"Well," said Barker, gloomily, "well."

"Barker," said Buck, "business may be lower than politics, but war is,
as I discovered last night, a long sight more like business. You
politicians are such ingrained demagogues that even when you have a
despotism you think of nothing but public opinion. So you learn to
tack and run, and are afraid of the first breeze. Now we stick to a
thing and get it. And our mistakes help us. Look here! at this moment
we've beaten Wayne."

"Beaten Wayne," repeated Barker.

"Why the dickens not?" cried the other, flinging out his hands. "Look
here. I said last night that we had them by holding the nine
entrances. Well, I was wrong. We should have had them but for a
singular event--the lamps went out. But for that it was certain. Has
it occurred to you, my brilliant Barker, that another singular event
has happened since that singular event of the lamps going out?"

"What event?" asked Barker.

"By an astounding coincidence, the sun has risen," cried out Buck,
with a savage air of patience. "Why the hell aren't we holding all
those approaches now, and passing in on them again? It should have
been done at sunrise. The confounded doctor wouldn't let me go out.
You were in command."

Barker smiled grimly.

"It is a gratification to me, my dear Buck, to be able to say that we
anticipated your suggestions precisely. We went as early as possible
to reconnoitre the nine entrances. Unfortunately, while we were
fighting each other in the dark, like a lot of drunken navvies, Mr.
Wayne's friends were working very hard indeed. Three hundred yards
from Pump Street, at every one of those entrances, there is a
barricade nearly as high as the houses. They were finishing the last,
in Pembridge Road, when we arrived. Our mistakes," he cried bitterly,
and flung his cigarette on the ground. "It is not we who learn from
them."

There was a silence for a few moments, and Barker lay back wearily in
a chair. The office clock ticked exactly in the stillness.

At length Barker said suddenly--

"Buck, does it ever cross your mind what this is all about? The
Hammersmith to Maida Vale thoroughfare was an uncommonly good
speculation. You and I hoped a great deal from it. But is it worth it?
It will cost us thousands to crush this ridiculous riot. Suppose we
let it alone?"

"And be thrashed in public by a red-haired madman whom any two doctors
would lock up?" cried out Buck, starting to his feet. "What do you
propose to do, Mr. Barker? To apologise to the admirable Mr. Wayne? To
kneel to the Charter of the Cities? To clasp to your bosom the flag of
the Red Lion? To kiss in succession every sacred lamp-post that saved
Notting Hill? No, by God! My men fought jolly well--they were beaten
by a trick. And they'll fight again."

"Buck," said Barker, "I always admired you. And you were quite right
in what you said the other day."

"In what?"

"In saying," said Barker, rising quietly, "that we had all got into
Adam Wayne's atmosphere and out of our own. My friend, the whole
territorial kingdom of Adam Wayne extends to about nine streets, with
barricades at the end of them. But the spiritual kingdom of Adam Wayne
extends, God knows where--it extends to this office, at any rate. The
red-haired madman whom any two doctors would lock up is filling this
room with his roaring, unreasonable soul. And it was the red-haired
madman who said the last word you spoke."

Buck walked to the window without replying. "You understand, of
course," he said at last, "I do not dream of giving in."

* * * * *

The King, meanwhile, was rattling along on the top of his blue
omnibus. The traffic of London as a whole had not, of course, been
greatly disturbed by these events, for the affair was treated as a
Notting Hill riot, and that area was marked off as if it had been in
the hands of a gang of recognised rioters. The blue omnibuses simply
went round as they would have done if a road were being mended, and
the omnibus on which the correspondent of the _Court Journal_ was
sitting swept round the corner of Queen's Road, Bayswater.

The King was alone on the top of the vehicle, and was enjoying the
speed at which it was going.

"Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said, patting the omnibus
encouragingly, "fleetest of all thy bounding tribe. Are thy relations
with thy driver, I wonder, those of the Bedouin and his steed? Does he
sleep side by side with thee--"

His meditations were broken by a sudden and jarring stoppage. Looking
over the edge, he saw that the heads of the horses were being held
by men in the uniform of Wayne's army, and heard the voice of an
officer calling out orders.

[Illustration: KING AUBERON DESCENDED FROM THE OMNIBUS WITH DIGNITY.]

King Auberon descended from the omnibus with dignity. The guard or
picket of red halberdiers who had stopped the vehicle did not number
more than twenty, and they were under the command of a short, dark,
clever-looking young man, conspicuous among the rest as being clad in
an ordinary frock-coat, but girt round the waist with a red sash and a
long seventeenth-century sword. A shiny silk hat and spectacles
completed the outfit in a pleasing manner.

"To whom have I the honour of speaking?" said the King, endeavouring
to look like Charles I., in spite of personal difficulties.

The dark man in spectacles lifted his hat with equal gravity.

"My name is Bowles," he said. "I am a chemist. I am also a captain of
O company of the army of Notting Hill. I am distressed at having to
incommode you by stopping the omnibus, but this area is covered by our
proclamation, and we intercept all traffic. May I ask to whom I have
the honour--Why, good gracious, I beg your Majesty's pardon. I am
quite overwhelmed at finding myself concerned with the King."

Auberon put up his hand with indescribable grandeur.

"Not with the King," he said; "with the special war correspondent of
the _Court Journal_."

"I beg your Majesty's pardon," began Mr. Bowles, doubtfully.

"Do you call me Majesty? I repeat," said Auberon, firmly, "I am a
representative of the press. I have chosen, with a deep sense of
responsibility, the name of Pinker. I should desire a veil to be drawn
over the past."

"Very well, sir," said Mr. Bowles, with an air of submission, "in our
eyes the sanctity of the press is at least as great as that of the
throne. We desire nothing better than that our wrongs and our glories
should be widely known. May I ask, Mr. Pinker, if you have any
objection to being presented to the Provost and to General Turnbull?"

"The Provost I have had the honour of meeting," said Auberon, easily.
"We old journalists, you know, meet everybody. I should be most
delighted to have the same honour again. General Turnbull, also, it
would be a gratification to know. The younger men are so interesting.
We of the old Fleet Street gang lose touch with them."

"Will you be so good as to step this way?" said the leader of O
company.

"I am always good," said Mr. Pinker. "Lead on."

CHAPTER III--_The Great Army of South Kensington_

The article from the special correspondent of the _Court Journal_
arrived in due course, written on very coarse copy-paper in the King's
arabesque of handwriting, in which three words filled a page, and yet
were illegible. Moreover, the contribution was the more perplexing at
first, as it opened with a succession of erased paragraphs. The writer
appeared to have attempted the article once or twice in several
journalistic styles. At the side of one experiment was written, "Try
American style," and the fragment began--

"The King must go. We want gritty men. Flapdoodle is all very ...;"
and then broke off, followed by the note, "Good sound journalism
safer. Try it."

The experiment in good sound journalism appeared to begin--

"The greatest of English poets has said that a rose by any ..."

This also stopped abruptly. The next annotation at the side was almost
undecipherable, but seemed to be something like--

"How about old Steevens and the _mot juste_? E.g...."

"Morning winked a little wearily at me over the curt edge of Campden
Hill and its houses with their sharp shadows. Under the abrupt black
cardboard of the outline, it took some little time to detect colours;
but at length I saw a brownish yellow shifting in the obscurity, and I
knew that it was the guard of Swindon's West Kensington army. They are
being held as a reserve, and lining the whole ridge above the
Bayswater Road. Their camp and their main force is under the great
Waterworks Tower on Campden Hill. I forgot to say that the Waterworks
Tower looked swart.

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