Kabanata Kabanata 10 · The Battle of the Lamps_

. The Battle of the Lamps_

Mr. Buck, who, though retired, frequently went down to his big drapery

stores in Kensington High Street, was locking up those premises, being

the last to leave. It was a wonderful evening of green and gold, but

that did not trouble him very much. If you had pointed it out, he

would have agreed seriously, for the rich always desire to be

artistic.

He stepped out into the cool air, buttoning up his light yellow coat,

and blowing great clouds from his cigar, when a figure dashed up to

him in another yellow overcoat, but unbuttoned and flying behind him.

"Hullo, Barker!" said the draper. "Any of our summer articles? You're

too late. Factory Acts, Barker. Humanity and progress, my boy."

"Oh, don't chatter," cried Barker, stamping. "We've been beaten."

"Beaten--by what?" asked Buck, mystified.

"By Wayne."

Buck looked at Barker's fierce white face for the first time, as it

gleamed in the lamplight.

"Come and have a drink," he said.

They adjourned to a cushioned and glaring buffet, and Buck established

himself slowly and lazily in a seat, and pulled out his cigar-case.

"Have a smoke," he said.

Barker was still standing, and on the fret, but after a moment's

hesitation, he sat down as if he might spring up again the next

minute. They ordered drinks in silence.

"How did it happen?" asked Buck, turning his big bold eyes on him.

"How the devil do I know?" cried Barker. "It happened like--like a

dream. How can two hundred men beat six hundred? How can they?"

"Well," said Buck, coolly, "how did they? You ought to know."

"I don't know; I can't describe," said the other, drumming on the

table. "It seemed like this. We were six hundred, and marched with

those damned poleaxes of Auberon's--the only weapons we've got. We

marched two abreast. We went up Holland Walk, between the high palings

which seemed to me to go straight as an arrow for Pump Street. I was

near the tail of the line, and it was a long one. When the end of it

was still between the high palings, the head of the line was already

crossing Holland Park Avenue. Then the head plunged into the

network of narrow streets on the other side, and the tail and myself

came out on the great crossing. When we also had reached the northern

side and turned up a small street that points, crookedly as it were,

towards Pump Street, the whole thing felt different. The streets

dodged and bent so much that the head of our line seemed lost

altogether: it might as well have been in North America. And all this

time we hadn't seen a soul."

[Illustration: Map of the SEAT of WAR.]

Buck, who was idly dabbing the ash of his cigar on the ash-tray, began

to move it deliberately over the table, making feathery grey lines, a

kind of map.

"But though the little streets were all deserted (which got a trifle

on my nerves), as we got deeper and deeper into them, a thing began to

happen that I couldn't understand. Sometimes a long way ahead--three

turns or corners ahead, as it were--there broke suddenly a sort of

noise, clattering, and confused cries, and then stopped. Then, when it

happened, something, I can't describe it--a kind of shake or stagger

went down the line, as if the line were a live thing, whose head had

been struck, or had been an electric cord. None of us knew why we were

moving, but we moved and jostled. Then we recovered, and went on

through the little dirty streets, round corners, and up twisted ways.

The little crooked streets began to give me a feeling I can't

explain--as if it were a dream. I felt as if things had lost their

reason, and we should never get out of the maze. Odd to hear me talk

like that, isn't it? The streets were quite well-known streets, all

down on the map. But the fact remains. I wasn't afraid of something

happening. I was afraid of nothing ever happening--nothing ever

happening for all God's eternity."

He drained his glass and called for more whisky. He drank it, and went

on.

"And then something did happen. Buck, it's the solemn truth, that

nothing has ever happened to you in your life. Nothing had ever

happened to me in my life."

"Nothing ever happened!" said Buck, staring. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing has ever happened," repeated Barker, with a morbid obstinacy.

"You don't know what a thing happening means? You sit in your office

expecting customers, and customers come; you walk in the street

expecting friends, and friends meet you; you want a drink, and get it;

you feel inclined for a bet, and make it. You expect either to win or

lose, and you do either one or the other. But things happening!" and

he shuddered ungovernably.

"Go on," said Buck, shortly. "Get on."

"As we walked wearily round the corners, something happened. When

something happens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards. It

happens of itself, and you have nothing to do with it. It proves a

dreadful thing--that there are other things besides one's self. I can

only put it in this way. We went round one turning, two turnings,

three turnings, four turnings, five. Then I lifted myself slowly up

from the gutter where I had been shot half senseless, and was beaten

down again by living men crashing on top of me, and the world was full

of roaring, and big men rolling about like nine-pins."

Buck looked at his map with knitted brows.

"Was that Portobello Road?" he asked.

"Yes," said Barker--"yes; Portobello Road. I saw it afterwards; but,

my God, what a place it was! Buck, have you ever stood and let a six

foot of man lash and lash at your head with six feet of pole with six

pounds of steel at the end? Because, when you have had that

experience, as Walt Whitman says, 'you re-examine philosophies and

religions.'"

"I have no doubt," said Buck. "If that was Portobello Road, don't you

see what happened?"

"I know what happened exceedingly well. I was knocked down four times;

an experience which, as I say, has an effect on the mental attitude.

And another thing happened, too. I knocked down two men. After the

fourth fall (there was not much bloodshed--more brutal rushing and

throwing--for nobody could use their weapons), after the fourth fall,

I say, I got up like a devil, and I tore a poleaxe out of a man's hand

and struck where I saw the scarlet of Wayne's fellows, struck again

and again. Two of them went over, bleeding on the stones, thank God;

and I laughed and found myself sprawling in the gutter again, and got

up again, and struck again, and broke my halberd to pieces. I hurt a

man's head, though."

Buck set down his glass with a bang, and spat out curses through his

thick moustache.

"What is the matter?" asked Barker, stopping, for the man had been

calm up to now, and now his agitation was far more violent than his

own.

"The matter?" said Buck, bitterly; "don't you see how these maniacs

have got us? Why should two idiots, one a clown and the other a

screaming lunatic, make sane men so different from themselves? Look

here, Barker; I will give you a picture. A very well-bred young man of

this century is dancing about in a frock-coat. He has in his hands a

nonsensical seventeenth-century halberd, with which he is trying to

kill men in a street in Notting Hill. Damn it! don't you see how

they've got us? Never mind how you felt--that is how you looked. The

King would put his cursed head on one side and call it exquisite. The

Provost of Notting Hill would put his cursed nose in the air and call

it heroic. But in Heaven's name what would you have called it--two

days before?"

Barker bit his lip.

"You haven't been through it, Buck," he said. "You don't understand

fighting--the atmosphere."

"I don't deny the atmosphere," said Buck, striking the table. "I only

say it's their atmosphere. It's Adam Wayne's atmosphere. It's the

atmosphere which you and I thought had vanished from an educated world

for ever."

"Well, it hasn't," said Barker; "and if you have any lingering doubts,

lend me a poleaxe, and I'll show you."

There was a long silence, and then Buck turned to his neighbour and

spoke in that good-tempered tone that comes of a power of looking

facts in the face--the tone in which he concluded great bargains.

"Barker," he said, "you are right. This old thing--this fighting, has

come back. It has come back suddenly and taken us by surprise. So it

is first blood to Adam Wayne. But, unless reason and arithmetic and

everything else have gone crazy, it must be next and last blood to us.

But when an issue has really arisen, there is only one thing to do--to

study that issue as such and win in it. Barker, since it is fighting,

we must understand fighting. I must understand fighting as coolly and

completely as I understand drapery; you must understand fighting as

coolly and completely as you understand politics. Now, look at the

facts. I stick without hesitation to my original formula. Fighting,

when we have the stronger force, is only a matter of arithmetic. It

must be. You asked me just now how two hundred men could defeat six

hundred. I can tell you. Two hundred men can defeat six hundred when

the six hundred behave like fools. When they forget the very

conditions they are fighting in; when they fight in a swamp as if it

were a mountain; when they fight in a forest as if it were a plain;

when they fight in streets without remembering the object of streets."

"What is the object of streets?" asked Barker.

"What is the object of supper?" cried Buck, furiously. "Isn't it

obvious? This military science is mere common sense. The object of a

street is to lead from one place to another; therefore all streets

join; therefore street fighting is quite a peculiar thing. You

advanced into that hive of streets as if you were advancing into an

open plain where you could see everything. Instead of that, you were

advancing into the bowels of a fortress, with streets pointing at you,

streets turning on you, streets jumping out at you, and all in the

hands of the enemy. Do you know what Portobello Road is? It is the

only point on your journey where two side streets run up opposite each

other. Wayne massed his men on the two sides, and when he had let

enough of your line go past, cut it in two like a worm. Don't you see

what would have saved you?"

Barker shook his head.

"Can't your 'atmosphere' help you?" asked Buck, bitterly. "Must I

attempt explanations in the romantic manner? Suppose that, as you were

fighting blindly with the red Notting Hillers who imprisoned you on

both sides, you had heard a shout from behind them. Suppose, oh,

romantic Barker! that behind the red tunics you had seen the blue and

gold of South Kensington taking them in the rear, surrounding them in

their turn and hurling them on to your halberds."

"If the thing had been possible," began Barker, cursing.

"The thing would have been as possible," said Buck, simply, "as simple

as arithmetic. There are a certain number of street entries that lead

to Pump Street. There are not nine hundred; there are not nine

million. They do not grow in the night. They do not increase like

mushrooms. It must be possible, with such an overwhelming force as we

have, to advance by all of them at once. In every one of the arteries,

or approaches, we can put almost as many men as Wayne can put into the

field altogether. Once do that, and we have him to demonstration. It

is like a proposition of Euclid."

"You think that is certain?" said Barker, anxious, but dominated

delightfully.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Buck, getting up jovially. "I

think Adam Wayne made an uncommonly spirited little fight; and I think

I am confoundedly sorry for him."

"Buck, you are a great man!" cried Barker, rising also. "You've

knocked me sensible again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was getting

romantic. Of course, what you say is adamantine sense. Fighting, being

physical, must be mathematical. We were beaten because we were neither

mathematical nor physical nor anything else--because we deserved to be

beaten. Hold all the approaches, and with our force we must have him.

When shall we open the next campaign?"

"Now," said Buck, and walked out of the bar.

"Now!" cried Barker, following him eagerly. "Do you mean now? It is so

late."

Buck turned on him, stamping.

"Do you think fighting is under the Factory Acts?" he said; and he

called a cab. "Notting Hill Gate Station," he said; and the two drove

off.

* * * * *

A genuine reputation can sometimes be made in an hour. Buck, in the

next sixty or eighty minutes, showed himself a really great man of

action. His cab carried him like a thunderbolt from the King to

Wilson, from Wilson to Swindon, from Swindon to Barker again; if his

course was jagged, it had the jaggedness of the lightning. Only two

things he carried with him--his inevitable cigar and the map of North

Kensington and Notting Hill. There were, as he again and again pointed

out, with every variety of persuasion and violence, only nine possible

ways of approaching Pump Street within a quarter of a mile round it;

three out of Westbourne Grove, two out of Ladbroke Grove, and four out

of Notting Hill High Street. And he had detachments of two hundred

each, stationed at every one of the entrances before the last green of

that strange sunset had sunk out of the black sky.

The sky was particularly black, and on this alone was one false

protest raised against the triumphant optimism of the Provost of North

Kensington. He overruled it with his infectious common sense.

"There is no such thing," he said, "as night in London. You have only

to follow the line of street lamps. Look, here is the map. Two hundred

purple North Kensington soldiers under myself march up Ossington

Street, two hundred more under Captain Bruce, of the North Kensington

Guard, up Clanricarde Gardens.[1] Two hundred yellow West Kensingtons

under Provost Swindon attack from Pembridge Road. Two hundred more of

my men from the eastern streets, leading away from Queen's Road. Two

detachments of yellows enter by two roads from Westbourne Grove.

Lastly, two hundred green Bayswaters come down from the North through

Chepstow Place, and two hundred more under Provost Wilson himself,

through the upper part of Pembridge Road. Gentlemen, it is mate in two

moves. The enemy must either mass in Pump Street and be cut to pieces;

or they must retreat past the Gaslight & Coke Co., and rush on my four

hundred; or they must retreat past St. Luke's Church, and rush on the

six hundred from the West. Unless we are all mad, it's plain. Come on.

To your quarters and await Captain Brace's signal to advance. Then you

have only to walk up a line of gas-lamps and smash this nonsense by

pure mathematics. To-morrow we shall all be civilians again."

[Footnote 1: Clanricarde Gardens at this time was no longer a

_cul-de-sac_, but was connected by Pump Street to Pembridge Square.

See map.]

His optimism glowed like a great fire in the night, and ran round the

terrible ring in which Wayne was now held helpless. The fight was

already over. One man's energy for one hour had saved the city from

war.

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.