Bab Bab 14 · The Last Battle_

. The Last Battle_

The day was cloudy when Wayne went down to die with all his army in

Kensington Gardens; it was cloudy again when that army had been

swallowed up by the vast armies of a new world. There had been an

almost uncanny interval of sunshine, in which the Provost of Notting

Hill, with all the placidity of an onlooker, had gazed across to the

hostile armies on the great spaces of verdure opposite; the long

strips of green and blue and gold lay across the park in squares and

oblongs like a proposition in Euclid wrought in a rich embroidery. But

the sunlight was a weak and, as it were, a wet sunlight, and was soon

swallowed up. Wayne spoke to the King, with a queer sort of coldness

and languor, as to the military operations. It was as he had said the

night before--that being deprived of his sense of an impracticable

rectitude, he was, in effect, being deprived of everything. He was out

of date, and at sea in a mere world of compromise and competition, of

Empire against Empire, of the tolerably right and the tolerably wrong.

When his eye fell on the King, however, who was marching very gravely

with a top hat and a halberd, it brightened slightly.

"Well, your Majesty," he said, "you at least ought to be proud to-day.

If your children are fighting each other, at least those who win are

your children. Other kings have distributed justice, you have

distributed life. Other kings have ruled a nation, you have created

nations. Others have made kingdoms, you have begotten them. Look at

your children, father!" and he stretched his hand out towards the

enemy.

Auberon did not raise his eyes.

"See how splendidly," cried Wayne, "the new cities come on--the new

cities from across the river. See where Battersea advances over

there--under the flag of the Lost Dog; and Putney--don't you see the

Man on the White Boar shining on their standard as the sun catches it?

It is the coming of a new age, your Majesty. Notting Hill is not a

common empire; it is a thing like Athens, the mother of a mode of

life, of a manner of living, which shall renew the youth of the

world--a thing like Nazareth. When I was young I remember, in the old

dreary days, wiseacres used to write books about how trains would get

faster, and all the world be one empire, and tram-cars go to the moon.

And even as a child I used to say to myself, 'Far more likely that we

shall go on the crusades again, or worship the gods of the city.' And

so it has been. And I am glad, though this is my last battle."

Even as he spoke there came a crash of steel from the left, and he

turned his head.

"Wilson!" he cried, with a kind of joy. "Red Wilson has charged our

left. No one can hold him in; he eats swords. He is as keen a soldier

as Turnbull, but less patient--less really great. Ha! and Barker is

moving. How Barker has improved; how handsome he looks! It is not all

having plumes; it is also having a soul in one's daily life. Ha!"

And another crash of steel on the right showed that Barker had closed

with Notting Hill on the other side.

"Turnbull is there!" cried Wayne. "See him hurl them back! Barker is

checked! Turnbull charges--wins! But our left is broken. Wilson has

smashed Bowles and Mead, and may turn our flank. Forward, the

Provost's Guard!"

And the whole centre moved forward, Wayne's face and hair and sword

flaming in the van.

The King ran suddenly forward.

The next instant a great jar that went through it told that it had met

the enemy. And right over against them through the wood of their own

weapons Auberon saw the Purple Eagle of Buck of North Kensington.

On the left Red Wilson was storming the broken ranks, his little green

figure conspicuous even in the tangle of men and weapons, with the

flaming red moustaches and the crown of laurel. Bowles slashed at his

head and tore away some of the wreath, leaving the rest bloody, and,

with a roar like a bull's, Wilson sprang at him, and, after a rattle

of fencing, plunged his point into the chemist, who fell, crying,

"Notting Hill!" Then the Notting Hillers wavered, and Bayswater swept

them back in confusion. Wilson had carried everything before him.

On the right, however, Turnbull had carried the Red Lion banner with a

rush against Barker's men, and the banner of the Golden Birds bore up

with difficulty against it. Barker's men fell fast. In the centre

Wayne and Buck were engaged, stubborn and confused. So far as the

fighting went, it was precisely equal. But the fighting was a farce.

For behind the three small armies with which Wayne's small army was

engaged lay the great sea of the allied armies, which looked on as yet

as scornful spectators, but could have broken all four armies by

moving a finger.

Suddenly they did move. Some of the front contingents, the pastoral

chiefs from Shepherd's Bush, with their spears and fleeces, were seen

advancing, and the rude clans from Paddington Green. They were

advancing for a very good reason. Buck, of North Kensington, was

signalling wildly; he was surrounded, and totally cut off. His

regiments were a struggling mass of people, islanded in a red sea of

Notting Hill.

The allies had been too careless and confident. They had allowed

Barker's force to be broken to pieces by Turnbull, and the moment that

was done, the astute old leader of Notting Hill swung his men round

and attacked Buck behind and on both sides. At the same moment Wayne

cried, "Charge!" and struck him in front like a thunderbolt.

Two-thirds of Buck's men were cut to pieces before their allies could

reach them. Then the sea of cities came on with their banners like

breakers, and swallowed Notting Hill for ever. The battle was not

over, for not one of Wayne's men would surrender, and it lasted till

sundown, and long after. But it was decided; the story of Notting Hill

was ended.

When Turnbull saw it, he ceased a moment from fighting, and looked

round him. The evening sunlight struck his face; it looked like a

child's.

"I have had my youth," he said. Then, snatching an axe from a man, he

dashed into the thick of the spears of Shepherd's Bush, and died

somewhere far in the depths of their reeling ranks. Then the battle

roared on; every man of Notting Hill was slain before night.

Wayne was standing by a tree alone after the battle. Several men

approached him with axes. One struck at him. His foot seemed partly to

slip; but he flung his hand out, and steadied himself against the

tree.

Barker sprang after him, sword in hand, and shaking with excitement.

"How large now, my lord," he cried, "is the Empire of Notting Hill?"

Wayne smiled in the gathering dark.

"Always as large as this," he said, and swept his sword round in a

semicircle of silver.

Barker dropped, wounded in the neck; and Wilson sprang over his body

like a tiger-cat, rushing at Wayne. At the same moment there came

behind the Lord of the Red Lion a cry and a flare of yellow, and a

mass of the West Kensington halberdiers ploughed up the slope,

knee-deep in grass, bearing the yellow banner of the city before them,

and shouting aloud.

At the same second Wilson went down under Wayne's sword, seemingly

smashed like a fly. The great sword rose again like a bird, but Wilson

seemed to rise with it, and, his sword being broken, sprang at Wayne's

throat like a dog. The foremost of the yellow halberdiers had reached

the tree and swung his axe above the struggling Wayne. With a curse

the King whirled up his own halberd, and dashed the blade in the man's

face. He reeled and rolled down the slope, just as the furious Wilson

was flung on his back again. And again he was on his feet, and again

at Wayne's throat. Then he was flung again, but this time laughing

triumphantly. Grasped in his hand was the red and yellow favour that

Wayne wore as Provost of Notting Hill. He had torn it from the place

where it had been carried for twenty-five years.

With a shout the West Kensington men closed round Wayne, the great

yellow banner flapping over his head.

"Where is your favour now, Provost?" cried the West Kensington leader.

And a laugh went up.

Adam struck at the standard-bearer and brought him reeling forward. As

the banner stooped, he grasped the yellow folds and tore off a shred.

A halberdier struck him on the shoulder, wounding bloodily.

"Here is one colour!" he cried, pushing the yellow into his belt; "and

here!" he cried, pointing to his own blood--"here is the other."

At the same instant the shock of a sudden and heavy halberd laid the

King stunned or dead. In the wild visions of vanishing consciousness,

he saw again something that belonged to an utterly forgotten time,

something that he had seen somewhere long ago in a restaurant. He saw,

with his swimming eyes, red and yellow, the colours of Nicaragua.

Quin did not see the end. Wilson, wild with joy, sprang again at Adam

Wayne, and the great sword of Notting Hill was whirled above once

more. Then men ducked instinctively at the rushing noise of the sword

coming down out of the sky, and Wilson of Bayswater was smashed and

wiped down upon the floor like a fly. Nothing was left of him but a

wreck; but the blade that had broken him was broken. In dying he had

snapped the great sword and the spell of it; the sword of Wayne was

broken at the hilt. One rush of the enemy carried Wayne by force

against the tree. They were too close to use halberd or even sword;

they were breast to breast, even nostrils to nostrils. But Buck got

his dagger free.

"Kill him!" he cried, in a strange stifled voice. "Kill him! Good or

bad, he is none of us! Do not be blinded by the face!... God! have we

not been blinded all along!" and he drew his arm back for a stab, and

seemed to close his eyes.

Wayne did not drop the hand that hung on to the tree-branch. But a

mighty heave went over his breast and his whole huge figure, like an

earthquake over great hills. And with that convulsion of effort he

rent the branch out of the tree, with tongues of torn wood; and,

swaying it once only, he let the splintered club fall on Buck,

breaking his neck. The planner of the Great Road fell face foremost

dead, with his dagger in a grip of steel.

"For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother," said Wayne, in

his strange chant, "there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of

the world."

The packed men made another lurch or heave towards him; it was almost

too dark to fight clearly. He caught hold of the oak again, this time

getting his hand into a wide crevice and grasping, as it were, the

bowels of the tree. The whole crowd, numbering some thirty men, made a

rush to tear him away from it; they hung on with all their weight and

numbers, and nothing stirred. A solitude could not have been stiller

than that group of straining men. Then there was a faint sound.

"His hand is slipping," cried two men in exultation.

"You don't know much of him," said another, grimly (a man of the old

war). "More likely his bone cracks."

"It is neither--by God, it is neither!" said one of the first two.

"What is it, then?" asked the second.

"The tree is falling," he replied.

"As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," said Wayne's voice out of the

darkness, and it had the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had

had throughout, of coming from a great distance, from before or after

the event. Even when he was struggling like an eel or battering like a

madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the tree falleth, so shall it

lie," he said. "Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence

of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what

is the only happiness, what is the only universality. I am clinging to

something. Let it fall, and there let it lie. Fools, you go about and

see the kingdoms of the earth, and are liberal and wise and

cosmopolitan, which is all that the devil can give you--all that he

could offer to Christ, only to be spurned away. I am doing what the

truly wise do. When a child goes out into the garden and takes hold of

a tree, saying, 'Let this tree be all I have,' that moment its roots

take hold on hell and its branches on the stars. The joy I have is

what the lover knows when a woman is everything. It is what a savage

knows when his idol is everything. It is what I know when Notting Hill

is everything. I have a city. Let it stand or fall."

As he spoke, the turf lifted itself like a living thing, and out of it

rose slowly, like crested serpents, the roots of the oak. Then the

great head of the tree, that seemed a green cloud among grey ones,

swept the sky suddenly like a broom, and the whole tree heeled over

like a ship, smashing every one in its fall.