第 十二 章 · The Great Army of South Kensington_
. 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.
"As I passed them and came over the curve of Silver Street, I saw the
blue cloudy masses of Barker's men blocking the entrance to the
high-road like a sapphire smoke (good). The disposition of the allied
troops, under the general management of Mr. Wilson, appears to be as
follows: The Yellow army (if I may so describe the West
Kensingtonians) lies, as I have said, in a strip along the ridge, its
furthest point westward being the west side of Campden Hill Road, its
furthest point eastward the beginning of Kensington Gardens. The Green
army of Wilson lines the Notting Hill High Road itself from Queen's
Road to the corner of Pembridge Road, curving round the latter, and
extending some three hundred yards up towards Westbourne Grove.
Westbourne Grove itself is occupied by Barker of South Kensington. The
fourth side of this rough square, the Queen's Road side, is held by
some of Buck's Purple warriors.
"The whole resembles some ancient and dainty Dutch flower-bed. Along
the crest of Campden Hill lie the golden crocuses of West Kensington.
They are, as it were, the first fiery fringe of the whole. Northward
lies our hyacinth Barker, with all his blue hyacinths. Round to the
south-west run the green rushes of Wilson of Bayswater, and a line of
violet irises (aptly symbolised by Mr. Buck) complete the whole. The
argent exterior ... (I am losing the style. I should have said
'Curving with a whisk' instead of merely 'Curving.' Also I should have
called the hyacinths 'sudden.' I cannot keep this up. War is too rapid
for this style of writing. Please ask office-boy to insert _mots
justes_.)
"The truth is that there is nothing to report. That commonplace
element which is always ready to devour all beautiful things (as the
Black Pig in the Irish Mythology will finally devour the stars and
gods); that commonplace element, as I say, has in its Black Piggish
way devoured finally the chances of any romance in this affair; that
which once consisted of absurd but thrilling combats in the streets,
has degenerated into something which is the very prose of warfare--it
has degenerated into a siege. A siege may be defined as a peace plus
the inconvenience of war. Of course Wayne cannot hold out. There is no
more chance of help from anywhere else than of ships from the moon.
And if old Wayne had stocked his street with tinned meats till all his
garrison had to sit on them, he couldn't hold out for more than a
month or two. As a matter of melancholy fact, he has done something
rather like this. He has stocked his street with food until there must
be uncommonly little room to turn round. But what is the good? To hold
out for all that time and then to give in of necessity, what does it
mean? It means waiting until your victories are forgotten, and then
taking the trouble to be defeated. I cannot understand how Wayne can
be so inartistic.
"And how odd it is that one views a thing quite differently when one
knows it is defeated! I always thought Wayne was rather fine. But now,
when I know that he is done for, there seem to be nothing else but
Wayne. All the streets seem to point at him, all the chimneys seem to
lean towards him. I suppose it is a morbid feeling; but Pump Street
seems to be the only part of London that I feel physically. I suppose,
I say, that it is morbid. I suppose it is exactly how a man feels
about his heart when his heart is weak. 'Pump Street'--the heart is a
pump. And I am drivelling.
"Our finest leader at the front is, beyond all question, General
Wilson. He has adopted alone among the other Provosts the uniform of
his own halberdiers, although that fine old sixteenth-century garb was
not originally intended to go with red side-whiskers. It was he who,
against a most admirable and desperate defence, broke last night into
Pump Street and held it for at least half an hour. He was afterwards
expelled from it by General Turnbull, of Notting Hill, but only after
desperate fighting and the sudden descent of that terrible darkness
which proved so much more fatal to the forces of General Buck and
General Swindon.
"Provost Wayne himself, with whom I had, with great good fortune, a
most interesting interview, bore the most eloquent testimony to the
conduct of General Wilson and his men. His precise words are as
follows: 'I have bought sweets at his funny little shop when I was
four years old, and ever since. I never noticed anything, I am ashamed
to say, except that he talked through his nose, and didn't wash
himself particularly. And he came over our barricade like a devil from
hell.' I repeated this speech to General Wilson himself, with some
delicate improvements, and he seemed pleased with it. He does not,
however, seem pleased with anything so much just now as he is with the
wearing of a sword. I have it from the front on the best authority
that General Wilson was not completely shaved yesterday. It is
believed in military circles that he is growing a moustache....
"As I have said, there is nothing to report. I walk wearily to the
pillar-box at the corner of Pembridge Road to post my copy. Nothing
whatever has happened, except the preparations for a particularly long
and feeble siege, during which I trust I shall not be required to be
at the Front. As I glance up Pembridge Road in the growing dusk, the
aspect of that road reminds me that there is one note worth adding.
General Buck has suggested, with characteristic acumen, to General
Wilson that, in order to obviate the possibility of such a catastrophe
as overwhelmed the allied forces in the last advance on Notting Hill
(the catastrophe, I mean, of the extinguished lamps), each soldier
should have a lighted lantern round his neck. This is one of the
things which I really admire about General Buck. He possesses what
people used to mean by 'the humility of the man of science,' that is,
he learns steadily from his mistakes. Wayne may score off him in some
other way, but not in that way. The lanterns look like fairy lights as
they curve round the end of Pembridge Road.
* * * * *
"_Later_.--I write with some difficulty, because the blood will run
down my face and make patterns on the paper. Blood is a very beautiful
thing; that is why it is concealed. If you ask why blood runs down my
face, I can only reply that I was kicked by a horse. If you ask me
what horse, I can reply with some pride that it was a war-horse. If
you ask me how a war-horse came on the scene in our simple pedestrian
warfare, I am reduced to the necessity, so painful to a special
correspondent, of recounting my experiences.
"I was, as I have said, in the very act of posting my copy at the
pillar-box, and of glancing as I did so up the glittering curve of
Pembridge Road, studded with the lights of Wilson's men. I don't know
what made me pause to examine the matter, but I had a fancy that the
line of lights, where it melted into the indistinct brown twilight,
was more indistinct than usual. I was almost certain that in a certain
stretch of the road where there had been five lights there were now
only four. I strained my eyes; I counted them again, and there were
only three. A moment after there were only two; an instant after only
one; and an instant after that the lanterns near to me swung like
jangled bells, as if struck suddenly. They flared and fell; and for
the moment the fall of them was like the fall of the sun and stars out
of heaven. It left everything in a primal blindness. As a matter of
fact, the road was not yet legitimately dark. There were still red
rays of a sunset in the sky, and the brown gloaming was still warmed,
as it were, with a feeling as of firelight. But for three seconds
after the lanterns swung and sank, I saw in front of me a blackness
blocking the sky. And with the fourth second I knew that this
blackness which blocked the sky was a man on a great horse; and I was
trampled and tossed aside as a swirl of horsemen swept round the
corner. As they turned I saw that they were not black, but scarlet;
they were a sortie of the besieged, Wayne riding ahead.
"I lifted myself from the gutter, blinded with blood from a very
slight skin-wound, and, queerly enough, not caring either for the
blindness or for the slightness of the wound. For one mortal minute
after that amazing cavalcade had spun past, there was dead stillness
on the empty road. And then came Barker and all his halberdiers
running like devils in the track of them. It had been their business
to guard the gate by which the sortie had broken out; but they had not
reckoned, and small blame to them, on cavalry. As it was, Barker and
his men made a perfectly splendid run after them, almost catching
Wayne's horses by the tails.
"Nobody can understand the sortie. It consists only of a small number
of Wayne's garrison. Turnbull himself, with the vast mass of it, is
undoubtedly still barricaded in Pump Street. Sorties of this kind are
natural enough in the majority of historical sieges, such as the siege
of Paris in 1870, because in such cases the besieged are certain of
some support outside. But what can be the object of it in this case?
Wayne knows (or if he is too mad to know anything, at least Turnbull
knows) that there is not, and never has been, the smallest chance of
support for him outside; that the mass of the sane modern inhabitants
of London regard his farcical patriotism with as much contempt as they
do the original idiotcy that gave it birth--the folly of our miserable
King. What Wayne and his horsemen are doing nobody can even
conjecture. The general theory round here is that he is simply a
traitor, and has abandoned the besieged. But all such larger but yet
more soluble riddles are as nothing compared to the one small but
unanswerable riddle: Where did they get the horses?
* * * * *
"_Later_.--I have heard a most extraordinary account of the origin of
the appearance of the horses. It appears that that amazing person,
General Turnbull, who is now ruling Pump Street in the absence of
Wayne, sent out, on the morning of the declaration of war, a vast
number of little boys (or cherubs of the gutter, as we pressmen say),
with half-crowns in their pockets, to take cabs all over London. No
less than a hundred and sixty cabs met at Pump Street; were
commandeered by the garrison. The men were set free, the cabs used to
make barricades, and the horses kept in Pump Street, where they were
fed and exercised for several days, until they were sufficiently
rapid and efficient to be used for this wild ride out of the town. If
this is so, and I have it on the best possible authority, the method
of the sortie is explained. But we have no explanation of its object.
Just as Barker's Blues were swinging round the corner after them, they
were stopped, but not by an enemy; only by the voice of one man, and
he a friend. Red Wilson of Bayswater ran alone along the main road
like a madman, waving them back with a halberd snatched from a
sentinel. He was in supreme command, and Barker stopped at the corner,
staring and bewildered. We could hear Wilson's voice loud and distinct
out of the dusk, so that it seemed strange that the great voice should
come out of the little body. 'Halt, South Kensington! Guard this
entry, and prevent them returning. I will pursue. Forward, the Green
Guards!'
"A wall of dark blue uniforms and a wood of pole-axes was between me
and Wilson, for Barker's men blocked the mouth of the road in two
rigid lines. But through them and through the dusk I could hear the
clear orders and the clank of arms, and see the green army of Wilson
marching by towards the west. They were our great fighting-men. Wilson
had filled them with his own fire; in a few days they had become
veterans. Each of them wore a silver medal of a pump, to boast that
they alone of all the allied armies had stood victorious in Pump
Street.
"I managed to slip past the detachment of Barker's Blues, who are
guarding the end of Pembridge Road, and a sharp spell of running
brought me to the tail of Wilson's green army as it swung down the
road in pursuit of the flying Wayne. The dusk had deepened into almost
total darkness; for some time I only heard the throb of the marching
pace. Then suddenly there was a cry, and the tall fighting men were
flung back on me, almost crushing me, and again the lanterns swung and
jingled, and the cold nozzles of great horses pushed into the press of
us. They had turned and charged us.
"'You fools!' came the voice of Wilson, cleaving our panic with a
splendid cold anger. 'Don't you see? the horses have no riders!'
"It was true. We were being plunged at by a stampede of horses with
empty saddles. What could it mean? Had Wayne met some of our men and
been defeated? Or had he flung these horses at us as some kind of ruse
or mad new mode of warfare, such as he seemed bent on inventing? Or
did he and his men want to get away in disguise? Or did they want to
hide in houses somewhere?
"Never did I admire any man's intellect (even my own) so much as I did
Wilson's at that moment. Without a word, he simply pointed the halberd
(which he still grasped) to the southern side of the road. As you
know, the streets running up to the ridge of Campden Hill from the
main road are peculiarly steep, they are more like sudden flights of
stairs. We were just opposite Aubrey Road, the steepest of all; up
that it would have been far more difficult to urge half-trained horses
than to run up on one's feet.
"'Left wheel!' hallooed Wilson. 'They have gone up here,' he added to
me, who happened to be at his elbow.
"'Why?' I ventured to ask.
"'Can't say for certain,' replied the Bayswater General. 'They've gone
up here in a great hurry, anyhow. They've simply turned their horses
loose, because they couldn't take them up. I fancy I know. I fancy
they're trying to get over the ridge to Kensingston or Hammersmith, or
somewhere, and are striking up here because it's just beyond the end
of our line. Damned fools, not to have gone further along the road,
though. They've only just shaved our last outpost. Lambert is hardly
four hundred yards from here. And I've sent him word.'
"'Lambert!' I said. 'Not young Wilfrid Lambert--my old friend.'
"'Wilfrid Lambert's his name,' said the General; 'used to be a "man
about town;" silly fellow with a big nose. That kind of man always
volunteers for some war or other; and what's funnier, he generally
isn't half bad at it. Lambert is distinctly good. The yellow West
Kensingtons I always reckoned the weakest part of the army; but he has
pulled them together uncommonly well, though he's subordinate to
Swindon, who's a donkey. In the attack from Pembridge Road the other
night he showed great pluck.'
"'He has shown greater pluck than that,' I said. 'He has criticised my
sense of humour. That was his first engagement.'
"This remark was, I am sorry to say, lost on the admirable commander
of the allied forces. We were in the act of climbing the last half of
Aubrey Road, which is so abrupt a slope that it looks like an
old-fashioned map leaning up against the wall. There are lines of
little trees, one above the other, as in the old-fashioned map.
"We reached the top of it, panting somewhat, and were just about to
turn the corner by a place called (in chivalrous anticipation of our
wars of sword and axe) Tower Crecy, when we were suddenly knocked in
the stomach (I can use no other term) by a horde of men hurled back
upon us. They wore the red uniform of Wayne; their halberds were
broken; their foreheads bleeding; but the mere impetus of their
retreat staggered us as we stood at the last ridge of the slope.
"'Good old Lambert!' yelled out suddenly the stolid Mr. Wilson of
Bayswater, in an uncontrollable excitement. 'Damned jolly old Lambert!
He's got there already! He's driving them back on us! Hurrah! hurrah!
Forward, the Green Guards!'
"We swung round the corner eastwards, Wilson running first,
brandishing the halberd--
"Will you pardon a little egotism? Every one likes a little egotism,
when it takes the form, as mine does in this case, of a disgraceful
confession. The thing is really a little interesting, because it shows
how the merely artistic habit has bitten into men like me. It was the
most intensely exciting occurrence that had ever come to me in my
life; and I was really intensely excited about it. And yet, as we
turned that corner, the first impression I had was of something that
had nothing to do with the fight at all. I was stricken from the sky
as by a thunderbolt, by the height of the Waterworks Tower on Campden
Hill. I don't know whether Londoners generally realise how high it
looks when one comes out, in this way, almost immediately under it.
For the second it seemed to me that at the foot of it even human war
was a triviality. For the second I felt as if I had been drunk with
some trivial orgie, and that I had been sobered by the shock of that
shadow. A moment afterwards, I realised that under it was going on
something more enduring than stone, and something wilder than the
dizziest height--the agony of man. And I knew that, compared to that,
this overwhelming tower was itself a triviality; it was a mere stalk
of stone which humanity could snap like a stick.
"I don't know why I have talked so much about this silly old
Waterworks Tower, which at the very best was only a tremendous
background. It was that, certainly, a sombre and awful landscape,
against which our figures were relieved. But I think the real reason
was, that there was in my own mind so sharp a transition from the
tower of stone to the man of flesh. For what I saw first when I had
shaken off, as it were, the shadow of the tower, was a man, and a man
I knew.
"Lambert stood at the further corner of the street that curved round
the tower, his figure outlined in some degree by the beginning of
moonrise. He looked magnificent, a hero; but he looked something much
more interesting than that. He was, as it happened, in almost
precisely the same swaggering attitude in which he had stood nearly
fifteen years ago, when he swung his walking-stick and struck it into
the ground, and told me that all my subtlety was drivel. And, upon my
soul, I think he required more courage to say that than to fight as he
does now. For then he was fighting against something that was in the
ascendant, fashionable, and victorious. And now he is fighting (at the
risk of his life, no doubt) merely against something which is already
dead, which is impossible, futile; of which nothing has been more
impossible and futile than this very sortie which has brought him into
contact with it. People nowadays allow infinitely too little for the
psychological sense of victory as a factor in affairs. Then he was
attacking the degraded but undoubtedly victorious Quin; now he is
attacking the interesting but totally extinguished Wayne.
"His name recalls me to the details of the scene. The facts were
these. A line of red halberdiers, headed by Wayne, were marching up
the street, close under the northern wall, which is, in fact, the
bottom of a sort of dyke or fortification of the Waterworks. Lambert
and his yellow West Kensingtons had that instant swept round the
corner and had shaken the Waynites heavily, hurling back a few of the
more timid, as I have just described, into our very arms. When our
force struck the tail of Wayne's, every one knew that all was up with
him. His favourite military barber was struck down. His grocer was
stunned. He himself was hurt in the thigh, and reeled back against the
wall. We had him in a trap with two jaws. 'Is that you?' shouted
Lambert, genially, to Wilson, across the hemmed-in host of Notting
Hill. 'That's about the ticket,' replied General Wilson; 'keep them
under the wall.'
"The men of Notting Hill were falling fast. Adam Wayne threw up his
long arms to the wall above him, and with a spring stood upon it; a
gigantic figure against the moon. He tore the banner out of the hands
of the standard-bearer below him, and shook it out suddenly above our
heads, so that it was like thunder in the heavens.
"'Round the Red Lion!' he cried. 'Swords round the Red Lion! Halberds
round the Red Lion! They are the thorns round rose.'
"His voice and the crack of the banner made a momentary rally, and
Lambert, whose idiotic face was almost beautiful with battle, felt it
as by an instinct, and cried--
"'Drop your public-house flag, you footler! Drop it!'
"'The banner of the Red Lion seldom stoops,' said Wayne, proudly,
letting it out luxuriantly on the night wind.
"The next moment I knew that poor Adam's sentimental theatricality had
cost him much. Lambert was on the wall at a bound, his sword in his
teeth, and had slashed at Wayne's head before he had time to draw his
sword, his hands being busy with the enormous flag. He stepped back
only just in time to avoid the first cut, and let the flag-staff fall,
so that the spear-blade at the end of it pointed to Lambert.
"'The banner stoops,' cried Wayne, in a voice that must have startled
streets. 'The banner of Notting Hill stoops to a hero.' And with the
words he drove the spear-point and half the flag-staff through
Lambert's body and dropped him dead upon the road below, a stone upon
the stones of the street.
"'Notting Hill! Notting Hill!' cried Wayne, in a sort of divine rage.
'Her banner is all the holier for the blood of a brave enemy! Up on
the wall, patriots! Up on the wall! Notting Hill!'
"With his long strong arm he actually dragged a man up on to the wall
to be silhouetted against the moon, and more and more men climbed up
there, pulled themselves and were pulled, till clusters and crowds of
the half-massacred men of Pump Street massed upon the wall above us.
"'Notting Hill! Notting Hill!' cried Wayne, unceasingly.
"'Well, what about Bayswater?' said a worthy working-man in Wilson's
army, irritably. 'Bayswater for ever!'
"'We have won!' cried Wayne, striking his flag-staff in the ground.
'Bayswater for ever! We have taught our enemies patriotism!'
"'Oh, cut these fellows up and have done with it!' cried one of
Lambert's lieutenants, who was reduced to something bordering on
madness by the responsibility of succeeding to the command.
"'Let us by all means try,' said Wilson, grimly; and the two armies
closed round the third.
* * * * *
"I simply cannot describe what followed. I am sorry, but there is such
a thing as physical fatigue, as physical nausea, and, I may add, as
physical terror. Suffice it to say that the above paragraph was
written about 11 p.m., and that it is now about 2 a.m., and that the
battle is not finished, and is not likely to be. Suffice it further to
say that down the steep streets which lead from the Waterworks Tower
to the Notting Hill High Road, blood has been running, and is running,
in great red serpents, that curl out into the main thoroughfare and
shine in the moon.
* * * * *
"_Later._--The final touch has been given to all this terrible
futility. Hours have passed; morning has broken; men are still swaying
and fighting at the foot of the tower and round the corner of Aubrey
Road; the fight has not finished. But I know it is a farce.
"News has just come to show that Wayne's amazing sortie, followed by
the amazing resistance through a whole night on the wall of the
Waterworks, is as if it had not been. What was the object of that
strange exodus we shall probably never know, for the simple reason
that every one who knew will probably be cut to pieces in the course
of the next two or three hours.
"I have heard, about three minutes ago, that Buck and Buck's methods
have won after all. He was perfectly right, of course, when one comes
to think of it, in holding that it was physically impossible for a
street to defeat a city. While we thought he was patrolling the
eastern gates with his Purple army; while we were rushing about the
streets and waving halberds and lanterns; while poor old Wilson was
scheming like Moltke and fighting like Achilles to entrap the wild
Provost of Notting Hill--Mr. Buck, retired draper, has simply driven
down in a hansom cab and done something about as plain as butter and
about as useful and nasty. He has gone down to South Kensington,
Brompton, and Fulham, and by spending about four thousand pounds of
his private means, has raised an army of nearly as many men; that is
to say, an army big enough to beat, not only Wayne, but Wayne and all
his present enemies put together. The army, I understand, is encamped
along High Street, Kensington, and fills it from the Church to Addison
Road Bridge. It is to advance by ten different roads uphill to the
north.
"I cannot endure to remain here. Everything makes it worse than it
need be. The dawn, for instance, has broken round Campden Hill;
splendid spaces of silver, edged with gold, are torn out of the sky.
Worse still, Wayne and his men feel the dawn; their faces, though
bloody and pale, are strangely hopeful ... insupportably pathetic.
Worst of all, for the moment they are winning. If it were not for Buck
and the new army they might just, and only just, win.
"I repeat, I cannot stand it. It is like watching that wonderful play
of old Maeterlinck's (you know my partiality for the healthy, jolly
old authors of the nineteenth century), in which one has to watch the
quiet conduct of people inside a parlour, while knowing that the very
men are outside the door whose word can blast it all with tragedy. And
this is worse, for the men are not talking, but writhing and bleeding
and dropping dead for a thing that is already settled--and settled
against them. The great grey masses of men still toil and tug and
sway hither and thither around the great grey tower; and the tower is
still motionless, as it will always be motionless. These men will be
crushed before the sun is set; and new men will arise and be crushed,
and new wrongs done, and tyranny will always rise again like the sun,
and injustice will always be as fresh as the flowers of spring. And
the stone tower will always look down on it. Matter, in its brutal
beauty, will always look down on those who are mad enough to consent
to die, and yet more mad, since they consent to live."
* * * * *
Thus ended abruptly the first and last contribution of the Special
Correspondent of the _Court Journal_ to that valued periodical.
The Correspondent himself, as has been said, was simply sick and
gloomy at the last news of the triumph of Buck. He slouched sadly down
the steep Aubrey Road, up which he had the night before run in so
unusual an excitement, and strolled out into the empty dawn-lit main
road, looking vaguely for a cab. He saw nothing in the vacant space
except a blue-and-gold glittering thing, running very fast, which
looked at first like a very tall beetle, but turned out, to his great
astonishment, to be Barker.
"Have you heard the good news?" asked that gentleman.
"Yes," said Quin, with a measured voice. "I have heard the glad
tidings of great joy. Shall we take a hansom down to Kensington? I see
one over there."
They took the cab, and were, in four minutes, fronting the ranks of
the multitudinous and invincible army. Quin had not spoken a word all
the way, and something about him had prevented the essentially
impressionable Barker from speaking either.
The great army, as it moved up Kensington High Street, calling many
heads to the numberless windows, for it was long indeed--longer than
the lives of most of the tolerably young--since such an army had been
seen in London. Compared with the vast organisation which was now
swallowing up the miles, with Buck at its head as leader, and the King
hanging at its tail as journalist, the whole story of our problem was
insignificant. In the presence of that army the red Notting Hills and
the green Bayswaters were alike tiny and straggling groups. In its
presence the whole struggle round Pump Street was like an ant-hill
under the hoof of an ox. Every man who felt or looked at that
infinity of men knew that it was the triumph of Buck's brutal
arithmetic. Whether Wayne was right or wrong, wise or foolish, was
quite a fair matter for discussion. But it was a matter of history. At
the foot of Church Street, opposite Kensington Church, they paused in
their glowing good humour.
"Let us send some kind of messenger or herald up to them," said Buck,
turning to Barker and the King. "Let us send and ask them to cave in
without more muddle."
"What shall we say to them?" said Barker, doubtfully.
"The facts of the case are quite sufficient," rejoined Buck. "It is
the facts of the case that make an army surrender. Let us simply say
that our army that is fighting their army, and their army that is
fighting our army, amount altogether to about a thousand men. Say that
we have four thousand. It is very simple. Of the thousand fighting,
they have at the very most, three hundred, so that, with those three
hundred, they have now to fight four thousand seven hundred men. Let
them do it if it amuses them."
And the Provost of North Kensington laughed.
The herald who was despatched up Church Street in all the pomp of the
South Kensington blue and gold, with the Three Birds on his tabard,
was attended by two trumpeters.
"What will they do when they consent?" asked Barker, for the sake of
saying something in the sudden stillness of that immense army.
"I know my Wayne very well," said Buck, laughing. "When he submits he
will send a red herald flaming with the Lion of Notting Hill. Even
defeat will be delightful to him, since it is formal and romantic."
The King, who had strolled up to the head of the line, broke silence
for the first time.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said, "if he defied you, and didn't send the
herald after all. I don't think you do know your Wayne quite so well
as you think."
"All right, your Majesty," said Buck, easily; "if it isn't
disrespectful, I'll put my political calculations in a very simple
form. I'll lay you ten pounds to a shilling the herald comes with the
surrender."
"All right," said Auberon. "I may be wrong, but it's my notion of Adam
Wayne that he'll die in his city, and that, till he is dead, it will
not be a safe property."
"The bet's made, your Majesty," said Buck.
Another long silence ensued, in the course of which Barker alone, amid
the motionless army, strolled and stamped in his restless way.
Then Buck suddenly leant forward.
"It's taking your money, your Majesty," he said. "I knew it was. There
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