The Napoleon of Notting Hill, G. K. Chesterton [latest books to read .TXT] 📗

you had flung me a favour, do you think I would have let it be taken by any ruffians on the road? This leadership and liberty of Notting Hill is a gift from your Majesty, and if it is taken from me, by God! it shall be taken in battle, and the noise of that battle shall be heard in the flats of Chelsea and in the studios of St. John’s Wood.”

“It is too much⁠—it is too much,” said the King. “Nature is weak. I must speak to you, brother artist, without further disguise. Let me ask you a solemn question. Adam Wayne, Lord High Provost of Notting Hill, don’t you think it splendid?”

“Splendid!” cried Adam Wayne. “It has the splendour of God.”

“Bowled out again,” said the King. “You will keep up the pose. Funnily, of course, it is serious. But seriously, isn’t it funny?”

“What?” asked Wayne, with the eyes of a baby.

“Hang it all, don’t play any more. The whole business⁠—the Charter of the Cities. Isn’t it immense?”

“Immense is no unworthy word for that glorious design.”

“Oh, hang you! But, of course, I see. You want me to clear the room of these reasonable sows. You want the two humorists alone together. Leave us, gentlemen.”

Buck threw a sour look at Barker, and at a sullen signal the whole pageant of blue and green, of red, gold, and purple, rolled out of the room, leaving only two in the great hall, the King sitting in his seat on the dais, and the red-clad figure still kneeling on the floor before his fallen sword.

The King bounded down the steps and smacked Provost Wayne on the back.

“Before the stars were made,” he cried, “we were made for each other. It is too beautiful. Think of the valiant independence of Pump Street. That is the real thing. It is the deification of the ludicrous.”

The kneeling figure sprang to his feet with a fierce stagger.

“Ludicrous!” he cried, with a fiery face.

“Oh, come, come,” said the King, impatiently, “you needn’t keep it up with me. The augurs must wink sometimes from sheer fatigue of the eyelids. Let us enjoy this for half an hour, not as actors, but as dramatic critics. Isn’t it a joke?”

Adam Wayne looked down like a boy, and answered in a constrained voice⁠—

“I do not understand your Majesty. I cannot believe that while I fight for your royal charter your Majesty deserts me for these dogs of the gold hunt.”

“Oh, damn your⁠—But what’s this? What the devil’s this?”

The King stared into the young Provost’s face, and in the twilight of the room began to see that his face was quite white and his lip shaking.

“What in God’s name is the matter?” cried Auberon, holding his wrist.

Wayne flung back his face, and the tears were shining on it.

“I am only a boy,” he said, “but it’s true. I would paint the Red Lion on my shield if I had only my blood.”

King Auberon dropped the hand and stood without stirring, thunderstruck.

“My God in Heaven!” he said; “is it possible that there is within the four seas of Britain a man who takes Notting Hill seriously?”

“And my God in Heaven!” said Wayne passionately; “is it possible that there is within the four seas of Britain a man who does not take it seriously?”

The King said nothing, but merely went back up the steps of the dais, like a man dazed. He fell back in his chair again and kicked his heels.

“If this sort of thing is to go on,” he said weakly, “I shall begin to doubt the superiority of art to life. In Heaven’s name, do not play with me. Do you really mean that you are⁠—God help me!⁠—a Notting Hill patriot; that you are⁠—?”

Wayne made a violent gesture, and the King soothed him wildly.

“All right⁠—all right⁠—I see you are; but let me take it in. You do really propose to fight these modern improvers with their boards and inspectors and surveyors and all the rest of it?”

“Are they so terrible?” asked Wayne, scornfully.

The King continued to stare at him as if he were a human curiosity.

“And I suppose,” he said, “that you think that the dentists and small tradesmen and maiden ladies who inhabit Notting Hill, will rally with war-hymns to your standard?”

“If they have blood they will,” said the Provost.

“And I suppose,” said the King, with his head back among the cushions, “that it never crossed your mind that”⁠—his voice seemed to lose itself luxuriantly⁠—“never crossed your mind that anyone ever thought that the idea of a Notting Hill idealism was⁠—er⁠—slightly⁠—slightly ridiculous?”

“Of course they think so,” said Wayne. “What was the meaning of mocking the prophets?”

“Where,” asked the King, leaning forward⁠—“where in Heaven’s name did you get this miraculously inane idea?”

“You have been my tutor, Sire,” said the Provost, “in all that is high and honourable.”

“Eh?” said the King.

“It was your Majesty who first stirred my dim patriotism into flame. Ten years ago, when I was a boy (I am only nineteen), I was playing on the slope of Pump Street, with a wooden sword and a paper helmet, dreaming of great wars. In an angry trance I struck out with my sword, and stood petrified, for I saw that I had struck you, Sire, my King, as you wandered in a noble secrecy, watching over your people’s welfare. But I need have had no fear. Then was I taught to understand Kingliness. You neither shrank nor frowned. You summoned no guards. You invoked no punishments. But in august and burning words, which are written in my soul, never to be erased, you told me ever to turn my sword against the enemies of my inviolate city. Like a priest pointing to the altar, you pointed to the hill of Notting. ‘So long,’ you said, ‘as you are ready to die for the sacred mountain, even if it were ringed with all the armies of Bayswater.’ I have not forgotten the words, and I have reason now to remember them, for the