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

“I am delighted to see you again, Barker,” said the King. “It is indeed long since we met. What with my travels in Asia Minor, and my book having to be written (you have read my Life of Prince Albert for Children, of course?), we have scarcely met twice since the Great War. That is twenty years ago.”

“I wonder,” said Barker, thoughtfully, “if I might speak freely to your Majesty?”

“Well,” said Auberon, “it’s rather late in the day to start speaking respectfully. Flap away, my bird of freedom.”

“Well, your Majesty,” replied Barker, lowering his voice, “I don’t think it will be so long to the next war.”

“What do you mean?” asked Auberon.

“We will stand this insolence no longer,” burst out Barker, fiercely. “We are not slaves because Adam Wayne twenty years ago cheated us with a water-pipe. Notting Hill is Notting Hill; it is not the world. We in South Kensington, we also have memories⁠—ay, and hopes. If they fought for these trumpery shops and a few lampposts, shall we not fight for the great High Street and the sacred Natural History Museum?”

“Great Heavens!” said the astounded Auberon. “Will wonders never cease? Have the two greatest marvels been achieved? Have you turned altruistic, and has Wayne turned selfish? Are you the patriot, and he the tyrant?”

“It is not from Wayne himself altogether that the evil comes,” answered Barker. “He, indeed, is now mostly wrapped in dreams, and sits with his old sword beside the fire. But Notting Hill is the tyrant, your Majesty. Its Council and its crowds have been so intoxicated by the spreading over the whole city of Wayne’s old ways and visions, that they try to meddle with everyone, and rule everyone, and civilise everyone, and tell everyone what is good for him. I do not deny the great impulse which his old war, wild as it seemed, gave to the civic life of our time. It came when I was still a young man, and I admit it enlarged my career. But we are not going to see our own cities flouted and thwarted from day to day because of something Wayne did for us all nearly a quarter of a century ago. I am just waiting here for news upon this very matter. It is rumoured that Notting Hill has vetoed the statue of General Wilson they are putting up opposite Chepstow Place. If that is so, it is a black and white shameless breach of the terms on which we surrendered to Turnbull after the battle of the Tower. We were to keep our own customs and self-government. If that is so⁠—”

“It is so,” said a deep voice; and both men turned round.

A burly figure in purple robes, with a silver eagle hung round his neck and moustaches almost as florid as his plumes, stood in the doorway.

“Yes,” he said, acknowledging the King’s start, “I am Provost Buck, and the news is true. These men of the Hill have forgotten that we fought round the Tower as well as they, and that it is sometimes foolish, as well as base, to despise the conquered.”

“Let us step outside,” said Barker, with a grim composure.

Buck did so, and stood rolling his eyes up and down the lamp-lit street.

“I would like to have a go at smashing all this,” he muttered, “though I am over sixty. I would like⁠—”

His voice ended in a cry, and he reeled back a step, with his hands to his eyes, as he had done in those streets twenty years before.

“Darkness!” he cried⁠—“darkness again! What does it mean?”

For in truth every lamp in the street had gone out, so that they could not see even each other’s outline, except faintly. The voice of the chemist came with startling cheerfulness out of the density.

“Oh, don’t you know?” he said. “Did they never tell you this is the Feast of the Lamps, the anniversary of the great battle that almost lost and just saved Notting Hill? Don’t you know, your Majesty, that on this night twenty-one years ago we saw Wilson’s green uniforms charging down this street, and driving Wayne and Turnbull back upon the gasworks, fighting with their handful like fiends from hell? And that then, in that great hour, Wayne sprang through a window of the gasworks, with one blow of his hand brought darkness on the whole city, and then with a cry like a lion’s, that was heard through four streets, flew at Wilson’s men, sword in hand, and swept them, bewildered as they were, and ignorant of the map, clear out of the sacred street again? And don’t you know that upon that night every year all lights are turned out for half an hour while we sing the Notting Hill anthem in the darkness? Hark! there it begins.”

Through the night came a crash of drums, and then a strong swell of human voices⁠—

“When the world was in the balance, there was night on Notting Hill,
(There was night on Notting Hill): it was nobler than the day;
On the cities where the lights are and the firesides glow,
From the seas and from the deserts came the thing we did not know,
Came the darkness, came the darkness, came the darkness on the foe,
And the old guard of God turned to bay.
For the old guard of God turns to bay, turns to bay,
And the stars fall down before it ere its banners fall today:
For when armies were around us as a howling and a horde,
When falling was the citadel and broken was the sword,
The darkness came upon them like the Dragon of the Lord,
When the old guard of God turned to bay.”

The voices were just uplifting themselves in a second verse when they were stopped by a scurry and a yell. Barker had bounded into the street with a cry of “South