"I beg your pardon," said the King, blankly.
"You speak well, sire," said Adam Wayne, "as you ever speak, when you say that my love is not less than the love of these. Small would it be if it were not more. For I am the heir of your scheme--the child of the great Charter. I stand here for the rights the Charter gave me, and I swear, by your sacred crown, that where I stand, I stand fast."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I BRING HOMAGE TO MY KING."]
The eyes of all five men stood out of their heads.
Then Buck said, in his jolly, jarring voice: "Is the whole world mad?"
The King sprang to his feet, and his eyes blazed.
"Yes," he cried, in a voice of exultation, "the whole world is mad, but Adam Wayne and me. It is true as death what I told you long ago, James Barker, seriousness sends men mad. You are mad, because you care for politics, as mad as a man who collects tram tickets. Buck is mad, because he cares for money, as mad as a man who lives on opium. Wilson is mad, because he thinks himself right, as mad as a man who thinks himself G.o.d Almighty. The Provost of West Kensington is mad, because he thinks he is respectable, as mad as a man who thinks he is a chicken. All men are mad but the humorist, who cares for nothing and possesses everything. I thought that there was only one humorist in England. Fools!--dolts!--open your cows" eyes; there are two! In Notting Hill--in that unpromising elevation--there has been born an artist! You thought to spoil my joke, and bully me out of it, by becoming more and more modern, more and more practical, more and more bustling and rational. Oh, what a feast it was to answer you by becoming more and more august, more and more gracious, more and more ancient and mellow! But this lad has seen how to bowl me out. He has answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has lifted the only shield I cannot break, the shield of an impenetrable pomposity. Listen to him. You have come, my Lord, about Pump Street?"
"About the city of Notting Hill," answered Wayne, proudly, "of which Pump Street is a living and rejoicing part."
"Not a very large part," said Barker, contemptuously.
"That which is large enough for the rich to covet," said Wayne, drawing up his head, "is large enough for the poor to defend."
The King slapped both his legs, and waved his feet for a second in the air.
"Every respectable person in Notting Hill," cut in Buck, with his cold, coa.r.s.e voice, "is for us and against you. I have plenty of friends in Notting Hill."
"Your friends are those who have taken your gold for other men"s hearthstones, my Lord Buck," said Provost Wayne. "I can well believe they are your friends."
"They"ve never sold dirty toys, anyhow," said Buck, laughing shortly.
"They"ve sold dirtier things," said Wayne, calmly: "they have sold themselves."
"It"s no good, my Buckling," said the King, rolling about on his chair. "You can"t cope with this chivalrous eloquence. You can"t cope with an artist. You can"t cope with the humorist of Notting Hill. Oh, _Nunc dimittis_--that I have lived to see this day! Provost Wayne, you stand firm?"
"Let them wait and see," said Wayne. "If I stood firm before, do you think I shall weaken now that I have seen the face of the King? For I fight for something greater, if greater there can be, than the hearthstones of my people and the Lordship of the Lion. I fight for your royal vision, for the great dream you dreamt of the League of the Free Cities. You have given me this liberty. If I had been a beggar and you had flung me a coin, if I had been a peasant in a dance and 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 G.o.d!
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 G.o.d."
"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 das, 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, d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d in Heaven!" said Wayne pa.s.sionately; "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 das, 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--G.o.d 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.