Buck ran forward in his excitement.
"Then, which way are they retreating? It must be either by St. Luke"s to meet Swindon, or by the Gas Company to meet us. Run like mad to Swindon, and see that the yellows are holding the St. Luke"s Road. We will hold this, never fear. We have them in an iron trap. Run!"
As the messenger dashed away into the darkness, the great guard of North Kensington swung on with the certainty of a machine. Yet scarcely a hundred yards further their halberd-points again fell in line gleaming in the gaslight; for again a clatter of feet was heard on the stones, and again it proved to be only the messenger.
"Mr. Provost," he said, "the yellow West Kensingtons have been holding the road by St. Luke"s for twenty minutes since the capture of Pump Street. Pump Street is not two hundred yards away; they cannot be retreating down that road."
"Then they are retreating down this," said Provost Buck, with a final cheerfulness, "and by good fortune down a well-lighted road, though it twists about. Forward!"
As they moved along the last three hundred yards of their journey, Buck fell, for the first time in his life, perhaps, into a kind of philosophical reverie, for men of his type are always made kindly, and as it were melancholy, by success.
"I am sorry for poor old Wayne, I really am," he thought. "He spoke up splendidly for me at that Council. And he blacked old Barker"s eye with considerable spirit. But I don"t see what a man can expect when he fights against arithmetic, to say nothing of civilisation. And what a wonderful hoax all this military genius is! I suspect I"ve just discovered what Cromwell discovered, that a sensible tradesman is the best general, and that a man who can buy men and sell men can lead and kill them. The thing"s simply like adding up a column in a ledger. If Wayne has two hundred men, he can"t put two hundred men in nine places at once. If they"re ousted from Pump Street they"re flying somewhere. If they"re not flying past the church they"re flying past the Works. And so we have them. We business men should have no chance at all except that cleverer people than we get bees in their bonnets that prevent them from reasoning properly--so we reason alone. And so I, who am comparatively stupid, see things as G.o.d sees them, as a vast machine. My G.o.d, what"s this?" and he clapped his hands to his eyes and staggered back.
Then through the darkness he cried in a dreadful voice--
"Did I blaspheme G.o.d? I am struck blind."
"What?" wailed another voice behind him, the voice of a certain Wilfred Jarvis of North Kensington.
"Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!"
"I"m blind too!" cried Jarvis, in an agony.
"Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind them; "we"re all blind.
The lamps have gone out."
"The lamps! But why? where?" cried Buck, turning furiously in the darkness. "How are we to get on? How are we to chase the enemy? Where have they gone?"
"The enemy went--" said the rough voice behind, and then stopped doubtfully.
"Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a madman.
"They went," said the gruff voice, "past the Gas Works, and they"ve used their chance."
"Great G.o.d!" thundered Buck, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at his revolver; "do you mean they"ve turned out--"
But almost before he had spoken the words, he was hurled like a stone from catapult into the midst of his own men.
"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried frightful voices out of the darkness, and they seemed to come from all sides, for the men of North Kensington, unacquainted with the road, had lost all their bearings in the black world of blindness.
"Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried the invisible people, and the invaders were hewn down horribly with black steel, with steel that gave no glint against any light.
Buck, though badly maimed with the blow of a halberd, kept an angry but splendid sanity. He groped madly for the wall and found it.
Struggling with crawling fingers along it, he found a side opening and retreated into it with the remnants of his men. Their adventures during that prodigious night are not to be described. They did not know whether they were going towards or away from the enemy. Not knowing where they themselves were, or where their opponents were, it was mere irony to ask where was the rest of their army. For a thing had descended upon them which London does not know--darkness, which was before the stars were made, and they were as much lost in it as if they had been made before the stars. Every now and then, as those frightful hours wore on, they buffeted in the darkness against living men, who struck at them and at whom they struck, with an idiot fury.
When at last the grey dawn came, they found they had wandered back to the edge of the Uxbridge Road. They found that in those horrible eyeless encounters, the North Kensingtons and the Bayswaters and the West Kensingtons had again and again met and butchered each other, and they heard that Adam Wayne was barricaded in Pump Street.
CHAPTER II--_The Correspondent of the Court Journal_
Journalism had become, like most other such things in England under the cautious government and philosophy represented by James Barker, somewhat sleepy and much diminished in importance. This was partly due to the disappearance of party government and public speaking, partly to the compromise or dead-lock which had made foreign wars impossible, but mostly, of course, to the temper of the whole nation which was that of a people in a kind of back-water. Perhaps the most well known of the remaining newspapers was the _Court Journal_, which was published in a dusty but genteel-looking office just out of Kensington High Street. For when all the papers of a people have been for years growing more and more dim and decorous and optimistic, the dimmest and most decorous and most optimistic is very likely to win. In the journalistic compet.i.tion which was still going on at the beginning of the twentieth century, the final victor was the _Court Journal_.
For some mysterious reason the King had a great affection for hanging about in the _Court Journal_ office, smoking a morning cigarette and looking over files. Like all ingrainedly idle men, he was very fond of lounging and chatting in places where other people were doing work.
But one would have thought that, even in the prosaic England of his day, he might have found a more bustling centre.
On this particular morning, however, he came out of Kensington Palace with a more alert step and a busier air than usual. He wore an extravagantly long frock-coat, a pale-green waistcoat, a very full and _degage_ black tie, and curious yellow gloves. This was his uniform as Colonel of a regiment of his own creation, the 1st Decadents Green. It was a beautiful sight to see him drilling them. He walked quickly across the Park and the High Street, lighting his cigarette as he went, and flung open the door of the _Court Journal_ office.
"You"ve heard the news, Pally--you"ve heard the news?" he said.
The Editor"s name was Hoskins, but the King called him Pally, which was an abbreviation of Paladium of our Liberties.
"Well, your Majesty," said Hoskins, slowly (he was a worried, gentlemanly looking person, with a wandering brown beard)--"well, your Majesty, I have heard rather curious things, but I--"
"You"ll hear more of them," said the King, dancing a few steps of a kind of negro shuffle. "You"ll hear more of them, my blood-and-thunder tribune. Do you know what I am going to do for you?"
"No, your Majesty," replied the Paladium, vaguely.
"I"m going to put your paper on strong, dashing, enterprising lines,"
said the King. "Now, where are your posters of last night"s defeat?"
"I did not propose, your Majesty," said the Editor, "to have any posters exactly--"
"Paper, paper!" cried the King, wildly; "bring me paper as big as a house. I"ll do you posters. Stop, I must take my coat off." He began removing that garment with an air of set intensity, flung it playfully at Mr. Hoskins" head, entirely enveloping him, and looked at himself in the gla.s.s. "The coat off," he said, "and the hat on. That looks like a sub-editor. It is indeed the very essence of sub-editing.
Well," he continued, turning round abruptly, "come along with that paper."
The Paladium had only just extricated himself reverently from the folds of the King"s frock-coat, and said bewildered--
"I am afraid, your Majesty--"
"Oh, you"ve got no enterprise," said Auberon. "What"s that roll in the corner? Wall-paper? Decorations for your private residence? Art in the home, Pally? Fling it over here, and I"ll paint such posters on the back of it that when you put it up in your drawing-room you"ll paste the original pattern against the wall." And the King unrolled the wall-paper, spreading it over the whole floor. "Now give me the scissors," he cried, and took them himself before the other could stir.
He slit the paper into about five pieces, each nearly as big as a door. Then he took a big blue pencil, and went down on his knees on the dusty oil-cloth and began to write on them, in huge letters--
"FROM THE FRONT.
GENERAL BUCK DEFEATED.
DARKNESS, DANGER, AND DEATH.
WAYNE SAID TO BE IN PUMP STREET.
FEELING IN THE CITY."
He contemplated it for some time, with his head on one side, and got up, with a sigh.
"Not quite intense enough," he said--"not alarming. I want the _Court Journal_ to be feared as well as loved. Let"s try something more hard-hitting." And he went down on his knees again. After sucking the blue pencil for some time, he began writing again busily. "How will this do?" he said--
"WAYNE"S WONDERFUL VICTORY."