The Napoleon of Notting Hill - G. K. Chesterton (best books to read now .txt) 📗

that council in frock-coats and that the King himself limited his love of ceremony to appearing (after his not unusual manner), in evening dress with one order⁠—in this case not the Garter, but the button of the Club of Old Clipper’s Best Pals, a decoration obtained (with difficulty) from a halfpenny boy’s paper. Thus also it happened that the only spot of colour in the room was Adam Wayne, who entered in great dignity with the great red robes and the great sword.

“We have met,” said Auberon, “to decide the most arduous of modern problems. May we be successful.” And he sat down gravely.

Buck turned his chair a little, and flung one leg over the other.

“Your Majesty,” he said, quite good-humouredly, “there is only one thing I can’t understand, and that is why this affair is not settled in five minutes. Here’s a small property which is worth a thousand to us and is not worth a hundred to anyone else. We offer the thousand. It’s not businesslike, I know, for we ought to get it for less, and it’s not reasonable and it’s not fair on us, but I’m damned if I can see why it’s difficult.”

“The difficulty may be very simply stated,” said Wayne. “You may offer a million and it will be very difficult for you to get Pump Street.”

“But look here, Mr. Wayne,” cried Barker, striking in with a kind of cold excitement. “Just look here. You’ve no right to take up a position like that. You’ve a right to stand out for a bigger price, but you aren’t doing that. You’re refusing what you and every sane man knows to be a splendid offer simply from malice or spite⁠—it must be malice or spite. And that kind of thing is really criminal; it’s against the public good. The King’s government would be justified in forcing you.”

With his lean fingers spread on the table, he stared anxiously at Wayne’s face, which did not move.

“In forcing you⁠ ⁠… it would,” he repeated.

“It shall,” said Buck, shortly, turning to the table with a jerk. “We have done our best to be decent.”

Wayne lifted his large eyes slowly.

“Was it my Lord Buck,” he inquired, “who said that the King of England ‘shall’ do something?”

Buck flushed and said testily⁠—

“I mean it must⁠—it ought to. As I say, we’ve done our best to be generous; I defy anyone to deny it. As it is, Mr. Wayne, I don’t want to say a word that’s uncivil. I hope it’s not uncivil to say that you can be, and ought to be, in gaol. It is criminal to stop public works for a whim. A man might as well burn ten thousand onions in his front garden or bring up his children to run naked in the street, as do what you say you have a right to do. People have been compelled to sell before now. The King could compel you, and I hope he will.”

“Until he does,” said Wayne, calmly, “the power and government of this great nation is on my side and not yours, and I defy you to defy it.”

“In what sense,” cried Barker, with his feverish eyes and hands, “is the government on your side?”

With one ringing movement Wayne unrolled a great parchment on the table. It was decorated down the sides with wild watercolour sketches of vestrymen in crowns and wreaths.

“The Charter of the Cities,” he began.

Buck exploded in a brutal oath and laughed.

“That tomfool’s joke. Haven’t we had enough⁠—”

“And there you sit,” cried Wayne, springing erect and with a voice like a trumpet, “with no argument but to insult the King before his face.”

Buck rose also with blazing eyes.

“I am hard to bully,” he began⁠—and the slow tones of the King struck in with incomparable gravity⁠—

“My Lord Buck, I must ask you to remember that your King is present. It is not often that he needs to protect himself among his subjects.”

Barker turned to him with frantic gestures.

“For God’s sake don’t back up the madman now,” he implored. “Have your joke another time. Oh, for Heaven’s sake⁠—”

“My Lord Provost of South Kensington,” said King Auberon, steadily, “I do not follow your remarks, which are uttered with a rapidity unusual at Court. Nor do your well-meant efforts to convey the rest with your fingers materially assist me. I say that my Lord Provost of North Kensington, to whom I spoke, ought not in the presence of his Sovereign to speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign’s ordinances. Do you disagree?”

Barker turned restlessly in his chair, and Buck cursed without speaking. The King went on in a comfortable voice⁠—

“My Lord Provost of Notting Hill, proceed.”

Wayne turned his blue eyes on the King, and to everyone’s surprise there was a look in them not of triumph, but of a certain childish distress.

“I am sorry, your Majesty,” he said; “I fear I was more than equally to blame with the Lord Provost of North Kensington. We were debating somewhat eagerly, and we both rose to our feet. I did so first, I am ashamed to say. The Provost of North Kensington is, therefore, comparatively innocent. I beseech your Majesty to address your rebuke chiefly, at least, to me. Mr. Buck is not innocent, for he did no doubt, in the heat of the moment, speak disrespectfully. But the rest of the discussion he seems to me to have conducted with great good temper.”

Buck looked genuinely pleased, for business men are all simple-minded, and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics. The King, for some reason, looked, for the first time in his life, ashamed.

“This very kind speech of the Provost of Notting Hill,” began Buck, pleasantly, “seems to me to show that we have at least got on to a friendly footing. Now come, Mr. Wayne. Five hundred pounds have been offered to you for a property you admit not to be worth a hundred. Well, I am a rich man and I won’t be outdone in generosity. Let us say fifteen hundred pounds, and have