The Napoleon of Notting Hill · Book II · Chapter 2 3 (2/2)

“Only feeling, sire,” answered the Provost. “I was born, like other men, in a spot of the earth which I loved because I had played boys’ games there, and fallen in love, and talked with my friends through nights that were nights of the gods. And I feel the riddle. These little gardens where we told our loves. These streets where we brought out our dead. Why should they be commonplace? Why should they be absurd? Why should it be grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a year I could not see a red pillar-box against the yellow evening in a certain street without being wracked with something of which God keeps the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy? Why should anyone be able to raise a laugh by saying ‘the Cause of Notting Hill’?⁠—Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze with alternate hope and fear.”

Auberon was flicking dust off his sleeve with quite a new seriousness on his face, distinct from the owlish solemnity which was the pose of his humour.

“It is very difficult,” he said at last. “It is a damned difficult thing. I see what you mean; I agree with you even up to a point⁠—or I should like to agree with you, if I were young enough to be a prophet and poet. I feel a truth in everything you say until you come to the words ‘Notting Hill.’ And then I regret to say that the old Adam awakes roaring with laughter and makes short work of the new Adam, whose name is Wayne.”

For the first time Provost Wayne was silent, and stood gazing dreamily at the floor. Evening was closing in, and the room had grown darker.

“I know,” he said, in a strange, almost sleepy voice, “there is truth in what you say, too. It is hard not to laugh at the common names⁠—I only say we should not. I have thought of a remedy; but such thoughts are rather terrible.”

“What thoughts?” asked Auberon.

The Provost of Notting Hill seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance; in his eyes was an elvish light.

“I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand that only one or two may rightly use, and only seldom. It is a fairy wand of great fear, stronger than those who use it⁠—often frightful, often wicked to use. But whatever is touched with it is never again wholly common; whatever is touched with it takes a magic from outside the world. If I touch, with this fairy wand, the railways and the roads of Notting Hill, men will love them, and be afraid of them forever.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” asked the King.

“It has made mean landscapes magnificent, and hovels outlast cathedrals,” went on the madman. “Why should it not make lampposts fairer than Greek lamps; and an omnibus-ride like a painted ship? The touch of it is the finger of a strange perfection.”

“What is your wand?” cried the King, impatiently.

“There it is,” said Wayne; and pointed to the floor, where his sword lay flat and shining.

“The sword!” cried the King; and sprang up straight on the dais.

“Yes, yes,” cried Wayne, hoarsely. “The things touched by that are not vulgar; the things touched by that⁠—”

King Auberon made a gesture of horror.

“You will shed blood for that!” he cried. “For a cursed point of view⁠—”

“Oh, you kings, you kings!” cried out Adam, in a burst of scorn. “How humane you are, how tender, how considerate! You will make war for a frontier, or the imports of a foreign harbour; you will shed blood for the precise duty on lace, or the salute to an admiral. But for the things that make life itself worthy or miserable⁠—how humane you are! I say here, and I know well what I speak of, there were never any necessary wars but the religious wars. There were never any just wars but the religious wars. There were never any humane wars but the religious wars. For these men were fighting for something that claimed, at least, to be the happiness of a man, the virtue of a man. A Crusader thought, at least, that Islam hurt the soul of every man, king or tinker, that it could really capture. I think Buck and Barker and these rich vultures hurt the soul of every man, hurt every inch of the ground, hurt every brick of the houses, that they can really capture. Do you think I have no right to fight for Notting Hill, you whose English government has so often fought for tomfooleries? If, as your rich friends say, there are no gods, and the skies are dark above us, what should a man fight for, but the place where he had the Eden of childhood and the short heaven of first love? If no temples and no scriptures are sacred, what is sacred if a man’s own youth is not sacred?”

The King walked a little restlessly up and down the dais.

“It is hard,” he said, biting his lips, “to assent to a view so desperate⁠—so responsible.⁠ ⁠…”

As he spoke, the door of the audience chamber fell ajar, and through the aperture came, like the sudden chatter of a bird, the high, nasal, but well-bred voice of Barker.

“I said to him quite plainly⁠—the public interests⁠—”

Auberon turned on Wayne with violence.

“What the devil is all this? What am I saying? What are you saying? Have you hypnotised me? Curse your uncanny blue eyes! Let me go. Give me back my sense of humour. Give it me back⁠—give it me back, I say!”

“I solemnly assure you,” said Wayne, uneasily, with a gesture, as if feeling all over himself, “that I haven’t got it.”

The King fell back in his chair, and went into a roar of Rabelaisian laughter.

“I don’t think you have,” he cried.