“I thank your Majesty,” said Buck, courteously but quickly. “Your Majesty’s statements are always clear and studied: therefore I may draw a deduction. As the scheme, whatever it was, on which you set your heart did not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne, it will survive his removal. Why not let us clear away this particular Pump Street, which does interfere with our plans, and which does not, by your Majesty’s own statement, interfere with yours.”
“Caught out!” said the King, enthusiastically and quite impersonally, as if he were watching a cricket match.
“This man Wayne,” continued Buck, “would be shut up by any doctors in England. But we only ask to have it put before them. Meanwhile no one’s interests, not even in all probability his own, can be really damaged by going on with the improvements in Notting Hill. Not our interests, of course, for it has been the hard and quiet work of ten years. Not the interest of Notting Hill, for nearly all its educated inhabitants desire the change. Not the interests of your Majesty, for you say, with characteristic sense, that you never contemplated the rise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his own interests, for the man has a kind heart and many talents, and a couple of good doctors would probably put him righter than all the free cities and sacred mountains in creation. I therefore assume, if I may use so bold a word, that your Majesty will not offer any obstacle to our proceeding with the improvements.”
And Mr. Buck sat down amid subdued but excited applause among the allies.
“Mr. Buck,” said the King, “I beg your pardon, for a number of beautiful and sacred thoughts, in which you were generally classified as a fool. But there is another thing to be considered. Suppose you send in your workmen, and Mr. Wayne does a thing regrettable indeed, but of which I am sorry to say, I think him quite capable...knocks their teeth out.”
“I have thought of that, your Majesty,” said Mr. Buck, easily, “and I think it can simply be guarded against. Let us send in a strong guard of say a hundred men...a hundred Of the North Kensington Halberdiers” (he smiled grimly), “of whom your Majesty is so fond. Or say...a hundred and fifty. The whole population of Pump Street, I fancy, is only about a hundred.”
“Still they might stand together and lick you,” said the King, dubiously.
“Then say two hundred,” said Buck, gaily.
“It might happen,” said the King, restlessly, “that one Notting Hiller fought better than two, North Kensingtons.”
“It might,” said Buck, coolly; “then say two hundred and fifty.”
The King bit his lip.
“And if they are beaten, too,” he said viciously.
“Your Majesty,” said Buck, and leaned back easily in his chair. “Suppose they are. If anything be clear, it is clear that all fighting matters are mere matters of arithmetic. Here we have a hundred and fifty say of Notting Hill soldiers. Or say two hundred. If one of them can fight two of us...we can send in, not four hundred, but six hundred, and smash him. That is all. It is out of all immediate probability that one of them could fight four of us. So what I say is this. Run no risks. Finish it at once. Send in eight hundred men and smash him...smash him almost without seeing him. And go on with the improvements.”
And Mr. Buck pulled out a bandanna and blew his nose.
“Do you know, Mr. Buck,” said the King, staring gloomily at the table, “the admirable clearness of your reason produces in my mind a sentiment which I trust I shall not offend you by describing as an aspiration to punch your head. You irritate me sublimely. What can it be in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense?”
“But your Majesty,” said Barker, eagerly and suavely, “does not refuse our proposals?”
“My dear Barker, your proposals are as damnable as your manners. I want to have nothing to do with them. Suppose I stopped them altogether. What would happen?”
Barker answered in a very low voice:
“Revolution.”
The King glanced quickly at the men around the table. They were all looking down silently: their brows were red.
He rose with a startling suddenness, and an unusual pallor.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you have overruled me. Therefore I can speak plainly. I think Adam Wayne, who is as mad as a hatter, worth more than a million of you. But you have the force, and, I admit, the common sense, and he is lost. Take your eight hundred halberdiers and smash him. It would be more sportsmanlike to take two hundred.”
“More sportsmanlike,” said Buck, grimly, “but a great deal less humane. We are not artists, and streets purple with gore do not catch our eye in the right way.”
“It is pitiful,” said Auberon. “With five or six times their number there will be no fight at all.”
“I hope not,” said Buck, rising and adjusting his gloves. “We desire no fight, your Majesty. We are peaceable business men.”
“Well,” said the King, wearily, “the conference is at an end at last.”
And he went out of the room before any one else could stir.
Forty workmen, a hundred Bayswater Halberdiers, two hundred from South, and three from North Kensington, assembled at the foot of Holland Walk and marched up it, under the general direction of Barker, who looked flushed and happy in full dress. At the end of the procession a small and sulky figure lingered like an urchin. It was the King.
“Barker,” he said at length, appealingly, “you are an old friend of mine...you understand my hobbies as I understand yours. Why can’t you let it alone? I hoped that such fun might come out of this Wayne business. Why can’t you let it alone? It doesn’t really so much matter to you...what’s a road or so? For me it’s the one joke that may save me from pessimism. Take fewer men and give me an hour’s fun. Really and truly, James, if you collected coins or humming-birds, and I could buy one with the price of your road, I would buy it. I collect incidents...those rare, those precious things. Let me have one. Pay a few pounds for it. Give these Notting Hillers a chance. Let them alone.”
“Auberon,” said Barker, kindly, forgetting all royal titles in a rare moment of sincerity, “I do feel what you mean. I have had moments when these hobbies have hit me. I have had moments when I have sympathized with your humours. I have had moments, though you may not easily believe it, when I have sympathized with the madness of Adam Wayne. But the world, Auberon, the real world, is not run on these hobbies. It goes on great brutal wheels of facts...wheels on which you are the butterfly. And Wayne is the fly on the wheel.”
Auberon’s eyes looked frankly at the other’s.
“Thank you, James; what you say is true. It is only a parenthetical consolation to me to compare the intelligence of flies, somewhat favourably with the intelligence of wheels. But it is the nature of flies to die soon, and the nature of wheels to go on for ever. Go on with the wheel. Good-bye, old man.”
And James Barker went on, laughing, with a high colour, slapping his bamboo on his leg.
The King watched the tail of the retreating regiment with a look of genuine depression, which made him seem more like a baby than ever. Then he swung round and struck his hands together.
“In a world without humour,” he said, “the only thing to do is to eat. And how perfect an exception! How can these people strike dignified attitudes, and pretend that things matter, when the total ludicrousness of life is proved by the very method by which it is supported? A man strikes the lyre, and says, ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’ and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a hole in his head. I think Nature was indeed a little broad in her humour in these matters. But we all fall back on the pantomime, as I have in this municipal affair. Nature has her farces, like, the act of eating or the shape of the kangaroo, for the more brutal appetite. She keeps her stars and mountains for those who can appreciate something more subtly ridiculous.” He turned to his equerry. “But, as I said ‘eating,’ let us have a picnic like two nice little children. Just run and bring me a table and a dozen courses or so, and plenty of champagne, and under these swinging boughs, Bowler, we will return to Nature.”