Mr. Buck, who, though retired, frequently went down to his big drapery stores in Kensington High Street, was locking up those premises, being the last to leave. It was a wonderful evening of green and gold, but that did not trouble him very much. If you had pointed it out, he would have agreed seriously, for the rich always desire to be artistic.

He stepped out into the cool air, buttoning up his light yellow coat, and blowing great clouds from his cigar, when a figure dashed up to him in another yellow overcoat, but unbuttoned and flying behind him.

“Hullo, Barker!” said the draper. “Any of our summer articles? You’re too late. Factory Acts, Barker. Humanity and progress, my boy.”

“Oh, don’t chatter,” cried Barker, stamping. “We’ve been beaten.”

“Beaten — by what?” asked Buck, mystified.

“By Wayne.”

Buck looked at Barker’s fierce white face for the first time, as it gleamed in the lamplight.

“Come and have a drink,” he said.

They adjourned to a cushioned and glaring buffet, and Buck established himself slowly and lazily in a seat, and pulled out his cigar-case.

“Have a smoke,” he said.

Barker was still standing, and on the fret, but after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down as if he might spring up again the next minute. They ordered drinks in silence.

“How did it happen?” asked Buck, turning his big bold eyes on him.

“How the devil do I know?” cried Barker. “It happened like — like a dream. How can two hundred men beat six hundred? How can they?”

“Well,” said Buck, coolly, “how did they? You ought to know.”

“I don’t know; I can’t describe,” said the other, drumming on the table. “It seemed like this. We were six hundred, and marched with those damned poleaxes of Auberon’s — the only weapons we’ve got. We marched two abreast. We went up Holland Walk, between the high palings which seemed to me to go straight as an arrow for Pump Street. I was near the tail of the line, and it was a long one. When the end of it was still between the high palings, the head of the line was already crossing Holland Park Avenue. Then the head plunged into the network of narrow streets on the other side, and the tail and myself came out on the great crossing. When we also had reached the northern side and turned up a small street that points, crookedly as it were, towards Pump Street, the whole thing felt different. The streets dodged and bent so much that the head of our line seemed lost altogether: it might as well have been in North America. And all this time we hadn’t seen a soul.”

Map of the Seat of War.
Map of the Seat of War.

Buck, who was idly dabbing the ash of his cigar on the ash-tray, began to move it deliberately over the table, making feathery grey lines, a kind of map.

“But though the little streets were all deserted (which got a trifle on my nerves), as we got deeper and deeper into them, a thing began to happen that I couldn’t understand. Sometimes a long way ahead — three turns or corners ahead, as it were — there broke suddenly a sort of noise, clattering, and confused cries, and then stopped. Then, when it happened, something, I can’t describe it — a kind of shake or stagger went down the line, as if the line were a live thing, whose head had been struck, or had been an electric cord. None of us knew why we were moving, but we moved and jostled. Then we recovered, and went on through the little dirty streets, round corners, and up twisted ways. The little crooked streets began to give me a feeling I can’t explain — as if it were a dream. I felt as if things had lost their reason, and we should never get out of the maze. Odd to hear me talk like that, isn’t it? The streets were quite well-known streets, all down on the map. But the fact remains. I wasn’t afraid of something happening. I was afraid of nothing ever happening — nothing ever happening for all God’s eternity.”

He drained his glass and called for more whisky. He drank it, and went on.

“And then something did happen. Buck, it’s the solemn truth, that nothing has ever happened to you in your life. Nothing had ever happened to me in my life.”

“Nothing ever happened!” said Buck, staring. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing has ever happened,” repeated Barker, with a morbid obstinacy. “You don’t know what a thing happening means? You sit in your office expecting customers, and customers come; you walk in the street expecting friends, and friends meet you; you want a drink, and get it; you feel inclined for a bet, and make it. You expect either to win or lose, and you do either one or the other. But things happening!” and he shuddered ungovernably.

“Go on,” said Buck, shortly. “Get on.”

“As we walked wearily round the corners, something happened. When something happens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards. It happens of itself, and you have nothing to do with it. It proves a dreadful thing — that there are other things besides one’s self. I can only put it in this way. We went round one turning, two turnings, three turnings, four turnings, five. Then I lifted myself slowly up from the gutter where I had been shot half senseless, and was beaten down again by living men crashing on top of me, and the world was full of roaring, and big men rolling about like nine-pins.”

Buck looked at his map with knitted brows.

“Was that Portobello Road?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Barker —“yes; Portobello Road. I saw it afterwards; but, my God, what a place it was! Buck, have you ever stood and let a six foot of man lash and lash at your head with six feet of pole with six pounds of steel at the end? Because, when you have had that experience, as Walt Whitman says, ‘you re-examine philosophies and religions.’”

“I have no doubt,” said Buck. “If that was Portobello Road, don’t you see what happened?”

“I know what happened exceedingly well. I was knocked down four times; an experience which, as I say, has an effect on the mental attitude. And another thing happened, too. I knocked down two men. After the fourth fall (there was not much bloodshed — more brutal rushing and throwing — for nobody could use their weapons), after the fourth fall, I say, I got up like a devil, and I tore a poleaxe out of a man’s hand and struck where I saw the scarlet of Wayne’s fellows, struck again and again. Two of them went over, bleeding on the stones, thank God; and I laughed and found myself sprawling in the gutter again, and got up again, and struck again, and broke my halberd to pieces. I hurt a man’s head, though.”

Buck set down his glass with a bang, and spat out curses through his thick moustache.

“What is the matter?” asked Barker, stopping, for the man had been calm up to now, and now his agitation was far more violent than his own.

“The matter?” said Buck, bitterly; “don’t you see how these maniacs have got us? Why should two idiots, one a clown and the other a screaming lunatic, make sane men so different from themselves? Look here, Barker; I will give you a picture. A very well-bred young man of this century is dancing about in a frock-coat. He has in his hands a nonsensical seventeenth-century halberd, with which he is trying to kill men in a street in Notting Hill. Damn it! don’t you see how they’ve got us? Never mind how you felt — that is how you looked. The King would put his cursed head on one side and call it exquisite. The Provost of Notting Hill would put his cursed nose in the air and call it heroic. But in Heaven’s name what would you have called it — two days before?”

Barker bit his lip.

“You haven’t been through it, Buck,” he said. “You don’t understand fighting — the atmosphere.”

“I don’t deny the atmosphere,” said Buck, striking the table. “I only say it’s their atmosphere. It’s Adam Wayne’s atmosphere. It’s the atmosphere which you and I thought had vanished from an educated world for ever.”

“Well, it hasn’t,” said Barker; “and if you have any lingering doubts, lend me a poleaxe, and I’ll show you.”

There was a long silence, and then Buck turned to his neighbour and spoke in that good-tempered tone that comes of a power of looking facts in the face — the tone in which he concluded great bargains.

“Barker,” he said, “you are right. This old thing — this fighting, has come back. It has come back suddenly and taken us by surprise. So it is first blood to Adam Wayne. But, unless reason and arithmetic and everything else have gone crazy, it must be next and last blood to us. But when an issue has really arisen, there is only one thing to do — to study that issue as such and win in it. Barker, since it is fighting, we must understand fighting. I must understand fighting as coolly and completely as I understand drapery; you must understand fighting as coolly and completely as you understand politics. Now, look at the facts. I stick without hesitation to my original formula. Fighting, when we have the stronger force, is only a matter of arithmetic. It must be. You asked me just now how two hundred men could defeat six hundred. I can tell you. Two hundred men can defeat six hundred when the six hundred behave like fools. When they forget the very conditions they are fighting in; when they fight in a swamp as if it were a mountain; when they fight in a forest as if it were a plain; when they fight in streets without remembering the object of streets.”

“What is the object of streets?” asked Barker.

“What is the object of supper?” cried Buck, furiously. “Isn’t it obvious? This military science is mere common sense. The object of a street is to lead from one place to another; therefore all streets join; therefore street fighting is quite a peculiar thing. You advanced into that hive of streets as if you were advancing into an open plain where you could see everything. Instead of that, you were advancing into the bowels of a fortress, with streets pointing at you, streets turning on you, streets jumping out at you, and all in the hands of the enemy. Do you know what Portobello Road is? It is the only point on your journey where two side streets run up opposite each other. Wayne massed his men on the two sides, and when he had let enough of your line go past, cut it in two like a worm. Don’t you see what would have saved you?”

Barker shook his head.

“Can’t your ‘atmosphere’ help you?” asked Buck, bitterly. “Must I attempt explanations in the romantic manner? Suppose that, as you were fighting blindly with the red Notting Hillers who imprisoned you on both sides, you had heard a shout from behind them. Suppose, oh, romantic Barker! that behind the red tunics you had seen the blue and gold of South Kensington taking them in the rear, surrounding them in their turn and hurling them ............