The Napoleon of Notting Hill G. K. Chesterton (best book club books for discussion .TXT) 📖

this cosmopolitan magnificence, she has played no small part. Your dates may come from the tall palms of Barbary, your sugar from the strange islands of the tropics, your tea from the secret villages of the Empire of the Dragon. That this room might be furnished, forests may have been spoiled under the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared under the Polar Star. But you yourself⁠—surely no inconsiderable treasure⁠—you yourself, the brain that wields these vast interests⁠—you yourself, at least, have grown to strength and wisdom between these grey houses and under this rainy sky. This city which made you, and thus made your fortunes, is threatened with war. Come forth and tell to the ends of the earth this lesson. Oil is from the North and fruits from the South; rices are from India and spices from Ceylon; sheep are from New Zealand and men from Notting Hill.”

The grocer sat for some little while, with dim eyes and his mouth open, looking rather like a fish. Then he scratched the back of his head, and said nothing. Then he said⁠—

“Anything out of the shop, sir?”

Wayne looked round in a dazed way. Seeing a pile of tins of pineapple chunks, he waved his stick generally towards them.

“Yes,” he said; “I’ll take those.”

“All those, sir?” said the grocer, with greatly increased interest.

“Yes, yes; all those,” replied Wayne, still a little bewildered, like a man splashed with cold water.

“Very good, sir; thank you, sir,” said the grocer with animation. “You may count upon my patriotism, sir.”

“I count upon it already,” said Wayne, and passed out into the gathering night.

The grocer put the box of dates back in its place.

“What a nice fellow he is!” he said. “It’s odd how often they are nice. Much nicer than those as are all right.”

Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist’s shop, unmistakably wavering.

“What a weakness it is!” he muttered. “I have never got rid of it from childhood⁠—the fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich, he is romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not⁠—no, he is not supernatural. But the chemist! All the other shops stand in Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land. Look at those great burning bowls of colour. It must be from them that God paints the sunsets. It is superhuman, and the superhuman is all the more uncanny when it is beneficent. That is the root of the fear of God. I am afraid. But I must be a man and enter.”

He was a man, and entered. A short, dark young man was behind the counter with spectacles, and greeted him with a bright but entirely businesslike smile.

“A fine evening, sir,” he said.

“Fine indeed, strange Father,” said Adam, stretching his hands somewhat forward. “It is on such clear and mellow nights that your shop is most itself. Then they appear most perfect, those moons of green and gold and crimson, which from afar oft guide the pilgrim of pain and sickness to this house of merciful witchcraft.”

“Can I get you anything?” asked the chemist.

“Let me see,” said Wayne, in a friendly but vague manner. “Let me have some sal-volatile.”

“Eightpence, tenpence, or one and sixpence a bottle?” said the young man, genially.

“One and six⁠—one and six,” replied Wayne, with a wild submissiveness. “I come to ask you, Mr. Bowles, a terrible question.”

He paused and collected himself.

“It is necessary,” he muttered⁠—“it is necessary to be tactful, and to suit the appeal to each profession in turn.”

“I come,” he resumed aloud, “to ask you a question which goes to the roots of your miraculous toils. Mr. Bowles, shall all this witchery cease?” And he waved his stick around the shop.

Meeting with no answer, he continued with animation⁠—

“In Notting Hill we have felt to its core the elfish mystery of your profession. And now Notting Hill itself is threatened.”

“Anything more, sir?” asked the chemist.

“Oh,” said Wayne, somewhat disturbed⁠—“oh, what is it chemists sell? Quinine, I think. Thank you. Shall it be destroyed? I have met these men of Bayswater and North Kensington⁠—Mr. Bowles, they are materialists. They see no witchery in your work, even when it is wrought within their own borders. They think the chemist is commonplace. They think him human.”

The chemist appeared to pause, only a moment, to take in the insult, and immediately said⁠—

“And the next article, please?”

“Alum,” said the Provost, wildly. “I resume. It is in this sacred town alone that your priesthood is reverenced. Therefore, when you fight for us you fight not only for yourself, but for everything you typify. You fight not only for Notting Hill, but for Fairyland, for as surely as Buck and Barker and such men hold sway, the sense of Fairyland in some strange manner diminishes.”

“Anything more, sir?” asked Mr. Bowles, with unbroken cheerfulness.

“Oh yes, jujubes⁠—Gregory powder⁠—magnesia. The danger is imminent. In all this matter I have felt that I fought not merely for my own city (though to that I owe all my blood), but for all places in which these great ideas could prevail. I am fighting not merely for Notting Hill, but for Bayswater itself; for North Kensington itself. For if the gold-hunters prevail, these also will lose all their ancient sentiments and all the mystery of their national soul. I know I can count upon you.”

“Oh yes, sir,” said the chemist, with great animation; “we are always glad to oblige a good customer.”

Adam Wayne went out of the shop with a deep sense of fulfilment of soul.

“It is so fortunate,” he said, “to have tact, to be able to play upon the peculiar talents and specialities, the cosmopolitanism of the grocer and the world-old necromancy of the chemist. Where should I be without tact?”

II The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull

After two more interviews with shopmen, however, the patriot’s confidence in his own psychological diplomacy began vaguely to wane. Despite the care with which he considered the peculiar rationale and the peculiar glory of each separate shop, there seemed to be something unresponsive about the shopmen.