Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 229
But with a man like Michael Herne the whole of this process worked backwards. He had hardly realised what personal romance was inspiring the impersonal romance of his historical revolution. He had had nothing but a sense of growing glory within; of a world that grew larger and loftier like an expanding sunrise or a rising tide; and which was yet of the same unconscious stuff as the day-dreams of his youth. He had had at first the feeling that a hobby had become a holiday. He had then had more and more feeling that the holiday had become a festival, in the sense of the solemn festival of a god. Only at the back of his mind did he assume that the god was a goddess. He was a man whose life had been almost wholly without personal relations. Therefore even when he was in fact growing from head to foot with a personal relation, he hardly knew that it was personal. He would have said in a sort of rapture that he was supported in his work by the most glorious friends that God had given to man. He would have spoken of them radiantly and collectively as if of a cloud of angels. And yet at any moment, even from the first, if Rosamund Severne had quarrelled with him and left that company, he would instantly have discovered his disease.
And yet it happened, as such coincidences do happen, hardly half an hour after those two that had met as enemies, and continued as friends, and had parted as lovers. So soon after they had said their farewell amid the incongruous clatter of industrial politics, the man who had in some sense divided them, if only symbolically, discovered that a man is meant in this world to be something more than a symbol. He saw Rosamund standing on the high terrace of the lawn, and the whole earth changed around her.
The news of Braintree’s defiance brought a certain doubt and depression to the more romantic group at Seawood but nothing but rage and fury to Rosamund Severne. She was the sort of woman inevitably irritated by strikes if only because they are delays. Waste of time was more vivid to her than loss of principle. Many have imagined that feminine politics would be merely pacifist or humanitarian or sentimental. The real danger of feminine politics is too much love of a masculine policy. There are a good many Rosamund Severnes in the world.
She could get no relief from her impatience from the tone of the men around her, though most of them were in principle far more prejudiced against Braintree than she was. But they did not seem to react as one should react to a challenge. Her father told her at some length the real essentials of the situation, which he would have no difficulty in placing before the malcontents in due course. But as his remarks affected even his own daughter with a sensation of faint fatigue, she could hardly persuade herself that they would affect his mortal enemies to an emotional repentance. Lord Eden was more brief but not much more brisk in his comments. He said that time would show; and expressed doubt about the ultimate economic resources of the revolt. Whether designedly or no, he said nothing about the new organisation of society which he himself had helped to establish. For all of them it seemed as if a shadow had fallen across all that shining array. Beyond the park, beyond the gates of their chivalric paradise, the modern monster, the great black factory town, lay snorting up its smoke in defiance and derision.
“They’re all so slack about it,” Rosamund confided to Monkey, that universal confidant. “Can’t you do something to get a move on? And after all our flag-waving and blowing of trumpets.”
“Well,” said Murrel dubiously, “all that has what they call a moral effect; only some people call it bluff. If it goes swinging along and everybody falls in with it, the thing works; and it often does. You can try your luck in rallying everybody to a flag. But you don’t fight with a flag.”
“Do you realise what this man Braintree has done,” she cried indignantly. “He has dared us all. He has dared the King-at-Arms and the King.”
“Well,” replied Murrel in a detached manner, “I don’t quite see what the devil else he could do. If I were in his place—”
“But you’re not in his place,” she cried vehemently, “you’re not in the place of any rebel or rioter. Don’t you ever think, Douglas, that it is time you were in your own place.”
Murrel smiled rather wearily. “I admit,” he said, “that I happen to be able to see two sides of a question. And I suppose you’d say its done by walking round and round it.”
“I say,” she said rising in wrath, “that I never met a man who saw both sides of a question without wanting to clout him on both sides of the head.”
Presumably lest she should yield to this impulse, she departed in a storm, and swept up the long lawns and terraces towards the old raised garden in which the play of Blondel the Troubadour had once been performed. And the coincidence came back to her with something of a pang of memory; for in that green deserted theatre stood one green deserted figure in forester’s costume, with a mane of light hair and a lifted leonine head, looking across the valley towards the smoking town.
For a moment she stood as if caught in a mesh of memories merely elfin and fantastic; as if she had loved and lost something unreal; the music and emotion of the theatricals revisited her and lulled her lust for action; but in a moment she had brushed it away like a cobweb and spoke in her own firm voice.
“You know your revolutionists have sent their reply. I hear they will not come to the Court.”
He looked round slowly in his rather short-sighted fashion; only the pause before he spoke expressed the change in his feelings on hearing the voice that hailed him.
“Yes, I have received their message,” he said mildly. “It was addressed to me. They certainly state their position clearly; but they will come to the Court all right.”
“They will come!” she repeated in some excitement. “Do you mean that Braintree has yielded?”
“They will come, yes,” he repeated, nodding. “Braintree has not yielded; indeed I did not expect him to do so. To tell the truth, I rather respect him for not doing so. He is a very courageous and consistent man; and it is always so much pleasanter to have an opponent of that kind.”
“But I don’t understand,” she cried. “What do you mean by saying they won’t yield but they will come?”
“The new constitution,” he explained, “provides for the situation, as I suppose most constitutions do. It’s rather like what we used to call a subpoena. I don’t know how many men I shall want with me; but I suppose some of the Hundreds may have to turn out.”
“What!” she cried. “You don’t mean that you are going to fetch them to the Court!”
“Oh yes, the law is quite clear on that point”, he answered. “And as the law makes me the executive officer, I have really no will in the matter.”
“You seem to have more will than anybody else I’ve come across yet,” she said. “You should hear Monkey!”
“Of course,” he said in his pedantic way, “what I state is a purpose and not a prediction. I cannot answer for what anyone else will do or will succeed in doing. But they will come here or I shall not come.”
His meticulous phraseology suddenly thrilled through her thoughts as she understood what he meant.
“You mean there will be fighting,” she said.
“There certainly will be on our side if there is on theirs,” he answered.
“You are the only man in this house,” cried Rosamund and found herself suddenly trembling from head to foot.
It seemed as if his stiff attitude was staggered so that he lost control of himself quite unexpectedly. He uttered a sort of cry.
“You must not say that to me; I am weak; and weakest of all now, when I should try to be strong.”
“You are not weak at all,” she said, recovering her firm voice.
“I am mad,” he said. “I love you.”
She was dumb. He caught both her hands and his arms thrilled up to the shoulders as with an electric shock.
“What am I doing and saying?” he cried harshly. “I — to you to whom so many men must have said it. What will you say?”
She remained leaning forward and looking steadily into his face.
“I say what I said,” she answered. “You are the only man.”
“Your eyes blind me,” he said.
They spoke no more; but the great land about them and above spoke for them as it rose in the mighty terraces towards the colossal corner-stones of the mountains; and the great wind of West England that rocked the tops of its royal trees; and all that vast valley of Avalon that has seen the muster of heroes and the meeting of immortal lovers, was full of a movement as of the trampling horses and the trumpets, when the kings go forth to battle and queens rule in their stead.
So they stood for a moment on the top of the world and in the highest place of our human fortune, almost at the moment when Olive and John Braintree in the dark and smoky town were taking their sad farewell. And no man could have guessed that the sad farewell was soon to be followed with fuller reconciliation and understanding; but that over the two coloured and shining figures, on the shoulder of the golden down, hung a dark cloud of sundering and division and doom.
CHAPTER XVI
THE JUDGMENT OF THE KING
Lord Seawood and Lord Eden were seated in their favourite summer-house on the lawn, the same into which the arrow had once entered like the first shaft of a new sunrise; and to judge by their faces they were doubtful whether the sun were not in eclipse. Lord Eden’s rigidity of expression might indeed have many meanings; but old Seawood was shaking his head in an openly disconsolate manner.
“If they had availed themselves of my intervention,” he said. “I could I think have made clear the impossibility of their position; a position quite unparalleled in the whole of my public life. The restoration of our fine old historical forms must have the profound sympathy of every cultivated man; but it is against all precedent that they should use these forms for the practical suppression of material menace. What would Peel have said, had it been proposed to use only the antiquated halberds of a few Beefeaters in the Tower instead of the excellent and effective Constabulary which he had the genius and imagination to conceive? What would Palmerston have said, had anyone suggested to him that the Mace lying on the table of Parliament could be used as a club with which to quell a riot in Parliament Square? Impossible as it is for us to project upon the future the actions of the mighty dead of the past, I conceive it as likely that he would have made it the subject of a jest. But men in the present generation are devoid of humour.”
“Our friend the King-at-Arms is devoid of humour all right,” drawled Eden. “I sometimes wonder whether he is not the happier for it.”
“There,” said the other nobleman with firmness. “I cannot agree. Our English humour, such as that to be found in the best pages of Punch is — .”
At this moment a footman appeared silently and abruptly in the entrance of the hut, murmured some ritual words and handed a note to his master. The reading of it changed his master’s dolorous expression to one of unaffected astonishment.
“God bless my soul,” said Lord Seawood; and remained gazing at the paper in his hand.
For upon that paper was scrawled in a large and bold hand a message destined in the next few days to change the whole face of England; as nothing for centuries had ever been changed by a battle upon English soil.
“Either our young friend is really suffering from delusions,” he said at last, “or else—”
“Or else,” said Lord Eden gazing at the roof of the summer-house, “he has surrounded and taken the town of Milldyke, captured the Bolshevist headquarters and is bringing the leaders here to the trial.”
“This is most remarkable,” said the other nobleman. “Were you informed of this before?”
“I was not informed of it at all,” answered Eden, “but in any case I thought it highly probable.”
“Curious,” repeated Seawood, “and I thought it so highly improbable; so highly improbable as to merge itself in what we call the impossible. That a mere stage army of that description — why I thought all educated and enlightened people were aware that such weapons are quite obsolete.”
“That,” answered Eden, “is because educated and enlightened people never think. Your enlightened man is always taking away the number he first thought of. It seems to be a sign of education first to take a thing for granted and then to forget to see if it is still there. Weapons are a very good working example. The man says he won’t go on wearing a sword because it is no longer any good against a gun. Then he throws away all the guns as relics of barbarism; and then he is surprised when a barbarian sticks him through with a sword. You say that pikes and halberds are not weapons against modern conditions. I say pikes are excellent weapons against no pikes. You say it is all antiquated medieval armament. But I put my money on men who make medieval armament against men who only disapprove of modern armament. And what have any of these political parties ever done about armament except profess to disapprove of it? They renounce it and neglect it and never think of the part it played in political history; and yet they go about with a vague security as if they were girt about with invisible guns that would go off at the first hint of danger. They’re doing what they always do; mixing up their Utopia that never comes with their old Victorian security that’s already gone. I for one am not at all surprised that a pack of pantomime halberdiers can poke them off the stage. I’ve always thought a coup d’état could be effected with very small forces against people who won’t learn to use the force they’ve got. But I never had the moral courage to do it myself; it needs somebody very different from our sort.”
“Perhaps,” remarked the other aristocrat, “it was due to our being, to quite a very recent political formula, too proud to fight.”
“Yes,” replied the old statesman. “It is the humble who fight.”
“I am not sure that I quite follow your meaning,” said Lord Seawood.
“I mean I am too wicked to fight,” said Lord Eden. “It is the innocent who kill and burn and break the peace. It is children who rush and smash and knock each other about and of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
It is not certain that even then his venerable Victorian companion was wholly and lucidly of one mind with him; but there was no more to be got out of him on the subject; and he remained with a face of flint looking up the long path towards the gates of the park. And indeed that road and that entrance were already shaken with the tumult and triumph of which he spoke; and the songs of young men who come back from battle.
“I apologise to Herne,” said Julian Archer with hearty generosity. “He is a strong man. I’ve always said that what we wanted to see was a Strong Man in England.”
“I once saw a Strong Man at Olympia,” said Murrel reminiscently. “I believe people often apologised to him.”
“You know what I mean,” answered the other good-humouredly. “A statesman. A man who knows his own mind.”
“Well, I suppose a madman knows his own mind,” answered Murrel. “I rather fancy a statesman ought to know a little about other people’s minds.”
“My dear Monkey, what’s the matter with you,” demanded Archer. “You seem to be quite sulky when everybody else is pleased.”
“It’s not so offensive as being pleased when everybody else is sulky,” answered Murrel. “But if you mean am I satisfied, I will admit your penetration in perceiving that I’m not. You said just now that we wanted a strong man in England. Now I should say that the one place where we never have wanted a strong man is England. I can only remember one person who went into the profession, poor old Cromwell; and the consequence was that we dug him up to hang him after he was dead and went mad with joy for a month because the throne was going back to a weak man — or one we thought was a weak man. These high-handed ways don’t suit us a bit, either revolutionary or reactionary. The French and the Italians have frontiers and they all feel like soldiers. So the word of command doesn’t seem humiliating to them; the man is only a man but he commands because he is the commander. But we are not democratic enough to have a dictator. Our people like to be ruled by gentlemen, in a general sort of way. But nobody could stand being ruled by one gentleman. The idea is too horrible.”
“I don’t know what you mean exactly,” said Archer discontentedly, “but I am glad to say that I think Herne knows what he means all right. And he’ll jolly well make these fellows understand what he means as well.”
“My dear fellow,” said Murrel, “it takes all sorts to make a world. I don’t gush about gentlemen, as you know; they’re a stuffy lot, often enough. But gentlemen have managed to rule this island pretty successfully for about three hundred years; and they’ve done it because nobody ever did understand what they meant. They could make a mistake to-day and undo it to-morrow, without anybody knowing anything about it. But they never went too far in any direction to make it quite impossible to go back. They were always yielding here and modifying there; and patching things up somehow. Now it may be a jolly fine sight to see old Herne charging with all his chivalry. But if he will charge, he can’t retreat. If he figures as a hero to you, he will figure as a tyrant to the other fellows. Now it was the very soul of our old aristocratic policy that even a tyrant must never figure as a tyrant. He may break down everybody’s fences and steal everybody’s land, but he must do it by Act of Parliament and not with a great two-handed sword. And if he meets the people he’s disposed, he must be very polite to them and enquire after their rheumatism. That’s what kept the British Constitution going — enquiring after the rheumatism. If he begins giving people black eyes or bloody scars, those things will be remembered in quite another way, whether he was right or wrong in the quarrel. And Herne isn’t by a hell of a long way so right in this quarrel as he thinks he is; being a simple-minded sort.”
