“I know what you are feeling like, Michael,” she said. “It is hateful to have to triumph over people we like. And I know you like John Braintree.”
He looked at her for a moment over his shoulder and she was quite startled by the expression of his face.
“I didn’t know you liked him so much as that,” she said.
He turned his head away abruptly; indeed there was something strangely abrupt in his whole manner.
“But I know the other part of you as well,” she said. “You will do justice.”
“Yes,” he answered. “I shall do justice.” And he put his head on his hands.
She felt a fine reverence for his broken friendship and silently left the library.
A minute or two after he picked up his pen again and continued to annotate documents and turn over reports; but before doing so he looked for a moment at the vast roof of the library where he had laboured so long; and especially at that high corner of the bookcase to which he had climbed in the beginning of this story.
John Braintree, who had never preferred any particular reverence for the romantic pageantry of the hour, even when it was praised by the person for whom he cared most, was not likely to admire it when it came arrayed with all the terrors of judgment against him, and adorned with the purple robes and golden sword-hilts of all the people he cared about least. His demeanour was openly contemptuous; but contempt is never contemptible in those who are defeated and defiant. When asked whether he wished to add any preliminary statement to the documents placed before the Court, he had appeared as defiantly detached as Charles the First.
“I see no Court,” he said. “I only see a lot of people who seem to be dressed up as court cards. I know of no reason why I should recognise the brute force of the brigands, merely because they are stage brigands. I suppose I shall have to listen while the mummery proceeds; but I do not propose to say anything until you bring out the racks and the thumb-screws and the faggots to burn us alive. For I presume you have revived these also with all the vanished beauties of the Middle Ages. You are a scholar of admitted learning and I suppose you will give us a complete historical reconstruction of medievalism.”
“Yes,” replied Herne with complete gravity. “Not in detail perhaps, for no one would defend every detail of any system, but in general plan we do desire to reconstruct the medieval scheme. You are not, however, charged with any conduct which could in any case involve the punishment of burning; and that question therefore does not arise.”
“Oh thank you,” said Braintree agreeably. “But is not this favouritism?”
“Order, order,” cried Julian Archer indignantly. “How can we proceed if the Court is not respected?”
“But for these things,” continued the Arbiter, “for which you can be shown to be responsible, in relation to any public peril, for these you and any other persons will be judged by this Court and this Court alone. It is not I who speak: it is the Law.”
Michael Herne cut short in midair, with a gesture sharp as the slash of a sword, the cry of acclaim and applause that greeted his words. The men who applauded him, anticipating his words with radiant faces, had always hitherto found those words like the words of a leader ringing and rousing and militant and even flamboyant. But he had too serious a sense of all the new parts he played to be flamboyant on the seat of judgment. Whatever condemnations he had to deliver against the enemies of his new realm, must be weighted with the composure and even coldness of impersonal justice. The applause simmered down into silence; but it was still an eager and even an enthusiastic silence. He proceeded in a voice singularly level and even monotonous.
“It has been our task,” he said, “to recover an ancient order. We would remake an old law, but in this we cannot wholly escape the duty of making a new one. The great ages from which we draw our life were rich in variety and even in exception; and we must abstract from them general principles apart from contradictory details. In the case before us of the quarrels arising out of what are called the products of Coal, especially the work necessary for the production of dyes and colours from Coal-Tar, we must begin by recurring to certain general principles that once governed the necessary labour of the world. Those principles were very different from those of which we hear most in the more modern times, and in the movements of a restless and often lawless epoch. They were marked by order and, I will add, by obedience.”
A murmur of approval broke out among his followers; and Braintree, on the other side, uttered a harsh laugh.
“In the old guild organisation,” continued Herne, “this obedience was expected from apprentices and from journeymen towards a class that may broadly be called, as in our modern system, the Masters. A Master was one who produced a Masterpiece. That is, he had passed an examination by the guild in a complete piece of work of the craft; and the guild insisted on a serious standard of craftsmanship. It was normally with this Master’s tools and shop and private capital that the work was done; the apprentice was one to whom this craft was being taught and the journeyman one who had not completely learnt it, but was finishing his education by hiring himself out to different masters, often in the course of a journey through different places. Men could eventually become Masters by producing Masterpieces in due course. That is, in general outline, the ancient organization of Labour. Applying it to the present case, we find the following situation. There are, in the large field covered by this work, practically three Masters; in the sense of men with whose tools and capital the craft is conducted. I have ascertained their names and I find that between them they practically share that ownership. 0ne is Sir Howard Pryce, formerly a Master in the manufacture of soap, but having in some rapid fashion become in turn a Master in the matter of Paints and Dyes. The second is Hubert Arthur Severne, now Baron Seawood. The third is John Henry Heriot Eames, now known as the Earl of Eden. But I have no note of the date or occasion of their presenting Masterpieces in the manufacture of dyes or pigments. And I have been unable to obtain any evidence of their labouring personally in the craft, or of their educating their apprentices to do so.”