“From information laid before me by the gallant gentlemen I have mentioned, I am in a position to say what happened to them. The man was beaten down to a condition of beggary, was so much broken by despair as to be accused of insanity; and it is perfectly clear that the methods employed to drive him from his shop and his livelihood were the methods of which I have spoken; the buying up of materials before they could reach him, the cutting off of his supplies, the cutting down of his prices by a conspiracy to undersell and all the rest. I need not describe them more generally than I have done already; by saying that among our fathers the men who did these things could be pilloried or hanged. The men who have done these things to-day are the three shareholders of this Company; the three Masters of this Trade.”
Then he named the three again formally and at length in a hard voice; but upon the name of Lord Seawood his voice seemed for an instant to break. He did not look at any face in the crowd.
“On this second point, therefore, the Court of Arbitrament decides that the private property employed in this business is not lawfully acquired; and cannot plead, as it normally would, the privilege of just possession. To sum up, it is decreed, first that the craft should be ruled by its fully enfranchised members, subject to any just claim of property; and second, that the claim of property made in this case is not just. We shall adjudge to the Guild–.”
Old Seawood sprang up as if galvanised; and a simple sort of vainglory deeper than all Victorian vanities came gasping to the surface like a drowning thing. He forgot even the snobbish fear of snobbishness.
“I had imagined,” he said, stammering with emphasis, “that this movement was to restore a true respect for Nobility. I am not aware that any of these workshop regulations applied to Nobility.”
“Ah,” said Herne in a low voice like an aside; “it has come at last.”
It seemed as if he spoke for the first time in a human voice, and the effect was all the stranger because of the strange words in which he spoke again. “I am not a man,” he said. “I am here only a mouthpiece to make clear the law; the law that knows nothing of men or women. But I ask you this before it is too late. Do not appeal to rank and title; do not make your claim as nobles and peers.”
“Why not?” cried the boisterous Archer.
“Because about that also,” replied Herne, who was deadly pale, “you have been fools enough to bid me find out the truth.”
“Oh what the devil does all this mean,” cried Archer in his agony.
“Damned if I know,” replied the stolid Mr. Hanbury.
“Ah yes, I had forgotten,” said the Arbiter in a vibrating voice, “you are not common craftsmen; you have not learnt to make paints; you have not dipped your hands in dyes. You have passed through loftier ordeals; you have watched your armour; you have won your spurs. But your crests and titles come to you from remote antiquity; and you have not forgotten the names you bear.”
“Naturally we haven’t forgotten our own names,” said Eden testily.
“Strangely enough,” said the Arbiter, “that is exactly what you have done.”
There was another enigmatic silence, that seemed to be filled with the staring eyes of Archer and Hanbury; and then the voice of the Arbiter was heard once more; but it gave them a new sort of start, for it had taken on again the leaden weight of legal exposition.
“In the course of applying serious historical methods to these questions of heraldry and heredity, to which my attention had been directed, I have discovered a singular state of things. It would appear to be precisely the opposite state of things to that which prevails in the general popular impression. To put it briefly, I have found very few people possessing any pedigrees that would be recognised in the heraldic or feudal sense of medieval aristocracy. But those there are are quite poor and obscure persons, not even of the rank which we should call middle class. But in all the three counties coming under my consideration, the men who seem to have no claim whatever to noble birth are the noblemen.”
He said it in a lifeless and impersonal tone, as if he were lecturing to students on the Hittites. But perhaps it was a little overdone; the words with which he went on were rather too dead and distinct. “Their estates have generally been obtained quite recently and often by methods of doubtful morality, let alone chivalry; by small solicitors and speculators employing various forms of mortgage, of foreclosing and the rest. In assuming the estates, these ingenious persons generally assumed not only the titles but the names of older families. The name of the Eden family is not Eames but Evans. The name of the Seawood family is not Severne but Smith.”
And with that Murrel, who had been painfully watching the pale face and rigid attitude of the speaker, suddenly muttered an exclamation and understood.
All around there was a hubbub now altogether broken up and uncontrolled; but it was still not a concerted cry but a noise as of everybody talking at once; and high above it all the hard voice of the Arbiter could still be heard.
“The only two men in this section of the county who can claim the nobility, to which appeal has been made, are a man now driving an omnibus between here and the town of Milldyke and a small green-grocer in the same town. No other person can call himself Armiger Generosus except William Pond and George Carter.”
“O Lor lumme, Old George!” cried Murrel, startled into throwing back his head with a shout of laughter. The laughter was infectious; it broke the strain and received them all into a roaring gulf; the true refuge of the English. Even Braintree, suddenly remembering the solid smile of Old George in the Green Dragon, could not control his amusement.
But, as Lord Seawood had accurately remarked, the Arbiter of the Court of Arbitrament was deficient in a sense of humour. He had never properly studied the back volumes of Punch.
“I do not know,” he said, “why this man’s lineage should be ridiculous. He has not, so far as I know, done anything to stain his coat of arms. He has not plotted with thieves and forestallers to ruin honest men. He has not taken money at usury and laid field to field by chicane, served the ruling families like a dog and then fed on the dying families like a vulture. But you–you who come here to grind the faces of the poor with your pomposities of property and gentility, and your grand final flourish of chivalry–what about you? You sit in another man’s house; you bear another man’s name; the blazon of another is on your shield; the crest of another is on your gate-posts; your whole story is the story of new men in old clothes, and you come here to me to plead against justice in the name of your noble ancestry.”
The laughter had died down but the noise was even louder; there was now no disguise or hesitation about its nature; all the broken cries had come together; there was a new noise of the mob when it changes to the pack in cry. Archer and Hanbury and ten or twelve other men were standing up and shouting; and yet high above all the other noises the one voice still managed to soar unsilenced; the voice of the fanatic on the judgment seat.
“Let it be enrolled therefore for the third judgment and the answer to the third plea. These three men have claimed the mastery of a craft and the obedience of all their workmen; and their cause is judged. They make the claim of mastery and they are not masters. They make the claim of property and they are not the proprietors. They make the claim of nobility and they are not nobles. The three pleas are disallowed.”