“Before I came?” asked Braintree in a momentary doubt.
“Before you first came here,” she answered colouring and looking again at the landscape. “He said he would have to look through a leper’s window.”
“A very typical medieval window, I should think,” said Braintree rather sourly.
The face of the man in medieval masquerade suddenly flamed as at a challenge to battle.
“Will you show me a King,” he cried, “a modern reigning King, by the grace of God, who will go and handle lepers in a hospital as St. Louis did?”
“I am not very likely,” said Braintree grimly, “to pay such a tribute to reigning Kings.”
“Or a popular leader either,” insisted the other. “St. Francis was a popular leader. If you saw a leper walking across this lawn, would you rush at him and embrace him?”
“He is as likely to do it as any of the rest of us,” said Olive, “Perhaps more.”
“You are right,” said Herne, with abrupt sobriety “Perhaps none of us would do it. . . . But what if the world needs such despots and such demagogues?”
Braintree slowly raised his head and looked steadily at the other man. “Such despots . . .” he said, and frowned heavily.
CHAPTER XII
THE STATESMAN AND THE SUMMER-HOUSE
At this point of the conversation that particular corner of the garden was filled with the broad and breezy presence of Julian Archer in resplendent evening dress; he entered with a swing and then stopped dead, staring at Michael Herne.
“I say,” he cried, “are you never going to change.”
Perhaps the sixth repetition of this single sentence was what drove the librarian of Seawood mad.
Anyhow he swung round, staring also, and suddenly cried out in a voice that rang down the garden path.
“No. I am never going to change.”
After glaring for a moment he went on “You all love change and live by change; but I shall never change. It was by change you fell; it is by this madness of change you go on falling. You had your happy moment, when men were simple and sane and formal and as native to this earth as they can ever be. You lost it; and even when you get it back for a moment, you have not the sense to keep it. I shall never change.”
“I don’t know what he means,” said Archer, rather as if he had been speaking of an animal or at least an infant.
“I know what he means,” said Braintree grimly, “and it’s not true. Do you really believe yourself, Mr. Herne that all that mysticism is true? What do you mean exactly by saying that this old society of yours was sane?”
“I mean that the old society was truthful and that you are in a tangle of lies,” answered Herne. “I don’t mean that it was perfect or painless. I mean that it called pain and imperfection by their names. You talk about despots and vassals and all the rest; well, you also have coercion and inequality; but you dare not call anything by its own Christian name. You defend every single thing by saying it is something else. You have a King and then explain that he is not allowed to be a King. You have a House of Lords and say it is the same as a House of Commons. When you do want to flatter a workman or a peasant you say he is a true gentleman; which is like saying he is a veritable Viscount. When you want to flatter the gentleman you say he does not use his own title. You leave a millionaire his millions and then praise him because he is ‘simple,’ otherwise mean and not magnificent; as if there were any good in gold except to glitter! You excuse priests by saying they are not priestly and assure us eagerly that clergymen can play cricket. You have teachers who refuse doctrine, which only means teaching; and doctors of divinity disavowing anything divine. It is all false and cowardly and shamefully full of shame. Everything is prolonging its existence by denying that it exists.”
“What you say may be true of such things or some of them,” answered Braintree. “But I do not want to prolong their existence at all. And if it comes to cursing and prophesying, by God, you will see some of them dead before you die.”
“Perhaps,” said Herne looking at him with his large pale eyes, “you may see them die and then live; which is a very different thing from existing. I am not sure that the King may not be a King once more.”
The Syndicalist seemed to see something in the staring eyes of the librarian that changed and almost chilled his mood.
“Do you think this is an age,” he asked, “for anybody to play King Richard?”
“I think this is an age,” replied the other, “when somebody ought to play . . . Coeur-de-Lion.”
“Ah,” said Olive, as if she began to see something for the first time. “You mean we lack the only virtue of King Richard.”
“The only virtue of King Richard,” said Braintree, “was staying out of the country.”
“Perhaps,” she answered. “He and his virtue might come back.”
“When he comes back he will find the country a good deal changed,” said the Syndicalist grimly. “No serfs; no vassals; and even the labourers daring to look him in the face. He will find something has broken its chain; something has opened, expanded, been lifted up; something wild and terrible and gigantic that strikes terror even into the heart of a lion.”
“Something?” repeated Olive.
“The heart of a man,” he replied.
Olive stood looking in a sort of daze or dazzle from one to the other. For on one side stood all the things she had dreamed of, clothed in their right century. And on the other something more deeply thrilling, of which she had never dreamed. Her tangled emotions broke out of her with a rather curious cry.
“Oh I wish Monkey were back again!”
Braintree glanced sharply at her and asked rather gruffly: “Why?”
“Because you are all changing,” she said. “Because you are all talking as you did in the play. Because you are both of you fierce and splendid and magnificent and magnanimous and have neither of you a grain of common sense.”
“I didn’t know you specialised in having common sense,” said Braintree.
“I never had any,” she replied. “Rosamund always told me I hadn’t got any. But any woman would have more than you have.”
“Here comes the lady in question,” said Braintree rather gloomily. “I hope she will meet your requirements.”
“She will say what I say,” said Olive calmly. “The madness is infectious. The infection is spreading. None of you can get out . . . of my poor little play.”
And indeed when Rosamund Severne came sweeping across the lawn in her resolute way, like a wind, the wind struck something and turned to a storm. The storm raged for an hour or two and we need only record its end; which was that Rosamund did what was very rarely done by her or anyone else; what had not been done since Murrel had presented the petition for the admission of Braintree. She burst into her father’s study and faced her father.
Lord Seawood looked up from a pile of letters and said: “What is it?” His tone might have been called apologetic or even nervous; but it was of the sort that makes others feel nervous and apologise.
But Rosamund never felt nervous and did not think of apologising; or indeed even of explaining. She said explosively: “Things out there are getting perfectly awful. The librarian won’t take off his clothes.”
“Well, I should hope not,” said Lord Seawood, and waited patiently.
“I mean,” she added hastily, “I mean it’s getting past a joke. Don’t you understand? He’s still dressed in all his green.”
“I suppose, strictly speaking, our livery is blue,” said Lord Seawood thoughtfully. “That doesn’t matter much nowadays; but heraldry was always a hobby of mine. . . . Well, I don’t think it’s possible now to insist on the correct colours. And nobody ever sees much of the librarian. Libraries are not very popular resorts. And the fellow himself . . . very quiet fellow, if I remember right. Nobody likely to notice him.”