“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.”
“Oh,” said Rosamund, with almost ominous quiet and restraint. “You think nobody will ever notice him?”
“Shouldn’t think so,” said Lord Seawood. “I never noticed him myself.”
If Lord Seawood has hitherto remained behind the scenes of the drama of “Blondel the Troubadour,” if he has remained behind the curtains and tapestries of Seawood Abbey, it is only because he did so remain during all such superficial social proceedings, and was, in the true sense of the word, conspicuous by his absence. This fact arose from many causes but chiefly from two: first that he had the misfortune to be an invalid and second that he had the misfortune to be a statesman. He was one of those who withdraw into a narrower and narrower world on the pretence of acting in a wider and wider sphere. He lived in a small world out of a love of large questions. He had, as he had suggested, a sort of hobby of heraldry and the tracing out of the history of his own and other noble families, but he had felt all the more at ease because there were only two or three other experts in England who troubled about such things at all. And as he dealt with heraldry, so he dealt with society; with politics and many other things. He never talked to any people except experts; that is, in trusting the expert, he always trusted the exception. Exceptional people gave him information of exceptional value; but he never knew what was going on in his own house. Now and then he was conscious that the details of his domestic arrangements were not what they had always been; and this was about the extent of his consciousness of the whole business of the Troubadour play and its strange sequel. But if he had noticed the librarian on the top of the ladder, it is doubtful whether he would have asked him why he was there. It is more probable he would have opened communications with a scientific specialist on the use of ladders; but only after he was honestly convinced that he had the very best specialist of the time. He would defend the aristocratic principle by an appeal to the Greek derivation, saying that he insisted on having the best of everything. And, to do him justice, though he was too much of an invalid and perhaps too much of a faddist to drink or smoke, he never had any wine or cigars in his house except the very best. He was, in his personal capacity, a bony and brittle little man, with a high-bridged nose and angles all over him, and a capacity for staring at people suddenly with a look of startled attention, which had an almost stunning effect on those who made the mistake of supposing that he was merely a fool. The whole of his somewhat secretive personality, with its concentration and its bewilderment, its attention and its inattention, must be understood with a sympathy bordering upon subtlety, before the conditions of this drama can be conceived. Probably he was the only man in the world who could have had these things happening in his own house without realizing how far they had gone.