Outside in the street, however, there were a good many people who thought that even the usual hasty scratch on the ballot paper was almost as much of a waste of time as Mr. Herne’s elaborate ritual. It was the paradox of that particular General Election that it was a great crisis because another thing was much greater; and it was intensely exciting because people were excited about something else. It was rather like one of the elections that take place during a great war. Indeed it might be said that it took place during a revolution.
The Great Strike that gathered all the workers in the dye and colour making trades, with sympathetic strikes among various bodies connected with Coal-Tar and Coal, had its headquarters in Milldyke and its leader in John Braintree. But it was much more than a strike of the local and limited sort that its description might imply. It was not the sort of strike at which men of the more comfortable classes had grown accustomed to grumble; being used to their discomforts as to their comforts. It was something entirely new, at which such men, not unnaturally and perhaps not unreasonably, ejaculated sharp and even shrill protests.
At the very moment when Herne was medievally occupied in the monastic cell of the polling-station, Braintree was filling the market-place of Milldyke with his thunderous voice in the most sensational speech of his career. It was sensational in substance as well as in style. He no longer, as in the first stages of this history, demanded what he called Recognition. He demanded Control.
“Your masters tell you,” he said, “that you are greedy materialists grown accustomed to clamour for more wages. They are right. Your masters tell you that you lack ideals and do not understand ambition and the instinct to govern. They are right. They imply that you are slaves and beasts of burden, in so far as you would only eat up stores and escape responsibility. They are right. They are right so long as you are content to ask only for wages, only for food, only for well-paid service. But let us show our masters that we have profited by the moral lessons they are so good as to give us. Let us return to them penitent; let us tell them we mean to amend our faults of petty stipulation and merely materialistic demand. Let us tell them that we have an ambition; and it is to rule. That we have an ideal; and it is to rule equally. That we have a hunger and a high thirst for responsibility; for the glorious and joyous responsibility of ruling what they misrule, of managing what they have mismanaged, of sharing among ourselves as workers and comrades that direct and democratic government of our own industry which was hitherto served to keep a few parasites in luxury in their palaces and parks.”
After that speech at Milldyke all communications were cut and a chasm yawned between Braintree and the parks and palaces to which he referred. The demand that the manual workers should become the managers of the works consolidated against him, indeed, a large mass of people who did not by any means live in palaces or parks. It was so manifestly and madly revolutionary that hardly anyone did agree with it who was not already prepared to call himself a revolutionist. And real revolutionists are rare. Rosamund’s friend Harry Hanbury, a very kindly and reasonable squire, spoke for the rest. “Hang it all, I’m all for paying people good wages, as I try to pay my chauffeur and valet good wages. But Control means that the chauffeur can drive me to Margate when I want to go to Manchester. My valet brushes my clothes and has something to say about them. But Control means that I must wear yellow trousers and a pink waistcoat if he chooses to lay them out for me.”
The next week brought the news of two great elections: the one a defiant answer to the other. On the Tuesday the news was brought to Herne that Braintree had been elected by a huge and howling Labour majority.
And on the Thursday was received by that abstracted mind, blind with inner light, the shout and scurry and acclamation which announced that he himself had been chosen by the Orders and Electoral Colleges, as King-at-Arms over the whole world of the West Country. It was in a sort of waking dream that he was escorted to a high throne set upon that green plateau of Seawood Park. On one side of the new King stood Rosamund Severne, Dame of some new degree and holding the Shield of Honour, shaped like a heart and blazoned with the lion, which was to be given to the best knight who had achieved the boldest adventure. She looked very statuesque; and few could have guessed how energetically she flew round in preparing the ceremony; or how very like it was to her way of preparing the theatricals. On the left stood her friend, the young squire and explorer, whom she had once introduced to Braintree, looking very serious indeed; for he had passed the point of self-consciousness and felt his heraldic uniform as natural as that of the Scots Grey. He held what was called the Sword of St. George, with the cross-hilt upwards; for Michael had said, in one of his mystical fragments, “A man never deserves a sword until he can hold it by the blade. His hand may bleed; but it is then that he sees the Cross.” But Herne sat on his high throne above all the coloured crowd, and his eyes seemed to inhabit the horizons and the high places. So have many fanatics ridden high on clouds over scenes as preposterous; so Robespierre walked in his blue coat at the Feast of the Supreme Being. Lord Eden caught sight of those clear eyes, like still and shining pools, and muttered: “The man is mad. It is dangerous for unbalanced men when their dreams come true. But the madness of a man may be the sanity of a society.”
“Well!” cried Julian Archer, slapping his sword-hilt with that air of answering for everybody that was so hearty and refreshing. “It’s been a great day and the world will hear of it. The people round here will find we’ve really got to work. This is the sort of thing that will hunt out Braintree and all his rabble of ragamuffins and make them run like rats.”
Rosamund was still rather like a smiling statue; but Olive standing behind her had seemed as dark as her shadow. Now Olive suddenly spoke and her clear voice rang like steel.
“He is not a ragamuffin,” she said. “He is an engineer; and knows a lot more than you do. What are most of you, if it comes to that? An engineer is as good as a librarian. I should think.”
There was a deathly silence; and Archer, with a helpless gesture, looked upwards, as if the sky would crack at the blasphemy; but most of the ladies and gentlemen looked downwards, at their pointed medieval shoes; for they realised that it was worse than blasphemy; it was certainly, under the circumstances, exceedingly bad taste.
But though the groups had begun to break up and mingle, the King-at-Arms had not yet left his throne; as they were soon to find, in more ways than one. He took no more notice of the woman who had just insulted him than if she had not been there; but he suddenly bent his brows upon Julian Archer; and a sort of subconscious thrill told everybody that in one mind at least the royalty was a reality.
“Sir Julian,” said the King-at-Arms sternly, “I think you have read your books of venery very wrongly. You do not seem to know that we are back in braver and better days and have left behind the time when gentlemen could swagger about hunting vermin. Ours is the spirit of the ages when royal beasts could turn to bay and slay the hunters; the great boar and the noble stag. We are of the world that could respect its enemies; yes, even when they were beasts. I know John Braintree; and there never was a braver man walking this world. Shall we fight for our faith and sneer at him because he fights for his? Go and kill him if you dare; but if he should kill you, you will be as much honoured in your death as you are now dishonoured by your tongue.”