“I am mad,” he said. “I love you.”
She was dumb. He caught both her hands and his arms thrilled up to the shoulders as with an electric shock.
“What am I doing and saying?” he cried harshly. “I–to you to whom so many men must have said it. What will you say?”
She remained leaning forward and looking steadily into his face.
“I say what I said,” she answered. “You are the only man.”
“Your eyes blind me,” he said.
They spoke no more; but the great land about them and above spoke for them as it rose in the mighty terraces towards the colossal corner-stones of the mountains; and the great wind of West England that rocked the tops of its royal trees; and all that vast valley of Avalon that has seen the muster of heroes and the meeting of immortal lovers, was full of a movement as of the trampling horses and the trumpets, when the kings go forth to battle and queens rule in their stead.
So they stood for a moment on the top of the world and in the highest place of our human fortune, almost at the moment when Olive and John Braintree in the dark and smoky town were taking their sad farewell. And no man could have guessed that the sad farewell was soon to be followed with fuller reconciliation and understanding; but that over the two coloured and shining figures, on the shoulder of the golden down, hung a dark cloud of sundering and division and doom.
CHAPTER XVI
THE JUDGMENT OF THE KING
Lord Seawood and Lord Eden were seated in their favourite summer-house on the lawn, the same into which the arrow had once entered like the first shaft of a new sunrise; and to judge by their faces they were doubtful whether the sun were not in eclipse. Lord Eden’s rigidity of expression might indeed have many meanings; but old Seawood was shaking his head in an openly disconsolate manner.
“If they had availed themselves of my intervention,” he said. “I could I think have made clear the impossibility of their position; a position quite unparalleled in the whole of my public life. The restoration of our fine old historical forms must have the profound sympathy of every cultivated man; but it is against all precedent that they should use these forms for the practical suppression of material menace. What would Peel have said, had it been proposed to use only the antiquated halberds of a few Beefeaters in the Tower instead of the excellent and effective Constabulary which he had the genius and imagination to conceive? What would Palmerston have said, had anyone suggested to him that the Mace lying on the table of Parliament could be used as a club with which to quell a riot in Parliament Square? Impossible as it is for us to project upon the future the actions of the mighty dead of the past, I conceive it as likely that he would have made it the subject of a jest. But men in the present generation are devoid of humour.”
“Our friend the King-at-Arms is devoid of humour all right,” drawled Eden. “I sometimes wonder whether he is not the happier for it.”
“There,” said the other nobleman with firmness. “I cannot agree. Our English humour, such as that to be found in the best pages of Punch is–.”
At this moment a footman appeared silently and abruptly in the entrance of the hut, murmured some ritual words and handed a note to his master. The reading of it changed his master’s dolorous expression to one of unaffected astonishment.
“God bless my soul,” said Lord Seawood; and remained gazing at the paper in his hand.
For upon that paper was scrawled in a large and bold hand a message destined in the next few days to change the whole face of England; as nothing for centuries had ever been changed by a battle upon English soil.
“Either our young friend is really suffering from delusions,” he said at last, “or else–”
“Or else,” said Lord Eden gazing at the roof of the summer-house, “he has surrounded and taken the town of Milldyke, captured the Bolshevist headquarters and is bringing the leaders here to the trial.”
“This is most remarkable,” said the other nobleman. “Were you informed of this before?”
“I was not informed of it at all,” answered Eden, “but in any case I thought it highly probable.”
“Curious,” repeated Seawood, “and I thought it so highly improbable; so highly improbable as to merge itself in what we call the impossible. That a mere stage army of that description–why I thought all educated and enlightened people were aware that such weapons are quite obsolete.”
“That,” answered Eden, “is because educated and enlightened people never think. Your enlightened man is always taking away the number he first thought of. It seems to be a sign of education first to take a thing for granted and then to forget to see if it is still there. Weapons are a very good working example. The man says he won’t go on wearing a sword because it is no longer any good against a gun. Then he throws away all the guns as relics of barbarism; and then he is surprised when a barbarian sticks him through with a sword. You say that pikes and halberds are not weapons against modern conditions. I say pikes are excellent weapons against no pikes. You say it is all antiquated medieval armament. But I put my money on men who make medieval armament against men who only disapprove of modern armament. And what have any of these political parties ever done about armament except profess to disapprove of it? They renounce it and neglect it and never think of the part it played in political history; and yet they go about with a vague security as if they were girt about with invisible guns that would go off at the first hint of danger. They’re doing what they always do; mixing up their Utopia that never comes with their old Victorian security that’s already gone. I for one am not at all surprised that a pack of pantomime halberdiers can poke them off the stage. I’ve always thought a coup d’etat could be effected with very small forces against people who won’t learn to use the force they’ve got. But I never had the moral courage to do it myself; it needs somebody very different from our sort.”
“Perhaps,” remarked the other aristocrat, “it was due to our being, to quite a very recent political formula, too proud to fight.”
“Yes,” replied the old statesman. “It is the humble who fight.”
“I am not sure that I quite follow your meaning,” said Lord Seawood.
“I mean I am too wicked to fight,” said Lord Eden. “It is the innocent who kill and burn and break the peace. It is children who rush and smash and knock each other about and of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
It is not certain that even then his venerable Victorian companion was wholly and lucidly of one mind with him; but there was no more to be got out of him on the subject; and he remained with a face of flint looking up the long path towards the gates of the park. And indeed that road and that entrance were already shaken with the tumult and triumph of which he spoke; and the songs of young men who come back from battle.
“I apologise to Herne,” said Julian Archer with hearty generosity. “He is a strong man. I’ve always said that what we wanted to see was a Strong Man in England.”
“I once saw a Strong Man at Olympia,” said Murrel reminiscently. “I believe people often apologised to him.”
“You know what I mean,” answered the other good-humouredly. “A statesman. A man who knows his own mind.”
“Well, I suppose a madman knows his own mind,” answered Murrel. “I rather fancy a statesman ought to know a little about other people’s minds.”
“My dear Monkey, what’s the matter with you,” demanded Archer. “You seem to be quite sulky when everybody else is pleased.”
“It’s not so offensive as being pleased when everybody else is sulky,” answered Murrel. “But if you mean am I satisfied, I will admit your penetration in perceiving that I’m not. You said just now that we wanted a strong man in England. Now I should say that the one place where we never have wanted a strong man is England. I can only remember one person who went into the profession, poor old Cromwell; and the consequence was that we dug him up to hang him after he was dead and went mad with joy for a month because the throne was going back to a weak man– or one we thought was a weak man. These high-handed ways don’t suit us a bit, either revolutionary or reactionary. The French and the Italians have frontiers and they all feel like soldiers. So the word of command doesn’t seem humiliating to them; the man is only a man but he commands because he is the commander. But we are not democratic enough to have a dictator. Our people like to be ruled by gentlemen, in a general sort of way. But nobody could stand being ruled by one gentleman. The idea is too horrible.”