The high debate was over, and Lord Runnymede issued from the House,
proud in his melancholy, like a garrison withdrawing from a fortress
with colours flying and all the honours of war. He had sent a messenger
(he called him an "orderly") for his carriage. He might have telephoned,
but he disliked the Board-School voice that said "Number, please!" and
he still more disliked the idea of a coachman speaking down a tube (as
he imagined it) into his ear. Not that he was opposed to inventions, or
the advance of science as such. He recognised the necessity of progress,
and had not openly reproached his own sister when she instituted a motor
in place of her carriage. But for himself the two dark bays were
waiting--heads erect, feet firmly planted on the solid earth. For he
loved horses, and the Runnymede stables maintained the blood of King
Charles's importations from Arabian chivalry. Besides, what manners,
what sense, could be expected of a chauffeur, occupied with oily wheels
and engines, instead of living things and corn?
Some of the small crowd standing about the gate recognised him as he
came out, and one called his name and said "What ho!" For his appearance
was fairly well known through political caricatures, which usually
represented him in plate-armour, holding a spear, and wearing a
coat-of-arms. He had once instructed his secretary to write privately to
an editor pointing out that the caricaturist had committed a gross error
in heraldry; but in his heart he rather enjoyed the pictures, and it was
the duty of one of his maids to stick them into a scrap-book, inscribed
with the proper dates, for the instruction and entertainment of his
descendants. In fact, he had lately been found showing the book to a boy
of three, who picked out his figure by its long nose, and said "Granpa!"
with unerring decision.
But what was the good of son or grandchild now? He had nothing to hand
down to them but the barren title, the old estate, and wealth safely
invested in urban land and financial enterprises which his stockbroker
recommended. Titles, estates, and wealth were but shadows without the
vitalising breath of power. Cotton-spinners, boot-finishers, purveyors
of food at popular prices could now possess such things, and they
appeared to enjoy them. There were people, he believed, satisfied with
comfort, amusements, rounds of visits, social ambitions, and domestic or
luxurious joys. But for a Runnymede thus to decline would be worse than
extinction.
For six centuries the Runnymedes had served their country. Edward I had
summoned one of them to his "model Parliament," and the present lord
could still spell out a word or two of the ancient writ that hung framed
in the hall at Stennynge, with the royal seal attached. Two of his
ancestors had died by public violence (one killed in battle, fighting
for the Yorkists, who Lord Runnymede inclined to think represented the
Legitimist side; the other executed under Elizabeth, apparently by
mistake), and regretting there were not more, he had searched the
records of the Civil Wars and the 'Forty-five in vain. But never had a
Runnymede failed in Parliament, or the Council of the King, as he
preferred to call it; and their name had frequently appeared among the
holders of subordinate but dignified offices, such as the Mastership of
the Buckhounds, to which special knowledge gave an honourable claim.
Trained from his first pony in political tradition, and encouraged by
every gamekeeper to follow the footsteps of his ancestors, Lord
Runnymede had inevitably taken "Noblesse oblige" as his private motto.
But of what service was nobility if its obligations were abolished? He
sometimes pictured with a shudder the fate of the surviving French
nobility--retaining their titles by courtesy, and compelled to fritter
away their lives upon châteaux, travelling, aeroplanes, or amatory
intrigues, instead of directing their wisdom and influence to the right
government of the State. The guillotine was better. He could not imagine
his descendants without a House of Lords to sit in. Without the Lords,
he was indeed the last of the Runnymedes, and upon the scaffold he might
at least die worthy of his name.
Compromise he despised as the artifice of lawyers and upstart
politicians. It had been a dagger in his heart to hear his leader
speaking of some readjustment between the two Houses as inevitable. He
denied the necessity, unless the readjustment augmented the power of the
Lords. Planting himself on Edward I's statute, he had vehemently
maintained the right of the Lords to control finance, though he was
willing to allow the commercial gentlemen in the Commons the privilege
of working out the figures of national income and expenditure. He now
regarded the threatened creation of Peers as a gross insult to public
decency. Properly speaking, he protested, Peers cannot be created. You
might as well put terriers into kennels and call them foxhounds. Now and
then a distinguished soldier or even a statesman could be ennobled
without much harm; and he supposed there was something to be said for a
learned man, and a writer or two, though he preferred them to be
childless. He had once published a book himself, with the Runnymede arms
on the cover. But the thought of making Lords by batches vulgarised the
King's majesty, and reversed the order of nature. "Are we worse than
Chinamen," he asked, "that we seek to confer nobility on fellows sprung
from unknown forefathers?" The Archbishop of Canterbury had appealed to
the House to approach the question with mutual consideration and
respect, high public spirit and common sense. But on such a question
consideration was dangerous, and common sense fatal. He wished the
Bishops had stuck to their own Convocation from Plantagenet times,
instead of intruding their inharmonious white sleeves where they were
not wanted. He was sorry he had subscribed so handsomely to the
restoration of Stennynge Church. He ought to have ear-marked his
contribution for the Runnymede aisle.
Worse still, the Archbishop had mentioned "the average voter in tramcar
or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of
disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working classes
as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and
unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they
always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in
passing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he
was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers alike. In one
family he had put out a puppy at walk; in another he had let off a man
who had poached a pheasant when his wife was ill; in a third he had
stood godfather to the baby when the father was killed falling from a
stack. He felt a kind of warmth towards the poor whenever he saw them
upon his own estate.
But of the average voter, such as the Archbishop described, he could not
think without pain and apprehension. Coming to London from any part of
the country, he always closed his eyes as the train entered the suburbs.
Those long rows of monotonous little houses--so decent, so uneventful,
so temporary--oppressed him like a physical disease. If he contemplated
them, they induced violent dyspepsia, such as he had once incurred by
visiting the Crystal Palace. The consciousness that they were there,
even as he passed through tunnels, lowered his vitality until he reached
his town house or club in the centre of things. Not even the
considerable income he derived from land on the outskirts of a large
manufacturing town consoled him for the horror of the town's extension.
In those uniform houses--in their railings, their Venetian blinds,
indiarubber plants, and stained-glass panels to the doors--he beheld the
coming degradation of his country. He saw them, like great armies of
white or red ants, creeping over the land, devouring all that was
beautiful in it, or ancient, or redolent of grandeur. Bit by bit, street
by street, the ignoble, the tidy, the pettiness of the parlour, was
gaining upon splendour and renown, and the anticipation of the change
cast a foreboding sadness over the beauty of his own ancestral home. It
tainted even his unuttered pride in his son, who had been at Eton
without expulsion, and served two years in the Foot Guards without
discredit. And now, there was his grandson.
What future could be theirs? Should a Runnymede sit in a House shorn of
its prerogatives, bound to impotence, reduced to a mere echo of popular
caprice, with hardly the delaying power of a chaperon at a ball? Or
should a son of his trot round from door to door, seeking the suffrages
of those distressing suburbs at the polls--a son whose ancestry had
known the favour of princes, and withstood foes and traitors upon the
field? Lord Runnymede himself had never thought of election, even before
the House of Lords received him. Yet if you wanted representatives, who
was more truly representative of his own estates and the interests of
every soul upon it--interests identical with his own? Who was more fit
to control the country than a man who had breathed the atmosphere of
State from childhood, and learnt history from the breast-plates, the
swords, the cloaks, the wigs, and the side-whisker portraits of men
whose very blood beat in his heart?
As the carriage went down Piccadilly, he was overwhelmed with the
darkness of the prospect. He saw an ancient country staggering from side
to side on its road to ruin, while the hands which had directed and
steadied it for centuries lay bound or idle. He saw coverts and meadows
and cornfields eaten away by desirable residences, angular garden
cities, and Socialist communities. He saw his own Stennynge advertised
for plots, and its relics catalogued for a museum, while factories
spouted smoke from its lawns and shrubberies, and if a Runnymede
survived, he lived in a rough-cast villa, like an eagle in a cage at
the Zoo. The soul of all his ancestors rose within him. Never should it
happen while he had a sword to draw. At least he could display the
courage of the fine old stock. If he submitted to the degradation, he
would feel himself a coward, unfit for the position he and his fathers
had occupied. Let the enemy do their worst; they should find him steady
at his post. Before him lay one solemn duty still to be performed for
God and country. The spirit of noble sacrifice was not dead. The
populace should see how an aristocrat still could die. Come what might,
he would vote against the third reading of the Bill!
Dismounting from his carriage, he approached the entrance-porch of his
house with so proud and resolute a bearing that three hatless
working-girls passing by, in white frocks, with arms interlaced, all
cried out "Percy!" as their ironic manner is.