Gilbert Chesterton - The Return of Don Quixote

All around there was a hubbub now altogether broken up and uncontrolled; but it was still not a concerted cry but a noise as of everybody talking at once; and high above it all the hard voice of the Arbiter could still be heard.

“The only two men in this section of the county who can claim the nobility, to which appeal has been made, are a man now driving an omnibus between here and the town of Milldyke and a small green-grocer in the same town. No other person can call himself Armiger Generosus except William Pond and George Carter.”

“O Lor lumme, Old George!” cried Murrel, startled into throwing back his head with a shout of laughter. The laughter was infectious; it broke the strain and received them all into a roaring gulf; the true refuge of the English. Even Braintree, suddenly remembering the solid smile of Old George in the Green Dragon, could not control his amusement.

But, as Lord Seawood had accurately remarked, the Arbiter of the Court of Arbitrament was deficient in a sense of humour. He had never properly studied the back volumes of Punch.

“I do not know,” he said, “why this man’s lineage should be ridiculous. He has not, so far as I know, done anything to stain his coat of arms. He has not plotted with thieves and forestallers to ruin honest men. He has not taken money at usury and laid field to field by chicane, served the ruling families like a dog and then fed on the dying families like a vulture. But you–you who come here to grind the faces of the poor with your pomposities of property and gentility, and your grand final flourish of chivalry–what about you? You sit in another man’s house; you bear another man’s name; the blazon of another is on your shield; the crest of another is on your gate-posts; your whole story is the story of new men in old clothes, and you come here to me to plead against justice in the name of your noble ancestry.”

The laughter had died down but the noise was even louder; there was now no disguise or hesitation about its nature; all the broken cries had come together; there was a new noise of the mob when it changes to the pack in cry. Archer and Hanbury and ten or twelve other men were standing up and shouting; and yet high above all the other noises the one voice still managed to soar unsilenced; the voice of the fanatic on the judgment seat.

“Let it be enrolled therefore for the third judgment and the answer to the third plea. These three men have claimed the mastery of a craft and the obedience of all their workmen; and their cause is judged. They make the claim of mastery and they are not masters. They make the claim of property and they are not the proprietors. They make the claim of nobility and they are not nobles. The three pleas are disallowed.”

“Well,” gasped Archer, “and how long is this to be allowed.”

The noise had somewhat subsided as in weariness; and each man looked at the other as if really wondering what would come next.

Lord Eden had risen slowly and lazily to his feet, with his hands thrust in his trousers’ pockets.

“Mention has been made,” he said, “of somebody being charged with insanity. I am sorry that a painful scene of the sort should have occurred in this place; but isn’t it time some humane person interfered?”

“Somebody send for a doctor,” cried Archer in a crowing and excited voice.

“You appointed him yourself, Eden,” said Murrel, looking sharply over his shoulder.

“We all make mistakes,” said Eden soberly. “I’ll never deny that the lunatic has the laugh of me. But it’s a rather unpleasant scene for the ladies.”

“Yes,” said Braintree. “The ladies have an opportunity of admiring the grand finale of all your loyalty and your vows.”

“If,” said the Arbiter calmly, “it be an end of your loyalty to me, it is not an end of my loyalty to you; or to the law that I have sworn to expound. It is nothing for me to stand down from this seat; but it is everything to speak the truth while I stand here; and it is less than nothing whether you hate the truth or no.”

“You were always a play-actor,” called out Julian Archer angrily.

A strange smile passed over the pale face of the judge.

“There,” he said, “you are singularly wrong. I was not always a play-actor; I was a very humble and humdrum person until you wanted me and made me a play-actor. But I found the play you acted was something much more real than the life you led. The rhymes we spoke in mummery on that lawn were so much more like life than any life that you were living then. And how very like what we are living now.” His voice did not change but seemed to roll on more rapidly, as if verse were more natural than prose.

He stood down suddenly from the dais; and seemed to look taller for the fall.

“If I cease to be king or judge,” he cried, “I shall still be a knight; though it be, as in the play, a knight-errant. But you will all be play-actors. Rogues and vagabonds, where did you steal your spurs?”

A spasm of something indescribable, like a twitch of involuntary humiliation, crossed the crabbed face of old Eden and he said testily, “I wish this scene would end.”

It could only have one ending. Braintree was glowing with a dark exultation; but the men about him understood almost as little of the decision in their favour as the men in front; and in any case the latter were long past letting them intervene. And all that chivalric company answered with murmurs or sombre silence the appeal of their late leader for support. In answer to that call only two of them moved. From the outer skirts of the crowd Olive Ashley came slowly forward with the movement of a princess and, casting one darkly radiant look at the leader of the labourers, took her station by the judgment-seat. She did not dare to look at the white and stony face of the woman who was her friend. A moment after Douglas Murrel lounged to his feet with a singular grimace and went to stand on the opposite side of the Arbiter. They seemed like strange repetitions, and even parodies, of the lady and the squire who had held the shield and sword on either side of him, on the day when he was crowned.

Standing before his judgment-seat, the judge made one last ritual gesture like the rending of the robes of old. He rent from him the long dark robe of black and purple which was his judicial vestment, and letting it fall stood up in the complete suit of close fitting green which he had always worn since the dramatic day after the drama.

“I will go forth as a real outlaw,” he said, “and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime.”

He turned his back on them and for a moment his wild glance seemed to stray hither and thither round the empty throne.

“Have you lost anything?” asked Murrel.

“I have lost everything,” replied Herne and Murrel looked for a moment into his ghastly eyes.

Then he saw what he was seeking and picked up the great spear that had gone with his forester’s garb and strode away towards the gateways of the park.

Murrel remained staring after him for a moment and then, as if propelled by a new impulse, ran after him down the path, hailing him by name. The man in green turned and looked at him with a pale and patient face.

“I say,” said Murrel, “may I come with you?”

“Why should you come with me?” asked Herne, not rudely but rather as if he were addressing a stranger.