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.