“Well,” replied Braintree, with a short laugh, “I suppose I mean the sort of clothes I wear; though I’ve never been considered exactly a leader of fashion.” He smiled a moment in his grim fashion and added, “Nobody here will insist on your wearing a red tie.”
Herne suddenly bent his brows upon the other man with a fixed and concentrated but rather puzzling expression and then said, in a soft voice: “And you think yourself revolutionary because you wear a red tie?”
“I have given other indications,” answered Braintree, “but the tie has certainly become rather a symbol of them. I assure you some people whom I admire very much regarded it rather as a scarf dipped in gore. In fact, if you go back to the beginning, I think that was the reason why I wore it.”
“I dare say,” said the librarian thoughtfully, “that was why you wore a red tie. But I want to know why you wore a tie. I want to know why anybody, of all the sacred race of man, ever wore a tie.”
Braintree, who was always sincere, was suddenly silent and the other man went on, still gazing at him earnestly, as if he were a specimen or a stranger from a foreign clime: “What do you do?” he said in the same soft accent. “You get up; you wash. . .”
“So far,” said Braintree, “I will confess to conventionality.”
“You put on a shirt. Then you take a separate strip of some linen or something and hook it round your neck with a complicated set of knobs or hooks. Then, not content with that, you take another and longer strip of some sort of cloth or something, of some particular colour that you fancy. You wreathe that strip round the other strip in most complicated convolutions of a particular kind of knot. You do this every morning; you do it all your life; you never think of doing anything else; you never are for one moment moved to cry aloud on God and rend your garments, like the prophets of old. You do precisely this or pretty much like it, because a vast number of other people are so mysteriously employed at the same hour of the day; you never think it too much trouble; you never complain because it is always the same. And then you call yourself a revolutionist– and boast because your tie is red!”
“There is something in what you say,” said Braintree, “but am I to understand that this is your reason for putting off the evil hour when you must abandon your fantastic attire?”
“Why do you call my attire fantastic?” asked Herne. “It’s very much simpler than yours. It just goes over your head and there you are. Besides, it has all sorts of sensible elements you don’t discover till you’ve worn it for a day or so. For instance,” he looked up at the sky with a sort of frown, “it may be going to rain or something; it may turn very cold or the wind be very strong. What will you all do then? You will make a bolt for the house and come back with a paraphernalia of things for the lady; perhaps a huge horrible umbrella that will force you to walk about like a Chinese Emperor under a canopy; perhaps a lot of wraps and waterproofs and things. But nine times out of ten a man only wants something to pull over his head in this climate; he simply does this,” and he plucked forward the hood that hung between his shoulders, “and for the rest of the time he can belong to the Hatless Brigade. . . . Do you know,” he added abruptly and in a lowered voice, “there’s something very satisfying about wearing a hood . . . something symbolical; I don’t wonder they corrupted the name of the great medieval hero into Robin Hood.”
Olive Ashley had been looking away across the undulating slopes of the valley, to where they vanished into a shining haze of evening, as if she were somewhat distrait and detached from the conversation, but she looked round, as if at the sound of a word which could penetrate her dreams.