Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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English Edition · Branch 36 of 254
Chapter I · Ralph Falcon Comes to Quivern Court · pp. 3–17
The Keepers of the People
p. 10“Through the wood” said Ralph Falcon.
“We must send to the station for your things, or you won’t have time to dress comfortably for dinner. It’s a long way,” said Lord Lisdor.
“My baggage and my servants are at the village inn,” said Ralph Falcon.
“We will send at once. You must make the Court your headquarters while you are in England,” said Lord Lisdor.
“Thank you,” said Ralph Falcon.
Lord Lisdor called to one of the boys who had been fielding their tennis-balls, and bade him tell a servant to come at once.
“My servants are mutes,” said Ralph Falcon; “and if they were not, they would not understand. But if he shows them this ring, they will follow him.”
He drew a ring, in which was set a great engraved sapphire, from his finger, and was handing it to the boy.
“No,” said Lord Lisdor; “if it’s like that, I’ll send Jackson. Tell him to come to me, Tommy.”
They walked slowly to the river terrace, Althea with her arm through Lord Lisdor’s, Lady Lisdor behind with the Russian, who was still complaining of his ill-fortune at tennis. “I suppose,” said Althea in a low voice to Lord Lisdor, “he is always put out like this by trifles because he has too much of his own way in his own country.”
“I have given him a lesson or two in doing without it, don’t you know?” said Lord Lisdor, with a grin.
They drank their tea on the river terrace; and Ralph Falcon sat among them, his face set in a strange, unchanging sternness. He was plainly watching them; but nothing in his expression told them how they affected him. He was never the first to speak; and answered the questions that one or another asked him from time to time, with a faint haughtiness in his tone, almost as if a question to him were a breach of manners. They were only assured that they were as strange to him as he to them, and that he was trying to understand them, or grow used to them.
The men had lighted their cigarettes and Prince Melinsky had at last ceased his complaining, when Ralph Falcon said to Lord Lisdor, “I have a letter from my father to yours; and as I gather that he is dead, I will deliver it to you.”
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter I · Ralph Falcon Comes to Quivern Court · Book I, Chapter I · Ralph Falcon Comes to Quivern Court · pp. 3–17
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.