Unknown (123 page)

c He never got back half what he spent on the Pageant," said Cordelia.

At the word Pageant, Mr. Evans gave an involuntary shiver. He thought to himself: “With Cordy as my Grail Messenger, I'm on a better path now!”

“Miss Crummie told me 'erself,” protested Red, “that 'twere only the two and a 'arf hinterest 'ee got from the bank, 'ee spent on that silliness!”

“That is really true, Miss Cor—I mean Mrs. Evans,” murmured Dave, staring at her with puzzled wonder. (Why have women, he thought, so much stronger possessive instincts than men?) “And everybody knows,” he went on, fixing his blue eyes steadily upon her, “that he's always regarded Canon Crow's money as a trust for the common good.”

“Damn the common good!” cried Cordelia impatiently, “I don't see what you people have got to do with our money! The Rector of Northwold left it to Father without the least restriction. He left it to him because he was his best friend. All his own family had deserted him. Father made those last ten years of his life the happiest he ever had.”

“Are you really going to Mark Court today?” enquired Mr. Evans. “I've never seen Lord P. Does he appreciate that amazing old house of his?”

“What we came for officially, Evans,” said Paul Trent, thinking to himself, I'll make this commune the first real anarchist experiment that's ever been made; and if this moralizing ass Spear is as stupid with men as he seems to be with women, I'll not have much difficulty with himl—“was to tell you that if Lord P. does sign over to us the leases of his property, your shop, together with nearly all the shops in High Street, will have to deal with us and do your business co-operatively in future. This will mean,” he went on hurriedly, noticing an impatient movement from Cordelia, “that Glastonbury tradesmen will pool their profits. Not all their profits, of course,” here he gave a sidelong, cat-like glance at Dave, “for the whole idea will be to have as much complete personal liberty as possible; but enough to enable the commune to deal as a unit with the outside world.”

Mr. Evans9 attention had been wandering for some while and his face had grown animated with a child-like excitement.

“Glastonbury,” he now cried, rising to his feet and beginning to walk up and down the little parlour with long strides, "Glastonbury will be like she was before that Tudor Devil, and all Welshmen know what the Tudors were, ruined her independence! Glastonbury will be a living Entity again. She will draw a magnetic life from her Three Hills strong enough to attract all the world to her side. She will take her place------r' he paused

and stared gloweringly at Red who was smoking his pipe in the purple chair with a wry, malicious smile. “This pooling of profits is nothing,” he went on with a wave of his hand. “We must all earn our living, of course; but that's not it. We must free ourselves from Teutonic vandals like this Lord P., of course; but that's not it. We must employ our workers, of course, better than Philip Crow does; but that's not it. The great thing is to revive the old life of Glastonbury Herself—the great thing is to revive the old faith in Glastonbury Herself as an^Urbs Beata to which all the ... all those who are ... all those who have been ... all those, I mean, who've put themselves outside the pale may be . . . may be . . . purged in their minds!”

His voice had risen so vehemently that when he suddenly stopped and plumped down on one of Number Two's shakiest chairs so that its gilded back cracked, everyone stared at him in embarrassment.

There was a nervous silence in the room. Dave thought to Himself: “It's the capitalistic system that breeds these eccentrics. When all able-bodied men in Glastonbury work in our municipal dye works no one will have time to think whether they've purged their minds or not! These nervous maniacs are the result of parasitism. We shall see to it that this fellow works with his ihands till he's too tired to think about his manias!”

Red Robinson looked round for something to spit into, but seeing nothing except the fireplace, which was too far away, he swallowed his saliva with a gulp and crossed his legs in the purple chair.

“The pint, Mr. Heavens,” he remarked grimly, “hain't whether Glastonbury waters can cure the pox, but whether hus working chaps can get 'old of the bewger's factories.”

“Father tells me you're an anarchist, Mr. Trent,” said Cordelia, attacking with feminine penetration the weak spot in this ambiguous conspiracy.

The old, weary film of cultivated patience descended upon Dave's blue eyes.

Red Robinson struggled to his feet, approached the small coal fire—the parlour of Number Five, Old Wells Road, was decidedly chilly—spat angrily into it and came back to his chair.

“ 5Ee doesn't know nothin5 of hanarchy 'cept the nime,” he jerked out, “nor nobody helse neither! 'Tis a bleedin' fancy of such as 'as never done a stroke of bleedin' work in their bleedin' lives!”

“Mr. Trent's our lawyer, Red,” said Dave quietly. “If he's clever enough to make Lord P. sell those leases, we at least must compromise a little when it comes to our commune.”

But Paul Trent had turned to Cordelia and was waiting for an opportunity to speak.

“Real anarchy,” he began, in the most caressing and beguiling voice, as if he had been a young Bagdad silk merchant displaying his wares in a luxurious harem, "has never yet been put into practice. Mr. Robinson thinks it a mere fairy-tale, but if your town council leases the shops in High Street and takes over the dye works and gives me a chance to make the few laws which------»

“Laws?” cried Red derisively, “ 'Ee's been sighing that we'll all hen joy ourselves and do just what we like; and now 'ee's talking about laws!”

Cordelia, who had begun to gloat over the effect of her apple of discord, surveyed with astonishment the movement of self-control with which the man from the Scilly Isles patted Red's shoulder and joined in the laugh against himself.

“If he can do that” she thought. tfche*ll be a match for Lord P. and reduce old Beere to nothing."

“I cannot . , . think,” said Mr. Evans gravely, speaking slowly and emphatically and evidently weighing his words, “that an anarchist commune in Glastonburv is a . . . practical possibility.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Evans,” said Paul Trent kibut perhaps you spoke just then . . . without . . . altogether . . . realising . . . how dangerous it is to . . . to clash with a man from the Scillies."

Mr. Evans' corrugated countenance broke into a deeply indented smile and he rose up from his creaking chair and crossed the room and shook hands vigorously with the anarchist.

“So you read the authors too?” he cried. “I never knew it! I never knew it! Think of that! And I never knew it!”

When Mr. Evans spoke of “the authors” he always meant one set of authors, those, namely, that dealt with Cymric mythology and Cymric superstition. He dropped the young lawyer's hand now and turned to his wife.

“Cordelia,” he said, “you may mark my words that Lord P. will sell them his land! Mr. Trent reads the authors. Mr. Trent knows that it was in the Scillies that the oldest of the gods— Cronos himself—was kept in prison! Mr. Trent knows that since that day it's dangerous to interfere with a man from the Scillies who's set his heart on anything.”

“ 'Ee don't believe one word, Mister, 'ee don't,” put in Red, “of they tiles and fibles what yer pins yer bleedin' fithe on! 'Ee thinks they be all my eye!”

Red looked maliciously at Mr. Evans. His reference was obviously to Paul Trent, who once more astonished Cordelia by his self-control.

“Well!” he said, “if our host can't believe my philosophy, and I can't follow his poetry, we can agree at any rate in enjoying your humour, Mr. Robinson!”

“I don't know whether you realise, Mrs. Evans,” said Dave Spear, “that your father has decided to put off the opening of his Chalice Hill arch until the end of January; when we hope to have a ceremonious proclamation of the Glastonbury commune.”

But in his heart, as he spoke, Dave thought to himself: “Since the only aspect of this affair of the least historic importance will be its move towards England becoming communist, I must see to it that the Gazette says nothing of Trent's absurd anarchism.” He sighed heavily. It would have been far easier for him to drill and march and keep step and practise rifle-shooting than to do all this plotting! But the cause demanded it. His dislike of it was part of that bourgeois mentality in him which must be overcome.

“You see, Mrs. Evans,” broke in Paul Trent in a soft, caressing voice, “this commune of ours will be a very harmless adventure. We have no intention of bringing the government down on us; and the fact that your father will naturally be the leading spirit in it all will keep politics in the background. His interest in it is entirely . . . religious ... if I can use the word! Our friend Spear, here, thinks of it as an advertisement for communism. I am even more modest. I regard it as a quiet little experiment in philosophical anarchy. Mr. Robinson, whose influence with the labouring element in our town is so great, is less doctrinaire in his notions. He will be content if------”

“If it makes that bewger Crow sit up and take notice! I 'ate the bloke's bleedin' phyz!”

Red added this last remark almost pensively, puffing out such a quantity of smoke that what Cordelia beheld in her purple chair was an artisan's torso, with a head covered in a cloud.

“It is true as he says,” remarked Spear—and it was noticeable that all three conspirators, Dave-Brutus, Trent-Cassius and Robinson-Casca, addressed their remarks to Mr. Geard's daughter rather than to her husband—“our commune will be a very tentative movement and with many facets. I wish,” here he gave another of his weary sighs, and his blue eyes took on that hopeless film of disillusionment which had such a curious pathos of its own—“I wish your father wasn't quite so absorbed in his religious ideas. He would be such a power, if only------”

Cordelia pulled down her muddy skirt hem over her ungainly ankles and let her eyes embrace all the four men in one sweeping and rather contemptuous glance. •

“Why don't you make him dismiss that man John Grow?*' she threw out harshly. ”It's that idiot who urges him on. Father's just putty in his hands. And he doesn't believe in anything himself He plays with us all. I know him, through and through!"

The founders of the Glastonbury commune surveyed their hostess much as a board of directors might have surveyed their office-stenographer if she had suddenly told them that their window-cleaner was the real danger to the firm.

But Mr. Evans, who had returned quietly to his antique chair after his discovery that the lawyer from the Scillies read “the authors,” broke in at this point.

“My wife has got fond of John,” he said gravely. “And so she always punishes him and holds him up to scorn.”

“Owen!” Cordelia's astonishment at this unexpected attack was so great that her big mouth became as round as the letter 0 in the “Ora pro nobis” of a missal.

“ 'Tis Miss Crummie—not Miss Cordy—what's got fond of Crow's cousin!” interjected Red. "She 'as divided 'er 'eart between Crow's cousin and young Mr. Dekker. Hain't I right, Mrs. Heavens? 'Tis 'er and not you what 'ave got soft on Crow's

O 59

cousin i

The insanity of Red's obsession against Philip was so extreme that it extended itself to every member of Philip's family. To Red's mind, Miss Crow of Benedict Street as well as Mr. and Mrs. Crow of Northload Street and even Persephone Spear, at present domiciled at Dickery Cantle's, had no individuality of their own. They were the bewger's cousins; and that fact damned them.

“What's your opinion, Evans,” said Dave Spear, anxious to turn the conversation away from these dangerous personalities, “as to what form our commune should take, if we really do get it started in January?”

“ 'Twas yer hone Missus, weren't it,” interrupted the incorrigible cockney, addressing Dave, “what first thought of upsetting the bewger by this 'ere commoon?”

Mr. Evans rubbed the side of his great hooked nose with his left thumb. Everybody in the room except Red, who now, as he reverted to his pipe, found his thoughts leaving the Crow family and summoning up the more soothing image of Sally Jones, fixed their eyes upon the Welshman.

The little parlour had become as stuffy as it was chilly. The gusty wind, beginning to shake the not very solid architecture of Five, Old Wells Road, seemed to join with the bizarre furniture of that small room in calling upon Merlin's biographer to utter some oracular word. At any rate there occurred just then that kind of pregnant silence to which groups of human beings are liable when their private thoughts differ so completely as to evoke a sort of negative equilibrium.

“I think it won't matter very much,” Mr. Evans said gravely, “what form your commune takes. You yourself,” and he stared at Dave with a mouth from which a small dribble of saliva was descending, “you yourself will oppose our good friend here,” and he nodded at Paul Trent, “and that opposition will bring the whole thing to nothing.”

His words were the first words, all this long while, that brought Paul Trent, who had been half-concealed in the smoke of Red's pipe, down from his seat on the arm of the chair. The feminine-complexioned, soft-fleshed anarchist, in his beautifully fitting clothes, now moved to the fireplace where he stood upon the rug and contemplated Mr. Evans with a tender indulgence.

The woman and the other men—for even Red seemed conscious of something unusual in the air—watched these two Celts with a faint uneasiness. For it seemed as if these strangely different aboriginals of the Western Isles stared at one another, as though something was passing between them totally obscure to the other persons in the room.

“I've only read,” murmured Paul Trent, in a much softer voice than that in which he discoursed on the commune, “books upon the authors.”

Then, without a moment's pause, as if it were a fragment of some immemorial ritual of which they both held the mystic clue, Paul Trent began to recite, in a sort of grave sing-song, words that seemed to Cordelia to be madness, to Dave to be devilry, and to Red to be pure gibberish.

“ 'Complete was the captivity of Gwair in Caer S*di. Lured thither through the emissary of Pvyii and Prvderi. Before him no one entered into it Into the heavy dark chain that held------*”'