Unknown (86 page)

Like an animal organism that has taken an emetic, Glastonbury now disembogued from the obscurest recesses of its complex being all manner of queer chemical substances. Such substances, though they were living creatures, needed a shock like this cry, “The Town is up/' to fling them forth from their profound hiding-places. Most of the destitute people and drunken people and half-witted people who now poured forth from the most unexpected quarters were indigenous to the place. Thus for the first time since the Battle of Sedgemoor when that strange cry went about the streets just as it was doing now—”The Town is up“— the real People of Glastonbury emerged and asserted itself. The last time it had asserted itself was on behalf of that sweet, honeysuckle bastard, Monmouth, for it was the ”great gentlemen,“ like Lord P.'s ancestor and Mat Dekker's ancestor, who had brought Dutch William in, not the people. And before that, for it had allowed the Abbot to persecute heretics and it had allowed the King to murder the Abbot without interfering, it had responded to the cry ”The Town is up“ when Jack Cade revolted against every privilege under the sun. It had rioted in honour of Mother Shipton, Jane Shore, Lambert Simnel, John Wycliffe, John Wesley, Lord George Gordon, and had even received and concealed from royal vengeance the crafty Welshman Owen Glen-dower. In fact the ingrown, inbred, integrated People of Glastonbury had raised their famous cry ”The Town is up!" on behalf of every scandal that had worried the well-constituted authorities since under the crazy Arviragus they had defied the gods for the sake of the blood of a mad demigod, and on behalf of the abductor Modred had waylaid the lovely queen of Rex Arturus himself.

These where the people who poured forth now on this historic Midsummer Day from Paradise and Bove Town and Butts Close and Manor House Road to join with the strikers from Philip's Dye-Works and with the holiday-makers from Wookey Hole. So fantastical did some of this queer crowd look, who thus enlisted themselves under the banner of Red Robinson's “ 'ate,” that the German and French and Scandinavian visitors—not to speak of the monks from the monastery in the Caucasus and the super-sophisticated Father Paleologue—would almost have been pardoned for taking them as lineal descendants of the dwellers in Abel Twig's Lake Village.

Unfortunately for Red's purpose his impatience for action got himself and his strikers much too quickly upon the scene. His strikers were orderly and respectable Wessex workmen, not easy to excite to acts of violence. Thus although before they reached the entrance they were shrewdly hustled by the strategic Red, over several gaps in the hedge, into the field and thus were enabled to approach the western flank of the crowd of spectators from an unexpected and unconventional quarter, things did not work out as he had hoped. If this heterogeneous mob of invaders had come en masse, in one grand rush, there is no doubt they would have stampeded the players and ended Mr. Geard's Pageant. But Red's “ 9ate”—directed equally against Mayor and Manufacturer—had, as Number Two would have put it, “stampeded its wone self” and ruined ail his .-k:I£i:l s:rateg\. He oagTi!“ to have waited in Chilkv/eli Street, opb.^iir St. Michael's Inn— and what a sighi for Mad Bet that \\;»u:u Lar»e Itviil—unlii I;i? ragged camp-followers, descendants of the heroic populace who fought with scythes and bill-hooks against a trained armv and a great general, had all reached the tpot. It -ua& the lack of these irresponsible pilgarlics that spoilt Red's plan, for hi* orderly strikers soon found themselves faced by ihr nnl the rows of seats occupied by the gentry of the town, and e\en the CwDown with Mummery” banners paused and wavered, if the> were not actually lowered, before the indignant glances and the cries of "Order! OrderP that now arose from these seats. To the crowd that were following these patient factory-hands such glances would have meant little. But many of these hands had come to labour in Philip's Dye-Works from Bath and Yeovil and Taunton and Shepton Mallet, and they lacked the recklessness of the true Glastonbury tradition.

There might, however, have been trouble, even then, if Philip's police had appeared on the scene, but fortunately these officers had chosen to remain in that portion of the field devoted to the gipsy caravans, for it was there that the hobbledehoys and riotous young apprentices of the town who regarded this occasion as their grand opportunity for causing annoyance, were shouting, singing, skylarking, making a resounding hullabaloo, and trying to draw the attention of the vast audience to themselves. The moment was a crucial one, for the brightly attired groups of the first part of the Pageant were already hovering about the two mediaeval pavilions on the ledge of the hillside that served for a platform, and Red, well-nigh desperate now and ready to risk anything, was calling upon his banner-holders to ascend the slope and invade this natural stage.

A spirited verbal altercation now began between Miss Drew, who happened to be nearest to the banner which carried the word “Mummery” and the young striker who held one of its poles. In her excitement, for Mary could do nothing to calm her, and Father Paleologue only laughed, the old lady rose to her feet and bandied recriminations with the young striker, who to tell the troth was more sulky and irritable than violent or rude.

There was an extremely large and very decorative canvas pavilion at each end of the grassy stage where the Pageant was now beginning and from these the players emerged and into these they retreated as occasion demanded. These huge tents had been copied from old books of chivalry; from the tops of them floated many bright-coloured streamers and the fluttering canvas that composed them was painted with heraldic symbols. It was from the interior of the western one of these two pavilions that John Crow watched in consternation the march of these hostile banners. He despatched a messenger for Tom Barter who was in the other tent and when Tom arrived, crossing the grassy stage with a great deal of haste and not a little awkwardness, the only thing he could suggest was that they should get the police away from the caravans as speedily as possible.

“But why haven't they come already?” demanded John.

“They don't realise what's up,” cried Tom. “How should they? They think it's a deputation to the Mayor or something! They're strangers. They don't know the town. They think it's part of the affair . . . those flags and so on! They think it's part of our performance!”

The two men went to the western entrance of the great heraldic tent and held open the sail-cloth hangings and stared helplessly at the disturbance. They could hear contentious voices from the invaded front rows! They could see figures on their feet among them. John, concerned for Mary, caught sight of the unmistakable figure of Miss Drew brandishing her parasol. “But good God, old man,” cried Barter, “look at them coming across the field! They're pouring through the hedge! We're being hustled by the populace. There's no doubt about it! Philip's been rousing the mob to break things up, since his police are no good.”

“What are you all doing?” John cried now, turning fiercely round on the actors with whom the tent was crowded. It was the moment for the opening dumb show of the Pageant, which consisted of a concourse of people in mediaeval dress gathered to watch the Coronation of Arthur and Gwenevere. The part of Gwenevere was taken by the tallest young lady in Wollop's, but for the role of Arthur, Ned Athling had brought from his own village his father's foreman, a majestic-looking middle-aged individual, bearded and broad-shouldered, but whose red-stockinged knees at that crisis were knocking together with panic. The thrones of the king and queen were now standing near them, inside the tent, a couple of Mat Dekker's choir-lads, in crimson doublet and hose, waiting the word to drag them out. From the eastern pavilion the knights and ladies of Camelot—Sunday School children from St. John's and St. Benignus"—were already, in the absence of anyone to stop them, gliding nervously forth and presenting themselves before the audience. It was then that the absence of the thrones—delayed by the consternation of the officials in the western tent—proved bewildering to these bedizened youngsters.

John's fury, directing itself blindly towards the Middlezoy King Arthur and towards the equally frightened pages who were to drag out the thrones, was now confronted by the soft protests of the prostrate Crummie, who, lying upon a lathe-and-plaster stretcher, roughly bulwarked to represent a barge, was attended by two lusty youths from the Congregational Chapel who were to carry her in, at the critical moment of the coronation, and lay her at the feet of the king and queen. Across the body of Crummie, who was wrapped in a dark blanket over which her long fair hair fell in dishevelled allurement, a mitred bishop, Bob Carter, from the Godney grocery, who was clinging frantically to the crown of Britain, which an agitated page, Ted Sparks from the bakery at Meare, was trying to take away from him, burst now into angry abuse of Lancelot du Lac. This melancholy Mirror of Courtesy wTas Billy Pratt of the St. John's Bell-Ringers, and Billy had infuriated Bob by insisting that it was his right to stand at the head of Crummie when the moment came for them all to emerge into public view, whereas Bishop Bob declared that Lancelot's place was near the queen. It was out of the midst of this noisy wrangle of Church and State over the beautiful corpse that the soft voice of the Lady of Shalott herself arose, enquiring of John what for mercy Is sake was the matter, and why the performance didn't commence. “It's so stuffy in here,” murmured the love-slain damsel.

“There's the devil to pay out here, Miss Geard,” cried John, in a state bordering on complete nervous collapse. “There's a mob pouring across the field from the town with flags and sticks and God knows what, and they're now collecting in front of the audience. They're pointing at us too and I believe*'—he cast a glance through the tent-hangings—”Christ! They are! They're coming up the hill, and all the front-row people are on their feet and the foreigners are beginning to make a row."

John's account of things, however, was a little exaggerated. Only one flag-carrier—the young Communist who had been threatened by Miss Drew's parasol—had begun to ascend the hill, but he had paused when he saw that no one was following him. It was true that the foreign element in the audience—especially the Swedes and Norwegians—were shouting protests in strange tongues, but although matters were critical nothing had yet occurred that was irretrievable.

“Are those Taunton police quiet still?” murmured the caressing voice of the Lady of Shalott.

“Quiet?” cried John, rushing once more to the opening of the tent When he came back to her side—for this fair creature under the dark blanket seemed just then all the human wisdom he could cling to—he informed her that a body of policemen were even now hastening round between the rear of the audience and the hedge, with an evident intention of cutting off the strikers' retreat.

“Stop them!” commanded Crummie, lifting up her lovely bare shoulders from the black cushions on which they were resting. “Father said that under no conditions were those Taunton police to interfere!”

“Tom!” cried poor John, in complete distraction, “Miss Geard says the police must be stopped!”

Barter approached, fixing upon the Lady of Shalott's shoulders an eye of covetous lechery.

“Are you a friend of mine, Mr. Barter?” said the girl. Into these words Crummie threw all that world of erotic appeal of which she was the perfect mistress. Paralysed by her passion for Sam this appeal had been storing up for the last two or three months like a precious wine “cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,” but at this delicate crisis, when the whole success of her father's Pageant was at stake, it poured forth from her voice, her hair, her shoulders, her bosom. like undalant music.

'“Yours to command. Miss Geard.” said Tun: Barter, Gloating over her with a drugged, fatuous smile. “She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my whole life.” he thought,

“Run down the field, then, Mr. Barter, for mercy's sake, and stop those policemen! Talk to their sergeant, if he's there. Talk to any of them. Tell them these people are friends or trie Mayor, and that it's all right.”

Barter didn't hesitate for a second. His face changed, however. Action always steadied him. 'Tm off!" he cried and disappeared from the tent.

John and the Bishop and Lancelot du Lac and a group of pretty pages with bare legs and tumbled curls watched the process of events from the tent entrance. Edward Athling from the other tent had already saved the situation as far as the Pageant was concerned, for he had himself carried out upon the grassy stage the Arthurian flag, “the Dragon of the great Pendragonship,” towards which, as he planted it in the earth, a group of his companions lifted their glittering sword-points in a reverential salute. Then leaving the flag there, midway between the two tents, he had withdrawn his followers from view. Thus from the emblazoned folds of the royal standard of Romanized Britain, the golden Dragon looked forth towards the black heraldic Lions upon one tent and the Sacred Symbols of Saint Joseph upon the other. The spectators had nowT something to hold their attention.

John suddenly resolved that they should have something else, and he gave a signal to the pages, who were scraping at the golden thrones with their nails to see how deep the gilding went, to carry them out and place them on the left of the Dragon Ensign. Meanwhile he watched with trembling interest Barter's encounter with the Taunton police. He could see his friend talking eagerly and earnestly to the sergeant in command, but he could also see the straggling procession of nondescripts from the town pouring constantly over the hedge and towards their leader's banners that now seemed to be remaining stationary side by side with the no longer protesting occupants of the front seats.

“Begin! Begin!” vociferated some Frenchman from Avignon. “The Play!” shouted some Spanish students from Salamanca. “Hush! Hush!” retorted a German contingent from Weimar, to whose more patient minds, schooled in Faustian mysteries, those two golden thrones with the sunny hillside as a background, held a symbolic if not metaphysical signification.