CHAPTER IX
THE TEMPERANCE FÊTE
WHEN Lady Knob-Kerrick drove round to the Fête ground she was surprised to find the gate open and unattended, but was rendered speechless with astonishment at the noise that assailed her ears. At first she thought there had been an accident; but in the medley of hoarse shouts and shrill screams she clearly distinguished the sound of laughter. She turned to Miss Isabel Strint, her companion, whom she always persisted in treating as she would not have dared to treat her maid. Miss Strint elevated her eyebrows and assumed a look that was intended to be purely tentative, capable of being developed into either horror or amusement.
"People say it takes beer to make the lower classes gay," remarked her ladyship grimly.
"I'm sure they couldn't make more noise if they were intoxicated," responded Miss Strint, developing the tentative look into one of amused tolerance.
"Strint, you're a fool!" remarked Lady Knob-Kerrick.
Miss Strint subsided.
Lady Knob-Kerrick looked round her disapprovingly. She was annoyed that no one should be there to welcome her.
"Strint, see if you can find Mr. Slocum and Mr. McFie, and tell them I am here." Then to the footman, "Thomas, come with me."
At that moment Dick Little came towards the small group.
"How d'you do, Lady Kerrick?" he smiled easily. "Delighted to be the first to welcome the Lady of the Feast. May I get you some refreshment?"
"You may not," was the ungracious response.
Lady Knob-Kerrick disliked both Little and his well-bred manner. She was accustomed to deference and servility. She also disapproved of what she conceived to be her daughter Ethel's interest in the doctor's son, and for that reason had not brought her to the Fête.
With a smile and a lifting of his hat. Little passed on in the direction of Barton Bridge.
Just as Lady Knob-Kerrick was preparing to descend from her carriage, a girl with a flushed face darted round the canvas screen that had been erected inside the gate. A moment after a man followed, coatless, hatless, and flushed. He caught her, lifted her in his arms and carried her back laughing and screaming. Neither had seen the carriage or its occupants. Tool, the coachman, looked only as a well-trained man-servant can look, wooden; but Thomas grinned, and was withered by his mistress's eye.
The man who had pursued and caught the girl was Mr. Marsh, the people's churchwarden, a widower with grown-up daughters.
With an air of stern determination, Lady Knob-Kerrick descended from her carriage and marched boldly round the screen. Never had she beheld such a scene. She did not faint, she did not cry out, she grimly stood and watched.
Bindle had relinquished his refreshment-stall to assume the direction of the revels. All seemed to look to him for inspiration. The dingy cricket cap was to be seen bobbing about everywhere, his grin of enjoyment was all-embracing. He it was who set the Morris dancers going and picked them up when they fell. He it was who explained to Miss Slocum, who hitherto had refreshed herself with tea, that their inability to keep an upright position was due to the heat.
"It's the 'eat, miss, 'as a wonderful effect. Look at 'er now." He indicated to Miss Slocum's horror-stricken gaze the form of Miss McFie, who was sitting on the ground, hat awry, singing quietly to herself.
It was Bindle, too, who fetched for Miss Slocum a glass of lemonade, after which she seemed to see more with the others.
The maypole dance was in full progress when Lady Knob-Kerrick entered the meadow. Youths and girls, men and women staggered unsteadily round the gaily decorated scaffold-pole that had been lent by Mr. Ash, the builder. Lady Knob-Kerrick distinguished many of her tenants among the fringe of stumbling humanity, and two of her own domestics.
The principal object of the men dancers seemed to be to kiss each girl as she passed, and that of the girls to appear to try to avoid the caress without actually doing so. The dance ended prematurely, there being none of the dancers any longer capable of preserving an upright position.
A little to the right of the maypole Lady Knob-Kerrick beheld the Rev. Andrew McFie, who was endeavouring to give a representation of his native sword-dance to an enthusiastic group of admirers. On his head was a pink sun-bonnet, round his waist, to represent a kilt, was tied a girl's jacket. His trousers were tucked up above the knee. On the ground sat a girl producing, by the simple process of holding her nose and tapping her throat, strange piercing noises intended to represent the bagpipes.
In another part of the meadow Mr. Grint, the chapel butcher, and an elder of irreproachable respectability, was endeavouring to instruct a number of girls in the intricacies of a quadrille, which, as he informed them, he had once seen danced in Paris. It was this exhibition of shameless abandon that decided Lady Knob-Kerrick upon immediate action.
"Strint," she called, looking about for her companion, "Strint." But Miss Strint was at that moment the centre of a circle of laughing, shouting, and shrieking men and women, hesitating in her choice of the man she should kiss.
"Thomas!"
"Yes, m'lady," replied Thomas, his eyes fixed intently upon a group of youths and girls who were performing a species of exalted barn dance.
"Fetch Saunders and Smith; tell them to fix the fire-hose to the hydrant nearest the meadow, and connect as many lengths as are necessary to reach where I am standing. Quick!"
The last word was uttered in a tone that caused Thomas to wrench his eyes away from the dancers as if he had been caught in the act of some impropriety.
"Yes, m'lady," and he reluctantly left the scene of festivity, full of envy and self-pity.
As Thomas disappeared round one side of the canvas screen, Dr. Little bustled round the other. He had been detained by an important patient who lived ten miles away. When his eyes beheld the scene before him, he stopped as if he had been shot. He looked about in a dazed fashion. Then he closed his eyes and looked again. Finally he saw Lady Knob-Kerrick, and hurried across to her.
"Dear me, dear me!" he fussed. "Whatever does this mean? Is everybody mad?"
"Either that or intoxicated, doctor. I'm not a medical man. I've sent for my fire-hose." There was a note of grim malevolence in Lady Knob-Kerrick's voice.
"Your fire-hose? I—I don't understand!" The doctor removed his panama and mopped his forehead with a large handkerchief.
"You will when it comes," was the reply.
"Dear me, dear me!" broke out the alarmed doctor; "but surely you're not"
"I am," interrupted Lady Knob-Kerrick. "I most certainly am. It's my meadow."
"Dear me! I must enquire into this. Dear me!" And the doctor trotted off in the direction of the maypole. The first object he encountered was the prostrate form of the vicar, who lay under the shadow of a refreshment-stall, breathing heavily. The doctor shook him.
"Slocum," he called. "Slocum!"
"Goo' fellow tha'," was the mumbled response. "Make himmy curate. Go 'way."
"Good God!" ejaculated the doctor. "He's drunk. They're all drunk. What a scandal."
He sat down beside the vicar, trying to think. He was stunned. Eventually he was aroused from his torpor of despair by a carelessly flung cokernut hitting him sharply on the elbow. He looked round quickly to admonish the culprit. At that moment he caught sight of the Rev. Andrew McFie arm-in-arm with Mr. Wace, the vicar's churchwarden, singing at the top of their voices, "Who's your Lady Friend?" Mr. McFie's contribution was limited to a vigorous but tuneless drone. He was obviously unacquainted with either the melody or the words, but was anxious to be convivial. He also threw in a rather unsteady sort of dance. Mr. Wace himself seemed to know only about two lines of the song, and even in this there were gaps.
"Shisssssssssssh!" The two roysterers were on their backs gasping and choking beneath a deluge of water. Lady Knob-Kerrick's hose had arrived, and in the steady hands of Saunders, the head-gardener, seemed likely to bring the Temperance Fete to a dramatic conclusion.
"A water-spout!" mumbled Mr. Wace vacuously.
"Water spout!" cried Mr. McFie. "It's that red-headed carlin wi' the hose."
With a yell of rage he sprang to his feet and dashed at Saunders. Lady Knob-Kerrick screamed, Dr. Little uttered a plaintive "Dear me!" Saunders stood as if petrified clinging irresolutely to the hose. He was a big man and strong, but the terrifying sight of the minister bearing down upon him with murder in his eyes clearly unnerved him. Releasing his hold of the hose he incontinently bolted. For a moment the force of the water caused the hose to rear its head like a snake preparing to strike, then after a moment's hesitation it gracefully descended, and discharged its stream full in the chest of Dr. Little, who sat down upon the grass with a sob of surprise.
McFie's yell had attracted to him an ever-enlarging crowd.
"Turned the hose on me," he explained thickly. "Me, Andrew McFie of Auchinlech." Suddenly catching sight of the retreating form of Lady Knob-Kerrick, he yelled, "It's all her doin', the old sinner."
With a whoop he sprang after Lady Knob-Kerrick, who at that moment was disappearing round the canvas screen seeking her carriage. The crowd followed, and some bethought themselves of the hose.
Lady Knob-Kerrick was just in the act of getting into her carriage when the jet of water from the hose took her in the small of the back and literally washed her into her seat as, a moment later, it washed her coachman off his. The horses reared and plunged; but McFie and Bindle rushed to their heads. Several men busied themselves with undoing the traces, the frightened animals were freed from the pole, and a cut from the whip, aided by the noise of the crowd, was sufficient to send them clattering down the road.
Hitherto Bindle had been by tacit consent the leading spirit; but now the Rev. Andrew McFie assumed the mantle of authority. Ordering the coachman and footman to take their mistress home, he caused the carriage to be drawn into the meadow and placed across the gateway, thus forming a barricade. This done, he mounted upon the box and harangued the throng.
Cokemuts and the balls used at the shies, together with the Aunt Sally sticks, were collected and piled up near the gate, and every preparation made to hold the meadow against all comers. McFie succeeded in working his hearers into a state of religious frenzy. They danced and sang like mad creatures, ate and drank all that was left of the provisions and lemonade, made bonfires of the stalls and tables; in short, turned Lady Knob-Kerrick's meadow into a very reasonable representation of an inferno.
"There's a-goin' to be trouble over this 'ere little arternoon's doin's," murmured Bindle to himself, as he slipped through a hole in the hedge and made his way towards Barton Bridge, whither he had already been preceded by a number of the more pacific spirits. "The cops 'll be 'ere presently, or I don't know my own mother."
Bindle was right. Lady Knob-Kerrick had telephoned to Ryford, and the police were already on their way in three motor-cars.
At Barton Bridge they were reinforced by the two local constables and later by the men-servants from the Castle. When they arrived at the entrance to the meadow they found McFie leading an extremely out-of-tune rendering of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Immediately he saw the approaching forces of Mammon, as he called them, he climbed down from his post of vantage and secured the hose.
The police and the retainers from the Castle approached the carriage to remove it and thus gain entrance to the meadow. Led by the red-faced superintendent from Ryford, they presented an imposing array. Allowing them to approach quite close, McFie suddenly gave the signal for the water to be turned on. He had taken the precaution to post men at the hydrant to protect it.
The superintendent's legs flew up into the air as the jet of water caught him beneath the chin. In a few seconds the attacking party had been hosed into a gasping, choking, and struggling heap. Cokernuts, wooden balls, sticks, bits of chairs, glasses and crockery rained upon them.
The forces of Mammon gathered themselves together and retired in disorder. Andrew McFie's blood was up. Victory was at hand. In his excitement he committed the tactical blunder of causing the carriage to be removed, that he might charge the enemy and complete its discomfiture. His followers, however, had too long been accustomed to regard the police with awe, and most of the men, fearful of being recognised, sneaked through holes in the hedges, and made their way home by circuitous routes.
Those who remained, together with a number of girls and women, fought until they were overpowered and captured, and the Barton Bridge Temperance Fête came to an inglorious end.
That same evening, having laden the van with such of the property and tents as had not been utilised for bonfires and missiles, Bindle took his seat on the tail-board, and the van lumbered off in the direction of London.
He proceeded to review the events of the day. What particularly diverted him was the recollection of the way in which horses and vehicles had been mixed up.
When he had returned to the High Street he found there numbers of those who had visited the Fête and were now desirous only of getting home. He helped them to harness their horses, assuring them that the beasts were theirs. If he were asked for a dog-cart he selected the first to hand, and then sought out a horse of suitable size and harnessed it to the vehicle.
If any demur were made, or if identification marks were sought, he hurried the objector off, telling him that he ought to be glad he had got a horse at all.
Bindle was grinning comfortably at the thought of the days it would take to sort out the horses and vehicles, when he saw in the distance a bicycle being ridden by someone obviously in a hurry.
As it came nearer he recognised the rider as Dick Little, who pedalled up beside the van and tendered a sovereign to Bindle.
"No, sir," Bindle remarked, shaking his head. "I'm a bit of a sport myself. Lord! wasn't they drunk!" He chuckled quietly. "That young parson chap, too. No, sir, I been paid in fun."
After a somewhat lengthy discussion carried on in whispers, so that the driver should not hear, Bindle suggested that Dick Little had better come inside the van, as if anyone were to see them it might result in suspicion.
"Yer seem to like a little joke," he added. "I can tell yer about some as won't make yer want to cry."
An hour later, when Dick Little launched his bicycle from the tail of the van he said:
"Well, come and see me in London; I'm generally in Sunday evenings."
"Right, sir; I will," replied Bindle; "but might I arst, sir, wot it was that made 'em so fidgety?"
"It was pure alcohol mixed with distilled mead," was the reply.
"Well, it done the trick. Good-night, sir. Lord! won't there be some 'eads wantin' oldin' in the mornin'," and he laughed joyously as the pantechnicon rumbled noisily Londonwards.