CHAPTER IX
THE TEMPERANCE FETE
When Lady Knob-Kerrick drove round to the Fete ground she was surprisedto find the gate open and unattended, but was rendered speechless withastonishment at the noise that assailed her ears. At first she thoughtthere had been an accident; but in the medley of hoarse shouts andshrill screams she clearly distinguished the sound of laughter. Sheturned to Miss Isabel Strint, her companion, whom she always persistedin treating as she would not have dared to treat her maid. Miss Strintelevated her eyebrows and assumed a look that was intended to be purelytentative, capable of being developed into either horror or amusement.
"People say it takes beer to make the lower classes gay," remarked herladyship grimly.
"I'm sure they couldn't make more noise if they were intoxicated,"responded Miss Strint, developing the tentative look into one of amusedtolerance.
"Strint, you're a fool!" remarked Lady Knob-Kerrick.
Miss Strint subsided.
Lady Knob-Kerrick looked round her disapprovingly. She was annoyedthat no one should be there to welcome her.
"Strint, see if you can find Mr. Slocum and Mr. McFie, and tell them Iam 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 thefirst to welcome the Lady of the Feast. May I get you somerefreshment?"
"You may not," was the ungracious response.
Lady Knob-Kerrick disliked both Little and his well-bred manner. Shewas accustomed to deference and servility. She also disapproved ofwhat she conceived to be her daughter Ethel's interest in the doctor'sson, and for that reason had not brought her to the Fete.
With a smile and a lifting of his hat, Little passed on in thedirection of Barton Bridge.
Just as Lady Knob-Kerrick was preparing to descend from her carriage, agirl with a flushed face darted round the canvas screen that had beenerected inside the gate. A moment after a man followed, coatless,hatless, and flushed. He caught her, lifted her in his arms andcarried her back laughing and screaming. Neither had seen the carriageor its occupants. Tool, the coachman, looked only as a well-trainedman-servant can look, wooden; but Thomas grinned, and was withered byhis mistress's eye.
The man who had pursued and caught the girl was Mr. Marsh, the people'schurchwarden, a widower with grown-up daughters.
With an air of stern determination, Lady Knob-Kerrick descended fromher carriage and marched boldly round the screen. Never had she beheldsuch a scene. She did not faint, she did not cry out, she grimly stoodand watched.
Bindle had relinquished his refreshment-stall to assume the directionof the revels. All seemed to look to him for inspiration. The dingycricket cap was to be seen bobbing about everywhere, his grin ofenjoyment was all-embracing. He it was who set the Morris dancersgoing and picked them up when they fell. He it was who explained toMiss Slocum, who hitherto had refreshed herself with tea, that theirinability to keep an upright position was due to the heat.
"It's the 'eat, miss, 'as a wonderful effect. Look at 'er now." Heindicated 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 enteredthe meadow. Youths and girls, men and women staggered unsteadily roundthe gaily decorated scaffold-pole that had been lent by Mr. Ash, thebuilder. Lady Knob-Kerrick distinguished many of her tenants among thefringe of stumbling humanity, and two of her own domestics.
The principal object of the men dancers seemed to be to kiss each girlas she passed, and that of the girls to appear to try to avoid thecaress without actually doing so. The dance ended prematurely, therebeing none of the dancers any longer capable of preserving an uprightposition.
A little to the right of the maypole Lady Knob-Kerrick beheld the Rev.Andrew McFie, who was endeavouring to give a representation of hisnative sword-dance to an enthusiastic group of admirers. On his headwas a pink sunbonnet, round his waist, to represent a kilt, was tied agirl's jacket. His trousers were tucked up above the knee. On theground sat a girl producing, by the simple process of holding her noseand tapping her throat, strange piercing noises intended to representthe bagpipes.
In another part of the meadow Mr. Grint, the chapel butcher, and anelder of irreproachable respectability, was endeavouring to instruct anumber of girls in the intricacies of a quadrille, which, as heinformed them, he had once seen danced in Paris. It was thisexhibition of shameless abandon that decided Lady Knob-Kerrick uponimmediate action.
"Strint," she called, looking about for her companion, "Strint." ButMiss Strint was at that moment the centre of a circle of laughing,shouting, and shrieking men and women, hesitating in her choice of theman she should kiss.
"Thomas!"
"Yes, m'lady," replied Thomas, his eyes fixed intently upon a group ofyouths and girls who were performing a species of exalted barn dance.
"Fetch Saunders and Smith; tell them to fix the fire-hose to thehydrant nearest the meadow, and connect as many lengths as arenecessary to reach where I am standing. Quick!"
The last word was uttered in a tone that caused Thomas to wrench hiseyes away from the dancers as if he had been caught in the act of someimpropriety.
"Yes, m'lady," and he reluctantly left the scene of festivity, full ofenvy and self-pity.
As Thomas disappeared round one side of the canvas screen, Dr. Littlebustled round the other. He had been detained by an important patientwho 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 LadyKnob-Kerrick, and hurried across to her.
"Dear me, dear me!" he fussed. "Whatever does this mean? Is everybodymad?"
"Either that or intoxicated, doctor. I'm not a medical man. I've sentfor my fire-hose." There was a note of grim malevolence in LadyKnob-Kerrick's voice.
"Your fire-hose? I--I don't understand!" The doctor removed hispanama 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'renot----"
"I am," interrupted Lady Knob-Kerrick. "I most certainly am. It's mymeadow."
"Dear me! I must enquire into this. Dear me!" And the doctor trottedoff in the direction of the maypole. The first object he encounteredwas the prostrate form of the vicar, who lay under the shadow of arefreshment-stall, breathing heavily. The doctor shook him.
"Slocum," he called. "Slocum!"
"Goo' fellow tha'," was the mumbled response. "Make him my 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 carelesslyflung cokernut hitting him sharply on the elbow. He looked roundquickly to admonish the culprit. At that moment he caught sight of theRev. 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. Hewas obviously unacquainted with either the melody or the words, but wasanxious to be convivial. He also threw in a rather unsteady sort ofdance. Mr. Wace himself seemed to know only about two lines of thesong, and even in this there were gaps.
"Shisssssssssssh!" The two roysterers were on their backs gasping andchoking beneath a deluge of water. Lady Knob-Kerrick's hose hadarrived, and in the steady hands of Saunders, the head-gardener, seemedlikely 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' thehose."
With a yell of rage he sprang to his feet and dashed at Saunders. LadyKnob-Kerrick screamed, Dr. Little uttered a plaintive "Dear me!"Saunders stood as if petrified, clinging irresolutely to the hose. Hewas a big man and strong, but the terrifying sight of the ministerbearing down upon him with murder in his eyes clearly unnerved him.Releasing his hold of the hose he incontinently bolted. For a momentthe force of the water caused the hose to rear its head like a snakepreparing to strike, then after a moment's hesitation it gracefullydescended, 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 ofAuchinlech." Suddenly catching sight of the retreating form of LadyKnob-Kerrick, he yelled, "It's all her doin', the old sinner."
With a whoop he sprang after Lady Knob-Kerrick, who at that moment wasdisappearing round the canvas screen seeking her carriage. The crowdfollowed, and some bethought themselves of the hose.
Lady Knob-Kerrick was just in the act of getting into her carriage whenthe jet of water from the hose took her in the small of the back andliterally washed her into her seat as, a moment later, it washed hercoachman off his. The horses reared and plunged; but McFie and Bindlerushed to their heads. Several men busied themselves with undoing thetraces, the frightened animals were freed from the pole, and a cut fromthe whip, aided by the noise of the crowd, was sufficient to send themclattering down the road.
Hitherto Bindle had been by tacit consent the leading spirit; but nowthe Rev. Andrew McFie assumed the mantle of authority. Ordering thecoachman and footman to take their mistress home, he caused thecarriage to be drawn into the meadow and placed across the gateway,thus forming a barricade. This done, he mounted upon the box andharangued the throng.
Cokernuts and the balls used at the shies, together with the Aunt Sallysticks, were collected and piled up near the gate, and everypreparation made to hold the meadow against all comers. McFiesucceeded in working his hearers into a state of religious frenzy.They danced and sang like mad creatures, ate and drank all that wasleft of the provisions and lemonade, made bonfires of the stalls andtables; in short, turned Lady Knob-Kerrick's meadow into a veryreasonable representation of an inferno.
"There's a-goin' to be trouble over this 'ere little arternoon'sdoin's," murmured Bindle to himself, as he slipped through a hole inthe hedge and made his way towards Barton Bridge, whither he hadalready been preceded by a number of the more pacific spirits. "Thecops 'll be 'ere presently, or I don't know my own mother."
Bindle was right. Lady Knob-Kerrick had telephoned to Ryford, and thepolice were already on their way in three motor-cars.
At Barton Bridge they were reinforced by the two local constables andlater by the men-servants from the Castle. When they arrived at theentrance to the meadow they found McFie leading an extremelyout-of-tune rendering of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Immediately hesaw the approaching forces of Mammon, as he called them, he climbeddown from his post of vantage and secured the hose.
The police and the retainers from the Castle approached the carriage toremove it and thus gain entrance to the meadow. Led by the red-facedsuperintendent from Ryford, they presented an imposing array. Allowingthem to approach quite close, McFie suddenly gave the signal for thewater to be turned on. He had taken the precaution to post men at thehydrant to protect it.
The superintendent's legs flew up into the air as the jet of watercaught him beneath the chin. In a few seconds the attacking party hadbeen hosed into a gasping, choking, and struggling heap. Cokernuts,wooden balls, sticks, bits of chairs, glasses and crockery rained uponthem.
The forces of Mammon gathered themselves together and retired indisorder. Andrew McFie's blood was up. Victory was at hand. In hisexcitement he committed the tactical blunder of causing the carriage tobe removed, that he might charge the enemy and complete itsdiscomfiture. His followers, however, had too long been accustomed toregard the police with awe, and most of the men, fearful of beingrecognised, sneaked through holes in the hedges, and made their wayhome by circuitous routes.
Those who remained, together with a number of girls and women, foughtuntil they were overpowered and captured, and the Barton BridgeTemperance Fete came to an inglorious end.
That same evening, having laden the van with such of the property andtents as had not been utilised for bonfires and missiles, Bindle tookhis seat on the tail-board, and the van lumbered off in the directionof London.
He proceeded to review the events of the day. What particularlydiverted him was the recollection of the way in which horses andvehicles had been mixed up.
When he had returned to the High Street he found there numbers of thosewho had visited the Fete and were now desirous only of getting home.He helped them to harness their horses, assuring them that the beastswere theirs. If he were asked for a dog-cart he selected the first tohand, and then sought out a horse of suitable size and harnessed it tothe vehicle.
If any demur were made, or if identification marks were sought, hehurried the objector off, telling him that he ought to be glad he hadgot a horse at all.
Bindle was grinning comfortably at the thought of the days it wouldtake to sort out the horses and vehicles, when he saw in the distance abicycle being ridden by someone obviously in a hurry.
As it came nearer he recognised the rider as Dick Little, who pedalledup beside the van and tendered a sovereign to Bindle.
"No, sir," Bindle remarked, shaking his head. "I'm a bit of a sportmyself. Lord! wasn't they drunk!" He chuckled quietly. "That youngparson chap, too. No, sir, I been paid in fun."
After a somewhat lengthy discussion carried on in whispers, so that thedriver should not hear, Bindle suggested that Dick Little had bettercome inside the van, as if anyone were to see them it might result insuspicion.
"Yer seem to like a little joke," he added. "I can tell yer about someas won't make yer want to cry."
An hour later, when Dick Little hunched his bicycle from the tail ofthe 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 itwas 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 thepantechnicon rumbled noisily Londonwards.
Bindle: Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle Page 9