The ladies separated, and the Precincts was abandoned for a time to its beautiful Sunday peace and calm.
Chapter III
The May-day Prologue
May is the finest month of all the year in Glebeshire. The days are warm but not too hot; the sky is blue but not too blue, the air is soft but with a touch of sharpness The valleys are pressed down and overflowing with flowers; the cuckoo cries across the glassy waters of blue harbours, and the gorse is honey-scented among the rocks.
May-day in Polchester this year was warm and bright, with a persistent cuckoo somewhere in the Dean's garden, and a very shrill-voiced canary in Miss Dobell's open window. The citizens of Polchester were suddenly aware that summer was close upon them. Doors were flung open and the gardens sinuously watered, summer clothes were dragged from their long confinement and anxiously overlooked, Mr. Martin, the stationer, hung a row of his coloured Polchester views along a string across his window, the dark, covered ways of the market-place quivered and shone with pots of spring flowers, and old Simon's water-cart made its first trembling and shaking appearance down the High Street.
All this was well enough and customary enough, but what marked this spring from any other spring that had ever been was that it was Jubilee Year. It was on this warm May-day that Polchester people realised suddenly that the Jubilee was not far away. The event had not quite the excitement and novelty that the Jubilee of 1887 had had; there was, perhaps, in London and the larger towns, something of a sense of repetition. But Polchester was far from the general highway and, although the picture of the wonderful old lady, now nearly eighty years of age, was strong before every one's vision, there was a deep determination to make this year's celebration a great Polchester affair, to make it the celebration of Polchester men and Polchester history and Polchester progress.
The programme had been long arranged--the great Service in the Cathedral, the Ball in the Assembly Rooms, the Flower Show in the St. Leath Castle grounds, the Torchlight Procession, the Croquet Tournament, the School- children's Tea and the School Cricket-match. A fine programme, and the Jubilee Committee, with the Bishop, the Mayor, and the Countess of St. Leath for its presidents, had already held several meetings.
Nevertheless, Glebeshire has a rather languishing climate. Polchester has been called by its critics "a lazy town," and it must be confessed that everything in connection with the Jubilee had been jogging along very sleepily until of a sudden this warm May-day arrived, and every one sprang into action. The Mayor called a meeting of the town branch of the Committee, and the Bishop out at Carpledon summoned his ecclesiastics, and Joan found a note from Gladys Sampson beckoning her to the Sampson house to do her share of the glorious work. It had been decided by the Higher Powers that it would be a charming thing for some of the younger Polchester ladies to have in charge the working of two of the flags that were to decorate the Assembly Room walls on the night of the Ball. Gladys Sampson, who, unlike her mother, never suffered from headaches, and was a strong, determined, rather masculine girl, soon had the affair in hand, and the party was summoned.
I would not like to say that Polchester had a more snobbish spirit than other Cathedral towns, but there is no doubt that, thirty years ago, the lines were drawn very clearly indeed between the "Cathedral" and the "Others."
"Cathedral" included not only the daughters of the Canons and what Mr. Martin, in his little town guide-book, called "General Ecclesiastical Phenomena," but also the two daughters of Puddifoot's sister, Grace and Annie Trudon; the three daughters of Roger McKenzie, the town lawyer; little Betty Callender, the only child of old, red-faced Major Callender; Mary and Amy Forrester, daughters of old Admiral Forrester; and, of course, the St. Leath girls.