“A’a’ah! T’ss’s! Ya’-’aah!�
“Close up here, close up!� A police-sergeant, hurrying from the bottom of the alley, herded the struggling queue before the door of the casual ward into a compact bunch. Then the rearward portals of the Town Hall, before which a red-and-white striped awning had suddenly sprouted, were thrown wide. A crush of rosetted stewards, carrying very shiny hats, preceded the Mace-Bearer; the Mayor, a plump and rosy personage, in his furred robes and chain of office, appeared, walking between a lovely lady in sumptuous sables and an accurately-attired gentleman, whose intense vacuity of eye, mechanical bow and smile, and inability to utter anything without being first prompted by an attendant secretary from behind, denoted him a Personage of the first importance.... The Sheriff followed with the Mayoress, the Aldermen and the guests trooped after. And the mob at the other side of the Town Hall, making a charge round the corner, and being repulsed by the police, vented its indignation in such an outburst of boo’s that the Mayor’s speech was delivered in dumb show. Everybody clapped when he had done, though. Upon which the Personage, prompted by his attendant spirit, delivered himself in short, House of Commons gasps of the contents of a Be-ribboned roll of typoscript. The last sentence was audible: “And let this! Be a perpetual! Reminder to this! And succeeding generations! How our! Mother country! Rewards her! Heroic sons!� Everybody clapped and applauded the Personage. The Personage, then, advancing upon exquisitely-polished boots to the Union Jack with the mysterious bulge under it pulled a white cord with a lavender kid glove, and brought the flag down, revealing a square block of Caen stone bearing some sculptural figures in low relief set in the masonry above a neat little drinking fountain. Then the Personage, the lovely lady in furs, the Mayor and Mayoress, Sheriff, Aldermen, guests, and stewards trooped back into the Town Hall to luncheon, and the crowd surged back again to boo the banqueters. But after the last of these had, under a cross-fire of gibes and taunts, taken himself away, the turbulent ocean of humanity rolled back into its foodless garrets and cellars, and the Socialist leaders who had urged on the ring-leaders retired to dine at a hotel. Subsequently the alley behind the Town Hall became gorged with homeless persons seeking shelter for the night, and when seven o’clock struck and the Casual Ward door opened, one rush of misery packed it instantly from wall to wall, and Stoneham, V. C., late Color-Sergeant in the Smutborough Regiment, found himself shut out.
He wondered, as he ruefully felt in his empty pockets, whether it would end in his having to sell the Cross? He had never failed to raise money on his reserve-pension when the General Brushmaker’s Union had forced him to come out with the other men, because a non-union employé had been taken on at the factory. Since then he had navvied, stoked, scavenged, done everything and anything that a capable man might do to get bare bread and common shelter for himself and his. Now the wife was in Clogham Infirmary with two of the children, and another was dead of clemming, and ... and the old wound from the cross-nicked Mauser bullet pained him horribly. He was giddy and sick with starvation, and the world was spinning round....
Just in time he caught at the edge of the new drinking fountain, and saved himself from falling. The grudging glimmer from the fanlight over the door of the Casual Ward showed him something that roused him as a swooning man may be roused by a splash of icy water in his face. It was his own name in shining gold letters, boldly incised upon a handsome tablet under the sculptured block that jutted from the sooty brick wall.
“Lord above, what’s this?� gasped the man whom Smutborough had that day toasted. He struck a match, the last he had, and read, beneath the bas-relief which represented the city’s hero in the act of shielding a wounded officer with his body from a supposititious volley of Boer bullets:
TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT ACTION
BY WHICH COLOUR-SERGEANT H. STONEHAM,
OF THE SMUTBOROUGH REGIMENT,
AND A NATIVE OF THIS CITY,
WON THE VICTORIA CROSS.
In Action, Paardfontein, Transvaal, South Africa, 1901.
“Move on, you!� said the voice of a police-constable behind him. And Stoneham, V. C., drove his freezing hands deep into his ragged pockets, wheeled and obeyed.
“It’s a rum world!� He reeled a little in his gait, and whispered thickly to himself, as if some of the champagne and grub that had been consumed that day in his honor had got into his head by proxy. “Damned queer from start to finish! But, in the long run, I’m a bit better off than the bloke in the Bible. He asked for bread, and they gave him a stone. And I’ve got a drinking fountain into the bargain!�
And the wet night swallowed him up.