The annual Flower Show and Gala in Jubilee Park was in part a serious
function, in part a popular festival. But its secondary aspect was
undoubtedly predominant.
Jubilee Park was sacred to those who thronged the close-packed southern
and eastern areas of the city. Among many other things, held by the
people of Blackhampton to be vastly more important, the town and its
suburbs had a reputation for flowers. It was odd that it should have.
Except perhaps a subtle quality in the soil, there was little in its
corporate life or in its physical expression to account for the fact
that it had long been famous for its roses. Among the hundreds of
allotment holders on the outskirts of the city, practical rose growers
abounded and these claimed an apotheosis at the annual show in Jubilee
Park.
Almost the only vanity Mr. Josiah Munt had permitted himself in his
earlier days was that he was a practical rose grower. He had competed
at the show ever since there had been a show, and he had garnered so
many prizes in the process that he now took rank as an expert. But he
was more than that. He was now regarded as chief patron of a cult that
was largely confined to the humbler and the poorer classes. A hard
man, known throughout the city as very "near" in his business dealings,
he was a despiser of public opinion and no seeker of popular applause.
But of late years, having grown remarkably prosperous and a figure of
ever-increasing consequence in the town, he made a practice just once
in the year of "letting himself out a bit" at the function in Jubilee
Park.
For one thing the Park itself was almost within a stone's throw of the
Duke of Wellington; and in Josiah's opinion its sole merit was its
contiguity to that famous public house. Personally he despised Jubilee
Park and the class of persons who frequented it--they were a common
lot--but now he had taken rank as the great man of this particular
neighborhood, wherein he had been born and had sown the seeds of his
fortune, it did him no harm in his own esteem or in that of the people
who had known him in humbler days, once a year to savor his preëminence.
Tuesday, August the Fourth, was one of the hottest days within the
memory of Blackhampton. And in that low-lying, over-populated area of
which Jubilee Park was the center it seemed hotter than anywhere else.
Being the day after Bank Holiday, a large section of the community "had
taken another day off," therefore several thousand persons of all ages
and both sexes assembled on the brown bare grass in the course of the
afternoon.
To say that the bulk of these had been attracted to those shadeless
precincts by a display of roses would be too polite a compliment. The
Blackhampton Prize Brass Band was the undoubted magnet of the many.
Then there were tea al fresco for the ladies, a baby show and a beauty
competition, beer and bowls for the gentlemen, dancing to follow and
also fireworks. When the Show was considered in all its aspects, the
roses only appealed to a small minority; the roses in fact were hardly
more than a pretext for a local saturnalia, but in the middle of the
sward was a large tent wherein the competing blooms were displayed.
Close by was a tent considerably less in size if intrinsically the more
imposing, to which a square piece of cardboard was attached by a blue
ribbon. It bore the legend "President and Committee."
At the entrance to this smaller tent a number of important looking but
perspiring gentlemen were seated in a semicircle on garden chairs.
And in the center of these, with rather the air of Jupiter among his
satellites, was Mr. Josiah Munt. Several members of the committee,
all badged and rosetted as they were, had removed their coats out of
deference to the thermometer, but the President was not of these. Under
the famous white pot hat, which in the southeastern district of his
native city was as famous as the Gladstone collar and the Chamberlain
eyeglass, was artfully disposed a cool cabbage leaf, and over all was a
large white sun umbrella.
The sun umbrella marked a precedent. It was a symbol, a herald of
the President's ever advancing social status. All the same it was
not allowed to mar a certain large geniality with which he always
bore himself at the Rose Show. By nature the proprietor of the Duke
of Wellington was not an expansive man, particularly in the world of
affairs, but once a year, at least, he made a point of unbending as far
as it was in him to do so.
This afternoon the President was accessible to all and sundry as of
yore. Moreover he had followed his time-honored custom of regaling the
committee, most of whom were "substantial men" and the cronies of an
earlier, more primitive phase in the ascending fortunes of the future
mayor of the city, with whisky and cigars, conveyed specially from
the Duke of Wellington by George the head barman. But it was clear as
the afternoon advanced and the heat increased with the ever-growing
throng, that the subject of roses and even the martial strains of Rule
Britannia, Hearts of Oak and other accepted masterpieces rendered with
amazing _brio_ by the B.P.B.B. did not wholly occupy the thoughts of
these distinguished men.
Among the Olympians who sat in the magic semicircle at the mouth of
their own private tent and enjoyed the President's whisky and cigars
and the privilege of personal intercourse with him was a foxy-looking
man with large ears and large spectacles. Julius Weiss by name, he
had migrated from his native Germany thirty years before, and by
specializing in what was technically known as "a threepenny hair-cut"
had risen to the position of a master hair-dresser with six shops
of his own in the city. A man of keen intelligence and cosmopolitan
outlook, there were times in the course of the afternoon when he seemed
to claim more of the President's attention than the ostensible business
in hand.
"No, I don't trust our gov'ment," said Josiah for the tenth time,
when a cornet solo, the Battle of Prague ("Bandsman Rosher") had been
brought to a triumphant close. "Never have trusted 'em if it comes to
that."
"That's because you're a blooming Tory," ventured the only hungry
looking member of an extremely well-nourished looking committee--an
obvious intellectual with piercing black eyes and fiercely picturesque
mustache whose hue was as the raven.
"Politics is barred, Lewis!" It was the President's Saturday morning
manner at the City Hall, but its austerity was tactfully mitigated by
a dexterous passing of the cigar box. "We ought to go in now ... this
minute. What do you say, Weiss?"
The master hair-dresser screwed up a pair of vulpine eyes and then
replied in a low harsh guttural, "It is a big t'ing to fight Chermany."
"We are not afraid of you," interjected a pugnacious Committee-man.
"Don't you think that."
The President held up a stern finger. "No, no, Jennings." It was a
breach of taste and the President glared at the offender from under
his cabbage leaf. He had a deep instinct for fair play, a curious
impartiality that enabled him to see the merits of Weiss as a taxpayer
and a citizen. In the lump he approved of Germans as little as any
one else, but such a man as Weiss with his unceasing industry, his
organizing capacity, his business ability and his social qualities was
a real asset to the city.
The little hair-dresser broke a solemn pause. "_We_ are not ready
for war." He stressed the "we" to the plain annoyance of several
committee-men, although Josiah was not of the number. "A month from now
they'll be in Paris."
"I don't think," said the truculent Jennings.
"You'll see, my tear," said Julius Weiss.