At the border of Saint Luke's Square, junction of eight streets, true
centre of the town's traffic, and the sole rectangular open space
enclosed completely by shops, they found a line of constables which
yielded only to processions and to the bearers of special rosettes.
`The Square,' as it was called by those who inhabited it, had been
chosen for the historic scene of the day because of its pre-eminent
claim and suitability; the least of its advantages--its slope, from the
top of which it could be easily dominated by a speaker on a platform--
would alone have secured for it the honours of the Centenary.
As the police cordon closed on the procession from the Old Church,
definitely dividing the spectators from the spectacle, it grew clear
that the spectators were in the main a shabby lot; persons without any
social standing: unkempt idlers, good-for-nothings, wastrels,
clay-whitened pot-girls who had to work even on that day, and who had
run out for a few moments in their flannel aprons to stare, and a few
score ragamuffins, whose parents were too poor or too careless to make
them superficially presentable enough to figure in a procession. Nearly
the whole respectability of the town was either fussily marshalling
processions or gazing down at them in comfort from the multitudinous
open windows of the Square. The `leads' over the projecting windows of
Baines's, the chief draper's, were crowded with members of the ruling
caste.
And even within the Square, it could be seen, between the towering backs
of constables, that the spectacle itself was chiefly made up of
indigence bedecked. The thousands of perspiring children, penned like
sheep, and driven to and fro like sheep by anxious and officious
rosettes, nearly all had the air of poverty decently putting the best
face on itself; they were nearly all, beneath their vague sense of
importance, wistful with the resigned fatalism of the young and of the
governed. They knew not precisely why they were there; but merely that
they had been commanded to be there, and that they were hot and thirsty,
and that for weeks they had been learning hymns by heart for this
occasion, and that the occasion was glorious. Many of the rosettes
themselves had a poor, driven look. None of these bought suits at
Shillitoe's, nor millinery at Baines's. None of them gave orders for
printing, nor had preferences in the form of ledgers, nor held views on
Victor Hugo, nor drank wine, nor yearned for perfection in the art of
social intercourse. To Edwin, who was just beginning to touch the
planes of worldliness and of dilettantism in art, to Edwin, with the
mysterious and haughty creature at his elbow, they seemed to have no
more in common with himself and her than animals had. And he wondered
by virtue of what decree he, in the Shillitoe suit, and the grand house
waiting for him up at Bleakridge, had been lifted up to splendid ease
above the squalid and pitiful human welter.
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