The whole Square was now suddenly revealed as a swarming mass of heads,
out of which rose banners and pennons that were cruder in tint even than
the frocks and hats of the little girls and the dresses and bonnets of
their teachers; the men, too, by their neckties, scarves, and rosettes,
added colour to colour. All the windows were chromatic with the hues of
bright costumes, and from many windows and from every roof that had a
flagstaff flags waved heavily against the gorgeous sky. At the bottom
of the Square the lorries with infants had been arranged, and each
looked like a bank of variegated flowers. The principal bands--that is
to say, all the bands that could be trusted--were collected round the
red baize platform at the top of the Square, and the vast sun-reflecting
euphoniums, trumpets, and comets made a glittering circle about the
officials and ministers and their wives and women. All denominations,
for one day only, fraternised effusively together on that platform; for
princes of the royal house, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Lord Mayor of London had urged that it should be so. The Primitive
Methodists' parson discovered himself next but one to Father Milton, who
on any other day would have been a Popish priest, and whose wooden
substitute for a wife was the queen on a chessboard. And on all these
the sun blazed torridly.
And almost in the middle of the Square an immense purple banner bellied
in the dusty breeze, saying in large gold letters, "The Blood of the
Lamb," together with the name of some Sunday school, which Edwin from
his barrel could not decipher.
Then a hoary white-tied notability on the platform raised his might arm
very high, and a bugle called, and a voice that had filled fields in
exciting times of religious revival floated in thunder across the
enclosed Square, easily dominating it--
"Let us sing."
And the conductor of the eager massed bands set them free with a
gesture, and after they had played a stave, a small stentorian choir at
the back of the platform broke forth, and in a moment the entire
multitude, at first raggedly, but soon in good unison, was singing--
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure:
Cleanse from guilt and make me pure.
The volume of sound was overwhelming. Its crashing force was enough to
sweep people from barrels. Edwin could feel moisture in his eyes, and
he dared not look at Hilda. "Why the deuce do I want to cry?" he asked
himself angrily, and was ashamed. And at the beginning of the second
verse, when the glittering instruments blared forth anew, and the
innumerable voices, high and loud, infantile and aged, flooded swiftly
over their brassy notes, subduing them, the effect on Edwin was the same
again: a tightening of the throat, and a squeezing down of the eyelids.
Why was it? Through a mist he read the words "The Blood of the Lamb,"
and he could picture the riven trunk of a man dying, and a torrent of
blood flowing therefrom, and people like his Auntie Clara and his
brother-in-law Albert plunging ecstatically into the liquid in order to
be white. The picture came again in the third verse,--the red fountains
and the frantic bathers.
Then the notability raised his arm once more, and took off his hat, and
all the males on the platform took off their hats, and presently every
boy and man in the Square had uncovered his head to the strong sunshine;
and at last Edwin had to do the same, and only the policemen, by virtue
of their high office, could dare to affront the majesty of God. And the
reverberating voice cried--
"Oh, most merciful Lord! Have pity upon us. We are brands plucked from
the burning." And continued for several minutes to descant upon the
theme of everlasting torture by incandescence and thirst. Nominally
addressing a deity, but in fact preaching to his audience, he announced
that, even for the veriest infant on a lorry, there was no escape from
the eternal fires save by complete immersion in the blood. And he was
so convinced and convincing that an imaginative nose could have detected
the odour of burnt flesh. And all the while the great purple banner
waved insistently: "The Blood of the Lamb."
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