In the field beyond the end of my
garden the materials for a bonfire had been heaped; a hill of every kind
of rubbish and refuse and things that nobody wants; broken chairs, dead
trees, rags, shavings, newspapers, new religions, in pamphlet form,
reports of the Eugenic Congress, and so on. All this refuse, material and
mental, it was our purpose to purify and change to holy flame on the day
when the King was crowned. The following is an account of the rather
strange thing that really happened. I do not know whether it was any sort
of symbol; but I narrate it just as it befell.
In the middle of the night I woke up slowly and listened to what I
supposed to be the heavy crunching of a cart-wheel along a road of loose
stones. Then it grew louder, and I thought somebody was shooting out
cartloads of stones; then it seemed as if the shock was breaking big
stones into pieces. Then I realised that under this sound there was also
a strange, sleepy, almost inaudible roar; and that on top of it every now
and then came pigmy pops like a battle of penny pistols. Then I knew what
it was. I went to the window; and a great firelight flung across two
meadows smote me where I stood. "Oh, my holy aunt," I thought, "they've
mistaken the Coronation Day.
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