It is a depressing fact and something of a disgrace to human nature
that the efforts of those who try to benefit their neighbours
are seldom appreciated. Our most active benefactors are generally
unpopular. Reformers of a serious kind, those who try to rid the world
of beer, tobacco and the opportunity of betting, no doubt expect to be
detested, and reckon the dislike they incur as part of the reward of
their virtue. At all events they richly deserve all they get in the way
of unpopularity. But it is hard on those much less culpable people who
merely insist on others amusing themselves in unaccustomed ways that
their efforts should earn no gratitude.
Mrs. Eames, for instance, had no objection to beer, often smoked
cigarettes and might have bet small sums if the temptation had come her
way. She did nothing worse in the village than stir up young men and
maidens to act plays; which they ought to have liked doing but did not.
She was not herself unpopular, but her plays were, and the announcement
that a fresh one was to be started, was received year after year with
groans from those likely to be implicated, and from the whole community
with a stolid passive resistance, which only energy as unfailing as
Mrs. Eames's could possibly have overcome.
She knew all this and fully expected that the pageant prospect would
be received by the village people with mutterings of revolt. It was.
Mrs. Eames, who believed in what she called personal influence, made
a rapid visitation of the village, explained the glories and delights
of pageants, and was met almost everywhere with gloomy hostility.
Only James Hinton of the Anchor Inn gave her the least encouragement,
and even his reception of the project would scarcely have been called
encouraging except by contrast to the hostility elsewhere. Hinton, at
least, did not condemn the pageant without hearing what it was to be.
He questioned Mrs. Eames about it and finally promised to think the
matter over carefully.
Mrs. Eames summoned a public meeting to consider the pageant and to
make the necessary arrangements.
This was always her way of proceeding. She liked public meetings
because they gave her opportunities for making speeches, and she
believed, like most English people, that a meeting is as necessary to
an undertaking of any kind as trousers are to a man. There would be
something indecent about a scheme which came into the world not clothed
in a resolution of approval, duly passed, not adorned with a properly
appointed treasurer and secretary.
A Tuesday ten days after Sir Evelyn's visit was fixed for the meeting
and the schoolroom was chosen as the place of assembly.
Mrs. Eames did not expect a large audience. While discussing the
meeting beforehand with her husband she was able to predict with
complete confidence who would be there.
"James Hinton, of course," she said. "He's your churchwarden."
"I suppose he's more or less bound to be there," said the vicar, "to
represent me. I'm certainly not going."
"Of course not, darling. Everyone knows you hate meetings and you
wouldn't be any use if you did go. I'm sure the school teachers will be
there. They always come to all meetings."
The schoolmaster and his two assistant damsels attended Mrs. Eames's
meetings regularly. The schoolmaster liked proposing resolutions. His
assistants took it in turns to second anything he proposed.
"And Mrs. Mudge," Mrs. Eames went on, "and Mrs. Purly and----"
She named half a dozen old women, all of them widows, all of them
mildly pious, with a vague feeling that attendance at any meeting
summoned by Mrs. Eames was a religious act.
"And some of the schoolboys."
"They only go because they're allowed to shout," said the vicar. "All
boys love shouting anywhere, and it's particularly pleasant to be able
to yell in the schoolroom where they generally have to sit quiet."
"Of course they love shouting, poor dears," said Mrs. Eames, "and I
love to hear them. Besides, Timothy, darling, a meeting is so dull if
nobody cheers. A speaker does want a little encouragement. Of course
it wouldn't do--I know quite well it wouldn't do--but all the same I
often think that most sermons would be better--not yours, Timothy--they
couldn't be nicer than they are--but most other sermons would be far
better if the choir boys were allowed to cheer occasionally. They'd
like it and you can't think how it would encourage the preacher."
"If nobody else goes to your meeting," said the vicar, "and I'm sure
nobody else will, I don't see what good it is to hold a meeting at
all."
A surprise, staggering in its unexpectedness, waited for Mrs. Eames
when she went to her meeting.
The schoolroom was full to its utmost capacity. Indeed it had evidently
been more than full at some time shortly before the beginning of the
meeting. The schoolboys had been turned out to make room for their
elders. Smarting under a sense of injustice they tried to avenge
themselves by marching round the building and uttering howls of a
lamentable kind outside every window in turn. The schoolmaster, though
he deplored their action, refused to interfere, saying that he had no
authority outside school hours. Others were less scrupulous about their
legal position. Tommy Whittle, a burly fisherman, went out with a stick
and was using an argument which the boys thoroughly understood when
Mrs. Eames arrived. Fortunately for the success of the meeting Tommy
Whittle had made his meaning perfectly plain to the leading boys before
he followed Mrs. Eames into the room.
She was obliged to push her way through the door, though everyone
tried to make way for her. Those who could not find seats were crowded
together at the bottom of the room, and it was almost impossible
for them to pack any closer even in order to let Mrs. Eames pass.
Once well into the room she made a triumphal progress towards the
platform amidst bursts of cheers, stamping of feet and clapping of
hands. On the platform, waiting to receive her, were James Hinton and
the schoolmaster, whom she expected, and, an astonishing sight, Jack
Bunce, one of the oldest and most influential men in the village,
fellow churchwarden with James Hinton. He had hitherto been obstinately
opposed to all Mrs. Eames's activities. All three stood bowing low as
she advanced towards them.
James Hinton, holding up his hand for silence, proposed that Mrs. Eames
should take the chair.
This was quite unnecessary. She took it of her own accord, and as a
matter of accustomed right, as soon as she reached the platform.
Jack Bunce was seen--but owing to the cheering, not heard--to be
making a short speech. It is likely that he was seconding Hinton's
proposition, very superfluously indeed, but he may have been saying
something else. No one ever knew.
The size of the audience and the warmth of her reception amazed Mrs.
Eames. Never before had she seen the people of Hailey Compton stirred
to the smallest interest in anything, but there was no doubt about
their excited enthusiasm over the pageant. When she began to speak they
cheered every sentence.
"In times past," she said, "we have made several efforts to revive
drama in our village."
"Three cheers for drama," shouted Tommy Whittle, waving the stick with
which he had beaten the boys, and the cheers were given.
"Shakespeare----" said Mrs. Eames.
"Three cheers for Shakespeare," said old Jack Bunce, who had always
hated the plays.
"Shakespeare----" said Mrs. Eames, when the shouting subsided.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Hinton, interrupting her, "before we go
further I think that the name of the immortal Shakespeare should be
received by all standing, in respectful silence."
Only the boys outside broke the silence. They had not been able to hear
what Hinton said.
Mrs. Eames, despairing perhaps of ever getting any further with that
part of her speech, dropped Shakespeare abruptly and went on to speak
of village art in general terms. The applause was loud. She repeated
one after another things that she had said hundreds of times and always
to people who neither would nor could understand what she meant. She
was perhaps no better understood at this wonderful meeting, but what
she said was certainly approved.
Her eyes gleamed with delight. Her face was flushed with excitement.
She could feel her heart beating in rapid throbs. But she began to
get a little hoarse from the effort to make herself heard during the
cheering. When she had been talking for half an hour, about art, song
and dance, all of the "folk" or superior kind, the audience began
to show signs of impatience. Instead of simply cheering, the younger
men at the back of the room took to shouting "Pageant! Pageant!" They
pronounced the first syllable as if it rhymed with rage, but there was
no doubt about what they meant. They wanted to get on, past art of all
kinds, to the proper business of the meeting.
There was a good deal to say about the pageant. And Mrs. Eames
had matter enough, if properly spun out, to keep her speech going
for another hour. She would have enjoyed making an oration of that
length and no doubt would have done it if her voice had held out.
Unfortunately for her it failed. Few, if any, human voices would have
done any better. The contest between a single speaker and a cheering
crowd is unequal and can only have one end. Mrs. Eames sat down at
last. Her final words, muttered hoarsely, were, "Smugglers"--"old
days"--"Hailey Compton"--"hardy breed of seadogs."
The cheers rose in a fine crescendo to a noise which would have made a
German orchestra playing Wagner's music sound restrained and soothing.
The people were no doubt very glad that Mrs. Eames had reached the
end of her speech, but there must have been something more than simple
relief behind their cheering. The ancestors of these fishermen, their
grandfathers and great grandfathers a century or so before, had been
noted smugglers, famous even in an age when everyone in the south
of England smuggled. The deadening tyranny of a hundred years of
law and order had tamed and cowed the Bunces and Whittles of to-day,
but deep down in them was the old spirit. Mrs. Eames had appealed to
sub-conscious selves with atavistic memories.
The surprises of the evening were not at an end. When Mrs. Eames sat
down James Hinton rose. He held in his hand a large piece of paper and
an observer in the audience might have supposed that he intended to
read a speech. But Hinton had a spirit above manuscript and it was very
soon evident that the paper contained something far more interesting
and more amazing than the notes of any speech.
"A pageant," he said gravely and with quiet dignity, "a great pageant,
a pageant displaying one of the most glorious epochs of our national
story----" Cheers from such of the audience as had any voices left
stopped him for a moment. "Such a pageant as we contemplate cannot
be run without the expenditure of considerable sums in preliminary
expenses."
At this point of the speech--a point which must be reached in a speech
made by someone at every meeting convened for a good purpose--the
audience usually becomes uncomfortable and often begins to melt away.
But the Hailey Compton people were apparently prepared to face even a
subscription list. They cheered again. The reason of this confidence
was apparent almost at once. The subscription list had been handed
round days before and was already complete.
"I have therefore much pleasure, madam," Hinton went on, bowing low to
Mrs. Eames, "in presenting to you a guarantee for the sum of £51 2s.
6d. together with a list of the names of the guarantors of what I may,
perhaps, call the Pageant Fund."
Mrs. Eames gasped. In all her experience of Hailey Compton--perhaps
in all the experience of all vicars and vicars' wives of all country
parishes--no such thing as this had ever happened. With the utmost
difficulty she had managed to extract sixpences and threepences from
unwilling people for the expenses of "Macbeth" and "Othello." For
"Hamlet" she expected to have to pay entirely out of her own pocket.
Yet here, unasked for and unsought, was more than fifty pounds offered
to her.
She rose to her feet, tried to find words to express at once gratitude
and amazement. She choked, swallowed hard, felt slightly faint and
sat down again abruptly. The emotion of the evening had been too much
for her. Never before in her whole life had Mrs. Eames been unable
to express herself in fluent and ready speech. But then she had never
before come face to face with a miracle.
The people cheered again, hoarsely, but as fervently as ever. This
time they felt that they were cheering themselves. The £1 2s. 6d.
represented the subscription of the fishermen to the fund. The fifty
pounds came from Hinton.