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DILCHESTER had gone on holiday. It is true it was Wednesday afternoon, which had been early-closing day for as far back as the memory of the very oldest inhabitant could carry him; but added to this was the fact that, at the earnest solicitation of Mr. Richard Anson, the elementary schools had all been given a half-holiday; while all local employers of labour had been circularized with the suggestion, couched in the suavest and most persuasive sentences that Celia Paterson had been able to evolve from her employer's rather pompous and unyielding phraseology, that the granting of a free half-hour to all their employees would not only be a gracious gesture but might also constitute an act of merit on the part of the employers. The letter also hinted that the moral uplift resulting to the workmen thus released—always supposing they used the free half-hour for the purpose for which it had been granted—would be such that the intensified efforts put in by the men for the remainder of the afternoon would more than compensate for the brief period during which work would be shut down. It did not occur to Richard Anson or Celia or any of the other people actively concerned that the employees might not, if their opinions were canvassed, quite agree on this point; but as their opinions were not sought, no one was disillusioned.

Richard Anson, as the prime mover in the matter of the unveiling ceremony, had, in characteristic arbitary manner, addressed a letter to the chairman of the local licensing bench, suggesting that all hostelries within a radius of ten miles from the town should be closed down for that morning session. It was a severe rebuff to his pride to receive from the clerk to the bench a note couched in formal language regretting that the circumstances did not warrant the magistrates in thus interfering with the laws of England.

An article in the Dilchester Gazette (with which was associated the Steepleton Magna Courier and the Irvingham Advertiser) had appeared a few days before the ceremony, under the name of Richard Anson, pointing out in florid detail the immense significance of the forthcoming occasion to everybody in and around Dilchester, and exhorting all and sundry—especially the mothers and small children—to array themselves (and the said children) in their Sunday best to attend in Dilchester Square on Wednesday at 3 p.m. to be edified and inspired by the tribute then to be paid to the memory of Dilchester's most famous citizeness, Anna Rita Rymer.

To Elizabeth Anson, as her husband opened the car door, on arrival at the Square, for her to alight, the scene was unreal, farcical, out of all proportion. This Rymer woman was doubtless all that had been said of her—to Elizabeth she had never been more than a name, held up before her eyes ever since she had come to Dilchester with an insistence and frequency which to her acutely sensitive nature soon became nauseating, typifying everything that was pious, heroic, and even saintly—but Elizabeth could not rid herself of the feeling that the business of unveiling this preposterous statue, and the pomp and circumstance with which the whole affair had been surrounded, had assumed proportions entirely incongruous to the proper perspective of the facts.

The doors of the public bar of the "Red Lion" had been thrown open, the day being warm, and the loungers sitting at the deal benches, pewter mugs of beer in front of them, were surveying the scenes in the Square with a cynical disregard, punctuated by an occasional spit, which struck Elizabeth Anson, as she descended from the car within a short distance of the hostelry, as constituting a very much saner attitude to the whole affair.

The conversation, could she have paused and heard it, might have suited her mood.

"Who is this 'ere female they're making all the fuss about?"

"Oh, I don't know—Anna somebody or other."

"What was she then, Bill—film star or something?"

"Grrh! No, she warn't no film star. 'S'matter o' fac', she was agin 'em."

"Well, what did she do, any'ow?"

"Gawd knows, Jim. I know she used to knock aroun' with old Ted Moore.... 'Ere, Ted, what did this Anna What's-name do?"

Ted Moore spat eloquently, grunted something unintelligible, rose, and slouched from the bar into the bright sunlight.

He made his erratic way to the small crowd surrounding the statue in the middle of the Square.

Despite the intensive publicity efforts of Richard Anson, the attendants at the ceremony consisted mainly of Good Women and Earnest Men. There was, of course, the inevitable sprinkling of small boys, quite a number of pious little girls in clean print frocks, and a few town loafers. Standing slightly apart from the main body was the figure of the stalwart town policeman, who surveyed the scene with something of a proprietorial interest.

The statue, from which the veiling-cloth had just been removed, was that of a rather plain girl with a sacrificial expression. Richard Anson, standing at the foot of the plinth, was reading aloud the inscription in his clear, precise, almost precious tone:

"Anna Rita Rymer. Born in this town of Dilchester on November 19, 1895. Suffered martyrdom at Chin-Soo in China on March 30,1920. She gave her beautiful life to the cause of humanity, and by her sacrifice inspired unborn generations to noble endeavour. Erected by the citizens of Dilchester in proud and loving memory."

The crowd, a little uncertain of the correct procedure, broke into low murmurs of sound, to be hushed after a brief interval by the voice of Richard Anson, now oracular and declamatory.

"Here is the name which will uplift the youth of our country for countless generations. Today, on the eleventh anniversary of her great sacrifice, we again do homage to the name and memory of Anna Rita Rymer."

Subdued hand-clapping was started at this point by one of the groups surrounding the speaker.

"Thoughts of self were conspicuously absent from this saintly woman's mind. She came from a family already bearing an honoured name, a name held in the deepest respect throughout the countryside—"

"Hear, hear!" put in Anson's chief clerk. He remembered his employer's relationship with the woman he was eulogizing.

"And it is scarcely a matter for wonder that that selflessness, crystallized, as it were, in the personality of Anna Rita Rymer, was such as to inspire her to deeds of true heroism. She thought not of self, but of the glorious work which lay before her. It is unnecessary for me to remind you, citizens of Dilchester, of what that work consisted. She lived in an atmosphere of piety from her early youth, and in her 'teens had already decided to devote her talents, her energies, her means—her whole life—to the service of Christian missions. Her services declined by the recognized missionary societies, she gave her own slender fortune to the foundation of the Dilchester Chin-Soo Mission...."

The voice droned on. Elizabeth Anson found her attention wandering. Her gaze strayed around and amongst the crowd surrounding the statue. She felt intuitively the utter meaninglessness of the tribute which her husband was paying to the memory of his dead half-sister. As her glance moved from one face to another, she found herself speculating in an uninterested way as to the degree of reality that the proceedings had for each of these pathetically pious people.

Her eyes caught sight of Ted Moore, by now slightly within the crowd. His clothes were shabby; his unshaven cheeks were flushed with drink, his cap askew, his whole bearing anything but attuned to the solemnity of the occasion. But, surrounded as he was by faces of such standardized vacuity as these occasions produce, his own expression stood out in bold relief and arrested Elizabeth Anson's attention.

Here, at any rate, she thought, was a man whose mental processes were to a certain extent alive: the sneer on his lips, the scathing contempt in his eyes, as he listened to the pompous periods of the speaker, struck, deep down in her heart, a note sympathetic to some chord in her own being.

Roast beef—or, perhaps more appropriately, rice pudding day after day for weeks becomes boring, intolerable, at length nauseating. And ever since arrangements had been discussed for this unveiling ceremony she had been regaled with talk about Anna Rita Rymer, had had the dead missionary held up before her eyes as a model of what a Christian woman should be, upon which one could not do better than to base one's own life. She had never quite been able to understand what there was so terribly meritable in going to a foreign country and patronizingly trying to wean the inhabitants from the practice of their own religion, intrinsically as potent for good as that in which one had by the accident of birth been nurtured. It had always seemed to Elizabeth a piece of gross impertinence on the part of these self-satisfied evangelists to force their own dogmas upon the adherents of perhaps an equally laudable and efficient code of moral teaching. It was so short-sighted, she thought.... A smile momentarily lightened her face as the idea came into her mind: why were all the missionaries she had ever met myopic?

She wrested her attentions back to the declamatory sonorousness of her husband.

"The example of this Christian woman should serve among us for countless generations as a model of what can be achieved by selfless devotion to a single aim. In the mind of Anna Rita Rymer was one resolve—one object—one abiding craving—to take the Gospel of Christianity to the poor, benighted, heathen Chinese. One may ask 'Why the Chinese?' My reply to that is, I think, unanswerable: 'Why not?' The inhabitants of that vast country, thousands of miles away, were blessed—supremely blessed—with the presence in their midst of a woman who deserves, and must surely be accorded, a place amongst the noble martyrs of history—Anna Rita Rymer."

Elizabeth, joining politely in the storm of enthusiastic clapping, caught sight again of Ted Moore. His hands were thrust defiantly into his trousers pockets, and on his face was more than ever a look of sullen scorn. She got the impression that his tolerance of the speaker's words was being badly strained.

"She was a beautiful woman"—Richard Anson's hand gestured towards the marble statue, rather unwisely, Elizabeth thought—"with a beautiful soul. This town of Dilchester should be forever proud that she was born and lived within our very midst.

"What must it have meant for her—leaving behind this lovely city and her friends, whose name is legion? As she wrote in one of her beautiful poems:

"Heart and soul, body and mind,

I have left this world behind.

Here on China's darkest strand,

A stranger in a foreign land."

Vigorous applause seemed called for here, and at Richard Anson paused, looking round expectantly, is was forthcoming. "China's darkest strand" didn't mean a thing to his audience, but it rhymed with "foreign land", a fact which largely accounted for the powerful appeal of the verse.

Elizabeth, watching and more or less listening, shuddered. She marvelled that Richard could find it possible to repeat such banality; but she had realized for some time that, where Anna Rita Rymer was concerned, all sense of values seemed to have left her husband. He saw in the present ceremony not so much the glorification of his missionary half-sister as an opportunity for bringing himself into the limelight which he invariably sought.

Deliberately she wrenched her attention from Richard's ponderous utterances and sent her mind wandering carelessly along whichever paths it chose to follow.

John Hackett would be at Dilchester Court that afternoon. She told herself she did not know whether she was glad or sorry that he was coming. Deep down in her heart, however, she realized, she was craving to see him again. She had never seen him since her marriage to Richard. John had gone abroad shortly after she had written to him of her intention to marry Anson; he had not replied to her letter, and she had no knowledge of his reactions to the news. She knew John had loved her; she knew, now more than ever, that she had loved him. If only Fate had not played her that cursed swindling trick! If only she had not been forced by circumstances into contracting this marriage I If she had only deferred it for a few months, and the knowledge of her inheritance could have reached her before committing herself to this loveless marriage with Richard Anson....

She pulled herself up with a jerk. The tones of her husband's voice were becoming slower, more impressive, more ponderous. He was evidently reaching a point at which he expected an outburst of applause.

"Let us be forever thankful, my friends, for the example of this devoted, saintly woman. Love of her fellow man was the abiding impulse of her whole life. In her beautiful soul she had heard echoed the words of our Lord: 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.' Let us for ever revere her in that she immolated herself so completely upon the altar of duty as to cast aside scornfully the material blessings with which she was surrounded and, disdaining comfort, despising luxury, denying all thoughts of self, gave her wonderful talents to the glory of God and the advancement of the Chinese."

Ted Moore could repress his feelings no longer.

"Bunk!" he shouted angrily. "Sheer bunk!"

"We should be proud," repeated Richard Anson, in a somewhat louder tone, "that this saintly woman—"

"Bunk, I'm telling you—!"

The speaker paused, wondering for a moment which was the least undignified way of coping with such a situation. Then:

"That man had better go away," he said. "He is not himself. It is deplorable that an occasion of such importance and solemnity should be marred by the interruption—I might say almost the blasphemous interruption—of a dipsomaniac—"

Moore removed his hands from his trousers pockets and pushed his way further into the crowd.

"Look here, Anson," he exclaimed, "if you mean I'm tight, you're a liar!"

Two good women, unsettled physically by Ted Moore's elbows and spiritually by his sacrilege, endeavoured to expostulate.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ted Moore!" vociferated one.

"Yes, you great, drunken loafer? Fancy coming here blackening the memory of a wonderful woman!" Ted Moore glared.

"Wonderful woman my foot!" he scoffed. "It's a lie! She—"

The proprietorial policeman thought it was time to take a hand. Edging his way through the crowd, he reached Moore's side and grabbed his arm.

"Come on, Ted. Push off. You're disturbing the peace. Now if you don't go like the sensible man you are I'll have to lock you up."

"All right, Burrows," agreed Moore. "I'll go. But I've never heard so much utter bunk in all my life...." The tactful policeman encouraged rather than pushed him through the small throng, which readily parted to allow them to pass, and the proceedings continued.

Anson, who had prepared several more telling phrases of his oration, had been disturbed but the interruption, and finished his speech with a few remarks both commonplace and halting. The applause of the crowd as he concluded reached Ted Moore when he was some distance from the gathering and inspired him to turn round and make rudely contemptuous gesture in its direction.