Читать книгу The Smuggler's Cave - George A. Birmingham - Страница 7

Table of Contents

There were incidents in the story which might have been cavilled at by a cold-blooded critic. There were, as Sir Evelyn went on, inconsistencies. Men who had tramped across bare rolling stones were splashing knee-deep in water a little later, as if the tide had come in with startling rapidity. On so calm a night there was surely no need for the lugger to carry ballast outboard, though the description of the kegs slung along her weather gunwale helped to produce an atmosphere of very proper desperation. But what do such details matter? Sir Evelyn had achieved the spirit of the smugglers' night landing; worked up to quite unusual emotion he might have gone on to a fight with the preventive officers, but Mrs. Eames, uncontrollably excited, interrupted him at last.

"I see it all," she cried, clapping her hands. "It's wonderful, Sir Evelyn, thrilling. Timothy, we must have a pageant—the Hailey Compton Pageant of Smuggling days. The first of a series of Hailey Compton Pageants of English History. Smugglers! They've never been done before."

To Sir Evelyn her voice was like a jug of cold water suddenly emptied over him. His delight in his own story faded away. He was conscious of nothing except that he had been betrayed into making a fool of himself.

The vicar groaned aloud.

"My dear Agatha——" he began.

"Don't croak, Timothy," she cried, "and don't cavil. This is going to be the most splendid pageant there ever was. The real thing. All the cinemas in the world will reproduce it. We'll have half England here to see it."

"Terrible, terrible," said the vicar.

"We'll make pots of money—for the church of course, Timothy."

"The church doesn't want money," said the vicar; but he knew even while he sobbed out the words, that this was not true. All churches want money, always, and when they get it immediately want more. So do states. If a church or a state could be found which did not want money all sensible men would immediately be received into the one and naturalised into the other.

"Timothy, dearest," said Mrs. Eames, "you know the church ought to be restored. You can't imagine," she explained to Sir Evelyn, "how utterly Victorian our church is. It's quite impossible to have really catholic services in it in its present state. But if we only had money to restore it—and we will, thanks to your splendid idea of a smuggling pageant."

Mrs. Eames, a fervent admirer of all that was best in drama, music and art, was in full sympathy with the picturesque part of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church. If she had not been a vicar's wife she would probably have become Catholic without the Anglo. This shows the wisdom of the Church of England in encouraging the marriage of her clergy. A taste for ornamental ecclesiasticism would doubtless lead many women to desert the church of their baptism, if it were not that such women generally get married early in life to curates. And how many of our priests—blessed with similar tastes and an equal share of intelligence—would make their submission to seductive Rome if they were not irrevocably tied to women by a bond which they regard as sacramental?

"God forbid," said the vicar solemnly, "that I should ever be guilty of restoring the church. I have," his voice became penitential, "I have many sins to answer for, but at least——"

Mrs. Eames laid down the potato dish which she still held in her hands, ran to him and flung a plump arm round his neck.

"Timothy, darling," she said, "you haven't any sins or shortcomings. I sometimes think you'd be a better man if you had a few. But you haven't."

"At least," said the vicar, pushing his mouth clear of the hands which covered it, "it shall never be recorded of me that I restored a church. I beg of you, Agatha, to allow me to die without doing that."

He spoke as all good clergy do of church restoration. There is scarcely a vicar or rector to be found in England to-day who does not resent the restoration of his church effected by his predecessor. So far has æsthetic education advanced in our time. So far, but no farther. For there is scarcely a vicar or a rector who does not feel that if the restoration had been left to him it would have been done properly; who would not joyfully undertake a fresh restoration if he saw his way to getting the money. But Mr. Eames at least was sincere. The furniture and fittings of Hailey Compton church deserved the worst that could be said of them, but the vicar would not willingly have removed a pew or erected a screen.

He got up slowly and sadly, releasing himself from his wife's encircling arms. With a bow to Sir Evelyn he turned to leave the room.

"Timothy, Timothy," said Mrs. Eames, "don't go till you've had a pancake."

She turned on Gladys who was making a cheerful noise by knocking table-spoons against the beer jug.

"Go and get the pancakes at once, Gladys. Timothy, my darling, do stay."

"Not if I'm to be asked to restore a church," he said.

"I'm afraid," said Sir Evelyn, when the vicar had shut the door behind him, "that he doesn't like the idea of a pageant."

"Oh, he's always that way at first," said Mrs. Eames, "when I'm doing something for the parish. He was perfectly miserable for a week when I began the rehearsing for 'Othello,' pretending that he didn't like my doing Desdemona. He was just as bad over 'Hamlet,' though I said I'd give up being Ophelia just to please him. I cannot get him to see that it is his duty in a parish like this to get up something for the people. Don't you agree with me, Sir Evelyn?"

"The country clergy," said Sir Evelyn, "are often reproached with apathy and indifference to——"

"Exactly what I don't want to have said about poor Timothy," said Mrs. Eames. "He's really a saint, you know. At least he would be if he'd only do something, even something wrong. It is such a comfort," she went on abruptly, "to feel that you're going to help us in this pageant, Sir Evelyn."

"So far as my limited knowledge of the subject goes," said Sir Evelyn, a little taken aback, "it is entirely at your disposal, but——"

"Splendid," said Mrs. Eames, "and your knowledge isn't the least limited, so don't be modest. I'll get Beth to write articles for every paper in England boosting the pageant for all she's worth. That's what's called publicity, and it's most important."

"But——" said Sir Evelyn, "excuse my interrupting you, Mrs. Eames, but——"

"Don't go on saying but. You're getting nearly as bad as poor Timothy. Let's make out a list of what we shall want. Ten smugglers would be enough, I should think. Jack Bunce and his son. That's two——" She ticked off the Hailey Compton fishermen on her fingers as she named them. "Tommy Whittle and his three brothers. The youngest is what's called mentally deficient, but that won't matter in a business like this. Old George Mullens—his beard will look splendid. Charlie Mees. He's lame; but I suppose a smuggler might be lame. How many's that?"

"But," said Sir Evelyn, "oughtn't we to begin by considering——"

"One lugger," Mrs. Eames went on. "It may be a little difficult to get a lugger. Ten pack horses. I haven't the least idea what a pack horse is, but I suppose an ordinary horse will do if it's dressed up properly. Everybody will have to dress up of course. Fifty or sixty kegs. I suppose Harrod's will be able to supply us with kegs. They sell everything."

"But," said Sir Evelyn desperately, "where's the money to come from?"

"The public, of course," said Mrs. Eames. "The public is going to pay enormous sums."

"I was thinking of preliminary expenses," said Sir Evelyn.

"Oh, they won't be much," said Mrs. Eames cheerfully, "and I think we'll easily be able to get a grant from some society. Look at the number of societies there are which go in for encouraging artistic handicrafts for the people. Now don't interrupt me, Sir Evelyn. I know just as well as you do that a pageant isn't a handicraft, but it's the same sort of thing. It's just as good as folk dancing anyhow, and there's always money going for that, and folk songs. We'll introduce a folk dance and a few folk songs if necessary. Then there are all the people who want to revive national drama. This is national drama."

Sir Evelyn, though inclined to be critical, was impressed. There are enormous numbers of people, most of them incorporated into societies, who are willing to give money, of which they seem to have more than they want, for just such enterprises as Mrs. Eames's. There ought not to be any great difficulty about getting at them.

"And of course," said Mrs. Eames, "we can get a grant from the County Education Committee."

"That," said Sir Evelyn firmly, "would be totally impossible."

This light-hearted suggestion of pillaging public funds came perilously near being an insult when made to a man who was once a Cabinet Minister. Sir Evelyn resented it and showed his feelings in his voice. Mrs. Eames was in no way abashed.

"I don't see why not," she said. "A pageant is a most educative thing. No one can possibly deny that. Lots and lots of money is spent on things which aren't nearly so educative as our pageant will be. I mean educative in the true sense of the word."

Everyone who says educative and education means the words to be understood in this way. The thought of the "true sense" mollified Sir Evelyn a little. It soothes everyone who has anything to do with education, except the public which has to pay for it. It realises that education in the "true sense" is more expensive than any other. Mrs. Eames saw that she had produced a good effect and pressed her advantage.

"I'm sure we'd get a grant from the committee," she said, "if you asked for it."

Sir Evelyn was most uncomfortably conscious that this was true. A suggestion from him would go a long way with any County Committee, and if he described Mrs. Eames's pageant as an educational enterprise everyone would at once believe him. Unfortunately, having been a gentleman before he became a politician, he was afflicted with a certain sense of honesty.

"It's only a matter of its being put properly to the proper people," said Mrs. Eames persuasively, "and you can do that easily."

"I'd rather give you fifty pounds myself," said Sir Evelyn desperately, "than ask for a grant from any public fund."

"How perfectly sweet of you," said Mrs. Eames. "Now there needn't be any worry about money. There can't be much more wanted. Timothy will be delighted when I tell him. He's always just a little inclined to fuss about money, and these things do cost something, don't they? I wish I could tell him about your fifty pounds at once and make his mind easy. But he's up in the church and I simply daren't disturb him."

"In the church?"

Sir Evelyn was impressed and quite understood that a vicar—admittedly on the verge of becoming a saint—ought not to be disturbed while engaged in prayer and meditation.

"Locked in," said Mrs. Eames. "He always locks himself into the church for a while when I get up anything for the parish. So naughty of him, but that's the kind of man he is. However I'll tell him about your fifty pounds when he comes home in the evening."

Mrs. Eames was perfectly right in saying that her husband had locked himself in. But Sir Evelyn's inference was wrong. Mr. Eames was not engaged in devotional exercises. He was reading the works of the philosopher Epictetus—a very wise choice of literature, for no writer, ancient or modern, has more comfort to offer to those who suffer from the worries and minor ills of life. Nervous irritability, impotent anger and such afflictions of temper are almost invariably soothed by a study of the excellent teaching of Epictetus. Mr. Eames read the philosopher in Greek, which is the best way to read him, for no one can read Greek very fast, and the necessity of going slowly in order to understand the words gives time for the digestion of the matter behind them.

There is nothing irreverent or even improper about reading Epictetus in church. He was a pagan, but so nearly a Christian that the mediæval monks mistook him for one of the fathers of the church and treated his works as books of devotion. If the monks of the sainted Middle Ages took this view of Epictetus a twentieth century English vicar who reads him in church cannot be regarded as profane.

Mr. Eames, owing to the unrestored condition of his church, was able to make himself fairly comfortable while reading. Hailey Compton parish church was built originally in the Early English style, and was refurnished every hundred years or so in accordance with the taste of each period. The Victorian churchwardens, when their turn came, filled it with large high-backed square pews, put thick cushions on the seats and provided footstools for the convenience of worshippers with short legs. There were fireplaces in some of the pews and occasionally there were arm-chairs. To avoid draughts and secure privacy red curtains were hung round the principal pews. The leading idea was the physical comfort of the worshippers, and the churchwardens seemed to have held with Bishop Blougram that soul was at its best when "body gets its sop and holds its noise." No one need be ashamed of being a disciple of Bishop Blougram, who was a most successful ecclesiastic, on the way to become a Cardinal or perhaps a Pope.