She a.s.sented to it with a very pretty grace. Her speech at the Sale of Work was charming, and she talked to her audience about the Empire; reminded them that they were all members of one body; called them her "dear Girl Friendlies": and hoped, though a new-comer, in future to see a great deal more of them. They applauded this pa.s.sage _de bon coeur_, and indeed p.r.o.nounced the whole speech "So womanly!"

At its close Mr. Colt, proposing a vote of thanks, insinuated something "anent a more ambitious undertaking, in which (if we can only engage Lady Shaftesbury's active sympathy) we may realise a cherished dream. I fear," proceeded Mr. Colt, "that I am a st.u.r.dy beggar. I can only plead that the cause is no mere local one, but in the truest sense national--nay imperial. For where but in the story of Merchester can be found the earliest inspiration of those countless deeds which won the Empire?"

Later, when Lady Shaftesbury asked to what he alluded, he discoursed on the project of the Pageant with dexterity and no little tact.

"What a ripping idea! . . . Now I come to remember, my husband _did_ say casually, the other day, that Mr. Bamberger had been sounding him about something of the sort. But Jack is English, you know, and a Whig at that. The mere notion of dressing-up or play-acting makes him want to run away and hide. . . . Oh, my dear sir, I know all about pageants! I saw one at Warwick Castle--was it last year or the year before? . . . There was a woman on horseback--I forget what historical character she represented: it wasn't Queen Elisabeth, I know, and it couldn't have been Lady G.o.diva because--well, because to begin with, she knew how to dress. She wore a black velvet habit, with seed-pearls, which sounds like Queen Henrietta Maria.

Anyway, everyone agreed she had a perfect seat in the saddle.

Is that the sort of thing--'Fair Rosamund goes a-hawking with King, er, Whoever-he-was?'"

Mr. Colt regretted that Fair Rosamund had no historical connection with Merchester. . . . No, and equally out of the question was Mary, Queen of Scots laying her neck on the block.

"Besides, she couldn't very well do that on horseback. And Maseppa was a man, wasn't he?"

"If," said Mr. Colt diplomatically, "we can only prevail upon one or two really influential ladies to see the thing in that light, details could be arranged later. We have not yet decided on the Episodes.

. . . But notoriously where there's a will there's a way."

Lady Shaftesbury pondered this conversation while her new car whirled her homewards. She had begun to wish that Jack (as she called her lord) would strike out a bolder line in county affairs, if his ambition confined him to these. He was already (through no search of his own) Chairman of the County Council, and Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and was p.r.i.c.ked to serve as High Sheriff next year.

He ought to do something to make his shrievalty memorable . . . and, moreover, the Lord-Lieutenant was an old man.

In the library that evening after dinner she opened fire. The small function at the Girls' Friendly had been a success; but she wished to do something more for Merchester--"where we ought to be a real influence for good--living as we do so close to it."

She added, "I hear that Mr. Bamberger's seat is by no means safe, and another General Election may be on us at any moment. . . . I know how little you like Mr. Bamberger personally: but after all, and until _you_ will consent to take his place--Mr. Bamberger stands between us and the rising tide of Socialism. I was discussing this with Mr.

Colt to-day."

"Who is Mr. Colt?" asked Sir John.

"You must have met him. He is Chaplain of St. Hospital, and quite a personality in Merchester . . . though I don't know," pursued Lady Shaftesbury, musing, "that one would altogether describe him as a gentleman. But ought we to be too particular when the cause is at stake, and heaven knows how soon the Germans will be invading us?"

The end was that Sir John, who loved his young wife, gave her a free hand, of which she made the most. Almost before he was aware of it, he found himself Chairman of a General Committee, summoning a Sub-Committee of Ways and Means. At the first meeting he announced that his lady had consented to set aside, throughout the winter months, one day a week from hunting, and offered Shaftesbury Hall as head-quarters of the Costume Committee.

Thereupon it was really astonishing with what alacrity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-cla.s.s (its damsels especially) caught the contagion. Within a week "Are you Pageantising?" or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge?"

became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close. To this a stock answer would be--

"Oh, I don't know! I suppose so." Here the respondent would simulate a slight boredom. "One will have to mix with the most impossible people, of course"--Lady Shaftesbury had won great popularity by insisting that, in a business so truly national, no cla.s.s distinctions were to be drawn--"but anyhow it will fill up the off-days this winter."

Lady Shaftesbury herself, after some pretty deliberation, decided to enact the part of the Empress Maud, and escape on horseback from King Stephen of Blois. Mr. Colt and Mr. Isidore Bamberger together waited on Brother Copas with a request that he would write the libretto for this Episode.

"But it was only last week you turned me on to Episode VI--King Hal and the Emperor Charles the Fifth," Copas protested.

"We are hoping you will write this for us too," urged Mr. Colt.

"It oughtn't to take you long, you know. To begin with, no one knows very much about that particular period."

"The less known the better, if we may trust the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. A few realistic pictures of the diversions of the upper cla.s.ses--"

"Hawking was one, I believe?" opined Mr. Colt.

"Yes, and another was hanging the poor by their heels over a smoky fire, and yet another was shutting them up in a close cell into which had been inserted a few toads and adders."

"Her ladyship suggests a hawking scene, in the midst of which she is surprised by King Stephen and his, er, myrmidons--if that be the correct term--"

"It is at least as old as Achilles."

"She escapes from him on horseback. . . . At this point she wants to know if we can introduce a water-jump."

"Nothing could be easier, in a blank verse composition," a.s.sented Brother Copas gravely.

"You see, there is very little writing required. Just enough dialogue to keep the thing going. . . . Her ladyship is providing her own riding-habit and those of her attendant ladies, for whom she has chosen six of the most beautiful maidens in the neighbourhood, quite irrespective of cla.s.s. The dresses are to be gorgeous."

"They will form a pleasing contrast, then, to King Stephen, whose riding-breeches, as we know, 'cost him but a crown.' . . .

Very well, I will 'cut the cackle and come to the hosses.' And you, Mr. Isidore? Do I read in your eye that you desire a similar literary restraint in your Episode of King Hal?"

"Ach, yes," grinned Mr. Isidore. "_Cut ze caggle_--cabital!

I soggest in zat Ebisode we haf a Ballet."

"A Ballet?"

"A Ballet of Imberial Exbansion--ze first English discofferies ofer sea--ze natives brought back in brocession to mek sobmission--"

"Devilish pretty subst.i.tute for Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation!"

"It was _zere_ lay ze future of Englandt, _hein_?"

"I see," said Brother Copas thoughtfully; "provided you make the ballets of our nation, you don't care if your brother makes its laws."

These preparations (he noted) had a small byproduct pleasantly affecting St. Hospital. Mr. Colt, in his anxiety to enlist the whole-hearted services of the Brethren (who according to design were to serve as a sort of subsidiary chorus to the Pageant, appearing and reappearing, still in their antique garb, in a succession of scenes supposed to extend over many centuries), had suddenly taken the line of being 'all things to all men,' and sensibly relaxed the zeal of his proselytising as well as the rigour of certain regulations offensive to the more Protestant of his flock.

"You may growl," said Brother Copas to Brother Warboise: "but this silly Pageant is bringing us more peace than half a dozen Pet.i.tions."

Brother Warboise was, in fact, growling because for three months and more nothing had been heard of the Pet.i.tion.

"You may depend," said Copas soothingly, "the Bishop put the thing away in his skirt pocket and forgot all about it. I happen to know that he must be averse to turning out his skirt pockets, for I once saw him surrept.i.tiously smuggle away a mayonnaise sandwich there.

It was at a Deanery garden party; and I, having been invited to hand the ices and look picturesque, went on looking picturesque and pretended not to see. . . . I ought to have told you, when you asked me to write it, that such was the invariable fate of my compositions."

Meanwhile, it certainly seemed that a truce had been called to the internal dissensions of St. Hospital. On the pageant-ground one afternoon, in the midst of a very scratchy rehearsal, Brother Copas found himself by chance at the Chaplain's side. The two had been watching in silence for a full five minutes, when he heard Mr. Colt addressing him in a tone of unusual friendliness.

"Wonderful how it seems to link us up, eh?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I was thinking, just then, of the St. Hospital uniform, which you have the honour to wear. It seems--or Mr. Isidore has the knack of making it seem--the, er, _foil_ of the whole Pageant. It outlasts all the more brilliant fashions."

"Poverty, sir, is perduring. It is in everything just because it is out of everything. We inherit time, if not the earth."

"But particularly," said Mr. Colt, "I was thinking of the corporate unity it seems to give us, and to pa.s.s on, through us, to the whole story of Merchester."

"Aye, we are always with you."

Afterwards Brother Copas repented that he had not answered more graciously: for afterwards, looking back, he perceived that, in some way, the Pageant had actually helped to bring back a sense of "corporate unity" to St. Hospital.