The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Smuggler's Cave, by George A. Birmingham

Transcriber's Note:

The book has an extra Chapter XIV following Chapter XV (i.e., the chapter sequence is XIV, XV, XIV, XVI). The numbering has been left as printed.

The Smugglers' Cave

NOVELS BY
GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM

• THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE
• GOODLY PEARLS
• THE GUN RUNNERS
• THE GRAND DUCHESS
• KING TOMMY
• SEND FOR Dr. O'GRADY
• GENERAL JOHN REGAN
• THE MAJOR'S NIECE
• HYACINTH
• BENEDICT KAVANAGH

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
Limited London

The
Smugglers' Cave

By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM

Hodder and Stoughton
Limited London

Made and Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham

An Introduction

Meant to make easy the task of those who review novels without reading them and to awaken the interest of others who read novels without reviewing them.

This is the story of the Hailey Compton Village Pageant.

Pageants, good and bad, great and small, were commonplace affairs a few years ago. Every summer half a dozen of them were widely advertised and probably a dozen more ran blameless courses unnoticed except by those who took part in them. They were started by enthusiasts, worked up by energetic committees, kept within the bounds of historic possibility by scholarly experts. They came and went, amused a few people, bored a great many and left not a trace of their brief existence behind them.

The Hailey Compton Pageant was staged in a small unimportant village. The people who organised it, the vicar's wife and the local innkeeper, were unknown to fame. It had, at first, no backing in the press except a few paragraphs slipped into provincial papers by Miss Beth Appleby, a young journalist of promise but small attainment. It had, at first, no aristocratic patronage, except the half-hearted support of Sir Evelyn Dent. It began in a casual, almost accidental way.

Yet the Hailey Compton Pageant excited England from end to end, set every club in London gossiping, inspired a spate of articles in the daily papers, smirched the reputation of an earl and went near wrecking, at the next General Election, the prospects of a prominent statesman.

Such are the tricks which destiny, a sportive imp, plays with human affairs. An elderly gentleman, in search of local colour for a perfectly innocent book, visits a remote village. An energetic lady with a taste for theatricals seizes an opportunity for getting up a show. An innkeeper, civil to every one and anxious to be obliging to all possible patrons, sees a chance of making a little money.

What could possibly be less important? Yet out of the activities of these people rose one of the most widely discussed scandals of our time.

Chapter I

It has been said, somewhat bitterly, that the whole south coast of England is now one prolonged watering-place, very horrible because very popular. The bitterness is excusable, but the saying is an exaggeration. There are still some places unvisited by chars-à-bancs and excursionists, undiscovered, or at all events unused by those who "take the kiddies to the sea" for August.

Hailey Compton is a village which until the other day escaped the curse of popularity. Its good fortune was due partly to the fact that there are no houses or lodgings in it suitable for letting. Nor can any be built for there is no room for building. The village lies in a narrow nook between high cliffs and all the ground is already occupied by fishermen's cottages, with their patches of garden, the church, the vicarage, and the Anchor Inn. It is also—and this helps to account for its escape from the general fate—very difficult of access. The only approach to it is by a steep, sharply twisting lane, with a surface of abominable roughness. Horses descend with extreme difficulty and climb up again only if they are very strong. Motorists shrink from the hairpin bends and the blinding high banks between which the lane zigzags. Even chars-à-bancs drivers, the gallant swashbucklers of our modern traffic, never venture to take their clients to Hailey Compton.

Nevertheless a car crept down the hill one warm, May morning, a light car, driven by an elderly man who sat alone in it. He went very cautiously, his engine responding to its lowest gear, his foot pressed on the brake pedal, his hands clutching the steering wheel convulsively. This was Sir Evelyn Dent, and the car was a new possession which he had only just learned to drive, indeed had not yet learned to drive without nervousness. The age of sixty-five is rather late in life for acquiring so difficult an art as motor driving.

Sir Evelyn bought this car after the fall of the Government, when he ceased to be a Cabinet Minister. He might not have bought it even then, if he had not lost his seat in Parliament in the disastrous General Election which followed the resignation of the Prime Minister. While still in office, with a salary of some thousands a year to cover expenses, Sir Evelyn owned a large car and was driven about by a competent chauffeur. Having lost his salary and having no longer any official expenses he economised by buying a small car and driving it himself. The plan had certain advantages. He could go driving where he pleased and when. Previously he had gone where the chauffeur, a very superior man, thought a Cabinet Minister ought to go at hours which he regarded as suitable.

The lane twisted on, the gradient becoming steeper and the surface worse. Sir Evelyn ventured from time to time to raise his strained eyes from the road immediately in front of him and glance at the roofs of the houses which lay below, and the sea, blue and sparkling, below them. Each time he looked the roofs and the sea seemed a little nearer, which cheered him; but the descent still twisted before him. He began to wonder whether his nerves would remain under control until he reached the bottom. Sweat broke out on his forehead and trickled into his eyes, cold sweat. His hands on the wheel were moist and cold. On the other hand—such are the compensations which nature arranges—the inside of his mouth became perfectly dry, so that it was painful to swallow. Yet he had to swallow each time he crawled round one of the blind corners and found nothing on the other side.

There was much excuse for Sir Evelyn's nervousness. A highly skilled driver would have disliked the hill. Sir Evelyn was a novice. A reckless youth would have hesitated over it. Sir Evelyn was sixty-five and most unwilling to throw away the few years of life remaining to him. It is greatly to his credit and a proof of the fine qualities which had raised him to the position of Cabinet Minister that he reached the bottom of the hill safely. Passing a row of fishermen's cottages, he crawled, not daring to change gear, till he came to the Anchor Inn. There he stopped. A board, either new or newly painted, announced that James Hinton was licensed to sell beer, spirits and tobacco.

Sir Evelyn passed the tip of a dry tongue across a dry lip. At the moment it seemed to him that beer, even the poorest, thinnest beer, any beer at all, was the best thing the world contained. He left his car and went into the tap-room.

Had Sir Evelyn been capable for the moment of any feeling except a desire for beer he would have been surprised at the tap-room of the Anchor Inn in Hailey Compton. Instead of reeking stuffily of stale beer, the place was fresh, cool and pleasant. Instead of a soiled floor, were clean polished boards. Instead of a messy counter and stained tables there was shining cleanliness. Not such are English inns in remote villages. Though thirsty Sir Evelyn could not help noticing the landlord when he came in. He was not in the least the landlord who might have been expected in such a village. He came from an inner room and greeted Sir Evelyn with respectful courtesy. He was a tall, slim man, neatly dressed, cleanly shaved. He might still have been, what indeed he once was, the valet of a wealthy peer.

"A glass of beer," said Sir Evelyn. "In fact a jug of beer."

The landlord, the James Hinton of the newly painted board, spread out apologetic hands.

"Very sorry sir," he said. "Very sorry indeed, sir; but at this hour—— The law, sir. The law. Most unfortunate, but you know how it is, sir."

Sir Evelyn did know and groaned. He had descended the hill at an unfortunate time, arriving at the Anchor Inn at one of those hours during which, no doubt to the advantage of the souls of Englishmen, the buying of a glass of beer is a breach of the law.

Sir Evelyn's guardian angel, watching from on high, smiled, and no one can blame him. He would have been less and not greater than a mortal if he had not been a little amused. Here was a man who had spent his life in making laws; who had taken a pleasure in that most objectionable occupation; who had given energy and considerable ability to the discovery of new laws, if possible sillier and more vexatious than those already made. Here was this man, parched with thirst, a-quiver with jangled nerves, cut off from the only thing in the world which would do him any good, by one of the very laws which he and his fellows had made. It is true that Sir Evelyn had never been directly and personally concerned with the laws which regulate the sale of beer, but he had been responsible for others quite as idiotic.

And once—the guardian angel sniggered when he remembered this—Sir Evelyn answering a tiresome questioner in Parliament, had said that he saw no reason why any of the existing laws should be repealed.

Here, surely, was an instance of that poetic justice, far too rare in the world, in which all good men rejoice and which angels, guardian and others, can scarce forbear to cheer.

But justice in this world is seldom perfect and even angels sometimes smile too soon. It appeared that James Hinton was no fanatical worshipper of the letter of the law.

"If I might venture to make a suggestion, Sir Evelyn——" he said and paused.

Sir Evelyn was surprised by the use of his name and title. He had never been in Hailey Compton before and this prompt recognition was unexpected. A man may be an ex-Cabinet Minister, may be adorned with a knighthood, may be, as Sir Evelyn was, the son of one earl, brother of another and uncle of a third, may be entitled to be styled the Honourable, besides being a knight; but he does not go about the world with a placard round his neck announcing these glories. He looked sharply at the innkeeper.

James Hinton offered an apologetic explanation of his knowledge.

"I sometimes had the pleasure of waiting on you, sir, when I was first footman in the service of your brother, the late earl."

"What about the beer?" said Sir Evelyn.

He began to feel hopeful. A retired servant is a family friend and ought to have more respect for the memory of a dead master than he has for an existing law.

"If I might venture to suggest, sir——" said Hinton again.

"You may suggest anything," said Sir Evelyn, "except lemonade. That, I cannot stand."

"Nothing would induce me to offer you such a thing, sir. If you'll excuse my mentioning a personal matter, sir, I have lived in good houses, some of the best in England, before coming here, and I'm aware that lemonade—with the possible exception of the home-brewed variety when suffering from influenza——"

"If it's not lemonade," said Sir Evelyn, "what is it?"

"My suggestion, sir—and I hope you will not regard it as unduly familiar from one in my position in life—is that you should be my guest, my private guest, for perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and during that time share a jug of beer with me in my little room, my own snuggery, behind the bar. There is, of course, no question of payment. Therefore there is no breach of the law."

"But I should like to pay for what I drink," said Sir Evelyn.

He was as thirsty as a man can be, but he shrank from drinking at the expense of a footman.

James Hinton's eyes were fixed on a large photograph of one of England's stately homes which hung, nicely framed, on the wall of the tap-room. He spoke in a tone of reminiscence, as a man does who tells a tale of old times, a tale which has nothing whatever to do with the life of to-day.

"In the houses in which I used to live, sir, it was customary for guests to offer some slight token of esteem, what is commonly spoken of as a tip, to the servants when departing. There was of course no obligation to give anything. The tip was entirely voluntary, a gift, sir, not a payment, if you catch my meaning."

Sir Evelyn caught it; he was to have his glass of beer in spite of the law, but it was to cost him two and sixpence, at least two and sixpence, perhaps five shillings. In the best houses it is scarcely possible to offer less than five shillings to the first footman.

"Hailey Compton is a very quiet place," said James Hinton a few minutes later when he had filled Sir Evelyn's glass. "I don't know that I ever came across a quieter place. No society, unless you count the vicar and his lady. A very nice gentleman, the vicar, though not very energetic. But perhaps you know our vicar, the Rev. Mr. Eames?"

Sir Evelyn did not and said so, holding out his glass for more beer. If he had to pay five shillings for his drink he felt entitled to quench his thirst.

"Perhaps you know Mrs. Eames, sir," said Hinton, pouring out the beer. "A remarkable lady, Mrs. Eames, if I may say so without disrespect. A very remarkable lady, though a little trying at times to the vicar."

Sir Evelyn took no more interest in Mrs. Eames than he did in the vicar. He was not a rural dean, nor an archdeacon, and his visit to Hailey Compton had nothing to do with the church.

"But of course not, sir," said Hinton. "It's not to be expected that you would know Mrs. Eames or the vicar."

Then he waited, hoping to hear what had brought Sir Evelyn to Hailey Compton. He was not disappointed.

"I understand," said Sir Evelyn, "that there is a remarkable sea cave in this neighbourhood."

James Hinton talked fluently and agreeably about the cave. He described its position and how to get to it. He congratulated Sir Evelyn on having arrived in Hailey Compton at a fortunate hour.

"Not altogether fortunate, sir, as regards the beer. But if you wish to visit the cave you could hardly have come at a better time."

The cave, it appeared, was accessible on foot only between half-tide and low water. At other times it must be approached by boat, and landing, except in calm weather, was difficult.

"According to local tradition, sir, the cave was at one time largely used by smugglers. But no doubt you know more about that than I do."

Sir Evelyn did. He knew more about the Hailey Compton cave, indeed more about all smugglers' caves on our coasts, than any man in England.

Having been forced, by a turn of the political wheel to leave office, he had retired to a pleasant old Manor House, once the property of his aunt, Lady Mildred Dent. It stood surrounded by gardens, some twenty miles from Hailey Compton. It had the advantage of being in the middle of the constituency which had lately rejected Sir Evelyn, which might, he hoped would, ultimately change its mind. There he settled down contentedly enough with his pictures, his old prints, his books and manuscripts, until such time as he could appeal to the voters again.

Sir Evelyn had spent his adult life in making laws and arranging for their administration. It was perhaps not unnatural that he should have cherished a secret love and admiration for law breakers. If a bishop were to tell the naked truth about himself he would probably say that what he looked forward to most in heaven was the chance of intimacy with heretics. A doctor, in hours of relaxation and influenced by good wine, will confess to a liking for quacks and a contempt for orthodox methods of cure.

Sir Evelyn's affections went out to the smugglers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, bold defiers of law every one of them. He had gathered a small library about smugglers and made a collection of pictures and prints illustrating their ways. It was his intention to devote his years, or months, of leisure—the period during which the life of Parliament was denied him—to the production of a complete illustrated history of English smuggling. The thing has never been done, and Sir Evelyn felt it was due to the memory of a number of adventurous men that it should be done sympathetically.

He intended, in course of time, to visit and photograph all the genuine smugglers' caves there were. He had already made a list of them, carefully eliminating those whose connection with smugglers was uncertain. It was chiefly with a view to visiting the caves that he had bought and more or less learned to drive his motor. His plan was to spend the summer, perhaps several summers, in investigating the caves one by one. During the winter he meant to arrange the material collected, make extracts from books, and in due time actually write the great history.

The Hailey Compton cave, an unquestionably genuine haunt of eighteenth century smugglers, was first on his list. He reached it—as has been already noted—early in May after a drive of some peril.

"Perhaps, sir," said Hinton, "you may be returning here for luncheon after your visit to the cave. I can scarcely recommend it though I shall do my best. This is a poor house, sir, not at all what you're accustomed to. I can scarcely venture to promise more than a slice of cold beef, a cut off the Sunday joint, with some bread and cheese. The cheese, if I may say so, is excellent. But perhaps you will prefer to lunch at the vicarage. Mrs. Eames is a very hospitable lady, sir, and I may take it upon myself to say that she will be delighted to entertain you."

"I shall lunch here," said Sir Evelyn, "on whatever you can give me."

"Very good, sir, I merely mentioned the vicarage because I thought you might like to meet Mrs. Eames. A very remarkable lady, sir."

"I do not want to meet Mrs. Eames," said Sir Evelyn. "And I shall not lunch at the vicarage."

Here Sir Evelyn's guardian angel smiled again. How far these beings arrange our future for us is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they know what is going to happen to us some time ahead. When they hear us asserting confidently that we are going to do something, or not going to do it, they are amused, being aware that our plans have very little to do with what actually happens. Sir Evelyn's angel knew perfectly well that his ward would lunch that day at the vicarage, that he would meet Mrs. Eames, and that consequences of the most unexpected kind would follow. His smile died wholly away when he reflected that it would be his business to extricate Sir Evelyn from the tangled difficulties in which he was soon to be involved, which began with his visit to the Hailey Compton Vicarage.

Chapter II

Sir Evelyn left the Anchor Inn, took his camera from the car and set out on the way which Hinton had described to him.

It was not a very pleasant way. It first passed along the village street which smelt of decaying fish and was strewed with empty lobster pots, broken spars and disused oars. Here he was stared at with unblinking hostility by a number of men who leaned against the walls of cottages with their hands in their pockets. He was surveyed apparently with amused dislike by women who came to the doors with babies in their arms. He would have been giggled at by children if they had not all been shut up at school at that hour.

Having reached the end of the street he skirted a slimy and very smelly boat haven beyond which he reached a space of coarse grass. Here nets were spread out to dry and long rows of geese paraded solemnly. Sir Evelyn picked his way among the nets and tried to be indifferent to the geese which stretched out their necks and hissed at him. Having crossed the grass he climbed the sea wall and dropped down on a stony beach. It was a disagreeable beach covered with round white stones. Some of these were about the size of potatoes. They rolled when Sir Evelyn trod on them and he ran some risk of spraining his ankles. Others were larger, about the size of field turnips, and they were coated with pale green weed. Sir Evelyn slipped when he walked on one of them.

At the back, the shoreward end of the beach, the cliffs rose abruptly to a plateau on which the church stood. A hundred yards or so from the village green was the cave. Sir Evelyn, stumbling doggedly on, reached it slightly out of breath.

A surprise waited him. Under the huge arch which formed the entrance of the cave is a pool, ten or twelve feet deep, large enough to hold a fair sized fishing smack. The rocks at the side of the pool are as steep as if they had been cut away to form a dock or a swimming bath. The water is bright green and so clear that the pebbles at the bottom can be plainly seen.

Sir Evelyn unstrapped his camera, preparing to photograph the entrance of the cave. He saw to his annoyance that he was not alone. A woman was standing at the far side of the pool. She wore a bright red bathing dress and a blue waterproof cap. At the moment when Sir Evelyn caught sight of her she was poised for a plunge into the green water.

An imaginative and slightly short-sighted man might have fancied himself unexpectedly blessed with a vision of a mermaid or some other kind of water nymph. The great arch of the cave, the gloomy hollow beyond it, the clear water and the shining rock, formed a natural and proper haunt for a marine damsel. But Sir Evelyn was not romantic. Men who rise to eminence in politics are almost always realists. And he was not short-sighted. He could see perfectly well that the lady on the rock had a sturdy figure and unusually thick legs. All nymphs, woodland or marine, are slim creatures and young. The lady on the rock was not very young, but if he had had any doubt about what she was her greeting would have dispelled it.

"Hallo!" she shouted.

Sir Evelyn, who was a courteous gentleman, took off his hat, bowed and apologised for his intrusion.

"I'm exceedingly sorry for disturbing you," he said. "If I had known you were bathing I should have waited until you had finished."

"Hold on a minute," said the lady. "I can't hear a word you're saying."

She plunged, a neat header with scarcely a splash. He saw the red clad form, curved stiffly from neck to heel, shooting through the clear water. The blue cap emerged, plump arms flashed and splashed. With incredible swiftness and all the grace of a swimming seal she crossed the pool. Grasping the rock at Sir Evelyn's feet she pulled herself half out of the water and looked at him with a gleaming smile.

"This is quite exciting," she said. "I don't think I ever saw anyone here before. Do tell me who you are and what you're doing."

The approach and the questioning which followed it surprised Sir Evelyn. This was not the way in which strangers usually sought to make his acquaintance. But though shocked and a little startled, he was not angry. It is almost impossible to be angry with a dripping, smiling, friendly lady who emerges from the water at your feet.

"My dear lady——" he began, rather pompously but quite kindly.

"My name," she said, "is Eames, Agatha Eames, and my husband is vicar of the parish."

"Dear me!" said Sir Evelyn a little startled.

He had a fairly clear idea in his mind of what the wives of our country clergy are like, an idea formed on the descriptions of these ladies given by our novelists. They are elderly, angular, severe, conventional in their outlook on life and morals, inclined to bitter speaking of a slanderous kind, clothed in body and equipped in mind after the fashion of provincial spinsters of fifty years ago. The lady who looked up at him in no way corresponded to his mental picture of what a country vicar's wife ought to be.

"My name," he said, "is Dent, Evelyn Dent."

"Evelyn Dent! But, of course, Sir Evelyn Dent. The Sir Evelyn Dent."

This prompt recognition of his eminence surprised Sir Evelyn. In political circles he was of course well known. Socially, as son, brother and uncle of three succeeding earls, he held a distinguished position. But he scarcely expected to find himself known to a plump lady bathing in a lonely pool. Recollecting Hinton's earlier recognition in the Anchor Inn, it occurred to him that this lady might at one time have been cook in the house of his father, brother or nephew. In the eighteenth century, according to Thackeray, the clergy often married upper servants. For all Sir Evelyn knew they might be doing so still.

With this idea in his mind he smiled in a friendly way. Mrs. Eames, no doubt encouraged by this sign of amiability, climbed out of the pool, sat down on a rock at his feet and began rubbing the water off her legs with curved palms.

"So you know who I am," he said, expecting a confession that she had in other days fried bacon for his breakfast.

But Mrs. Eames had never been a cook and knew Sir Evelyn only as a public man.

"Of course I know who you are," she said. "I have often heard of your splendid work in the Foreign Office—or if it wasn't the Foreign Office, the Treasury."

Sir Evelyn's splendid work had not been done either in the Foreign Office or the Treasury.

"Not quite right," he said.

"A Cabinet Minister, anyhow," said Mrs. Eames, "and frightfully important. Chairman of no end of Royal Commissions."

"Only three," said Sir Evelyn, as if modestly disclaiming a well deserved honour which had not been bestowed on him.

"Three seems no end of a lot to me," said Mrs. Eames. "In fact three is no end of a lot when it's Royal Commissions. Of course three cigarettes wouldn't be much or three apples. Was anyone else ever Chairman of three Royal Commissions?"

Sir Evelyn was not vainer or fonder of praise than most elderly and successful men. Vanity is supposed to be the besetting sin of young women. It is really the devil's most successful lure for old gentlemen, and Sir Evelyn had not escaped it. Long after the other six deadly sins have ceased to be dangerous, when the blood is too sluggish for lust, when bitter experience has taught the folly of gluttony, when there is little left in life with the power to move to anger, whenever avarice—though Byron calls it an old-gentlemanly vice—is a temptation of the past, then vanity attacks a man whose life has given any excuse for it, and he generally falls. With grey hairs and a measure of success there comes to most of us, as to Sir Evelyn, a strong sense of our own importance.

"I wonder," he said modestly, "how you come to be interested in my commonplace career."

"You mustn't think," said Mrs. Eames, "that because I live in Hailey Compton I'm interested in nothing except the parish pump."

"No doubt," said Sir Evelyn, becoming ponderously playful, "so omniscient a lady will be able to guess what has brought me here to-day."

Mrs. Eames took off her bathing cap and ran her fingers through her hair as if deeply pondering. Her hair was red and had been cropped by the village barber, a fisherman and only an amateur at hair-cutting, who had heard of but not actually seen the fashionable bobbing and shingling. The result was comfortable but not becoming. The absence of floating locks made Mrs. Eames's face look bigger than it was and her features did not bear exaggeration well. They gave the impression of having been rather hurriedly put into their places—eyes, nose, mouth and chin—by a modeller who had learnt his art through a correspondence class. The general effect was lumpy and, on closer looking, rather crooked.

"A little bird whispered to me——" she said.

"A little what?"

"Bird. Of course it wasn't really a bird. And even if it had been it wouldn't have whispered. Birds don't. They twitter. I ought to have said 'Lilith lisped to me——'"

"Lilith!"

"Surely you know 'The Lispings of Lilith,'" said Mrs. Eames.

Sir Evelyn had to confess that he did not.

"Lilith," said Mrs. Eames, "is my niece, Beth Appleby. My name was Appleby before I married poor dear Timothy. She does a column called 'The Lispings of Lilith' which comes out every week in about a dozen provincial papers. Syndicated, you know. I couldn't get on without it. It keeps me up to all that's going on in the great world outside Hailey Compton. Surely you've read it?"

"Never," said Sir Evelyn.

"You'd have liked last week's. There was a Lisping about you. 'Lilith lisps,' that's how every paragraph begins, 'that Sir Evelyn Dent, who has recently retired from public life, is devoting his leisure to a study of the history of English smuggling on which he is expected to produce a ——' Now what was it Beth called it? Either a monograph or a magnum opus."

Sir Evelyn was aware that some paragraphs, based on hints which he had given himself, had appeared here and there about his devotion to historical research. No doubt "Lilith" or Miss Appleby had copied one of them into the column of provincial lispings.

"Very annoying," he said. "Very annoying indeed. This craze for the publication of the personal affairs of private individuals is one of the crying evils of our time."

But Mrs. Eames, though talkative, was by no means a fool. She knew that Sir Evelyn did not find paragraphs in the papers about his historical work in the least annoying. He liked them. He would have liked them even if they had dealt with his favourite shaving soap. All eminent men like this kind of publicity. If they did not they would not get it. For journalists only advertise those who supply the advertisements. Mrs. Eames was wise enough to know this, but also wise enough to pretend she did not.

"It must be most trying," she said. "That's the worst of being famous. Now what about your photo of the cave? I mustn't interrupt you by chattering here. Would you like me to pose for you as a pirate? I mean to say a smuggler. A real live smuggler seated on a stone at the entrance of the cave would be rather a catch in your book, wouldn't it?"

Sir Evelyn did not think it would, and tried to say so politely.

"I see what you mean," said Mrs. Eames. "My figure, of course. It's too plump for even a well-to-do smuggler. What you want is someone lean. Now if poor Timothy were here—— But he's too mild-looking for a smuggler. It is a pity about my figure."

She surveyed her own legs with a good-humoured smile.

"It's not that," said Sir Evelyn, though it was. "All I meant to say is that I'd like to take a separate photograph of you afterwards, a portrait."

He felt that he had been rude, and there was nothing he disliked more than failing in courtesy to a woman.

Mrs. Eames clapped her hands.

"For publication, of course," she said. "'Mrs. Eames takes a dip at Deauville.' We must say Deauville. Beth knows all about these things, being a journalist herself; and she says that this sort of photo practically must be at Deauville if it's to get into any really smart paper."

"But do you want that?"

"Of course I do," said Mrs. Eames, "and it won't do to say 'Mrs. Eames taking a dip,' even at Deauville. We'll say 'Agatha Eames,' and then if people don't know who I am they'll feel they ought to and pretend they do. Or perhaps 'Lady Agatha Eames.' I don't think there'd be any harm in that, do you? 'Lady Agatha Eames in the smartest of chic bathing suits taking her morning dip at Deauville. Photo'd by Sir Evelyn Dent.' You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I don't think I should," said Sir Evelyn, rather alarmed. "In fact, I'm sure I shouldn't."

Mrs. Eames was a little downcast, but bore her disappointment well.

"I quite understand," she said. "My bathing dress isn't really chic, and it's centuries old. Of course, you wouldn't like to be associated with it in any public way."

"It's not that," said Sir Evelyn feebly.

"And my figure," said Mrs. Eames. "It is unfortunate about my figure. And you wouldn't believe the amount of exercise I take in order to keep it down. I quite see that it wouldn't do for a Deauville bathing photo. I'll just slip off behind a rock and get my clothes on while you're photographing the cave."

She put on her bathing cap and plunged into the pool again. A few swift strokes took her to the other side. Sir Evelyn watched her disappear into the cave with a bundle of clothes and a bathing towel in her arms. He adjusted his camera and took three photographs.

A quarter of an hour later Mrs. Eames came scrambling over the rocks at the mouth of the pool. She was dressed, but it struck Sir Evelyn when he saw her that her clothes tended rather to emphasise than disguise the defects of figure she complained of. On the upper part of her body she wore a low-necked, entirely sleeveless knitted jumper of a bright yellow colour. A blue cotton skirt barely reached her knees. Her stockings, which seemed stretched to their uttermost, were of the colour called "nude" by hosiers, and it was impossible to help looking at them because her shoes were very white and caught the eye.

"Now for lunch," she said. "You'll lunch with us, of course."

"I fear," said Sir Evelyn vaguely. "I fear that to-day—— Perhaps some other day——"

"Oh, but you must," said Mrs. Eames. "Think of poor Timothy. He hardly ever has the chance of meeting anyone. Not that he wants to, poor darling. In fact he hates it. But it's so good for him."

This tangled account of the vicar's feelings about strangers confirmed Sir Evelyn in his determination to go back to the Anchor Inn for luncheon. He had no wish to force his company on an unwilling host, and did not feel it in any way his duty to be "good" for the Rev. Timothy Eames.

"I have made arrangements," he said a little stiffly, "to lunch at the inn."

"Oh, that'll be all right," said Mrs. Eames, "I'll explain to James Hinton. As a matter of fact, he'll quite expect you to lunch at the vicarage. Everybody who comes to the village does. Not that anyone ever does come. At least, very seldom. But if anybody did—and, after all, you have—he would lunch at the vicarage. James Hinton knows that quite well."

James Hinton did. Sir Evelyn remembered that.

Further refusal became impossible when Mrs. Eames hooked her arm through his and began to tow him across the stony beach.

"There's only cold lamb," she said. "But as soon as we get home I'll dart into the kitchen and make some pancakes. I'm sure you like pancakes. Don't you like pancakes?"

"Oh, quite," said Sir Evelyn.

"And scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs don't take a minute. After photographing the cave you're sure to be hungry. I know I am. Gladys can run down to the inn for a jug of beer."

"Gladys!"

"Gladys," said Mrs. Eames, "is our cook, which she can't, not even scrambled eggs; and housemaid, which she won't, though she could if she liked. But she can and will go down to James Hinton's for a jug of beer when I tell her to."

Chapter III

"While I'm making the pancakes," said Mrs. Eames, as they crossed the green where the nets and geese were, "you might give Timothy a bit of a talking to; stir him up, you know. I'm always trying to, but I've never succeeded in the least. A word or two from you——"

"I do not think it at all likely that I should influence him," said Sir Evelyn stiffly.

He had no idea of taking on the task of stimulating into activity a lazy country vicar. That was what the Rev. Timothy Eames seemed to be.

"Oh, but you could," said Mrs. Eames. "Force of good example, you know. Tell him you're writing a book, and then, very likely, he'll write one too. He could if he chose. I was sitting beside a Dean once at tea—not quite a first-rate Dean, but still fairly important—and I heard him say to another Dean that there is a corner to be made in the Christological heresies, if anyone cared to seize the chance. I remembered that and told Timothy afterwards, hoping that he might go in for it."

"Might make a corner?"

"Exactly. Just what you're doing, you know. I don't say Christological heresies are as good as smugglers. They're not. But a corner is a corner whatever it's in. My idea was that Timothy might dart in before anyone else tumbled to the chance, and corner those heretics. I know he can read Greek, for I've seen him do it, and so far as I can make out that's the only qualification required. Do try and persuade him, won't you?"

"I'm afraid——"

"You needn't be," said Mrs. Eames. "Timothy won't resent anything you say. He isn't the kind of man who resents good advice. I give him lots and lots, and he's never even annoyed. He simply lies down under it. Such a pity, when he really can read Greek, a thing very few can do."

They passed through the gateway of the vicarage—the gate itself had long ago decayed away—and walked up an ill-kept drive. They found the vicar seated on a rickety chair in front of the house. He had a book in his hand, perhaps a Greek book, but instead of reading it he was gazing at the sea with mild, watery eyes. He stood up as his wife and Sir Evelyn approached, and showed himself to be a tall, gaunt man. He rose slowly to an incredible height, and then seemed to shrink again as he relapsed into his habitual stoop. Mrs. Eames was fluent and explanatory in her introduction.

"This is Sir Evelyn Dent," she said, "and he has come to luncheon. He was a very eminent Cabinet Minister until the Government was hoofed out, which wasn't his fault, and happens to all Governments sooner or later. What do you think Sir Evelyn did then, Timothy? He sat straight down to historical research of the most abstruse kind. There's an example for you! Now, Sir Evelyn, you talk to him about Christological heresies while I go and make the pancakes. You'll hardly believe it, but I've put the advantages of that corner of the Dean's before him dozens of times and he hasn't done a thing yet, not even ragged a Monophysite, though that must be an easy enough thing for anyone who knows Greek."

She ran into the house, leaving two embarrassed men behind her. Sir Evelyn, though a man of the world and practised in dealing with awkward situations, stood tongue-tied. The vicar, sighing gently, looked at his visitor, apparently waiting for the scolding which he felt he deserved. It was he who first broke the silence.

"Do you find the Christological controversies really interesting?" he asked mildly.

"Interesting!" Sir Evelyn was a little irritable. "Good heavens, no! I don't even know what Christological controversies are. I never heard of them till Mrs. Eames mentioned them to me ten minutes ago."

"Oh," said the vicar. "I thought Agatha said that you and some Dean were going into the subject together. I must have been mistaken. But I'm often mistaken, in fact—generally, especially about things Agatha says. She will talk fast and jump about from one thing to another."

"My subject," said Sir Evelyn, beginning to recover himself, "is Eighteenth Century Smuggling."

"And is that interesting? But, of course, it must be to you, or you wouldn't take it up. I suppose that any subject would be interesting if only one succeeded in getting started, even the Christological heresies. But we needn't talk about them, at least not until Agatha comes back. Indeed we needn't even then unless we want to. She will do all the talking necessary. So restful for us. Don't you think so?"

Sir Evelyn did not. He liked talking, and held the view, taken by St. Paul, that women ought to keep silence. They are at their best when listening, respectfully, to what men like Sir Evelyn have to say.

"The Hailey Compton cave," he began, as if delivering a public lecture, "which I came here to-day to investigate, was undoubtedly much used by smugglers. Its situation, close to a remote village difficult of access, rendered it peculiarly suitable for their lawless trade. Its great size and the ease with which it can be approached from the sea at high tide, help to mark it out as one of the places...."

Long before he had finished what he had to say about the Hailey Compton cave Mrs. Eames came from the house again.

"So lucky," she said. "I found Gladys's aunt in the kitchen, so I just scrambled the eggs and left her to make the pancakes. I expect she can all right. Anyhow, she'll be better than Gladys, and quite as good as me. She has nine children, so she must be able to make pancakes. What I mean to say is that a woman who can bring up nine children can do anything. And now, Sir Evelyn, do tell me all about London. Timothy, darling, get a couple more chairs, and we'll all sit down and be comfortable. We can't have lunch till the pancakes are ready and Gladys has fetched the beer."

The vicar, who seemed obedient in most things though rebellious over the Christological heresies, shambled into the house in search of chairs.

"I'm just longing," said Mrs. Eames, "to hear all about the latest music and art. I really live for music though, of course, I never hear any, and I worship——" She looked round and saw that her husband had not yet come out of the house. "Timothy isn't here, so I don't mind saying that I worship the theatre. I hope you don't think it very wrong of me to say 'worship,' on account of the second commandment, and me being a clergyman's wife. Though, of course, the theatre isn't a graven or molten image, is it? Still, Timothy mightn't quite like my saying it, although it's true. Now what do you think about that, Sir Evelyn?"

Sir Evelyn evaded the point, a thing which his long practice in politics enabled him to do without any difficulty. He did not feel equal to deciding whether the second commandment forbids the worship of the theatre.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that you have not much chance of indulging your taste for the drama down here."

"Oh, but I have," said Mrs. Eames. "Timothy says I indulge it too much. But I always tell him something must be done for the good of the parish, and as he won't, I do. The year before last we had 'Macbeth,' acted entirely by the village people. I do think Shakespeare is so educative, don't you? Last year we had 'Othello,' and now we're getting up 'Hamlet.' Oh, here's Timothy coming back with some chairs. Now we'll be able to sit down and listen to you, Sir Evelyn. I always say that the greatest pleasure in life is hearing a clever man talk, a really clever man. Timothy, darling, Sir Evelyn thinks that we never have any plays here. But we do, don't we?"

The vicar, shambling along with two chairs dragged behind him, stopped when appealed to.

"Plays!" he said. "Oh, yes, certainly. Almost too many of them."

"I always think," said Mrs. Eames, "that Shakespeare is so much better done in the open air by simple country people. More Elizabethan in spirit. I'm sure you agree with me about that."

"I should have supposed," said Sir Evelyn, a little stiffly, "that it would have been difficult to get a satisfactory local Hamlet."

"Not a bit," said Mrs. Eames. "There's a man here called Hinton, the landlord of the inn—but you've seen him, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm sure you agree with me," said Mrs. Eames, "that he's a perfect natural Hamlet—figure, manner, face, voice, everything. You ought to see him in the grave-digger scene—and you shall. This isn't the regular day for rehearsals, but we'll have one after lunch. I'll send Gladys round to tell everyone. It'll be so good for us all to hear what you have to say. I'm doing the Queen, Hamlet's mother, you know. I'd have liked to do Ophelia; but that was scarcely possible with my figure."

She sat down abruptly on a low deck chair which the vicar had dragged out. Her skirt was a barely sufficient covering when she stood up. It was very insufficient when she sat down in a low chair. She was conscious of that but not at all embarrassed.

"You simply couldn't have an Ophelia with legs like those," she said.

Sir Evelyn agreed with her, but was not obliged to say so, for Gladys's aunt put her head out of the kitchen window and shouted that luncheon was ready.

"Has Gladys come back with the beer?" said Mrs. Eames.

The aunt said she was at that moment coming in through the back door with a jug in her hand.

"I do hope it'll turn out that Gladys's aunt can make pancakes," said Mrs. Eames as they went into the house. "Gladys can't. But these things don't always run in families, which is a pity. If I could write for the papers like Beth—she is my niece, Sir Evelyn, not Timothy's—we might be quite rich. But I can't; which just shows that there's not so much in heredity as some people say, and proves that Gladys's aunt may be able to make pancakes. Anyhow, let's try."

Gladys, a failure as a cook and unwilling to make beds, appeared to be quite incompetent as a parlourmaid. Mrs. Eames was obliged to run round the table with plates and dishes, while Gladys, grinning foolishly, followed her with the beer. This gave Sir Evelyn a chance of resuming the monologue about smugglers' caves which had been interrupted by Mrs. Eames.

"There are," he said, "several hundred so-called smugglers' caves on the south coast of England. Few of them, perhaps not more than eighty or ninety altogether, were actually ever used for the storing of contraband goods. All the rest are spurious, advertised by the local hotel-keepers and railway companies as attractions to the trippers. They are rapidly becoming popular features of our watering-places. Picnic parties throng them. Campers pitch tents in their vicinity."

The vicar, who was drooping slowly at the head of the table, sighed. The thought of picnic parties swarming into the Hailey Compton cave filled him with horror. Mrs. Eames became interested. She was hovering over the cold lamb with a carving knife in her hand. She paused to consider a splendid prospect. Crowds of trippers, if they could be attracted to Hailey Compton, would provide audiences for her plays, and audiences were so far just what the plays lacked. A vision of Hailey Compton as a sort of Shakespearean Ober-Ammergau, floated through her mind.

"The claims of your cave," Sir Evelyn went on, bowing politely to the vicar, "can certainly be substantiated at the bar of history."

A man gains this advantage by being an experienced public speaker. He is able to use phrases like "Substantiated at the bar of history" without suffering, though not, of course, without causing suffering to others. The ordinary speech of an experienced politician contains hundreds of similar phrases; and in his use of them he is like a surgeon who can do the most disgusting things to the human body without the slightest feeling of nausea because he has become thoroughly accustomed to doing them. In the same way a Cabinet Minister can use phrases, not only without self-contempt, but even with a glow of satisfaction, which make other men sick. How splendid it must be to be able to say "The answer is in the negative" without vomiting!

"Timothy," said Mrs. Eames while Sir Evelyn had his mouth full of scrambled egg, "why hasn't our cave been advertised? I'm always telling you that something ought to be done for the parish. As vicar you're simply bound to do something. Here's a splendid opportunity for you. Advertise the cave."

Sir Evelyn held up his hand in gentle but firm protest against Mrs. Eames's interruptions. He still had a great deal to say and he meant to say it all. It was a contest for the privilege of talking, and Sir Evelyn's steady flow of words reduced Mrs. Eames to silence for a time.

Perhaps mere persistence would not have won the victory. Sir Evelyn was more than persevering and monotonous. He was interesting and showed that he possessed a gift for picturesque description. Having proved that the Hailey Compton cave really had been used by smugglers, he went on to give an account, imaginary but based on laboriously studied facts, of the landing of a cargo of contraband goods.

He did it so well that even the vicar was slightly interested. Mrs. Eames, who might have sat down and eaten her luncheon, stood with a dish of potatoes in her hand, thrilled. Even Gladys stopped clattering plates together on the sideboard. Sir Evelyn, like all good talkers, responded to the sympathy of his audience. He spoke better than he ever remembered speaking before.

A dark autumn night. A sighing wind. The hoarse roar of sullen waves dragging at the stones on the beach. A watcher on the tower of the church. The flash of a light far out at sea. A flare on the church tower, subsiding, flaming up again. Glimmering lights in cottage windows. The trampling of heavily booted feet across the beach. The glowing of lanterns. A gathering of dim figures under the arch of the cave, the sharp rattle of horsehoofs on the stony path which led down the cliff to the village. (Sir Evelyn's own experiences earlier in the day helped him to realise what that descent was like.) A gathering of led pack horses, whinnying and neighing, on the short grass where now the nets are spread. The continuous flashing of a ship's light near at hand. Answering flashes from the mouth of the cave. All the while the hollow booming of the sea. (Sir Evelyn had a good voice, resonant and thrilling like the tones of a 'cello and he was telling his story well.) The appearance of blacker shadows, huge, menacing, against the blackness of the night—the great sails of the lugger. The rattle of blocks and the whining of running ropes. Muttered orders. The slow in-gliding of the boat. The making fast of mooring ropes.

This was part of one of the few chapters in Sir Evelyn's book which was already written. He had worked at it so long and revised it so often that he knew it off by heart. He thought it a fine piece of writing, and it certainly seemed good to his audience. Perhaps it is only because they despise their audiences that our statesmen talk stale jargon in Parliament and on platforms. When they sit down to write, hoping to be read by intelligent men and women, they are very often capable of producing good English.

Chapter IV

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.

It was in one of these great square pews that Mr. Eames settled down with his Epictetus. He shut the door. He drew the curtains. He sat at ease in an arm-chair with his outstretched feet on a stool. A thick, though dirty carpet covered the floor. A man might have a worse study if he were content to read without smoking. When Mr. Eames felt that a full appreciation of Epictetus required tobacco he went out and smoked a pipe, sitting on a tombstone.

This pew, the largest and best furnished in the church, had its place in the chancel, close to the altar rails. It had been dedicated a century or so before to the use of the lord of the manor. But for many years there had been no lord of the manor or resident squire in Hailey Compton. The pew was therefore unused except by the vicar when he retired for a while from the turmoil of his wife's activities.

Chapter V

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.