…”

Suddenly the Mayor’s voice (“Our ’ome-made Pageant, our ’ome-made ’istory”) brought Stephen back to the present with a jerk. There was an argument going on about the vexed question of an extra episode, and Mr. Gurney had just remarked that in his humble opinion the town had been going from bad to worse for three centuries, and that the trivial doings of its wretched population during this period were of no conceivable interest to anybody. The Mayor ignored this and proceeded to make a suggestion of his own. He was not, he said, like Councillor Noakes a literary man; he was not like Mr. Gurney a scholard. But Pageants were meant for ordinary chaps, and what could appeal more to ordinary chaps than the paragraph he had chanced upon in the Intelligencer only last week under the heading “Seventy-Five Years Ago”? He fumbled in his pocket for the cutting, put on his spectacles, and solemnly declaimed the following passage from Mr. Runcorn’s predecessor’s extraordinary prose:

“Last Saturday upon our hallowed greensward the wielders of the willow included among their number one whose fame resounds far beyond the confines of this his native county, nay, throughout the whole civilised world. In the course of scoring 172 Dr. W. G. Grace kept the leather-chasers on the run for nearly two hours ere his seemingly impregnable citadel fell; and towards the close of his innings he smote the spheroid three times in succession into the willow-girt river. …”

The Mayor looked up.

“I don’t know,” he said modestly, “whether you’d call that ’istory?”

There was a murmur of applause. Everybody seemed delighted with the idea except Lance, who was appalled at the prospect of having to write a Chorus about cricket, and Stephen, whose already enormous cast would be increased by twenty-two. “Mr. Tasker will see to it, then,” said the Mayor, flushed with triumph. “No doubt the Cricket Club will co-operate. And now it only remains for me to thank you for your attendance and to say how safe we feel our arrangements all are in Mr. Tasker’s capable hands. …” He got up to go.

Stephen had scarcely taken three steps to ease his throbbing knee before the furry lady was on to him, babbling of chinchillas. Why did it seem so much worse, he wondered, to wear your own rabbits than to eat them? She terrified him, and mumbling some excuse, he made his escape from her, hurrying down the stairs although all the nerves in his left leg seemed to be dancing an infernal jig together. At the bottom of the stairs something like panic overtook him as there flooded into his mind the full realisation of what lay ahead: W. G. Grace and chinchillas superadded to Odo and Dodo and the Beauty Queens. He had an impulse to turn back, intercept the Mayor, and hand in his resignation on the spot; but he lacked the courage to do so, and he limped on down the slumberous street, past the offices of the Weekly Intelligencer outside which Virginia, on her way home, favoured him with an Enigmatic Smile, past the Mayor’s shop, JNO. WILKES, LADIES’ OUTFITTER, displaying grey bloomers, dreadful pink corsets, and peculiar garments called spencers, past the poor little dusty window of Mr. Handiman’s ironmongery with its fishing-floats, its mousetraps, its rusty garden trowels, and its bundle of skates which had hung there ever since the great frost of 1946—Mr. Handiman having routed them out from his store-room just in time for the thaw. Festival Committee Meetings always had a curious effect on Stephen: they implanted in his mind a rebellious disbelief in history; and now as he paused outside Mr. Handiman’s to rest his knee, he found it quite incredible that great events had ever happened here —that the knights had clattered down the street on their heavy chargers, striking sparks from the cobbles, pennons bravely flying, a red rose or a white one worn for a challenge in their shining helmets—that a Prince had been slain but half a mile away, and a King hunted like a fox had given the slip to his foes—that Shakespeare himself, if Mr.