"First-class!" grunted Brother Warboise at Copas's elbow. "Pity old Bonaday couldn't be here to see the girl!"
"Aye," said Copas; but there was that in his throat which forbade his saying more.
So the Pageant went on unfolding its scenes. Some of them were merely silly: all of them were false to fact, of course, and a few even false to sentiment. No entry, for example, received a heartier round of British applause than did Nell Gwynn's (Episode IX). Tears actually sprang to many eyes when an orange-girl in the crowd pushed forward offering her wares, and Nell with a gay laugh bought fruit of her, announcing "I was an orange-girl once!" Brother Copas snorted, and snorted again more loudly when Prebendary Ken refused to admit the naughty ex-orange-girl within his episcopal gates. For the audience applauded the protest almost as effusively, and again clapped like mad when the Merry Monarch took the rebuke like a sportsman, promising that "the next Bishopric that falls vacant shall be at this good old man's disposal!"
Indeed, much of the Pageant was extremely silly. Yet, as it progressed, Brother Copas was not alone in feeling his heart lift with the total effect of it. Here, after all, thousands of people were met in a common pride of England and her history. Distort it as the performers might, and vain, inadequate, as might be the words they declaimed, an idea lay behind it all. These thousands of people were met for a purpose in itself ennobling because unselfish. As often happens on such occasions, the rite took possession of them, seizing on them, surprising them with a sudden glow about the heart, sudden tears in the eyes. This was history of a sort. Towards the close, when the elm shadows began to stretch across the green stage, even careless spectators began to catch this infection of nobility— this feeling that we are indeed greater than we know.
In the last act all the characters—from early Briton to Georgian dame—trooped together into the arena. In groups marshalled at haphazard they chanted with full hearts the final hymn, and the audience unbidden joined in chorus—
"O God! our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home!"
"O God! our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home!"
"Where is the child?" asked Brother Copas, glancing through the throng.
He found her in the thick of the press, unable to see anything for the crowd about her, and led her off to a corner where, by the southern end of the Grand Stand, some twenty Brethren of St. Hospital stood shouting in company—
"A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun."