"A Pageant; that's what we want for Merchester—something to advertise the dear old place and bring grist to our mills. I've often wondered if we could not run something of the sort."
This was not a conscious falsehood, but just a word or two of political patter, dropped automatically, absently. In truth, Mr. Bamberger, possessed by his inspiration, was wondering why the deuce it had never occurred to him until this moment. Still more curious, too, that it had never occurred to his brother Isidore! This Isidore, after starting as a croupier at Ostend and pushing on to the post of Directeur des Fêtes Périodiques to the municipality of that watering-place, had made a sudden name for himself by stage-managing a Hall of Odalisques at the last Paris Exposition, and, crossing to London, had accumulated laurels by directing popular entertainments at Olympia (Kensington) and Shepherd's Bush. One great daily newspaper, under Hebrew control, habitually alluded to him as the Prince of Pageantists. Isidore saw things on a grand scale, and was, moreover, an excellent brother. Isidore (said Mr. Julius Bamberger to himself) would find all the History of England in Merchester and rattle it up to the truth of music.
Aloud he said—
"This very scene we're looking on, f'r instance!"
"There would be difficulties in the way of presenting it in the open air," hazarded his Worship.
Mr. Bamberger, never impatient of stupidity, opined that this could be got over easily.
"There's all the material made to our hand. Eh, Master?—these old pensioners of yours—in a procession? The public is always sentimental."
Master Blanchminster, rousing himself out of reverie, made guarded answer that such an exhibition might be instructive, historically, for schoolchildren.
"An institution like this, supported by endowments, don't need advertising, of course—not for its own sake," said Mr. Bamberger. "I was thinking of what might be done indirectly for Merchester. But—you'll excuse me, I must ride a notion when I get astride of one—St. Hospital would be no more than what we call an episode. We'd start with Alfred the Great—maybe before him; work down to the Cathedral and its consecration and Sir John, here—that is, of course, his ancestor—swearing on the Cross to depart for Jerusalem."
Sir John—a Whig by five generations of descent—glanced at Mr. Bamberger uneasily. He had turned Unionist when Mr. Gladstone embraced Home Rule; and now, rather by force of circumstance than by choice, he found himself Chairman of the Unionist Committee for Merchester; in fact he, more than any man, was responsible for Mr. Bamberger's representing Merchester in Parliament, and sometimes wondered how it had all come about. He answered these rare questionings by telling himself that Disraeli, whose portrait hung in his library, had also been a Jew. But he did not quite understand it, or what there was in Mr. Bamberger that personally repelled him.