The Cabinet Minister came, accompanied by John, who was able to walk now, for short distances, with the aid of a stout stick; the audience stood up and applauded, and Colonel Edgington bowed profoundly. I think he would have remained on the platform, but the chairman, with a jerk of the head, intimated that his presence was no longer necessary, and the Colonel withdrew reluctantly to engage at the side upon a brief altercation with a strong-minded lady who declined to comply with his order to remove her hat, on the grounds that she was not, as it happened, wearing one. People called out "Order, order!" and the Colonel disappeared.
The chairman introduced John in a dozen words, thereby confuting the apprehensions we had expressed in the train, coming up; we had felt bound to agree with Mr. Hillier's suggestion that political folk when they faced an audience, rarely knew where to stop. The chairman said he proposed to keep any remarks he had to offer until the end.
The hall was defensive in its attitude at the start, and John had a little trouble in getting his voice to the right pitch. He remedied this, and there was no more coughing, no signs of inattention. He gave accounts of small incidents connected with the engagement, with imitations of some of his comrades and their wonderful light heartedness; he told one or two anecdotes that went well, and suddenly, ere people had finished their laugh, switched off to a dramatic and exciting description of the struggle. Master John had got them well in hand by this time. When the lights were lowered, and it was seen that his pictures were not of the type called 'moving,' there came a slight ejaculation of surprise; a moment's thought and folk seemed to realise that British prisoners of war were not, perhaps, furnished with a cinematograph machine. John was particularly fair to the enemy. He had a good word for the German doctors, a severe one for a commandant who had not apparently set out to achieve popularity. He re-constituted the lager, and took us through a day there; it was not prejudice on my side in favour of a young man whom I had known and liked for years that made me feel that this was more vivid and more illustrative than the printed word. John finished with a couple of sentences full of hope and enthusiasm, and declaring that all who had suffered for their country enjoyed a pride they were not disposed to change or to forget.
Our party, flushed and warm with content, had the idea that the afternoon might well end here: the rest of the audience evidently wanted a speech from the chairman. A speech he gave, and it was interesting for us to compare the two styles; John's endeavour to use only the indispensable words, and the Cabinet Minister's large and luxurious manner of the practised orator. The hall, I admit, liked the great man's method. The hall indicated its approval of the chairman's compliments to the lecturer: it became uproarious with excitement when he quoted the Crispian speech from Henry the Fifth. Edward assured me the quotation was not really correct (and proved later, by production of his Shakespeare, that his criticism was right), but the people, I think, liked the recital all the better for the touch of undesigned originality, and when he closed by asking us to sing "God save the King" and we all stood up, and sang our best, and ladies in the front rows of the stalls took the bunches of flowers they wore and flung them on the platform, and Colonel Edgington—the fusser!—came on to guide the chairman, and our John, to the exit, as though the perfectly obvious way had to be made through a scarcely penetrable forest—why then we knew, and everyone knew, that Mr. John Hillier had received what is called a good send-off.
"Who," asked Katherine as we reached the vestibule, "who, pray, is the eccentric but seemingly perfectly happy gentleman dancing all by himself in a corner over there?"
"He," I was able to answer, "is the lecture agent!"
CHAPTER XV
One ought to have been made apprehensive and cautious by the fact that everything seemed to be going so well. In congratulating myself on the smoothness with which the machinery was running, I should have adopted one of the precautionary measures of a superstitious nature, handed down to me and impressed on me by my mother. But it was satisfactory to observe the chastened deportment and comfortable peace in the Hillier household—the loss endured seemed to have brought all the members closer in affection—it was cheering to find that John's tour could be reckoned a success; it was so pleasant to discover in the notes from Herbert Millwood a new tone of cheeriness, that there seemed no grounds for anticipating disaster. Herbert was unable for the present to obtain leave; he wrote that he intended to come up to town and see Muriel at the earliest possible moment; I gave her the message in a way that deprived it of any special meaning, and she said, casually,