I broke the news of the lecture to the members of the vicarage household at tea that evening. Their reactions were characteristic, of course. Old Coutts grinned ruefully.
“I suppose I must turn up and help keep order,” he said.
“We’d better start with a tea, or else we shan’t get anybody, and that would be frightfully awkward for the poor old dear,” said Daphne, who, of course, is full of the milk of human kindness and drips it about rather after the manner of a punctured cocoanut—that is to say, where it is neither expected nor desired.
“Don’t you worry,” said William sturdily. “They’ll come, if it’s only to throw eggs. She’s been talking to some of ’em about the way they bring up their bally offspring.”
“William!” said Mrs. Coutts, sharply.
“Well, anyway, she has!” said William defiantly. “What’s she going to talk about, Noel?”
“Well, that’s just the point,” I said, weakly. Mrs. Coutts sat up very straight and parked the tea-pot, with which she had been about to fill my cup, on its parent china stand.
“You understand,” she said, with frightful venom, “I hold you responsible.”
I didn’t get this at first.
“Eh?” I said, with my winning smile.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Coutts, “if That Woman speaks upon an Indelicate Topic, I shall hold you personally responsible. So mind!” She picked up the tea-pot and cascaded the brew into my cup.
“Hello,” said William, opening his eyes wide, “has she been talking to you, too, Aunt, about bringing up kids?”
“Go out of the room, William!” thundered old Coutts. William, hastily snatching a chunk of bread and butter, went.
“Really,” I said, “I think—don’t you think—I mean, you’re a bit premature, Mrs. Coutts. After all, why should she talk about anything peculiar? Besides, I am sure that Mrs. Bradley would never dream of lecturing upon any topic which is—well, not lecturable upon.”
I tried the winning smile again, but it came unstuck half-way. I don’t know why. I mean, I’m not
“You can always rise and protest, Aunt,” she said austerely, “if you don’t approve of the lecture.”
“Quite, quite,” said old Coutts, rising from the table. Mrs. Coutts stacked up the tray in frightful silence, and waited rather pointedly for my cup. I got up and rang the bell. When tea was cleared, Mrs. Coutts hopped it to the Girls’ Guildry and Daphne and I collared cake out of the sideboard and went in search of William.
At intervals during the next day I tried in vain to get from Mrs. Bradley the subject of her lecture. She would tell me nothing definite. All she would do was to hint that the lecture would certainly draw crowds if I would fix up, in place of the usual notice, a card indicating that a Mystery Lecture would be given by Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, in the Village Hall at 9.0 p.m. on the Wednesday week.
“But we always start at seven-thirty. You see, we wash out the Women’s Prayer Meeting and Devotional on lecture nights,” I said. She waved all that aside.
“We have dinner just before that,” she said. “Surely, dear child, you are not suggesting that I miss my dinner?”
“No, of course not,” I said, “but isn’t nine o’clock rather the other extreme?”
“No,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It must be quite dark while my lecture is going on. The hall must be dark, and it must be pitch dark outside.”
“But we can draw the blinds and things,” I pointed out. “We always do darken the hall for lantern lectures. By the way, do you want somebody to manage the slides for you?”
She shook her head.
“There is only one slide,” she said. “It can be fixed at the commencement of the lecture and left until the end.”
I began to regret that I had not put my foot down and boldly refused her offer to lecture. We usually get a sprinkling of youths from other villages at our lectures and they are apt to be a nuisance. Our best chance, I thought, was to fill the hall with as many of our own people as we could. To this end, I spent the Wednesday morning in going round the village soliciting promises of attendance at the lecture. As it happened, the notice had tickled the fancy of some of our people, and even Burt announced his intention of being present.
“And I’ll have to bring my nigger with me,” he said. “Hanged if I can get the coon to stay in the house alone for a single instant, since he spent the night at your place. I can’t think what’s the matter with the fellow. He misses Cora, you know. That’s about the fact of it. These blighters are like dogs for that. Besides, Mrs. Gatty has been round frightening him. Is she quite mad?”
So on the Wednesday evening at about ten minutes to nine, the front rows of the village hall were filled with a fairly complete collection of the local nobs and semi-nobs. There were Sir William and Margaret and Bransome Burns, the Gattys, our vicarage party, except William who had been sent to bed, and Mrs. Coutts who was remaining indoors to see that he stayed there, the doctor and his wife and two daughters, Burt, and quite a sprinkling of the more respectable element of the village and most of the servants from the hall, the pub and the Moat House. At the back were the people whom our weekly winter efforts were really intended to benefit—the louts, mutts and hobbledehoys of our own village and the neighbouring hamlets. In short, the hall was about three- quarters full.
At nine o’clock precisely, Mrs. Bradley mounted the rostrum and commenced her lecture. She had asked particularly that the hall might be in complete darkness except for the light of the magic lantern, so that we could not see her, we could only hear her really beautiful voice coming across out of the void, so to speak. There was dead silence when she began. Except for occasional gasps and whistles of surprise and an exclamation from a rather hysterical servant girl, and Mrs. Gatty’s absurd interruption and somebody popping out quietly towards the end, there was complete silence until the great thrill. She waited until all the lights were extinguished, and her one lantern slide, a plan of Saltmarsh and the surrounding country, had been thrown on to the screen, before she began
