“No, really, Colonel, I hardly think that’s necessary. I’ve just put the car away.”
“I won’t start before you come back, if that’s what you’re thinking of. It’ll take me some time to get everything fixed up. We’ll wait for you. I promise you that.”
“My dear Colonel, it’s snowing heavily—practically a blizzard. Surely it would be a mistaken kindness to drag an elderly man out of doors on a night like this in order to see a film which, I have no doubt, will soon be on view all over the country?”
“All right, Rector, just as you think best. I only thought after all it is Christmas… damn the thing; I got a nasty shock then.”
Adam and Nina and the Rector and his wife sat in the dark patiently. After a time the Colonel unrolled a silvered screen.
“Just help me take all these things off the chimneypiece, someone,” he said.
The Rector’s wife scuttered to the preservation of her ornaments.
“Will it bear, do you think?” asked the Colonel, mounting precariously on the top of the piano, and exhibiting in his excitement an astonishing fund of latent vitality. “Now hand up the screen to me, will you? That’s splendid. You don’t mind a couple of screws in your wall, do you, Rector? Quite small ones.”
Presently the screen was fixed and the lens directed so that it threw on to it a small square of light.
The audience sat down expectantly.
“Now,” said the Colonel, and set the machine in motion.
There was a whirring sound, and suddenly there appeared on the screen the spectacle of four uniformed horsemen galloping backwards down the drive.
“Hullo,” said the Colonel. “Something wrong there… that’s funny. I must have forgotten to rewind it.”
The horsemen disappeared, and there was a fresh whirring as the film was transferred to another spool.
“Now,” said the Colonel, and sure enough there appeared in small and clear letters the notice, “THE WONDERFILM COMPANY OF GREAT BRITAIN PRESENTS.” This legend, vibrating a good deal, but without other variation, filled the screen for some time—(“Of course, I shall cut the captions a bit before it’s shown commercially,” explained the Colonel)—until its place was taken by “EFFIE LA TOUCHE IN.” This announcement was displayed for practically no time at all; indeed, they had scarcely had time to read it before it was whisked away obliquely. (“Damn,” said the Colonel. “Skidded.”) There followed another long pause, and then:
“A BRAND FROM THE BURNING,
A FILM BASED ON THE LIFE
OF JOHN WESLEY.”
(“There,” said the Colonel.)
“EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND.”
There came in breathless succession four bewigged men in fancy costume, sitting round a card table. There were glasses, heaps of money and candles on the table. They were clearly gambling feverishly and drinking a lot. (“There’s a song there, really,” said the Colonel, “only I’m afraid I haven’t got a talkie apparatus yet.”) Then a highwayman holding up the coach which Adam had seen; then some beggars starving outside Doubting Church; then some ladies in fancy costume dancing a minuet. Sometimes the heads of the dancers would disappear above the top of the pictures; sometimes they would sink waist-deep as though in a quicksand; once Mr. Isaacs appeared at the side in shirt sleeves, waving them on. (“I’ll have him out,” said the Colonel.)
“EPWORTH RECTORY,
LINCOLNSHIRE (ENG.)”
(“That’s in case it’s taken up in the States,” said the Colonel. “I don’t believe there is a Lincolnshire over there, but it’s always courteous to put that in case.”)
A corner of Doubting Hall appeared with clouds of smoke billowing from the windows. A clergyman was seen handing out a succession of children with feverish rapidity of action. (“It’s on fire, you see,” said the Colonel. “We did that quite simply, by burning some stuff Isaacs had. It did make a smell.”)
So the film went on eventfully for about half an hour. One of its peculiarities was that whenever the story reached a point of dramatic and significant action, the film seemed to get faster and faster. Villagers trotted to church as though galvanized; lovers shot in and out of windows; horses flashed past like motor cars; riots happened so quickly that they were hardly noticed. On the other hand, any scene of repose or inaction, a conversation in a garden between two clergymen, Mrs. Wesley at her prayers, Lady Huntingdon asleep, etc., seemed prolonged almost unendurably. Even Colonel Blount suspected this imperfection.
“I think I might cut a bit there,” he said, after Wesley had sat uninterruptedly composing a pamphlet for four and a half minutes.
When the reel came to an end everyone stirred luxuriously.
“Well, that was very nice,” said the Rector’s wife, “very nice and instructive.”
“I really must congratulate you, Colonel. A production of absorbing interest. I had no idea Wesley’s life was so full of adventure. I see I must read up my Lecky.”
“Too divine, Papa.”
“Thank you so much, sir, I enjoyed that immensely.”
“But, bless you, that isn’t the end,” said the Colonel. “There are four more reels yet.”
“Oh, that’s good.” “But how delightful.” “Splendid.” “Oh.”
But the full story was never shown. Just at the beginning of the second part—when Wesley in America was being rescued from Red Indians by Lady Huntingdon disguised as a cowboy—there occurred one of the mishaps from which the largest super-cinemas are not absolutely immune. There was a sudden crackling sound, a long blue spark, and the light was extinguished.
“Oh, dear,” said the Colonel, “I wonder what’s happened now. We were just getting to such an exciting place.” He bent all his energies on the apparatus, recklessly burning his fingers, while his audience sat in darkness. Presently the door opened and a housemaid appeared carrying a candle.
“If you please, mum,” she said, “the light’s gone out all over the house.”
The Rector hurried across to the door and tried the switch in the passage. He clicked it up and down several times; he tapped it like a barometer and shook it slightly.
“It looks as though the wires were fused,” he said.
“Really, Rector, how very inconvenient,” said the Colonel crossly. “I can’t possibly show the film without electric current. Surely there must be something you can do?”
“I am afraid it will be a job for an electrician; it will be scarcely possible to get one before Monday,” said the Rector with scarcely Christian calm. “In fact it is clear to me that my wife and myself and my whole household will have to spend the entire Christmas weekend in darkness.”
“Well,” said the Colonel. “I never expected this to happen. Of course, I know it’s just as disappointing for you as it is for me. All the same…”
The housemaid brought in some candles and a bicycle lamp.
“There’s only these in the house, sir,” she said, “and the shops don’t open till Monday.”
“I don’t think in the circumstances my hospitality can be of much more use to you, can it, Colonel? Perhaps you would like me to ring up and get a taxi out from Aylesbury.”
“What’s that? Taxi? Why, it’s ridiculous to get a taxi out from Aylesbury to go a quarter of a mile!”
“I’m sure Mrs. Littlejohn wouldn’t like to walk all the way on a night like this?”
“Perhaps a taxi would be a good idea, Papa.”
“Of course, if you’d care to take shelter here… it may clear up a little. But I think you’d find it very wretched, sitting here in the dark?”
“No, no, of course, order a taxi,” said the Colonel.
On the way back to the house he said, “I’d half made up my mind to lend him some of our lamps for the weekend. I certainly shan’t now. Fancy hiring a taxi seven miles to drive us a few hundred yards. On Christmas Eve, too. No wonder they find it hard to fill their churches when that’s their idea of Christian fellowship. Just when I’d brought my film
all that way to show them…”
Next morning Adam and Nina woke up under Ada’s sprig of mistletoe to hear the bells ringing for Christmas across the snow. “Come all to church, good people; good people come to church.” They had each hung up a stocking the evening before, and Adam had put a bottle of scent and a scent spray into Nina’s, and she had put two ties and a new kind of safety razor into his. Ada brought them their tea and wished them a happy Christmas. Nina had remembered to get a present for each of the Florins, but had forgotten Ada, so she gave her the bottle of scent.
“Darling,” said Adam, “it cost twenty-five shillings—on Archie Schwert’s account at Asprey.”
Later they put some crumbs of their bread and butter on the windowsill and a robin redbreast came to eat them. The whole day was like that.
Adam and Nina breakfasted alone in the dining room. There was a row of silver plates kept hot by spirit lamps which held an omelet and deviled partridges and kedgeree and kidneys and sole and some rolls; there was also a ham and a tongue and some brawn and a dish of pickled herrings. Nina ate an apple and Adam ate some toast.
Colonel Blount came down at eleven wearing a gray tail coat. He wished them a very good morning and they exchanged gifts. Adam gave him a box of cigars; Nina gave him a large illustrated book about modern cinema production; he gave Nina a seed pearl brooch which had belonged to her mother, and he gave Adam a calendar with a colored picture of a bulldog smoking a clay pipe and a thought from Longfellow for each day in the year.
At half-past eleven they all went to Matins.
“It will be a lesson to him in true Christian forgiveness,” said the Colonel (but he ostentatiously read his Bible throughout the sermon). After church they called in at two or three cottages. Florin had been round the day before distributing parcels of grocery. They were all pleased and interested to meet Miss Nina’s husband. Many of them remembered him as a little boy, and remarked that he had grown out of all recognition. They reminded him with relish of many embarrassing episodes in Ginger’s childhood, chiefly acts of destruction and cruelty to cats.
After luncheon they went down to see all the decorations in the servants’ hall.
This was a yearly custom of some antiquity, and the Florins had prepared for it by hanging paper streamers from the gas brackets. Ada was having middle-day dinner with her parents who lived among the petrol pumps at Doubting village, so the Florins ate their turkey and plum pudding alone.
“I’ve seen as many as twenty-five sitting down to Christmas dinner at this table,” said Florin. “Regular parties they used to have when the Colonel and Mr. Eric were boys. Theatricals and all the house turned topsy-turvy, and every gentleman with his own valet.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Florin.
“Times is changed,” said Florin, picking a tooth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Florin.
Then the family came in from the dining room.
The Colonel knocked on the door and said, “May we come in, Mrs. Florin?”
“That you may, sir, and welcome,” said Mrs. Florin.
Then Adam and Nina and the Colonel admired the decorations and handed over their presents wrapped in tissue paper. Then the Colonel said, “I think we should take a glass of wine together.”
Florin opened a bottle of sherry which he had brought up that morning and poured out the glasses, handing one first to Nina, then to Mrs. Florin, then to the Colonel, then to Adam, and, finally, taking one for himself.
“My very best wishes to you, Mrs. Florin,” said the Colonel, raising his glass, “and to you, Florin. The years go by, and we none of us get any younger, but I hope and trust that there are many Christmases in store for us yet. Mrs. Florin certainly doesn’t look a day older than when she first came here. My best wishes to you both for another year of health and happiness.”
Mrs. Florin said, “Best respects, sir, and thank you, sir, and the same to you.”
Florin said, “And a great pleasure it is to see Miss Nina—Mrs. Littlejohn, I should say—with us once more at her old home, and her husband too, and I’m sure Mrs. Florin and me wish them every happiness and prosperity in their married life together, and all I can say, if they can be as happy together as me and Mrs. Florin has been, well, that’s the best I can wish them.”
Then the family went away, and the house settled down to its afternoon nap.
After dinner that night Adam and the Colonel filled up their port glasses and turned their chairs towards the fire. Nina had gone into the drawing room to smoke.
“You know,” said the Colonel, poking back a log with his foot, “I’m very glad that Nina has married you, my boy. I’ve liked you from the moment I saw you. She’s a headstrong girl—always was—but I knew that she’d make a sensible choice in the end. I foresee a very agreeable life ahead of you two young people.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“I’m sure of it, my boy. She’s very nearly made several mistakes. There was an ass of a fellow here the other day wanting to marry her. A journalist. Awful silly fellow. He told me my old friend Canon Chatterbox was working on his paper. Well, I didn’t like to contradict him—he ought to have known, after all—but I thought it was funny at the time, and then, d’you know, after he’d gone I was going through some old papers upstairs and I came on a cutting from the Worcester Herald describing his funeral. He died in 1912. Well, he must have been a muddleheaded sort of fellow to make a mistake like that, mustn’t he?… Have some port?”
“Thank you.”
“Then there was another chap. Came here selling vacuum cleaners, if you please, and asked me to give him a thousand pounds! Impudent young cub. I soon sent him about his business… But you’re different, Littlejohn. Just the sort of son-in-law I’d have chosen for myself. Your marriage has been a great happiness to me, my boy.”
At this moment Nina came in to say that there were carol singers outside the drawing room window.
“Bring ’em in,” said the Colonel. “Bring ’em in. They come every year. And tell Florin to bring up the punch.”
Florin brought up the punch in a huge silver punch bowl and Nina brought in the waits. They stood against the sideboard, caps in hand, blinking in the gaslight, and very red about the nose and cheeks with the sudden warmth.
“Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,” they sang, “comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.”
They sang Good King Wenceslas, and The First Noël, and Adeste Fideles, and While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. Then Florin ladled out the punch, seeing that the younger ones did not get the glasses intended for their elders, but that each, according to his capacity, got a little more, but not much more, than was good for him.
The Colonel tasted the punch and pronounced it excellent. He then asked the carol singers their names and where they came from, and finally gave their leader five shillings and sent them off into the snow.
“It’s been just like this every year, as long as I can remember,” said the Colonel. “We always had a party at Christmas when we were boys… acted some very amusing charades too… always a glass of sherry after luncheon in the servants’ hall and carol singers in the evening… Tell me,” he said, suddenly changing the subject, “did you really like what you saw of the film yesterday?”
“It was the most divine film I ever saw, Papa.”
“I enjoyed it enormously, sir, really I did.”
“Did you? Did you? Well, I’m glad to hear that. I don’t believe the Rector did—not properly. Of course, you only saw a bit of it, most disappointing. I didn’t like to say so at the time, but I thought it most negligent of him to have his electric light in that sort of condition so that it wouldn’t last out for one evening. Most inconsiderate to anyone who wants to show a film. But it’s a glorious film, isn’t it? You did think so?”
“I never enjoyed a film so much, honestly.”
“It makes a stepping stone in the development of the British film industry,” said the Colonel dreamily. ??
?It is the most important all-talkie super-religious film to be produced solely in this country by British artists and management and by British capital. It has been directed throughout regardless of difficulty and expense, and supervised by a staff of expert historians and theologians. Nothing has been omitted that would contribute to the meticulous accuracy of every detail. The life of that great social and religious reformer John Wesley is for the first time portrayed to a British public in all its humanity and tragedy… I’m glad you realized all that, my boy, because, as a matter of fact, I had a proposal to make to you about it. I’m getting an old man and can’t do everything, and I feel my services should be better spent in future as an actor and producer, rather than on the commercial side. One needs someone young to manage that. Now what I thought was, that perhaps you would care to come in with me as business partner. I bought the whole thing from Isaacs and, as you’re one of the family, I shouldn’t mind selling you a half share for, say, two thousand pounds. I know that that isn’t much to you, and you’d be humanly certain to double your money in a few months. What do you say to it?”
“Well…” said Adam.
But he was never called upon to answer, for just at that moment the door of the dining room opened and the Rector came in.
“Hullo, Rector, come in. This is very neighborly of you to come and call at this time of night. A happy Christmas to you.”
“Colonel Blount, I’ve got very terrible news. I had to come over and tell you…”
“I say, I am sorry. Nothing wrong at the Rectory, I hope?”
“Worse, far worse. My wife and I were sitting over the fire after dinner, and as we couldn’t read—not having any light—we put on the wireless. They were having a very pretty carol service. Suddenly they stopped in the middle and a special news bulletin was read… Colonel, the most terrible and unexpected thing—War has been declared.”