The day of the performance was singularly fine, which was pure luck, but helped greatly towards its success. Had it been raining or even drizzling the great scene would almost certainly have been a failure. The flare on the church tower might have smoked instead of blazing. The signal lamps on the lugger out at sea would have been invisible on shore. But it was not luck, it was skill, which chose the exact moment for the arrival of the lugger. An hour earlier, when the glow of the setting sun was still strong, the blaze on the tower would have been unimpressive, and the flashing lights at sea would have escaped notice altogether. An hour or two hours later, when the twilight had died away, it would have been impossible for the spectators to see what happened when the lugger reached the cave. But Mrs. Eames--Sir Evelyn got the credit in the newspapers but Mrs. Eames deserved it--chose what Beth in a description of the performance called the psychological moment. It was just dark enough for the signal lights to make a good display, and there was still light enough to allow the operations of landing the cargo to be observed.
It was skill and not luck which selected the day for the performance, and here the credit belongs almost entirely to Lord Colavon. He discovered a day--perhaps the only day during the whole of that summer--when there was nothing else of great importance going on. Ascot was over. The Wimbledon Tennis Tournament had not yet begun. There was a pause between the first and second Test Matches. Yachts had not yet begun to race in popular waters. Interest in the regatta at Henley had died away. The fashionable world and that greater public which amuses itself in fashionable ways had nowhere particular to go on that particular day; no engagements and nothing fresh to talk about. The Hailey Compton Pageant filled a gap.
It had been very well advertised, again a matter of skill, though mingled with luck. It was Beth Appleby who deserved praise for the advertising. She did not, indeed--no single person could--write all the preparatory notes and articles which appeared for weeks beforehand. She did not supply the papers with all the photographs they published. Other journalists, discovering and developing the popularity of the pageant, earned their guineas. But it was Beth who did the spade work and forced the pageant on the attention of editors who might otherwise not have noticed it. Her character sketch of James Hinton--"Valet and Artist"--attracted attention in a popular Sunday paper. A study of Mrs. Eames as an enthusiastic and successful reviver of the best features of mediæval village life, with its apt quotations from Blake's poems--"Dark, satanic mills" and "England's green and pleasant land"--won the sympathy and support of the intellectual neo-Catholics, a school of writers who still possess a great, though diminishing influence among the members of suburban literary societies. Her intimate account of Sir Evelyn's home life--"Studious research and patient pursuits of original sources"--was read, or at all events talked of, all over Oxford. It was she who circulated the first published photograph of the cave, several "camera portraits" of old Bunce, of the mentally deficient Whittle, and of Lord Colavon seated at the steering wheel of the Pallas Athene. Her success stimulated other photographers, and the press was flooded, though by no means sated, with snapshots of every person and place connected with the pageant. There was even, in one paper, a picture of Mr. Linker, standing, with a smile on his face, in front of the door of his shop in Morriton St. James.