In nearly every detail Tory had been correct in her original conception. The pageant would be presented in the clear green s.p.a.ce with the grove of shadowy trees as background.
Across the water the audience were to be seated in a natural outdoor auditorium. On a slight elevation of land near the stream the Father of the Scouts, who had promised to appear for the evening"s entertainment, would read aloud portions of the Odyssey.
This afternoon, however, the Scouts were busy building and arranging details of the outdoor scenery.
It must be as simple as possible to serve their purpose.
Observing the crowd gathering about Mr. Richard Fenton, the builders also stopped their toil to join the others.
A rare experience had come to Mr. Fenton late in life, and although she never realized the fact, Tory Drew was chiefly responsible.
Almost as a recluse Mr. Fenton had spent the years of his middle age.
He was under the impression that he was not sympathetic with most people and that they did not care for him. With a sufficient fortune for his needs, he had not found it necessary to engage in an occupation for the sake of making money. Therefore he had devoted most of his time to study and thought.
The result had not brought him a deep satisfaction. In his young manhood he had not planned this kind of existence.
He had contemplated being a public man, a statesman should he reveal the necessary ability. In those days he had been young and meant to make Memory Frean proud of him. They had separated and he had sought consolation among his books.
Then into his own and his sister"s well regulated lives Tory had entered the winter before. She was not Tory to them then, but Victoria Drew, as Miss Victoria Fenton still insisted upon calling her niece.
To Mr. Fenton the young girl had made an unconscious appeal. Lonely and feeling herself out of place in a new and strange environment, she appeared like a gay little tropical bird or flower transferred to a harsher environment. When he and Tory became friends the coldness of the old maid and old bachelor establishment changed to a pleasanter warmth.
Introduced to her girl friends, Mr. Fenton had become a member of their Scout Council. But not until this summer had he developed into their chief mentor, and fairy G.o.dfather.
Now to his surprise, added to his other unsought honors, he found himself the director of the Greek pageant, one of the performers as well, and far more popular with his fellow-players than he yet appreciated.
Daily they were coming to him with their problems and their ambitions.
As yet their confidences related only to the approaching performance.
Lance"s question was more general than any other that had been propounded. While Mr. Fenton was replying he looked at Lance with more interest than he had felt in the boy before.
If no one else understood what he was endeavoring to make plain, he believed that Tory and Lance would catch the import of his words.
"Among the nations the Greeks are rarely fortunate," Mr. Fenton began.
"They left us such inheritances that we have remembered their great days; with other nations we are too apt to recall the years of their decay, their mistakes.
"Perhaps one reason for this is that the Greeks were our forefathers, a branch of the Aryan-speaking peoples who in the faint twilight of early history, a nomadic, wandering people, moved southward, and combined with the inhabitants of Crete. This gives us the story of the Odyssey, one of the two great Greek poems, but more filled with legend than the story of the Iliad, which is the siege of Troy."
Mr. Fenton paused.
"I am not tiring you too much? Still I must go on. We must try as far as we can to understand what we have undertaken to present to others.
And I have not yet told you what I mean by the Greek spirit.
"It revealed itself even as far back as these two poems. The Greeks were then possessed of two great pa.s.sions, the love of adventure and the love of beauty. Those two possessions I want to be equally the heritage of the American Girl and Boy Scouts.
"Later, in what is known as the Age of Pericles, the Greeks entered into their third ardor, Democracy, the love of freedom. So what I call the Greek spirit is the love and pursuit of these three things: Beauty, Adventure, Freedom.
"I might talk longer and you would understand me less well. Understand, there may be danger in these three desires. One must not seek beauty, adventure and freedom at the expense of other people, but in order to share it with others as the Greeks have done.
"Now I am through with my lecture, will some one give me a hammer?
I"ll try to a.s.sist Don in building a footstool for one of Penelope"s maids. I"m afraid I am no better carpenter than I am lecturer. Do you understand what I have been trying to explain, Lance? We may talk the question over together some other time."
Lance nodded.
"I think I do understand what it means in regard to the Scouts."
A moment he stood dreaming when the others went back to work. Beauty, adventure, freedom, the Scouts were finding in the outdoors during the weeks of their summer camp.
At present in front of the grove of trees Mrs. Phillips was starting a rehearsal of the Greek dance that was to form a part of the coming pageant.
Fascinated, Lance stood watching.
CHAPTER XVII
A CLa.s.sIC REVIVAL
Only now and then does nature allow us a perfect thing.
The day of the presentation of the Greek poem of the Odyssey by the Girl and Boy Scouts was a perfect day.
It occurred during the last week in August. Here at the fringe of the deep woods the afternoon was like early September; there was more color, more radiance than one a.s.sociates with any other month of the year.
Beyond the woods the wheat fields were golden, the final growth of the summer gardens a riot of purple and rose and blue. The corn fields having ripened, bent their green maturity to the breezes, the silk of the corn ta.s.sels made valiant banners. In the forests the beech trees showed bronze leaves amid the midsummer foliage, the sumach and the woodbine were flaunting the scarlet signals of autumn.
Along the road leading from Westhaven to the site in the woods where the Greek pageant would take place, from an early hour in the afternoon motor cars moved back and forth.
The first cars transported the players and their costumes and such odds and ends of scenery as had to be attended to at the last.
The same cars returned for the families and friends of the actors.
Every automobile and carriage the town could spare for the occasion had been commandeered.
The interest the town of Westhaven and several neighboring villages displayed in the Greek pageant was beyond the realms of possibility in the original conception of the Girl and Boy Scouts.
But the summer was closing. In a short time a good many of the summer residents would be returning to their city homes. The thought of a final entertainment, a final memory of the summer days became inspiring.
Moreover, a Greek pageant was unusual presented by groups of American girls and boys. Probably they would make a failure of so ambitious an effort, yet it would be worth while to see.
The first arrivals among the audience found several hundred chairs placed in more or less orderly array upon one side of a stream that ran straight as a ribbon along this part of the countryside.
Upon an elevation a small platform had been constructed with a table and a chair so banked with golden rod and Michaelmas daisies and green boughs that the wooden outlines were concealed.
On the further side of the water was an ingenious structure, half palace and half tent.
The walls were of a heavy white canvas, the roof had been made of narrow lattice and this covered with green branches.