CHAPTER XXVLLANGARTH FAIRTHEgenerosity of those who admired the toll-keeper’s excellent exit from this life had placed his daughter beyond the possibility of want.Public admiration, which, in like instances, will often display itself in ornamenting a memory that is already the most ornamental thing possible, had been leavened by the common-sense of the Vicar. He maintained that the plainest stone would be as efficient a background to the proud record it bore as the most expensive article ever turned out of a stone-cutter’s yard. He also added that the sincerest homage offered to the dead would, in this case, be the care of the living.The gentlemen representing the district were impressed by the view he took, as men often are by the words of those who speak little, and though their wives, on hearing of the decision, sniffed and opined that any expenditure on the hussy would be a throwing away of good money, they decided to take his advice and to leave its carrying out in his hands. They thus had the agreeable experience of feeling broad-minded and saving themselves trouble in one and the same act; the situation had novelty as well as convenience, and they folded their hands upon their ample persons in easy after-dinner enjoyment of the good deed. Lady Harriet’s was the one dissenting voice in the general female opinion. In this, as in most things, she was Mr. Lewis’ warmest supporter, adding a private mite out of her slim purse; the peculiar horror of Mary’s situation left no room in her mind for more creditable feelings.By the time Harry’s love affair had come to a point, an arrangement had been made on her behalf. Eager to work for her living, she accepted the small provision made for her gratefully, while she assured her benefactors of her wish to help herself as far as she could for the future. She begged them to get her some decent work. The little board before whom she was summoned was impressed by the slender, firm creature, her gentle demeanour and sensible answers, as she stood in front of them and made her request. Afterwards, one member even tried to describe her to his wife, but the lady frowned him down, pointing to the freckled miss who crowned their union, and who now sat at her wool-work within earshot of the pair.But, in spite of the sneers and charges of infatuation for a pretty face brought against the gentlemen by their spouses, she obtained the interest she needed, and a place was found for her in a little greengrocer’s shop at Llangarth. The owner, an old woman becoming rapidly infirm, wanted a girl to act as servant and saleswoman, offering a home and a small wage in return for the help. The Vicar, who was particular on the point, hid no part of Mary’s history from her employer, but it was received without comment as too ordinary an occurrence to need notice. So one afternoon she started for the town, a bundle in her hand and her new life waiting a few miles in front.She walked along, a kind of reluctance clinging round her footsteps. The independent course she had asked for was near, but, now that she had launched herself, she felt internally cold.Her new employer was a stranger, and the friends she had just left seemed to be receding very far away. She looked mentally back on them, as a traveller ferrying across to an unfamiliar shore looks back at the faces on the brink. She could see the roofs of Llangarth appearing in the green and blue of the landscape, and the smoke curling among the trees. She paused and laid down her bundle, leaning against a gate. A path which was a short cut to the town from the uplands of Crishowell, ran, a wavy line through the clover and daisies,towards her halting-place; and, though a man’s figure was coming along it, she was so much pre-occupied that she did not notice his approach. It was only when he stood not a yard from her that she moved aside to let him pass. The man was George Williams.Mary had thought many times of their parting, and, as the wound in her mind began to ache less and her agonizing sensitiveness to abate, her judgment grew straighter. She began to see that she had done George a wrong, misjudging his impulses, and she sincerely wished her words unsaid; but, being one of those souls to whom explanation is torture, she had made no sign. Even now, though she longed to set it right, she could find no voice for a moment. He passed her with an indistinct word.“George.”He stopped immediately.“George, I treated you bad when I shut the door on you. I didn’t understand. It’s hard to do right,” said Mary simply.“Then you bean’t angry, Mary? Not now?”“No, no.”Facing each other, there seemed nothing more to say. In their state of life there are no small embroideries round the main subject.“I’m going to Llangarth,” said the girl, with a clumsy attempt at ending the episode.“So am I,” said he.Looking down, he noticed her bundle, which he had almost rolled into the ditch as he opened the gate; the four corners were knotted in the middle, and under the knot was stuck a bunch of flowers—wallflower, ribes, and a couple of pheasant-eye narcissus.“Have you left the toll?” he asked, taking it up from the clump of nettles upon which it had fallen.She nodded.“I’ll work for myself now.”A pang of apprehension went through him.“Where are you going? You won’t go further nor Llangarth, surely?”“I’m to help Mrs. Powell. Her that keeps the shop by the market. The Vicar of Crishowell knows her, and ’twas him got me the place. I’ll do my best,” added Mary, holding out her hand for the bundle; “let me go on, now.”“I’ll go with you a bit,” said George.They took the road together, looking very much like a respectable young peasant family starting on a holiday, but for the fact that the man walked beside the woman, not in front of her, and that there was no baby.The ribes scented everything. Mary drew the nosegay from the bundle; she liked to keep it in her hand, for the touch and smell of something familiar was necessary to her as she stepped along towards her new world. After the solitary position of the Dipping-Pool, and her seclusion at the toll-house, Llangarth seemed nothing short of a metropolis.“I’ll be coming into market, time an’ again,” began Williams, after a few minutes. “Would I see you, do you think? I have to go into the town for Mrs. Walters sometimes.”He spoke without a trace of anxiety, but he had been longing and fearing to ask the question.“For Mrs. Walters?”“Yes,” replied he, fixing his eyes on the road about a hundred yards ahead. “I’m working for her now at Great Masterhouse.”Mary bit her lip. The news surprised her, and the sound of Rhys’ name affected her as the word “gallows” might affect a reprieved man.“Of a Sunday,” urged George, “I could step down to Llangarth and get a sight of you.”She was silent.“But, perhaps you wouldn’t like it. I wish you wasn’t so set against me.”“I’m not set against you.”“But you don’t like to see me.”“I do; but——”“What’s wrong wi’ you, Mary? Speak out.”“I’m feared of you, George.”He swore under his breath.“Promise you won’t ever speak like you did at the toll,” she faltered, “not ever again.”Williams set his lips; his short space of prosperity had raised his spirit, and he was no longer so much inclined to accept reverses as natural events. For some time he had earned good wages, and he was already beginning to lessen his debt to Mrs. Walters; in a short time it would no longer exist. He was a different being from the Pig-driver’s sullen, dispirited servant. That hated bondage had crushed all the instincts of young manhood, and made him into a kind of machine for endurance. They now had freedom to rise in him, and he longed for a little joy beyond the mere joy of his release. He could not have framed it for himself, but he was craving for emotion, for femininity, for love, for children, for all that might be centred in the woman beside him. He picked up a stone and threw it smartly into the boughs of an elm-tree. It was a rebellious action.“I can’t,” he said shortly, “and I won’t.”“Then I can’t see you any more. You were to stand by me that day when—after—at the river, but it’s different now, it seems.”“’Tis different. It’s one thing or the other now. Oh! Mary, an’ I would be good to you.”For reply she quickened her pace.George struck at the bushes with the stick he carried. In spite of the good fortune of their meeting, in spite of the words that had set all right between them, they had slipped back into the old place. The sky had cleared indeed, but the clouds were rolling up again.They arrived at the outskirts of Llangarth without exchanging another word or looking at each other; the girl kept her head turned away, with that uncomfortable sensation that weall know when we do not wish to meet the eye of our neighbour, and feel, consequently, as if we had only one side to our faces. When a steep street branched down to the market, she put out her hand timidly for the bundle, but he took no notice of it, and where the pavement narrowed, he fell behind, so that he might look at her unabashed as she went on before him holding the cottage bouquet close.The town was unusually full, it being the day of a half-yearly fair, and Mary became almost bewildered by the stream of passers. Soon it grew clear that she had missed her way, and that the line she was following would eventually bring her out near the river, some way from her destination. George, who did not know the exact place for which she was making, kept behind; she tried to retrieve her mistake by a short cut, and, turning a corner, found herself in the very middle of the fair.The place was a moving mass of humanity; country boys with their awkward gait elbowing about among the trimmer townspeople, girls in their best head-gear, lingering in groups in the attractive vicinity of a double row of booths bisecting the crowd. A merry-go-round, whose shrill pipes and flags assailed both ear and eye, creaked on its ceaseless round of measured giddiness, and behind it a drum, high on a platform, was being beaten with a certain violent decorum, which announced that the action was no outcome of the performer’s spirit, but part of a recognized scheme.Far away from it a rival was found in a Cheap Jack, who proclaimed the merits of bootlaces, tin-whistles, coloured ribbons, and a stack of inferior umbrellas propped against the rush-bottomed chair which formed alike his rostrum and his stronghold. His assistant stood before him, keeping back the dense ring which threatened to submerge him, and using one of the umbrellas for the purpose.The purely agricultural part of the fair had its stand on a piece of high ground, where some fat beasts with indifferent faces occupied a line of pens. In front of them James Bumpett sat in his cart surveying the exhibition. Farm-horseswere being trotted up and down before possible buyers, the pig-jumps with which some of the young ones varied their paces driving the unwary back among their neighbours. Here and there a knot of drunken men rolled through the crowd, their passage marked by oaths emanating both from themselves and from those who were inconvenienced by them.Mary started at finding herself on the verge of such a tumult, and turned back to George.“This isn’t the road I thought,” she said, “I suppose I must have taken the wrong corner somewhere. I can’t mind the name of the street, but it’s nigh the market.”“Then we can get across to it this way,” answered Williams, beginning to make a passage through the crowd. “Keep you close to me.”He shouldered a path through the human waves. It was a big fair, and the inhabitants of other towns had patronized it largely; one or two lounging youths with their hats on one side looked impertinently at Mary, who was made more conspicuous by the flowers she carried. She shrank closer to her companion; he drew her hand under his arm and they went forward.They passed the pens where the live stock were delighting the gaze of the initiated, and found themselves outside a kind of curtained platform, at either end of which was a large placard. To judge by these, all the most celebrated persons the earth contained were to be found behind the curtain, and would, when the showman had collected enough from the bystanders, be revealed to the public eye. The crowd was so thick in this place that George and Mary found it almost impossible to move, though they had no particular wish to see the Fat Woman, the Wild Indian, the Emperor of China, and all the other inspiring personalities who apparently dwelt in godly unity in the tent at the back of the stage. There was a great collecting of coppers going on, and the showman’s hat having reached the fulness he expected, he sprang upon the platform and announced that the show was about to begin.“An’ about toime too,” observed the voice of Howlie Seaborne, who was in the foremost row of spectators; “oi thought them coppers would be moiking a fresh ’ole in the crown.”For three months Howlie had kept Harry’s gift intact; he had laid it carefully by, resisting any temptation to spend even a fraction, so that, when Llangarth Fair should come round, his cup of pleasure should be brimming. He had already laid a shilling out on a knife which he admired, but, in the main, he had gone down the row of booths casting withering looks on such wares as displeased him, occasionally taking up some article, and, after a careful examination, laying it down again with quiet contempt.Sweets were simply beneath his notice, and he passed the places in which they were displayed more insolently than any others. To him, the merry-go-round was foolishness, and those who trusted their persons astride of puce-coloured dragons and grass-green horses, fools; but the mysteries behind the curtain appealed to his curiosity. He now stood in the most desirable position amongst the audience waiting for the show to begin; on his right was a stout, high-nosed farmer’s wife in a black silk bonnet.After a short disappearance the showman came forward carrying a stick with which he tapped the curtain. It flew up disclosing a stupendous lady in purple velveteen, with a wreath of scarlet wax camellias on her head. She was seated at a table.“Seenyora Louisa, a native of Italy! The stoutest female living!” bawled the showman. The lady blew a promiscuous kiss. “She will now sing an Italian song!”At this the lady rose and took a step forward, the stage shaking under her tread. She cleared her throat and began in a shrill treble, so disproportionate to her size that the effect was more startling than if she had roared aloud, as, indeed, one almost expected her to do. The song was evidently a translation.“I am far from my country alone,And my friends and my parents so true.From the land of my birth I have flown,And the faces around me are new!I weep and I sigh all the day,And dream of fair Italy’s shore;How can I be lightsome and gay,When perchance I shall see it no more?”“Well, I never!” exclaimed the woman in the black silk bonnet, “pore thing! I always did say as I hated them furrin’ countries, but I suppose them as is born in them is used to them.”“Waft me, ye winds, to my home,Where my light skiff bounds on the wave;My heart is too weary to roam,And its rest is the wanderer’s grave!”Here the exile turned her eyes upwards and sat thunderously down, a pocket-handkerchief at her face.“’Tis a bad case, pore lady,” said the farmer’s wife again.“Thatain’t no loidy,” remarked Howlie shortly.“Hold yer tongue, ye varmint,” said the farmer’s wife.For once in his life Howlie was nonplussed; chance had thrown him against one of the few people fitted to deal with him.He would have liked to make some suitable reply, but the eyes of his neighbour were fixed upon the stage from which Signora Louisa’s chair was being removed. The curtain dropped.When it rose again the audience drew a long breath. A pasteboard rock, much the size of the Signora, filled the place where she had sat, and to it, by a rope, was attached a middle-aged woman, whose considerable good looks had departed, leaving a cloud of rouge behind. Her position seemed to have produced no sort of effect upon her, for her face was as placid as if she were at her own fireside. She looked not unlike a dog tied up outside a public-house andwaiting for its master. She was enveloped in blue muslin, which stopped midway between knee and ankle, and left her arms and shoulders bare.“’Ere we ’ave the drama of St. George and the Dragon,” announced the showman. “The Princess, forsook by all, waits ’er doom.”“The hussy!” exclaimed the farmer’s wife, turning severely on Howlie. “Go you home, boy, ’tis no place for decent folks. Princess, indeed! I’d Princess her.”Howlie smiled and looked tolerantly at his enemy, but made no effort to move; had he wished to, he could hardly have done so, the crowd was so thick. Awful puffings and roarings proclaimed the approach of the Dragon, and the farmer’s wife began to get nervous.Anything was to be expected from such a godless exhibition, and, in spite of a high nose and a strict moral attitude, her heart began to quake. As in the case of most women, fear made her angry. She took Howlie fiercely by the arm.“D’ye hear me, boy?” she cried.“Oi feel yew, anyhow,” said he.The Dragon had now passed the wings of the stage, and his dire appearance was producing a great effect. The owner of the black silk bonnet turned and found herself confronted by George and Mary, who were wedged up in the row immediately behind her.“Help me out o’ this, young man,” she said authoritatively, but with a suspicious quaver in her voice. “I don’t think much of that sort o’ show, an’ I don’t think much of you, neither, letting your missus stand looking at loose sights.”Mary turned crimson.“’Tis hard to get free of this maze o’ folk,” answered Williams.“I’m going to try it, howsomenever,” continued the farmer’s wife, “and you might lend me a hand if you be going too. My screwmatics is that bad that I can’t shove about me as I’d like to.” She looked resolutely round upon the crowd.“I’ll do what I can,” said George, beginning to push his way to a freer space.The whole concourse having its senses completely centred upon the Dragon it made but little resistance, and as long as its eyes might remain fixed on him, it hardly cared what became of the rest of its body. George’s efforts were supplemented by those of the sturdy woman behind him, and they soon arrived at the outskirts of the fair.“Thank ye,” she said, as she mopped her shining forehead; “just you take that young missus o’ yours home. She’s dead tired, I can see that, pore lass.”And she left them.George walked with his companion to the door of her new home and parted from her. He asked her again to let him go to see her now and then. She hesitated, and finally said yes.
THEgenerosity of those who admired the toll-keeper’s excellent exit from this life had placed his daughter beyond the possibility of want.
Public admiration, which, in like instances, will often display itself in ornamenting a memory that is already the most ornamental thing possible, had been leavened by the common-sense of the Vicar. He maintained that the plainest stone would be as efficient a background to the proud record it bore as the most expensive article ever turned out of a stone-cutter’s yard. He also added that the sincerest homage offered to the dead would, in this case, be the care of the living.
The gentlemen representing the district were impressed by the view he took, as men often are by the words of those who speak little, and though their wives, on hearing of the decision, sniffed and opined that any expenditure on the hussy would be a throwing away of good money, they decided to take his advice and to leave its carrying out in his hands. They thus had the agreeable experience of feeling broad-minded and saving themselves trouble in one and the same act; the situation had novelty as well as convenience, and they folded their hands upon their ample persons in easy after-dinner enjoyment of the good deed. Lady Harriet’s was the one dissenting voice in the general female opinion. In this, as in most things, she was Mr. Lewis’ warmest supporter, adding a private mite out of her slim purse; the peculiar horror of Mary’s situation left no room in her mind for more creditable feelings.
By the time Harry’s love affair had come to a point, an arrangement had been made on her behalf. Eager to work for her living, she accepted the small provision made for her gratefully, while she assured her benefactors of her wish to help herself as far as she could for the future. She begged them to get her some decent work. The little board before whom she was summoned was impressed by the slender, firm creature, her gentle demeanour and sensible answers, as she stood in front of them and made her request. Afterwards, one member even tried to describe her to his wife, but the lady frowned him down, pointing to the freckled miss who crowned their union, and who now sat at her wool-work within earshot of the pair.
But, in spite of the sneers and charges of infatuation for a pretty face brought against the gentlemen by their spouses, she obtained the interest she needed, and a place was found for her in a little greengrocer’s shop at Llangarth. The owner, an old woman becoming rapidly infirm, wanted a girl to act as servant and saleswoman, offering a home and a small wage in return for the help. The Vicar, who was particular on the point, hid no part of Mary’s history from her employer, but it was received without comment as too ordinary an occurrence to need notice. So one afternoon she started for the town, a bundle in her hand and her new life waiting a few miles in front.
She walked along, a kind of reluctance clinging round her footsteps. The independent course she had asked for was near, but, now that she had launched herself, she felt internally cold.
Her new employer was a stranger, and the friends she had just left seemed to be receding very far away. She looked mentally back on them, as a traveller ferrying across to an unfamiliar shore looks back at the faces on the brink. She could see the roofs of Llangarth appearing in the green and blue of the landscape, and the smoke curling among the trees. She paused and laid down her bundle, leaning against a gate. A path which was a short cut to the town from the uplands of Crishowell, ran, a wavy line through the clover and daisies,towards her halting-place; and, though a man’s figure was coming along it, she was so much pre-occupied that she did not notice his approach. It was only when he stood not a yard from her that she moved aside to let him pass. The man was George Williams.
Mary had thought many times of their parting, and, as the wound in her mind began to ache less and her agonizing sensitiveness to abate, her judgment grew straighter. She began to see that she had done George a wrong, misjudging his impulses, and she sincerely wished her words unsaid; but, being one of those souls to whom explanation is torture, she had made no sign. Even now, though she longed to set it right, she could find no voice for a moment. He passed her with an indistinct word.
“George.”
He stopped immediately.
“George, I treated you bad when I shut the door on you. I didn’t understand. It’s hard to do right,” said Mary simply.
“Then you bean’t angry, Mary? Not now?”
“No, no.”
Facing each other, there seemed nothing more to say. In their state of life there are no small embroideries round the main subject.
“I’m going to Llangarth,” said the girl, with a clumsy attempt at ending the episode.
“So am I,” said he.
Looking down, he noticed her bundle, which he had almost rolled into the ditch as he opened the gate; the four corners were knotted in the middle, and under the knot was stuck a bunch of flowers—wallflower, ribes, and a couple of pheasant-eye narcissus.
“Have you left the toll?” he asked, taking it up from the clump of nettles upon which it had fallen.
She nodded.
“I’ll work for myself now.”
A pang of apprehension went through him.
“Where are you going? You won’t go further nor Llangarth, surely?”
“I’m to help Mrs. Powell. Her that keeps the shop by the market. The Vicar of Crishowell knows her, and ’twas him got me the place. I’ll do my best,” added Mary, holding out her hand for the bundle; “let me go on, now.”
“I’ll go with you a bit,” said George.
They took the road together, looking very much like a respectable young peasant family starting on a holiday, but for the fact that the man walked beside the woman, not in front of her, and that there was no baby.
The ribes scented everything. Mary drew the nosegay from the bundle; she liked to keep it in her hand, for the touch and smell of something familiar was necessary to her as she stepped along towards her new world. After the solitary position of the Dipping-Pool, and her seclusion at the toll-house, Llangarth seemed nothing short of a metropolis.
“I’ll be coming into market, time an’ again,” began Williams, after a few minutes. “Would I see you, do you think? I have to go into the town for Mrs. Walters sometimes.”
He spoke without a trace of anxiety, but he had been longing and fearing to ask the question.
“For Mrs. Walters?”
“Yes,” replied he, fixing his eyes on the road about a hundred yards ahead. “I’m working for her now at Great Masterhouse.”
Mary bit her lip. The news surprised her, and the sound of Rhys’ name affected her as the word “gallows” might affect a reprieved man.
“Of a Sunday,” urged George, “I could step down to Llangarth and get a sight of you.”
She was silent.
“But, perhaps you wouldn’t like it. I wish you wasn’t so set against me.”
“I’m not set against you.”
“But you don’t like to see me.”
“I do; but——”
“What’s wrong wi’ you, Mary? Speak out.”
“I’m feared of you, George.”
He swore under his breath.
“Promise you won’t ever speak like you did at the toll,” she faltered, “not ever again.”
Williams set his lips; his short space of prosperity had raised his spirit, and he was no longer so much inclined to accept reverses as natural events. For some time he had earned good wages, and he was already beginning to lessen his debt to Mrs. Walters; in a short time it would no longer exist. He was a different being from the Pig-driver’s sullen, dispirited servant. That hated bondage had crushed all the instincts of young manhood, and made him into a kind of machine for endurance. They now had freedom to rise in him, and he longed for a little joy beyond the mere joy of his release. He could not have framed it for himself, but he was craving for emotion, for femininity, for love, for children, for all that might be centred in the woman beside him. He picked up a stone and threw it smartly into the boughs of an elm-tree. It was a rebellious action.
“I can’t,” he said shortly, “and I won’t.”
“Then I can’t see you any more. You were to stand by me that day when—after—at the river, but it’s different now, it seems.”
“’Tis different. It’s one thing or the other now. Oh! Mary, an’ I would be good to you.”
For reply she quickened her pace.
George struck at the bushes with the stick he carried. In spite of the good fortune of their meeting, in spite of the words that had set all right between them, they had slipped back into the old place. The sky had cleared indeed, but the clouds were rolling up again.
They arrived at the outskirts of Llangarth without exchanging another word or looking at each other; the girl kept her head turned away, with that uncomfortable sensation that weall know when we do not wish to meet the eye of our neighbour, and feel, consequently, as if we had only one side to our faces. When a steep street branched down to the market, she put out her hand timidly for the bundle, but he took no notice of it, and where the pavement narrowed, he fell behind, so that he might look at her unabashed as she went on before him holding the cottage bouquet close.
The town was unusually full, it being the day of a half-yearly fair, and Mary became almost bewildered by the stream of passers. Soon it grew clear that she had missed her way, and that the line she was following would eventually bring her out near the river, some way from her destination. George, who did not know the exact place for which she was making, kept behind; she tried to retrieve her mistake by a short cut, and, turning a corner, found herself in the very middle of the fair.
The place was a moving mass of humanity; country boys with their awkward gait elbowing about among the trimmer townspeople, girls in their best head-gear, lingering in groups in the attractive vicinity of a double row of booths bisecting the crowd. A merry-go-round, whose shrill pipes and flags assailed both ear and eye, creaked on its ceaseless round of measured giddiness, and behind it a drum, high on a platform, was being beaten with a certain violent decorum, which announced that the action was no outcome of the performer’s spirit, but part of a recognized scheme.
Far away from it a rival was found in a Cheap Jack, who proclaimed the merits of bootlaces, tin-whistles, coloured ribbons, and a stack of inferior umbrellas propped against the rush-bottomed chair which formed alike his rostrum and his stronghold. His assistant stood before him, keeping back the dense ring which threatened to submerge him, and using one of the umbrellas for the purpose.
The purely agricultural part of the fair had its stand on a piece of high ground, where some fat beasts with indifferent faces occupied a line of pens. In front of them James Bumpett sat in his cart surveying the exhibition. Farm-horseswere being trotted up and down before possible buyers, the pig-jumps with which some of the young ones varied their paces driving the unwary back among their neighbours. Here and there a knot of drunken men rolled through the crowd, their passage marked by oaths emanating both from themselves and from those who were inconvenienced by them.
Mary started at finding herself on the verge of such a tumult, and turned back to George.
“This isn’t the road I thought,” she said, “I suppose I must have taken the wrong corner somewhere. I can’t mind the name of the street, but it’s nigh the market.”
“Then we can get across to it this way,” answered Williams, beginning to make a passage through the crowd. “Keep you close to me.”
He shouldered a path through the human waves. It was a big fair, and the inhabitants of other towns had patronized it largely; one or two lounging youths with their hats on one side looked impertinently at Mary, who was made more conspicuous by the flowers she carried. She shrank closer to her companion; he drew her hand under his arm and they went forward.
They passed the pens where the live stock were delighting the gaze of the initiated, and found themselves outside a kind of curtained platform, at either end of which was a large placard. To judge by these, all the most celebrated persons the earth contained were to be found behind the curtain, and would, when the showman had collected enough from the bystanders, be revealed to the public eye. The crowd was so thick in this place that George and Mary found it almost impossible to move, though they had no particular wish to see the Fat Woman, the Wild Indian, the Emperor of China, and all the other inspiring personalities who apparently dwelt in godly unity in the tent at the back of the stage. There was a great collecting of coppers going on, and the showman’s hat having reached the fulness he expected, he sprang upon the platform and announced that the show was about to begin.
“An’ about toime too,” observed the voice of Howlie Seaborne, who was in the foremost row of spectators; “oi thought them coppers would be moiking a fresh ’ole in the crown.”
For three months Howlie had kept Harry’s gift intact; he had laid it carefully by, resisting any temptation to spend even a fraction, so that, when Llangarth Fair should come round, his cup of pleasure should be brimming. He had already laid a shilling out on a knife which he admired, but, in the main, he had gone down the row of booths casting withering looks on such wares as displeased him, occasionally taking up some article, and, after a careful examination, laying it down again with quiet contempt.
Sweets were simply beneath his notice, and he passed the places in which they were displayed more insolently than any others. To him, the merry-go-round was foolishness, and those who trusted their persons astride of puce-coloured dragons and grass-green horses, fools; but the mysteries behind the curtain appealed to his curiosity. He now stood in the most desirable position amongst the audience waiting for the show to begin; on his right was a stout, high-nosed farmer’s wife in a black silk bonnet.
After a short disappearance the showman came forward carrying a stick with which he tapped the curtain. It flew up disclosing a stupendous lady in purple velveteen, with a wreath of scarlet wax camellias on her head. She was seated at a table.
“Seenyora Louisa, a native of Italy! The stoutest female living!” bawled the showman. The lady blew a promiscuous kiss. “She will now sing an Italian song!”
At this the lady rose and took a step forward, the stage shaking under her tread. She cleared her throat and began in a shrill treble, so disproportionate to her size that the effect was more startling than if she had roared aloud, as, indeed, one almost expected her to do. The song was evidently a translation.
“I am far from my country alone,And my friends and my parents so true.From the land of my birth I have flown,And the faces around me are new!I weep and I sigh all the day,And dream of fair Italy’s shore;How can I be lightsome and gay,When perchance I shall see it no more?”
“I am far from my country alone,And my friends and my parents so true.From the land of my birth I have flown,And the faces around me are new!
“I am far from my country alone,
And my friends and my parents so true.
From the land of my birth I have flown,
And the faces around me are new!
I weep and I sigh all the day,And dream of fair Italy’s shore;How can I be lightsome and gay,When perchance I shall see it no more?”
I weep and I sigh all the day,
And dream of fair Italy’s shore;
How can I be lightsome and gay,
When perchance I shall see it no more?”
“Well, I never!” exclaimed the woman in the black silk bonnet, “pore thing! I always did say as I hated them furrin’ countries, but I suppose them as is born in them is used to them.”
“Waft me, ye winds, to my home,Where my light skiff bounds on the wave;My heart is too weary to roam,And its rest is the wanderer’s grave!”
“Waft me, ye winds, to my home,Where my light skiff bounds on the wave;My heart is too weary to roam,And its rest is the wanderer’s grave!”
“Waft me, ye winds, to my home,
Where my light skiff bounds on the wave;
My heart is too weary to roam,
And its rest is the wanderer’s grave!”
Here the exile turned her eyes upwards and sat thunderously down, a pocket-handkerchief at her face.
“’Tis a bad case, pore lady,” said the farmer’s wife again.
“Thatain’t no loidy,” remarked Howlie shortly.
“Hold yer tongue, ye varmint,” said the farmer’s wife.
For once in his life Howlie was nonplussed; chance had thrown him against one of the few people fitted to deal with him.
He would have liked to make some suitable reply, but the eyes of his neighbour were fixed upon the stage from which Signora Louisa’s chair was being removed. The curtain dropped.
When it rose again the audience drew a long breath. A pasteboard rock, much the size of the Signora, filled the place where she had sat, and to it, by a rope, was attached a middle-aged woman, whose considerable good looks had departed, leaving a cloud of rouge behind. Her position seemed to have produced no sort of effect upon her, for her face was as placid as if she were at her own fireside. She looked not unlike a dog tied up outside a public-house andwaiting for its master. She was enveloped in blue muslin, which stopped midway between knee and ankle, and left her arms and shoulders bare.
“’Ere we ’ave the drama of St. George and the Dragon,” announced the showman. “The Princess, forsook by all, waits ’er doom.”
“The hussy!” exclaimed the farmer’s wife, turning severely on Howlie. “Go you home, boy, ’tis no place for decent folks. Princess, indeed! I’d Princess her.”
Howlie smiled and looked tolerantly at his enemy, but made no effort to move; had he wished to, he could hardly have done so, the crowd was so thick. Awful puffings and roarings proclaimed the approach of the Dragon, and the farmer’s wife began to get nervous.
Anything was to be expected from such a godless exhibition, and, in spite of a high nose and a strict moral attitude, her heart began to quake. As in the case of most women, fear made her angry. She took Howlie fiercely by the arm.
“D’ye hear me, boy?” she cried.
“Oi feel yew, anyhow,” said he.
The Dragon had now passed the wings of the stage, and his dire appearance was producing a great effect. The owner of the black silk bonnet turned and found herself confronted by George and Mary, who were wedged up in the row immediately behind her.
“Help me out o’ this, young man,” she said authoritatively, but with a suspicious quaver in her voice. “I don’t think much of that sort o’ show, an’ I don’t think much of you, neither, letting your missus stand looking at loose sights.”
Mary turned crimson.
“’Tis hard to get free of this maze o’ folk,” answered Williams.
“I’m going to try it, howsomenever,” continued the farmer’s wife, “and you might lend me a hand if you be going too. My screwmatics is that bad that I can’t shove about me as I’d like to.” She looked resolutely round upon the crowd.
“I’ll do what I can,” said George, beginning to push his way to a freer space.
The whole concourse having its senses completely centred upon the Dragon it made but little resistance, and as long as its eyes might remain fixed on him, it hardly cared what became of the rest of its body. George’s efforts were supplemented by those of the sturdy woman behind him, and they soon arrived at the outskirts of the fair.
“Thank ye,” she said, as she mopped her shining forehead; “just you take that young missus o’ yours home. She’s dead tired, I can see that, pore lass.”
And she left them.
George walked with his companion to the door of her new home and parted from her. He asked her again to let him go to see her now and then. She hesitated, and finally said yes.