Chapter 11

Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such festivals. Luck would have it that[Pg 58] for the last two years there had been no official fiddler—old Abel Pinch having been seduced by a semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother honourably as chief musician.

He advertised him in the neighbourhood for some weeks beforehand, and gossip ran high. Condemnation of Backfield's ruthlessness in exploiting his brother was combined with a furtive admiration of his smartness as a business man. It was extraordinary how little he cared about "lowering himself," a vital matter with the other farmers of his position. Just as he had thought nothing of working his own farm instead of indulging in the dignity of hired labour, so he thought nothing of making money at Boarzell Fair with the gipsies and pikers.

Naomi no longer protested. For one thing Harry seemed to like his fiddling, and was quite overjoyed at the prospect of playing at the Fair. Strangely enough, he remembered the Fair and its jollities, though he had forgotten all weightier matters of life and love.

"Where shall I stand?—by the gipsies' tent?—or right forrard by the stalls? I'd like to stand by the stalls, and then maybe when I'm not fiddling they'll give me sweeties."

"You must behave yourself," said Reuben, in the tones he would have used to a child—"you mustn't go vrothering people to give you sweeties."

"I'll give you some sweeties, Harry," said Naomi.

"Oh, will you?—Then I'll love you!"

Naomi turned away with a shudder, her eyes full of inexpressible pain.

Reuben looked after her as she went out of the room, then he took a couple of strides and caught her up in the passage.

"It's I who'm t?aking you to the Fair, remember," he said, his hand on her arm.

"Oh, no ... I couldn't go to the Fair."

"Nonsense—you're coming wud me."

"Oh, Ben, don't make me go."

It was the cry of her weakness to his purpose.

"I shall m?ake you ... dear."

She flung herself from him, and ran upstairs. That night at supper she took no notice of him, talking garrulously all the time to Mrs. Backfield.

But she went to the Fair.

In the soft grey gown that the first of the cold demanded she walked with her arm through Reuben's up the Moor. Her bonnet was the colour of heather, tied with wide ribbons that accentuated the milkiness of her chin. Reuben wore his Sunday clothes—drab shorts and a sprigged waistcoat, and a wide-brimmed hat under which his face looked strangely handsome and dark. Harry shuffled along, clutching his brother's coat-sleeve to guide himself. Mrs. Backfield preferred to stay at home, and Reuben had not tried to make her come.

All Peasmarsh went to the Fair. It was a recognised holiday. All farm work—except the most barely necessary—was put aside, and the ploughman and dairymaid rollicked with their betters. The road across Boarzell was dark with them, coming from all quarters—Playden, Iden, Beckley, Northiam, Bodiam—Old Turk's Farm, Baron's Grange, Corkwood, Kitchenhour—even from Blackbrook and Ethnam on the Kentish border.

The tents and stalls were blocked as usual round the central crest of pines. It was all much as it had been five years ago on the day of the Riot. There was the outer fringe of strange dwellings—tents full of smoke and sprawling squalling children, tilt carts with soup-pots hanging from their axles over little fires, and[Pg 60] gorgeously painted caravans which stood out aristocratically amidst the prevalent sacking. There was a jangle of voices—the soft Romany of the gipsies, the shriller cant of the pikers and half-breeds, the broad drawling Sussex of the natives. Head of all the Fair, and superintending the working of the crazy merry-go-round, was Gideon Teazel, a rock-like man, son, he said, of a lord and a woman of the Rosamescros or Hearnes. He stood six foot eight in his boots and could carry a heifer across his shoulders. His wife Aurora, a pure-bred gipsy, told fortunes, and was mixed up in more activities than would appear from her sleepy manner or her invariable position, pipe in mouth, on the steps of her husband's caravan. Gideon loved to display his devotion for her by grotesque endearments and elephantine caresses—due no doubt to the gaujo strain in him, for the true gipsies always treated their women in public as chattels or beasts of burden, though privately they were entirely under their thumbs.

Reuben brought Naomi and Harry into the middle of the Fair. Many people stared at them. It was Harry's first public appearance since his illness, and one or two comments louder than the general hum came to Naomi's ears and made them pink.

Harry was soon established on the upturned cask beside the fighting booth which had always been the fiddler's place. He began to play at once—"Nice Young Maidens"—to all appearances quite indifferent to the jostle round him. Naomi could not help marvelling at Reuben, too—he was so cool, possessed and assured, so utterly without anything in the way of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Wonder was succeeded by wrath—how dare he be calm in the face of such terrible things? She tried to pull her hand out of his arm, but he held his elbow close to his side, and the little hand lay there like an imprisoned mouse.

"Let's go away," she whispered, half nervously and half angrily, "I hate standing here."

"I want to see how he's going to manage," said Reuben. "What'll he do when he comes to the end of this tune?"

"Oh, do let's go away."

He did not answer, but stood there imperturbable, till Harry, having successfully finished "Nice Young Maidens," started "The Woodpecker Tapping" without any ado.

"He's safe enough now—we may as well go and have a look round."

Naomi followed him out of the little crowd which had grouped round Harry, and they wandered into the Panorama tent to see the show. After having sat for half an hour on a crowded bench, in an atmosphere thick with foul tobacco and the smell of clothes long stored away—watching "The Coronation of Queen Victoria" and "Scenery on the West Coast of Scotland" rumble slowly past with many creaks—they moved on to the sparring booth, where Buck Washington, now a little knotted and disabled by a bout of rheumatism, arranged scraps between the ploughboys of the neighbouring farms.

Unluckily, the object of sparring, as practised locally, was to draw as much blood from the adversary as possible. The combatants went straight for each others' noses, in spite of the conjurations of Buck, and Naomi soon exercised her privilege as a town girl, and said she felt faint. Reuben took her out, and they walked round the stalls, at one of which he bought her a cherry ribbon for her fairing. At another they bought gingerbread. Gradually her spirits began to revive—she applauded his power at the shooting gallery, and when they came to the cocoanut shie, she was laughing out loud.

Reuben seemed to have an endless supply of money.[Pg 62] He, whom she had seen deny himself white bread and tobacco, and scold his mother if she used eggs to make a pudding, did not seem now to care how much he spent for her amusement. He vowed, laughing, that she should not leave the shie till she had brought down a nut, and the showman pocketed pennies till he grinned from ear to ear, while Naomi threw the wooden balls in all directions, hitting the showman and the spectators and once even Reuben himself. At last he took her arm, and putting himself behind her managed after one or two attempts to guide a successful throw. They went off laughing with her prize, and came once more to the open ground where Harry was still playing his fiddle.

Evidently he had pleased the multitude, for there was now a thick crowd in the central space, and already dancing had begun. Farm-hands in clean smocks, with bright-coloured handkerchiefs round their necks, gambolled uncouthly with farm-girls in spotted and striped muslins. Young farmers' wives, stiff with the sedateness of their bridehead, were drawn into reluctant capers. Despairing virgins renewed their hope, and tried wives their liveliness in unaccustomed arms. Even the elders danced, stumping together on the outskirts of the whirl as long as their breath allowed them.

Harry played "The Song of Seth's House," which in spite of—or because of—its sadness was a good dancing tune. There was no definite step, just anything the dancers fancied. Some kicked up their heels vigorously, others slid them sedately, some held their partners by the hand, others with both arms round their waist.

Then suddenly Naomi found herself in the thick of the crowd, at once crushed and protected by Reuben's six foot three of strength. At first she was shocked, chilled—she had never danced at a fair before, and it seemed dreadful to be dancing here with Reuben while Harry fiddled. But gradually the jovial movement, the vigour and gay spirits of her partner, wore down her[Pg 63] reluctance. Once more she was impressed by that entire absence of self-consciousness and false pride which characterised him. After all, why should they not dance here together? Why should they stand glum while everyone else was merrymaking? Harry did not notice them, and if he did he would not care.
"The blackbird flew out from the eaves of the Manor,
The Manor of Seth in the Sussex countrie,
And he carried a prayer from the lad of the Manor,
A prayer and a tear to his faithless ladie."

She found herself bending to the rhythm of the music, swaying in Reuben's arms. He held her lightly, and it was wonderful how clever he was in avoiding concussion with the other dancers, most of whom bumped about regardless of anybody else.
"To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,
The water of Iron in the Sussex countrie,
The lad of Seth's House prays for comfort and pity—
Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!"

A sudden weariness passed over Naomi, and Reuben led her out of the dance and brought her a drink of mild icy ale. He did not offer to take her home, and she did not ask to go. If he had offered she would have gone, but she had no will of her own—all desire, all initiative was drowned in the rhythm of the dance and the sadness of the old tune.
"O why when we loved like the swallows in April,
Should beauty forget now their nests have grown cold?
O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,
Should you turn from me now that they winter in fold?"

He led her back into the crowd, and once more she felt his arms round her, so light, so strong, while her feet spun with his, tricked by magic. She became acutely conscious of his presence—the roughness of his coat-sleeve, the faint scent of the sprigged waistcoat, which had been folded away in lavender. And all the[Pg 64] while she had another picture of him in her heart, not in his Sunday best, but in corduroys and the blue shirt which had stood out of the January dusk, the last piece of colour in the day. She remembered the swing of his arm, the crash of the axe on the trunk, the bending of his back as he pulled it out, the muscles swelled under the skin ... and then the tingling creep in her own heart, that sudden suffocating thrill which had come to her there beside Harry in the gloam....

The dusk was falling now, splashed by crude flares over the stalls, and once more that creep—delicious, tingling, suffocating—was in her heart, the intoxication of the weak by the strong. It seemed as if he were holding her closer. She grew warm, and yet she would not stop. There was sweat on her forehead, she felt her woollen gown sticking to her shoulders—but she would not rest. The same old tune jigged on—it was good to dance to, and Harry liked playing it.
"O why, because sickness hath wasted my body,
Should you do me to death with your dark treacherie?
O why, because brothers and friends all have left me,
Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie?"

The dance was becoming more of a rout. Hats fell back, even Naomi's heather-coloured bonnet became disorderly. Kerchiefs were crumpled and necks bare. Arms grew tighter, there were few merely clasping hands now. Then a lad kissed his partner on the neck while they danced, and soon another couple were spinning round with lips clinging together. The girls' hair grew rough and blew in their boys' eyes—there were sounds of panting—of kissing—Naomi grew giddy, round her was a whirl of colour, hands, faces, the dusk and flaring lights. She clung closer to Reuben, and his arms tightened about her.
"One day when your pride shall have brought you to sorrow,
And years of despair and remorse been your fate,
Perhaps your cold heart will remember Seth's Manor,
And turn to your true love—and find it too late."