I
The holidays were over. The Coles were once more back in Polchester, and
the most exciting period of Jeremy's life had begun. So at any rate he
felt it. It might be that in later years there would be new exciting
events, lion-hunting, for instance, or a war, or the tracking of niggers
in the heart of Africa--he would be ready for them when they came--but
these last weeks before his first departure for school offered him the
prospect of the first real independence of his life. There could never
be anything quite like that again. Nevertheless, school seemed still a
long way distant. It was only his manliness that he was realising and
a certain impatience and restlessness that underlay everything that he
did.
September and October are often very lovely months in Polchester; autumn
seems to come there with a greater warmth and richness than it does
elsewhere. Along all the reaches of the Pol, right down to the sea, the
leaves of the woods hung with a riotous magnificence that is glorious
in its recklessness. The waters of that silent river are so still, so
glassy, that the banks of gold and flaming red are reflected in all
their richest colour down into the very heart of the stream, and it is
only when a fish jumps or a twig falls from the overhanging trees that
the mirror is broken and the colours flash into ripples and shadows of
white and grey. The utter silence of all this world makes the Cathedral
town sleepy, sluggish, forgotten of all men. As the autumn comes it
seems to drowse away into winter to the tune of its Cathedral bells,
to the scent of its burning leaves and the soft steps of its Canons
and clergy. There is every autumn here a clerical conference, and
long before the appointed week begins, and long after it is lawfully
concluded, clergymen, strange clergymen with soft black hats, take the
town for their own, gaze into Martin the pastry-cook's, sit in the dusk
of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their
arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they
were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and
give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d.
box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at
the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed
thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to some
ladies' tea-party, or pass with solemn and anxious mien into the palace
of the Bishop himself.
All these things belong to autumn in Polchester, as Jeremy very well
knew, but the event that marks the true beginning of the season, the
only way by which you may surely know that summer is over and autumn is
come is Pauper's Fair.
This famous fair has been, from time immemorial, a noted event in
Glebeshire life. Even now, when fairs have yielded to cinematographs as
attractions for the people, Pauper's Fair gives its annual excitement.
Thirty years ago it was the greatest event of the year in Polchester.
All our fine people, of course, disliked it extremely. It disturbed the
town for days, the town rocked in the arms of crowds of drunken sailors,
the town gave shelter to gipsies and rogues and scoundrels, the town,
the decent, amiable, happy town actually for a week or so seemed to
invite the world of the blazing fire and the dancing clown. No wonder
that our fine people shuddered. Only the other day--I speak now of these
modern times--the Bishop tried to stop the whole business. He wrote to
the Glebeshire Morning News, urging that Pauper's Fair, in these days of
enlightenment and culture, cannot but be regretted by all those who have
the healthy progress of our dear country at heart. Well, you would be
amazed at the storm that his protest raised. People wrote from all over
the County, and there were ultimately letters from patriotic Glebeshire
citizens in New Zealand and South Africa. And in Polchester
itself! Everyone--even those who had shuddered most at the fair's
iniquities--was indignant. Give up the fair! One of the few signs left
of that jolly Old England whose sentiment is cherished by us, whose
fragments nevertheless we so readily stamp upon. No, the fair must
remain and will remain, I have no doubt, until the very end of our
national chapter.
Nowadays it has shed, very largely, I am afraid, the character that it
gloriously maintained thirty years ago. Then it was really an invasion
by the seafaring element of the County. All the little country ports
and harbours poured out their fishermen and sailors, who came walking,
driving, singing, laughing, swearing; they filled the streets, and went
peering, like the wildest of ancient Picts, into the mysterious beauties
of the Cathedral, and late at night, when the town should have slept,
arm in arm they went roaring past the dark windows, singing their songs,
stamping their feet, and every once and again ringing a decent door-bell
for their amusement. It was very seldom that any harm was done. Once a
serious fire broke out amongst the old wooden houses down on the river,
and some of them were burnt to the ground, a fate that no one deplored;
once a sailor was murdered in a drunken squabble at “The Dog and
Pilchard,” the wildest of the riverside hostelries; and once a Canon
was caught and stripped and ducked in the waters of the Pol by a mob who
resented his gentle appeals that they should try to prefer lemonade to
gin; but these were the only three catastrophes in all the history of
the fair.
During the fair week the town sniffed of the sea--of lobster and seaweed
and tar and brine--and all the tales of the sea that have ever been told
by man were told during these days in Polchester.
The decent people kept their doors locked, their children at home, and
their valuables in the family safe. No upper class child in Polchester
so much as saw the outside of a gipsy van. The Dean's Ernest was
accustomed to boast that he had once been given a ride by a gipsy on a
donkey, when his nurse was not looking, but no one credited the story,
and the details with which he supported it were feeble and unconvincing.
The Polchester children in general were told that “they would be stolen
by the gipsies if they weren't careful,” and, although some of them
in extreme moments of rebellion and depression felt that the life of
adventure thus offered to them, might, after all, be more agreeable than
the dreary realism of their natural days, the warning may be said to
have been effective.
No family in Polchester was guarded more carefully in this matter of the
Pauper's Fair than the Cole family. Mr. Cole had an absolute horror of
the fair. Sailors and gipsies were to him the sign and seal of utter
damnation, and although he tried, as a Christian clergyman, to believe
that they deserved pity because of the disadvantages under which they
had from the first laboured, he confessed to his intimate friends that
he saw very little hope for them either in this world or the next.
Jeremy, Helen and Mary were, during Fair Week, kept severely within
doors; their exercise had to be taken in the Cole garden, and the
farthest that they poked their noses into the town was their visit to
St. John's on Sunday morning. Except on one famous occasion. The Fair
Week of Jeremy's fifth year saw him writhing under a terrible attack of
toothache, which became, after two agonised nights, such a torment and
distress to the whole household that he had to be conveyed to the house
of Mr. Pilter, who had his torture-chamber at No. 3 Market Square. It
is true that Jeremy was conveyed thither in a cab, and that his pain
and his darkened windows prevented him from seeing very much of the
gay world; nevertheless, in spite of the Jampot, who guarded him like a
dragon, he caught a glimpse of flags, a gleaming brass band and a Punch
and Judy show, and he heard the trumpets and the drum, and the shouts of
excited little boys, and the blowing of the Punch and Judy pipes, and
he smelt roasting chestnuts, bad tobacco, and beer and gin. He returned,
young as he was, and reduced to a corpse-like condition by the rough
but kindly intentioned services of Mr. Pilter, with the picture of a
hysterical, abandoned world clearly imprinted upon his brain.
“I want to go,” he said to the Jampot.
“You can't,” said she.
“I will when I'm six,” said he.
“You won't,” said she.
“I will when I'm seven,” said he.
“You won't,” said she.
“I will when I'm eight,” he answered.
“Oh, give over, do, Master Jeremy,” said she. And now he was eight, very
nearly nine, and going to school in a fortnight. There seemed to be a
touch of destiny about his prophecy.
II
He had no intention of disobedience. Had he been once definitely told by
someone in authority that he was not to go to the fair he would not
have dreamt of going. He had no intention of disobedience--but he had
returned from the Cow Farm holiday in a strange condition of mind.
He had found there this summer more freedom than he had been ever
allowed in his life before, and it had been freedom that had come, not
so much from any change of rules, but rather from his own attitude to
the family--simply he had wanted to do certain things, and he had done
them and the family had stood aside. He began to be aware that he had
only to push and things gave way--a dangerous knowledge, and its coming
marks a period in one's life.
He seemed, too, during this summer, to have left his sisters definitely
behind him and to stand much more alone than he had done before. The
only person in his world whom he felt that he would like to know better
was Uncle Samuel, and that argued, on his part, a certain tendency
towards rebellion and individuality. He was no longer rude to Aunt 'Amy,
although he hated her just as he had always done. She did not seem any
longer a question that mattered. His attitude to his whole family now
was independent.
Indeed, he was, in reality, now beginning to live his independent life.
He was perhaps very young to be sent off to school by himself, although
in those days for a boy of eight to be plunged without any help but a
friendly word of warning into the stormy seas of private school life was
common enough--nevertheless, his father, conscious that the child's
life had been hitherto spent almost entirely among women, sent him
every morning during these last weeks at home down to the Curate of St.
Martin's-in-the-Market to learn a few words of Latin, an easy sum or
two, and the rudiments of spelling. This young curate, the Rev. Wilfred
Somerset, recently of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had but two ideas
in his head--the noble game of cricket and the jolly qualities of Mr.
Surtees's novels. He was stout and strong, red-faced, and thick in the
leg, always smoking a largo black-looking pipe, and wearing trousers
very short and tight. He did not strike Jeremy with fear, but he was,
nevertheless, an influence. Jeremy, apparently, amused him intensely. He
would roar with laughter at nothing at all, smack his thigh and shout,
“Good for you, young 'un,” whatever that might mean, and Jeremy,
gazing at him, at his pipe and his trousers, liking him rather, but not
sufficiently in awe to be really impressed, would ask him questions
that seemed to him perfectly simple and natural, but that, nevertheless,
amused the Rev. Wilfred so fundamentally that he was unable to give them
an intelligible answer.
Undoubtedly this encouraged Jeremy's independence.
He walked to and fro the curate's lodging by himself, and was able
to observe many interesting things on the way. Sometimes, late in the
afternoon, he would have some lesson that he must take to his master
who, as he lodged at the bottom of Orange Street, was a very safe and
steady distance from the Coles.
Of course Aunt Amy objected.
“You allow Jeremy, all by himself, into the street at night, and he's
only eight. Really, you're too strange!”
“Well, in the first place,” said Mrs. Cole, mildly, “it isn't
night--it's afternoon; in the second place, it is only just down the
street, and Jeremy's most obedient always, as you know, Amy.”
“I'm sure that Mr. Somerset is wild,” said Aunt Amy.
“My dear Amy, why'?”
“You've only got to look at his face. It's 'flashy.' That's what I call
it.”
“Oh, that isn't the sort of man who'll do Jeremy harm,” said Mrs. Cole,
with a mother's wisdom.
Certainly, he did Jeremy no harm at all; he taught him nothing, not even
“mensa,” and how to spell “receive” and “apple.” The only thing he did
was to encourage Jeremy's independence, and this was done, in the first
place, by the walks to and fro.
He had only been going to Mr. Somerset's a day or two when the
announcements of the Fair appeared on the walls of the town. He could
not help but see them; there was a large cue on the boarding half-way
down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured
picture of “Wombwell's Circus,” a fine affair, with spangled ladies
jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a
clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious
face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude
on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that
there would be a “Cattle Market, Races, Roundabout, Swings, Wrestling,
Boxing, Fat Women, Dwarfs, and the Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus.”
During a whole week, once a day, Jeremy read this bill from the top to
the bottom; at the end of the week he could repeat it all by heart.
He asked Mr. Somerset whether he was going.
“Oh, I shall slip along one evening, I've no doubt,” replied that
gentleman. “But it's a bore--a whole week of it--upsets one's work.”
“It needn't,” said Jeremy, “if you stay indoors.”
This amused Mr. Somerset immensely. He laughed a great deal.
“We always have to,” said Jeremy, rather hurt. “We're not allowed
farther than the garden.”
“Ah, but I'm older than you are,” said Mr. Somerset. “It was the same
with me once.”
“And what did you do? Did you go all the same?”
“You bet, I did,” said the red-faced hero, more intent on his
reminiscences than on the effect that this might have on the morals of
his pupil.
Jeremy waited then for the parental command that was always issued. It
was: “Now, children, you must promise me never to go outside the house
this week unless you have asked permission first.” And then: “And on
no account to speak to any stranger about anything whatever.” And then:
“Don't look out of the back windows, mind.” (From the extreme corners
of the bedroom windows you could see a patch of the meadow whereon the
gipsy-vans settled.) These commands had been as regular as the Fair, and
always, of course, the children had promised obedience. Jeremy told his
conscience that if, this year, he gave his promise, he would certainly
keep it. He wondered, at the same time, whether he might not possibly
manage to be out of the house when the commands were issued. He formed
a habit of suddenly slipping out of the room when he saw his father's
mouth assuming the shape of a “command.” He took the utmost care not to
be alone with his father.
But he need not have been alarmed. This year no command appeared.
Perhaps Mr. Cole thought that it was no longer necessary; it was obvious
that the children were not to go, and they were, after all, old enough
now to think for themselves. Or, perhaps, it was that Mr. Cole had other
things on his mind; he was changing curates just then, and a succession
of white-faced, soft-voiced, and loud-booted young men were appearing at
the Coles' hospitable table.
“Here's this tiresome Fair come round again,” said Mrs. Cole.
“Wicked!” said Aunt Amy, with an envious shudder. “Satan finds work,
indeed, in this town.”
“I don't suppose it's worse than anywhere else,” said Mrs. Cole.
On the late afternoon of the day before the opening, Jeremy, on his way
to Mr. Somerset's, caught the tailend of Wombwell's Circus Procession
moving, in misty splendour, across the market.
He could see but little, although he stood on the pedestal of a
lamp-post; but Britannia, rocking high in the air, flashing her silver
sceptre in the evening air, and followed by two enormous and melancholy
elephants, caught his gaze. Strains of a band lingered about him. He
entered Mr. Somerset's in a frenzy of excitement, but he said nothing.
He felt that Mr. Somerset would laugh at him.
He returned to his home that night haunted by Britannia. He ate
Britannia for his supper; he had Britannia for his dreams; and he
greeted Rose as Britannia the next morning when she called him. Early
upon that day there were borne into the heart of the house strains of
the Fair. It was no use whatever to close the windows, lock the doors,
and read Divinity. The strains persisted, a heavenly murmur, rising at
moments into a muffled shriek or a jumbling shout, hanging about the
walls as a romantic echo, dying upon the air a chastened wail. “No use
for Mr. Cole to say:
“We must behave as though the Fair was not.”
For a whole week it would be there, and everyone knew it.
Jeremy did not mean to be disobedient, but after that glimpse of
Britannia he knew that he would go.
III
It had, at first, been thought advisable that Jeremy should not go to
Mr. Somerset's during Fair Week. Perhaps Mr. Somerset could come to
the Coles'. No, he was very sorry. He must be in his rooms at that
particular hour in case parishioners should need his advice or
assistance.
“Pity for him to miss all this week, especially as there will be only
four days left after that. I am really anxious for him to have a little
grounding in Latin.”
Mrs. Cole smiled confidently. “I think Jeremy is to be trusted. He would
never do anything that you wouldn't like.”
Mr. Cole was not so sure. “He's not quite so obedient as I should wish.
He shows an independence--”
However, after some hesitation it was decided that Jeremy might be
trusted.
But even after that he was never put upon his honour. “If I don't
promise, I needn't mind,” he said to himself, and waited breathlessly;
but nothing came. Only Aunt Amy said:
“I hope you don't speak to little boys in the street, Jeremy.” To which
he replied scornfully: “Of course not.”
He investigated his money-box, removing the top with a tin-opener. He
found that he had there 3s. 3 1/2d.; a large sum, and enough to give him
a royal time.
Mary caught him.
“Oh, Jeremy, what are you doing?”
“Just counting my money,” he said, with would-be carelessness.
“You're going to the Fair?” she whispered breathlessly.
He frowned. How could she know? She always knew everything.
“Perhaps,” he whispered back; “but if you tell anyone I'll--”
“Of course I wouldn't tell,” she replied, deeply offended.
This little conversation strengthened his purpose. He had not admitted
to himself that he was really going. Now he knew.
Wednesday would be the night. On Wednesday evenings his father had a
service which prevented him from returning home until half-past eight.
He would go to Somerset's at half-past four, and would be expected
home at half-past six; there would be no real alarm about him until his
father's return from church, and he could, therefore, be sure of two
hours' bliss. For the consequences he did not care at all. He was going
to do no harm to anyone or anything. They would be angry, perhaps, but
that would not hurt him, and, in any case, he was going to school next
week. No one at school would mind whether he had been to the Fair or no.
He felt aloof and apart, as though no one could touch him. He would
not have minded simply going into them all and saying: “I'm off to the
Fair.” The obvious drawback to that would have been that he would have
been shut up in his room, and then they might make him give his word...
He would not break any promises.
When Wednesday came it was a lovely day. Out in the field just behind
the Coles' house they were burning a huge bonfire of dead leaves. At
first only a heavy column of grey smoke rose, then flames broke through;
little, thin golden flames like paper; then a sudden fierce red tongue
shot out and went licking up into the air until it faded like tumbling
water against the sunlight. On the outer edge of the bonfire there was
thin grey smoke through which you could see as through glass. The smell
was heavenly, and even through closed windows the crackling of the
burnt leaves could be heard. The sight of the bonfire excited Jeremy. It
seemed to him a signal of encouragement, a spur to perseverance. All
the morning the flames crackled, and men came with wheelbarrows full of
leaves and emptied them in thick heaps upon the fire. At each emptying
the fire would be for a moment beaten, and only the white, thick,
malicious smoke would come through; then a little spit of flame,
another, another; then a thrust like a golden hand stretching out; then
a fine, towering, quivering splendour.
Under the full noonday sun the fire was pale and so unreal, weak, and
sickly, that one was almost ashamed to look at it. But as the afternoon
passed, it again gathered strength, and with the faint, dusky evening it
was a giant once more.
“You come along,” it said to Jeremy. “Come along! Come along!”
“I'm going to Mr. Somerset's, Mother,” he said, putting two exercise
books and a very new and shining blue Latin book together.
“Are you, dear? I suppose you're safe?” Mrs. Cole asked, looking through
the drawing-room window.
“Oh, it's all right,” said Jeremy
“Well, I think it is,” said Mrs. Cole. “The street seems quite empty.
Don't speak to any odd-looking men, will you?”
“Oh, that's all right,” he said again.
He walked down Orange Street, his books under his arm, the 3s. 3 1/2d.
in his pocket. The street was quite deserted, swimming in a cold, pale
light; the trees, the houses, the church, the garden-walls, sharp and
black; the street, dim and precipitous, tumbling forward into the
blue, whence lights, one, two, three, now a little bunch together, came
pricking out.
The old woman opened the door when he rang Mr. Somerset's bell.
“Master's been called away,” she said in her croaking voice. “A burial.
'E 'adn't time to let you know. 'Tell the little gen'l'man,' 'e said,
'I'm sorry.'”
“All right,” said Jeremy; “thank you.”
He descended the steps, then stood where he was, in the street, looking
up and down. Who could deny that it was all being arranged for him? He
felt more than ever like God as he looked proudly about him. Everything
served his purpose.
The jingling of the money in his pocket reminded him that he must waste
no more time. He started off.
Even his progress through the town seemed wonderful, quite unattended
at last, as he had always all his life longed to be. So soon as he left
Orange Street and entered the market he was caught into a great crowd.
It was all stirring and humming with a noise such as the bonfire had
all day been making. It was his first introduction to the world--he had
never been in a large crowd before--and it is not to be denied but that
his heart beat thick and his knees trembled a little. But he pulled
himself together. Who was he to be afraid? But the books under his arm
were a nuisance. He suddenly dropped them in amongst the legs and boots
of the people.
There were many interesting sights to be seen in the market-place,
but he could not stay, and he found himself soon, to his own surprise,
slipping through the people as quietly and easily as though he had done
it all his days, only always he kept his hand on his money lest that
should be stolen and his adventure suddenly come to nothing.
He knew his way very well, and soon he was at the end of Finch Street
which in those days opened straight into fields and hedges.
Even now, so little has Polchester grown in thirty years, the fields and
hedges are not very far away. Here there was a stile with a large
wooden fence on either side of it, and a red-faced man saying: “Pay your
sixpences now! Come along... pay your sixpences now.” Crowds of people
were passing through the stile, jostling one another, pressing and
pushing, but all apparently in good temper, for there was a great deal
of laughter and merriment. From the other side of the fence came a
torrent of sound, so discordant and so tumultuous that it was impossible
to separate the elements of it one from another--screams, shrieks, the
bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of
tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything
lost together in the general babel; and to the right of him Jeremy could
see not very far away quiet fields with cows grazing, and the dark grave
wood on the horizon.
Would he venture? For a moment his heart failed him--a wave of something
threatening and terribly powerful seemed to come out to him through the
stile, and the people who were passing in looked large and fierce. Then
he saw two small boys, their whole bearing one of audacious boldness,
push through. He was not going to be beaten. He followed a man with a
back like a wall. “One, please,” he said.
“'Come along now... pay your sixpences... pay your sixpences,” cried the
man. He was through. He stepped at once into something that had for him
all the elements of the most terrifying and enchanting of fairy tales.
He was planted, it seemed, in a giant world. At first he could see
nothing but the high and thick bodies of the people who moved on every
side of him; he peered under shoulders, he was lost amongst legs and
arms, he walked suddenly into waistcoat buttons and was flung thence on
to walking sticks.
But it was, if he had known it, the most magical hour of all for him to
have chosen. It was the moment when the sun, sinking behind the woods
and hills, leaves a faint white crystal sky and a world transformed in
an instant from sharp outlines and material form into coloured mist and
rising vapour. The Fair also was transformed, putting forward all its
lights and becoming, after the glaring tawdiness of the day, a place of
shadow and sudden circles of flame and dim obscurity.
Lights, even as Jeremy watched, sprang into the air, wavered, faltered,
hesitated, then rocked into a steady glow, only shifting a little with
the haze. On either side of him were rough, wooden stalls, and these
were illuminated with gas, which sizzled and hissed like angry snakes.
The stalls were covered with everything invented by man; here a sweet
stall, with thick, sticky lumps of white and green and red, glass
bottles of bulls' eyes and peppermints, thick slabs of almond toffee
and pink cocoanut icing, boxes of round chocolate creams and sticks of
liquorice, lumps of gingerbread, with coloured pictures stuck upon them,
saffron buns, plum cakes in glass jars, and chains of little sugary
biscuits hanging on long red strings. There was the old-clothes' stall
with trousers and coats and waistcoats, all shabby and lanky, swinging
beneath the gas, and piles of clothes on the boards, all nondescript and
unhappy and faded; there was the stall with the farm implements, and the
medicine stall, and the flower stall, and the vegetable stall, and many,
many another. Each place had his or her guardian, vociferous, red-faced,
screaming out the wares, lowering the voice to cajole, raising it again
to draw back a retreating customer, carrying on suddenly an intimate
conversation with the next-door shopkeeper, laughing, quarrelling,
arguing.
To Jeremy it was a world of giant heights and depths. Behind the
stalls, beyond the lane down which he moved, was an uncertain glory,
a threatening peril. He fancied that strange animals moved there; he
thought he heard a lion roar and an elephant bellow. The din of the
sellers all about him made it impossible to tell what was happening
beyond there; only the lights and bells, shouts and cries, confusing
smells, and a great roar of distant voices.
He almost wished that he had not come, he felt so very small and
helpless; he wondered whether he could find his way out again, and
looking back, he was for a moment terrified to see that the stream of
people behind him shut him in so that he could not see the stile, nor
the wooden barrier, nor the red-faced man. Pushed forward, he found
himself at the end of the lane and standing in a semi-circular space
surrounded by strange-looking booths with painted pictures upon them,
and in front of them platforms with wooden steps running up to them.
Then, so unexpectedly that he gave a little scream, a sudden roar burst
out behind him. He turned and, indeed, the world seemed to have gone
mad. A moment ago there had been darkness and dim shadow. Now, suddenly,
there was a huge whistling, tossing circle of light and flame, and from
the centre of this a banging, brazen, cymbal-clashing scream issued-a
scream that, through its strident shrillness, he recognised as a tune
that he knew--a tune often whistled by Jim at Cow Farm. “And her golden
hair was hanging down her back.” Whence the tune came he could not
tell; from the very belly of the flaming monster, it seemed; but, as he
watched, he saw that the huge circle whirled ever faster and faster,
and that up and down on the flame of it coloured horses rose and fell,
vanishing from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and seeming of
their own free will and motion to dance to the thundering music.
It was the most terrific thing that he had ever seen. The most terrific
thing... he stood there, his cap on the back of his head, his legs
apart, his mouth open; forgetting utterly the crowd, thinking nothing of
time or danger or punishment--he gazed with his whole body.
As his eyes grew more accustomed to the glare of the hissing gas, he saw
that in the centre figures were painted standing on the edge of a pillar
that revolved without pause. There was a woman with flaming red cheeks,
a gold dress and dead white dusty arms, a man with a golden crown and
a purple robe, but a broken nose, and a minstrel with a harp. The woman
and the king moved stiffly their arms up and down, that they might
strike instruments, one a cymbal and the other a drum. But it was
finally the horses that caught Jeremy's heart. Half of them at least
were without riders, and the empty ones went round pathetically, envying
the more successful ones and dancing to the music as though with an
effort. One especially moved Jeremy's sympathy. He was a fine horse,
rather fresher than the others, with a coal-black mane and great black
bulging eyes; his saddle was of gold and his trappings of red. As he
went round he seemed to catch Jeremy's eye and to beg him to come to
him. He rode more securely than the rest, rising nobly like a horse of
fine breeding, falling again with an implication of restrained force as
though he would say: “I have only to let myself go and there, my word,
you would see where I'd get to.” His bold black eyes turned beseechingly
to Jeremy--surely it was not only a trick of the waving gas; the boy
drew closer and closer, never moving his gaze from the horses who had
hitherto been whirling at a bacchanalian pace, but now, as at some
sudden secret command, suddenly slackened, hesitated, fell into a gentle
jog-trot, then scarcely rose, scarcely fell, were suddenly still. Jeremy
saw what it was that you did if you wanted to ride. A stout dirty man
came out amongst the horses and, resting his hands on their backs as
though they were less than nothing to him, shouted: “Now's your chance,
lidies and gents! Now, lidies and gents! Come along hup! Come along hup!
The ride of your life now! A 'alfpenny a time! A 'alfpenny a time, and
the finest ride of your life!”
People began to mount the steps that led on to the platform where the
horses stood. A woman, then a man and a boy, then two men, then two
girls giggling together, then a man and a girl.
And the stout fellow shouted: “Come along hup! Come along hup! Now,
lidies and gents! A 'alfpenny a ride! Come along hup!”
Jeremy noticed then that the fine horse with the black mane had stopped
close beside him. Impossible to say whether the horse had intended it
or no! He was staring now in front of him with the innocent stupid gaze
that animals can assume when they do not wish to give themselves away.
But Jeremy could see that he was taking it for granted that Jeremy
understood the affair. “If you're such a fool as not to understand,”
he seemed to say, “well, then, I don't want you.” Jeremy gazed, and the
reproach in those eyes was more than he could endure. And at any moment
someone else might settle himself on that beautiful back! There, that
stupid fat giggling girl! No--she had moved elsewhere... He could endure
it no longer and, with a thumping heart, clutching a scalding penny in
a red-hot hand, he mounted the steps. “One ride--little gen'elman. 'Ere
you are! 'Old on now! Oh, you wants that one, do yer? Eight yer are--yer
pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.” He lifted Jeremy up. “Put yer
arms round 'is neck now--'e won't bite yer!”
Bite him indeed! Jeremy felt, as he clutched the cool head and let his
hand slide over the stiff black mane, that he knew more about that horse
than his owner did. He seemed to feel beneath him the horse's response
to his clutching knees, the head seemed to rise for a moment and nod to
him and the eyes to say: “It's all right. I'll look after you. I'll give
you the best ride of your life!” He felt, indeed, that the gaze of the
whole world was upon him, but he responded to it proudly, staring boldly
around him as though he had been seated on merry-go-rounds all his
days. Perhaps some in the gaping crowd knew him and were saying: “Why,
there's the Rev. Cole's kid--” Never mind; he was above scandal. From
where he was he could see the Fair lifted up and translated into a
fantastic splendour. Nothing was certain, nothing defined--above him a
canopy of evening sky, with circles and chains of stars mixed with the
rosy haze of the flame of the Fair; opposite him was the Palace of “The
Two-Headed Giant from the Caucasus,” a huge man as portrayed in the
picture hanging on his outer walls, a giant naked, save for a bearskin,
with one head black and one yellow, and white protruding teeth in both
mouths. Next to him was the Fortune Teller's, and outside this a little
man with a hump beat a drum. Then there was “The Theatre of Tragedy and
Mirth,” with a poster on one side of the door portraying a lady drowning
in the swiftest of rivers, but with the prospect of being saved by a
stout gentleman who leaned over from the bank and grasped her hair. Then
there was the “Chamber of the Fat Lady and the Six Little Dwarfs,” and
the entry to this was guarded by a dirty sour-looking female who
gnashed her teeth at a hesitating public, before whom, with a splendid
indifference to appearance, she consumed, out of a piece of newspaper,
her evening meal.
All these things were in Jeremy's immediate vision, and beyond them was
a haze that his eyes could not penetrate. It held, he knew, wild beasts,
because he could hear quite clearly from time to time the lion and the
elephant and the tiger; it held music, because from somewhere through
all the noise and confusion the tune of a band penetrated; it held
buyers and sellers and treasures and riches, and all the inhabitants of
the world--surely all the world must be here to-night. And then, beyond
the haze, there were the silent and mysterious gipsy caravans. Dark with
their little square windows, and their coloured walls, and their round
wheels, and the smell of wood fires, and the noise of hissing kettles
and horses cropping the grass, and around them the still night world
with the thick woods and the dark river.
He did not see it all as he sat on his horse--he was, as yet, too young;
but he did feel the contrast between the din and glare around him and
the silence and dark beyond, and, afterwards, looking back, he knew that
he had found in that same contrast the very heart of romance. As it was,
he simply clutched his horse's beautiful head and waited for the ride to
begin...
They were off! He felt his horse quiver under him, he saw the mansions
of the Two-Headed Giant and the Fat Lady slip to the right, the light
seemed to swing like the skirt of someone's dress, upwards across the
floor, and from the heart of the golden woman and the king and the
minstrel a scream burst forth as though they were announcing the end of
the world. After that he had no clear idea as to what occurred. He was
swung into space, and all the life that had been so stationary, the
booths, the lights, the men and women, the very stars went swinging with
him as though to cheer him on; the horse under him galloped before,
and the faster he galloped the wilder was the music and the dizzier the
world. He was exultant, omnipotent, supreme. He had long known that this
glory was somewhere if it could only be found, all his days he seemed to
have been searching for it; he beat his horse's neck, he drove his legs
against his sides. “Go on! Go on! Go on!” he cried. “Faster! Faster!
Faster!”
The strangest things seemed to rise to his notice and then fall again--a
peaked policeman's hat, flowers, a sudden flame of gas, the staring eyes
and dead white arms of the golden woman, the flying forms of the horses
in front of him. All the world was on horseback, all the world was
racing higher and higher, faster and faster. He saw someone near him
rise on to his horse's back and stand on it, waving his arms. He would
like to have done that, but he found that he was part of his horse, as
though he had been glued to it. He shouted, he cried aloud, he was so
happy that he thought of no one and nothing... The flame danced about
him in a circle, he seemed to rise so high that there was a sudden
stillness, he was in the very heart of the stars; then came the supreme
moment when, as he had always known, that one day he would be, he was
master of the world... Then, like Lucifer, he fell. Slowly the stars
receded, the music slackened, people rocked on to their feet again...
The Two-Headed Giant slipped hack once more into his place, he saw the
sinister lady still devouring her supper, women looking up at him gaped.
His horse gave a last little leap and died.
This marvellous experience he repeated four times, and every time with
an ecstasy more complete than the last. He rushed to a height, he fell,
he rushed again, he fell, and at every return to a sober life his one
intention was instantly to be off on his steed once more. He was about
to start on his fifth journey, he had paid his halfpenny, he was sitting
forward with his hands on the black mane, his eyes, staring, were filled
already with the glory that he knew was coming to him, his cheeks were
crimson, his hat on the back of his head, his hair flying. He heard a
voice, quiet and cool, a little below him, but very near:
“Jeremy... Jeremy. Come off that. You've got to go home.”
He looked down and saw his Uncle Samuel.
IV
It was all over; he knew at once that it was all over.
As he slipped down from his dear horse he gave the glossy dark mane one
last pat; then, with a little sigh, he found his feet, stumbled over the
wooden steps and was at his uncle's side.
Uncle Samuel looked queer enough with a squashy black hat, a black cloak
flung over his shoulders, and a large cherry-wood pipe in his mouth.
Jeremy looked up at him defiantly.
“Well,” said Uncle Samuel sarcastically. “It's nothing to you, I
suppose, that the town-crier is at this moment ringing his bell for you
up and down the Market Place?”
“Does father know?” Jeremy asked quickly.
“He does,” answered Uncle Samuel.
Jeremy cast one last look around the place; the merry-go-round was
engaged once more upon its wild course, the horses rising and falling,
the golden woman clashing the cymbals, the minstrel striking, with his
dead eyes fixed upon space, his harp. All about men were shouting;
the noise of the coconut stores, of the circus, of the band, of the
hucksters and the charlatans, the crying of children, the laughter of
women--all the noise of the Fair bathed Jeremy up to his forehead.
He swam in it for the last time. He tried to catch one last glimpse
of his coal-black charger, then, with a sigh, he said, turning to his
uncle: “I suppose we'd better be going.”
“Yes, I suppose we had,” said Uncle Samuel.
They threaded their way through the Fair, passed the wooden stile, and
were once again in the streets, dark and ancient under the moon, with
all the noise and glare behind them. Jeremy was thinking to himself: “It
doesn't matter what Father does, or how angry he is, that was worth it.”
It was strange how little afraid he was. Only a year ago to be punished
by his father had been a terrible thing. Now, since his mother's illness
in the summer, his father had seemed to have no influence over him.
“Did they bend you, or did you just come yourself, Uncle?” asked Jeremy.
“I happened to be taking the air in that direction,” said Uncle Samuel.
“I hope you didn't come away before you wanted to,” said Jeremy
politely.
“I did not,” said his uncle.
“Is Father very angry?” asked Jeremy.
“It's more than likely he may be. The Town Crier's expensive.”
“I didn't think they'd know,” explained Jeremy. “I meant to get back in
time.”
“Your father didn't go to church,” said Uncle Samuel. “So your sins were
quickly discovered.”
Jeremy said nothing.
Just as they were climbing Orange Street he said:
“Uncle Samuel, I think I'll be a horse-trainer.”
“Oh, will you?... Well, before you train horses you've got to train
yourself. Think of others beside yourself. A fine state you've put your
mother into to-night.”
Jeremy looked distressed. “She'd know if I was dead, someone would come
and tell her,” he said. “But I'll tell Mother I'm sorry... But I won't
tell Father,” he added.
“Why not?” asked Uncle Samuel.
“Because he'll make such a fuss. And I'm not sorry. He never told me not
to.”
“No, but you knew you hadn't to.”
“I'm very good at obeying,” explained Jeremy, “if someone says
something; but if someone doesn't, there isn't anyone to obey.”
Uncle Samuel shook his head. “You'll be a bit of a prig, my son, if you
aren't careful,” he said.
“I think it will be splendid to be a horse-trainer,” said Jeremy. “It
was a lovely horse to-night... And I only spent a shilling. I had three
and threepence halfpenny.”
At the door of their house Uncle Samuel stopped and said:
“Look here, young man, they say it's time you went to school, and I
don't think they're far wrong. There are things wiser heads than yours
can understand, and you'd better take their word for it. In the future,
if you want to go running off somewhere, you'd better content yourself
with my studio and make a mess there.”
“Oh, may I?” cried Jeremy delighted.
That studio had been always a forbidden place to them, and had,
therefore, its air of enchanting mystery.
“Won't you really mind my coming?” he asked.
“I shall probably hate it,” answered his uncle; “but there's nothing I
wouldn't do for the family.”
The boy walked to his father's study and knocked on the door. He did
have then, at the sound of that knock, a moment of panic. The house
was so silent, and he knew so well what would follow the opening of the
door. And the worst of it was that he was not sorry in the least. He
seemed to be indifferent and superior, as though no punishment could
touch him.
“Come in!” said his father.
He pushed open the door and entered. The scene that followed was grave
and sad, and yet, in the end, strangely unimpressive. His father
talked too much. As he talked Jeremy's thoughts would fly back to the
coal-black horse and to that moment when he had seemed to fly into the
very heart of the stars.
“Ah, Jeremy, how could you?” said his father. “Is obedience nothing to
you? Do you know how God punishes disobedience? Think what a terrible
thing is a disobedient man!” Then on a lower scale: “I really don't know
what to do with you. You knew that you were not to go near that wicked
place.”
“You never said--” interrupted Jeremy.
“Nonsense! You knew well enough. You will break your mother's heart.”
“I'll tell her I'm sorry,” he interrupted quickly.
“If you are really sorry--” said his father.
“I'm not sorry I went,” said Jeremy, “but I'm sorry I hurt Mother.”
The end of it was that Jeremy received six strokes on the hand with a
ruler. Mr. Cole was not good at this kind of thing, and twice he
missed Jeremy's hand altogether, and looked very foolish. It was not
an edifying scene. Jeremy left the room, his head high, his spirit
obstinate; and his father remained, puzzled, distressed, at a loss,
anxious to do what was right, but unable to touch his son at all.
Jeremy went up to his room. He opened his window and looked out. He
could smell the burnt leaves of the bonfire. There was no flame now, but
he fancied that he could see a white shadow where it had been. Then, on
the wind, came the music of the Fair.
“Tum--te--Tum... Tum--te--Tum... Whirr--Whirr--Whirr--Bang--Bang.”
Somewhere an owl cried, and then another owl answered.
He rubbed his sore hand against his trousers; then, thinking of his
black horse, he smiled.
He was a free man. In a week he would go to school; then he would go to
College; then he would be a horsetrainer.
He was in bed; faintly into the dark room, stole the scent of the
bonfire and the noise of the Fair.
“Tum--te-Tum... Tum--te--Tum...”
He was asleep, riding on a giant charger across boundless plains.