LADY-DAY Fair came round by and by, and Amaryllis, about eleven o'clock
in the morning, went down the garden to the end of the orchard, where
she could overlook the highway without being seen, and watch the folk go
past. Just there the road began to descend into a hollow, while the
garden continued level, so that Amaryllis, leaning her arm on the top of
the wall, was much higher up than those who went along. The wall dropped
quite fourteen feet down to the road, a rare red brick wall--thick and
closely-built, the bricks close together with thin seams of mortar, so
that the fibres of the whole mass were worked and compressed and bound
firm, like the fibres of a piece of iron. The deep red bricks had a
colour--a certain richness of stability--and at the top this good piece
of workmanship was protected from the weather by a kind of cap, and
ornamented with a projecting ridge. Within the wall Amaryllis could
stand on a slight bank, and easily look over it. Without there was a
sheer red precipice of fourteen feet down to the dusty sward and
nettles beside the road.
Some bare branches of a plum tree trained against the wall rose thin and
tapering above it in a bunch, a sign of bad gardening, for they ought to
have been pruned, and the tree, indeed, had an appearance of neglect.
One heavy bough had broken away from the nails and list, and drooped to
the ground, and the shoots of last year, not having been trimmed, thrust
themselves forward presumptuously.
Behind the bunch of thin and tapering branches rising above the wall
Amaryllis was partly hidden, but she relied a great deal more for
concealment upon a fact Iden had taught her, that people very seldom
look up; and consequently if you are only a little higher they will not
see you. This she proved that morning, for not one of all who passed
glanced up from the road. The shepherd kept his eye fixed on his sheep,
and the drover on his bullocks; the boys were in a hurry to get to the
fair and spend their pennies; the wenches had on a bit of blue ribbon or
a new bonnet, and were perpetually looking at the traps that overtook
them to see if the men admired their finery. No one looked up from the
road they were pursuing.
The photographer fixes the head of the sitter by a sort of stand at the
back, which holds it steady in one position while the camera takes the
picture. In life most people have their heads fixed in the claws of
some miserable pettiness, which interests them so greatly that they
tramp on steadily forward, staring ahead, and there's not the slightest
fear of their seeing anything outside the rut they are travelling.
Amaryllis did not care anything about the fair or the people either,
knowing very well what sort they would be; but I suspect, if it had been
possible to have got at the cause which brought her there, it would have
been traced to the unconscious influence of sex, a perfectly innocent
prompting, quite unrecognised by the person who feels it, and who would
indignantly deny it if rallied on the subject, but which leads girls of
her age to seize opportunities of observing the men, even if of an
uninteresting order. Still they are men, those curious beings, that
unknown race, and little bits of knowledge about them may, perhaps, be
picked up by a diligent observer.
The men who drifted along the road towards the Fair were no "mashers, by
Jove!" Some of them, though young, were clad antiquely enough in
breeches and gaiters--not sportsmen's breeches and gaiters, but
old-fashioned "granfer" things; the most of them were stout and sturdy,
in drab and brown suits of good cloth, cut awry. Hundreds of them on
foot, in traps, gigs, fourwheels, and on horseback, went under
Amaryllis: but, though they were all Christians, there was not one
"worth a Jewess' eye."
She scorned them all.
This member of the unknown race was too thickly made, short set, and
squat; this one too fair--quite white and moist-sugar looking; this one
had a straight leg.
Another went by with a great thick and long black beard--what a horrid
thing, now, when kissing!--and as he walked he wiped it with his sleeve,
for he had just washed down the dust with a glass of ale. His neck, too,
was red and thick; hideous, yet he was a "stout knave," and a man all
over, as far as body makes a man.
But women are, like Shakespeare, better judges. "Care I for the thews
and sinews of a man?" They look for something more than bulk.
A good many of these fellows were more or less lame, for it is
astonishing if you watch people go by and keep account of them what a
number have game legs, both young and old.
A young buck on a capital horse was at the first glance more
interesting--paler, rakish, a cigar in his mouth, an air of viciousness
and dash combined, fairly well dressed, pale whiskers and beard; in
short, he knew as much of the billiard-table as he did of sheep and
corn. When nearer Amaryllis disliked him more than all the rest put
together; she shrank back a little from the wall lest he should chance
to look up; she would have feared to have been alone with such a
character, and yet she could not have said why. She would not have
feared to walk side by side with the great black beard--hideous as he
was--nor with any of the rest, not even with the roughest of the
labourers who tramped along. This gentleman alone alarmed her.
There were two wenches, out for their Fair Day holiday, coming by at the
same time; they had on their best dresses and hats, and looked fresh and
nice. They turned round to watch him coming, and half waited for him;
when he came up he checked his horse, and began to "cheek" them. Nothing
loth, the village girls "cheeked" him, and so they passed on.
One or two very long men appeared, unusually clumsy, even in walking
they did not know exactly what to do with their legs. Amaryllis had no
objection to their being tall--indeed, to be tall is often a passport to
a "Jewess' eye"--but they were so clumsy.
Of the scores who went by in traps and vehicles she could not see much
but their clothes and their faces, and both the clothes and the faces
were very much alike. Rough, good cloth, ill-fitting (the shoulders were
too broad for the tailor, who wanted to force Bond Street measurements
on the British farmer's back); reddish, speckled faces, and yellowish
hair and whiskers; big speckled hands, and that was all. Scores of men,
precisely similar, were driven down the road. If those broad speckled
hands had been shown to Jacob's ewes he need not have peeled rods to
make them bring forth speckled lambs.
Against the stile a long way up the road there was a group of five or
six men, who were there when she first peered over the wall, and made
no further progress to the Fair. They were waiting till some
acquaintance came by and offered a lift; lazy dogs, they could not walk.
They had already been there long enough to have walked to the Fair and
back, still they preferred to fold their hands and cross their legs, and
stay on. So many people being anxious to get to the town, most of those
who drove had picked up friends long before they got here.
The worst walker of all was a constable, whose huge boots seemed to take
possession of the width of the road, for he turned them out at right
angles, working his legs sideways to do it, an extraordinary exhibition
of stupidity and ugliness, for which the authorities who drilled him in
that way were responsible, and not the poor fellow.
Among the lowing cattle and the baaing sheep there drifted by a variety
of human animals, tramps and vagrants, not nearly of so much value as
the wool and beef.
It is curious that these "characters"--as they are so kindly
called--have a way of associating themselves with things that promise
vast enjoyment to others. The number of unhappy, shirtless wretches who
thread their path in and out the coaches at the Derby is wonderful.
While the champagne fizzes above on the roof, and the footman between
the shafts sits on an upturned hamper and helps himself out of another
to pie with truffles, the hungry, lean kine of human life wander round
about sniffing and smelling, like Adam and Eve after the fall at the
edge of Paradise.
There are such incredible swarms of vagrants at the Derby that you might
think the race was got up entirely for their sakes. There would be
thousands at Sandown, but the gate is locked with a half-crown bolt, and
they cannot get a stare at the fashionables on the lawn. For all that,
the true tramp, male or female, is so inveterate an attendant at races
and all kinds of accessible entertainments and public events that the
features of the fashionable are better known to him than to hundreds of
well-to-do people unable to enter society.
So they paddled along to the fair, slip-slop, in the dust, among the
cattle and sheep, hands in pockets, head hanging down, most of them
followed at a short distance by a Thing.
This Thing is upright, and therefore, according to the old definition,
ought to come within the genus Homo. It wears garments rudely resembling
those of a woman, and there it ends. Perhaps it was a woman once;
perhaps it never was, for many of them have never had a chance to enter
the ranks of their own sex.
Amaryllis was too young, and, as a consequence, too full of her own
strength and youth and joy in life to think for long or seriously about
these curious Things drifting by like cattle and sheep. Yet her brow
contracted, and she drew herself together as they passed--a sort of
shiver, to think that there should be such degradation in the world.
Twice when they came along her side of the road she dropped pennies in
front of them, which they picked up in a listless way, just glancing
over the ear in the direction the money fell, and went on without so
much as recognizing where it came from.
If sheep were treated as unfortunate human beings are, they would take a
bitter revenge; though they are the mildest of creatures, they would
soon turn round in a venomous manner. If they did not receive sufficient
to eat and drink, and were not well sheltered, they would take a bitter
revenge: _they would die_. Loss of £ s. d.!
But human beings have not even got the courage or energy to do that;
they put up with anything, and drag on--miserables that they are.
I said they were not equal in value to the sheep--why, they're not worth
anything when they're dead. You cannot even sell the skins of the
Things!
Slip-slop in the dust they drive along to the fair, where there will be
an immense amount of eating and a far larger amount of drinking all
round them, in every house they pass, and up to midnight. They will see
valuable animals, and men with well-lined pockets. What on earth can a
tramp find to please him among all this? It is not for him; yet he goes
to see it.
[Illustration]