III (11)

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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.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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