Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Seed Time/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the way,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
We are waiting in the schoolroom for mother, who has gone with a serene front, but (we believe) trembling knees, to ask her lord and master's gracious consent to our setting out for Pimpernel Fair. She has been absent a quarter of an hour, which we are inclined to think a hopeful sign, as his "Noes" are usually short and sharp, and for him to condescend to argue a matter promises well. Here she comes! We tumble one over the other to the door, and fling it wide. No need to ask her; she has "Yes!" written all over her in big capitals. As she sits down we swarm round her until she looks like something good encompassed by a hive of buzzing, noisy bees.
"You are coming with us, eh, mother?" I ask eagerly.
"No, dear, I think not; there is baby, you know."
"We are not going to have all the fry at our heels, I hope?" asks Jack, with some anxiety.
The two nurses are going with four of them, and Miss Amberley will take you elder ones."
"Hurrah!" cries Jack; "if there's anything I hate it's going out in dozens. And what time are we to be back?"
"Six o'clock. And don't make yourselves ill with gingerbreads, dears."
"Ill!" we all echo in chorus; "who could get ill on nothing?"
"We have not a rap, mother," I put in on my own account. "There was a shilling somewhere among us last week, but it was so valuable, and we took so much care of it, that somehow it got lost. One of us hid it away, and forgot where we put it."
"I will give you a shilling each," says mother,"and you must make it do."
She takes out her purse that is so much too slender for the size of her family; and though we all scorn the scanty shilling that is to fall to our share, we do not say so. Shall we give one additional pang to that tender, gentle heart? The governor must have his hunting, his shooting, his horses. We must be kept so long without a sight of the Queen's countenance as almost to forget what she is like; and I am certain that when we are grown up we shall be spendthrifts. When mother has given us our shillings and kissed us all round, she goes away, and we also depart to make our toilets, and beautify ourselves according to our scanty means and several lights. Alice puts on a white hat with a long white feather, sole tail of an ostrich that the family possesses, and considered by us Adairs to be the ne plus ultra of beauty and fashion. Whatever our other shortcomings may be in the matter of dress, when that feather is in our midst, and Alice's blooming face is under that feather, we feel respectable, and defy anybody to beat us. She also wears a white cloak and a black silk dress, and when it is all put on, where will you, in the whole of England, find a fairer, sweeter sixteen-year-old, than our Alice? Milly wears her out-door gear as uncompromisingly as usual. Jack appears with a button-hole the size of a small cabbage, that gives him an uncommonly gay and festive air, and I, having tilted my Leghorn hat to the back of my head, for the better observation of men and matters, we descend and find Amberley awaiting us in a green bonnet, and with a large smut on her nose. We admire the former, but are all much too delicate to point out the latter to her, so it goes to the fair with the rest.
Pimpernel is only a mile away, but a noonday mile in June is a long one, and by the time we reach the High Street we are very hot indeed, and very thirsty. It is the second day of the fair, and the fat farmers and their fatter beasts have waddled off the scene, while their smart wives and daughters have appeared upon it, and are walking about in raiment, compared with which Joseph's coat was a mere joke, exchanging jests and cracking jokes with their friends, and looking—thanks to the exceeding heat—very uneasy and exceedingly moist. Behind and about prance their maidservants and hinds; every Jill who has a Jack hangs fondly to his arm, and while her large crinoline bangs affectionately against his legs, she casts scornful and triumphant glances at the unappropriated Jill who sidles by, deeply conscious of her forlorn and degraded state.
Hard-by Punch is setting a bright example to the British house-holder as to the management of his wife and family, and we pause under the shadow of Lawyer Trask's door to see the instructive little drama played out, and the ends of justice defeated.
In the market-place is a queer edifice that looks like a gigantic house of cards, and upon the steps thereof, apparently too solid for the shabby structure, stands a man beating a gong that rends the air with its hideous tom-tom!—that is the circus. To our right a crowd of white-waistcoated, blue-coated, shiny-faced youths are shooting for nuts at a gallery which is presided over by a young person with black eyes and blacker ringlets, a brazen countenance, and a nimble tongue. She seems to have as unlimited a supply of chaff as of nuts, and holds her own against all comers. Farther on is the peep-show, beyond that the merry-go-round, upon whose wooden horses the boys and girls are clinging with such giddy, delighted grasp, and round the corner the fat woman bursts upon our view, or rather her picture does, which has much the same effect. She wears a low-necked gown and short skirts, displaying a calf of which the circumference is about equal to our united waists. Her neck——— We turn away shuddering.
"Now what are we going to see first?" asks Jack.
What, indeed! it is an embarras de richesses.
"The circus," says Alice.
"The fat woman," says Milly, who has been much struck.
"The peep-show," says Jack.
"Anywhere out of the sun," say I; so Jack, being the only male present gets his own way, and we are speedily lifting the dirty red curtain, and standing on forms arranged in a circle, beholding improving illustrations of battle, murder, and sudden death.
The first scene represents a field, strewn with dead bodies, whose heads, arms, and legs, are scattered around them in graceful confusion; a few horses seem to have got into the mélée by mistake, and lie on their backs with all four legs turned up piteously to the gory sky, as who should say, "We kicked to the last!"
The beauties of this affecting picture are forcibly pointed out to us by the showman, who describes it as being the scene of a "most 'orrible massacree," as depicted by a "hi witness."
We are next treated to an artistic study of murder in low life, the murderer being in hot pursuit of a young female in a nightgown, whose hair sets out straight as porcupine's quills from her head, and within an inch of the itching fingers of her pursuer, while behind him are laid out in an ascending scale the dead bodies of an old man, an old woman, and a child, the same being the victims he has just finished off.
In the midst of the showman's description of this tableau vivant, his voice suddenly ceases; turning to ascertain the cause of his silence, we find that he has temporarily retired behind a pot of beer, "Not before it was required," as he remarks when he returns to his duties. It strikes us that before the day is over, his explanations will be somewhat hazy and obscure. And we see several other horrors which Amberley regards with extreme disfavour, as being possibly subversive of our morals.
When this stock of delicacies is exhausted, we adjourn to the pastry-cook's, and eat sandwiches, buns, and tarts, with extreme relish, due heedfulness, and the nicest discrimination, for we are limited as to money, and must get its worth, if we can.
"I could eat 'em all!" murmured Jack, on our first arrival, gazing fondly at a pyramid of jam tarts before him; but experience soon teaches him that his eye is decidedly larger than his stomach, and after a decent tuck-in he is satisfied. Having drunk our lemonade, we betake ourselves to the square, where the circus man is still sturdily beating his gong for the one o'clock performance, and mount the rickety steps, and go through the entrance to the red baize-covered seats that circle round the arena strewn with saw-dust. Although we know it all by heart, and just what is coming, what a thrill of excitement runs through us as we glance around us, at the eager faces of the poor folks and their children, seated in the lowest place; at the dissipated pieces of orange peel that are strewn hither and thither, suggestive remnants of the visits of those who could enjoy themselves without striving to be "genteel;" at the men with their brazen instruments, that will presently burst forth in a volume of sound more startling than dulcet; at our neighbours and their olive branches, who, like us, possess the upper seats in the synagogue, but who do not look at us, oh! dear no! The governor's sins are visited very fully upon our heads, and though he never goes abroad to encounter either good looks or bad, his sins will be visited on his luckless children, to the third and fourth generation.
And now the entertainment has begun; the pretty little girl in pink is taking her flying leaps through the hoops, and our hearts beat high with pride and delight as she clears them successfully, but a shiver runs through us as once she jumps short and falls. What a piteous quiver there is on the poor little painted face at the frowning, black-browed man who cracks the whip, scolds her in a low fierce voice; how we hate him, and would like to make him suffer as he is making her! The clowns come in and make their jokes; old as the hills, no doubt, but to us exquisitely fresh, and we greet them with the hearty zest and admiration that no laughter, save that of childhood, ever knows. Presently something very dreadful happens; the hero of the piece (it is a grand piece, with robbers and horses and ladies and a splendid fight) who has been killed is being carried out, laid very straight and stiff on the shoulders of four men, with his eyes tightly shut, and the band is playing the Dead March in Saul very slowly and impressively, with a pause of several seconds between each note, when the music abruptly ceases, and with a discordant crash, musicians, instruments and all, vanish from our sight, and nothing is to be seen of them save a great dust that rises from their ruins. What has happened? The dead man is lowered to the ground, upon which he sits up and stares. We all gaze with fascinated and dilated eyes at the box from which the men have vanished. Are they killed? But sounds of wrath, of disgust and vituperation, mingled with a rattling of bones and brass instruments, speedily reassure us on that point, and before long the missing gentlemen creep out one by one, very red in the face and dusty in the throat, and take up their station on the benches, which may possibly be trusted not to serve them the dirty trick the box has done. Once settled, they take up the burden of their Dead March where they laid it down, the dead man carefully stretches himself out on his bearers' shoulders, and the piece is brought to a decent conclusion with "God save the Queen," to cover all deficiencies.
The sunshine makes our eyes blink as we emerge into it, and bend our steps towards the fat woman, to whom we must assuredly make our bow. The apartment in which that august lady receives us is out of all proportion to her charms, being in fact but a carevan upon wheels, across the hinder part of which is drawn a musty curtain, that we dimly imagine hides unsavoury sights As she lifts it and stands before us, I involuntarily draw back and get behind Jack, and Dolly gets behinds me; her ponderous foot shakes the boarding as she approaches, and her huge body oscillates from side to side, like a badly filled sack set upright in a cart. It is impossible to help feeling that if she happened to tread on one of us we should be crushed into pulp; for once report has not lied, and her picture has failed to do her charms justice, or represent her as she really is. "Look at 'er!" cries the showman in a voice of rapture, hitching up her already short petticoats with his cane, and indicating first one colossal leg, then another: "Look at 'er, ladies and gentlemen! Did ever yer see sich flesh, sich size, sich proporshun? And mind yer, it's all real genuine bony-fidy fat; no make-believes, shams, or saw-dust in this exhibition! Look 'ere!" and he prods her with his stick in her overflowing sides, and he pinches her fat neck and arms as though she were a prize ox or sheep. "Turn round!" he says, and she turns slowly as though on a pivot, and displays a back that is such a mountain of flesh as I have seen nowhere, save on the body of a prize pig. As she faces us again, a fat smile of pleased complacency dawns on her features at marking our amazement and admiration of her manifold beauties. At her knee, but overlooked in the neighbourhood of her mountainous presence, stands a tiny dwarf, who nearly dislocates his neck in peeping up at her. It is plain that he admires her beyond all earthly things, and that she is to him, not only the lode-star of his existence, but the type of everything that is comely and pleasant to the eye in woman. Decidedly impressed, we take our departure, and repair to seek our fairings in the smartly laid-out stalls in the shadow of the old grey market-house. We buy mother a thimble, not that we are aware she is in want of one, but a silver thimble is a nice, useful, comfortable sort of thing, that is sure to come in handy if you wait long enough, and we have no notion, we Adairs, of spending our infrequent money in kickshaws, or merely ornamental presents. We sometimes give her a purse by way of a change, and when she has had enough of them, we present her with a prayer-book; so there is a good deal of variety after all.
We pause for a minute or two to listen to the amazing lies of a cheap Jack, compared with whom Ananias was the most veracious man on record; and I, at least, look with some envy at the merry-go-round, remembering a day many years ago when I escaped from nurse, and surreptitiously took a ride on a side-saddled wooden pony that stood beside one ridden by Johnny Stubbs, the sweeps son, and was enjoying myself with all my heart, when a heavy hand made a clutch at my vanishing garments, and nurse's voice said, in tones of deepest wrath, "I'm ashamed of you, Miss Nell!"
The fun of the fair is just beginning as we turn our faces homeward towards Silverbridge. By-and-by it will become a frolic, later on grow into a carouse, last of all degenerate into a hurly-burly, where women will be seeking their husbands, and the same will be shaking hands with the town pumps, and attempting to walk home in a circle. Most of the sober folks are leaving like us, and in the cool lanes athwart which the sun is laying dark shadows, Lubin is kissing Phillis's ruddy and willing cheek, blessedly unconscious of our near vicinity. With what honest delight do they gaze on each other's ugly red faces, and how enjoyingly does the smack! smack! of their salutes come to our ears! The lady is not coy, and kisses him full as often as he does her, and almost as loudly. They are beautiful in each other's eyes, and long may their love last!
"I wonder," I say to myself, looking at Alice's flower-like face, "if any one will ever love her like that?—or—or—me?"
Presently we overtake the fry whom we have once or twice come across in the fair and avoided successfully; very gummy and warm and dirty and happy they look. If the governor could only see them! Fortune smiles on us to-day; we do not meet him in the court or in the hall or on the stairs, so we are able to retire in peace to change our dusty clothes.
"Thank goodness, there won't be a walk to-night!" says Alice, sitting down restfully in her white petticoat on the broad window-sill. Thank goodness, indeed! Walks are the plagues of our lives and the terror of our existence. I do not mean those nondescript leisurely rambles that Jack and I are partial to taking, or the saunters that Alice and Milly affect; I mean a three or four-mile race over hill and dale at the governor's heels, that leaves us with aching, blown bodies, sore hearts, and angry souls. We resort to various cowardly and sneaking devices to get out of these excursions, but altogether in vain; severe illness even and a prompt retirement to bed, avail us nothing. Papa is up to that trick, and we are promptly unearthed, dressed, and sent forth with the rest. We have even, on occasions, tried the desperate expedient of salts and senna, but even that cruel remedy failed us, for papa, believing our sufferings to be only another form of humbug, insisted on our accompanying him; therefore from that day to this, we have left Messrs. S. & S. alone.
The Adair family out a-walking is a sight to be seen. The governor leads the way, steaming on in front all alone, like a ship in full sail, while behind him his family stretch out like a pack of beagles, puffing, blowing, groaning, gasping, the elders well up to the fore, the youngsters, by reason of the shortness of their miserable little legs, straggling behind, while last of all comes Amberley, doing her duty like the Christian woman that she is, and praying that her second wind may come quickly. From time to time papa turns and surveys our scarlet and distressed countenances with a grim smile. After all, I believe he has some sense of humour, and only manages to support his own discomforts by witnessing the infinitely greater ones of his children. Past cool sweet fields, where the cows are taking their meals at their leisure—happy cows, who have no father to harry them!—past easy stiles and broad flat stones to which our bodies seriously incline; up hill and down dale, across fields and down lanes, with never a pause for breath or flower or fern, and so home again "in linked sweetness long drawn out."
Next to those scampers we hate drives. Papa has several conveyances in which he jeopardizes the lives of his family, and makes our "too fretful hair" rise from our heads. First in danger is a very high gig, in which he drives a powerful rakish chestnut, with a rolling eye, who invariably runs away twice or thrice whenever he goes out. In this, knowing her fears, he loves to take out mother, who has some respect for her own neck, seeing that it is the only one she is ever likely to possess, and by hook or by crook, she usually manages to get out of going. Now and then, however, she is fairly caught, and drives from the door with a backward look at her assembled flock, that has in it the solemnity of a dying farewell. Next in danger to the gig is a mail phaeton, drawn by a pair of fiery cobs, thoroughbreds, and matched to a hair, in which two of us girls are always made to sit, occupying ingloriously enough the seat intended for a man-servant. Many and many a time have we clung to each other with our breath gone, while the horses thundered on in their mad career, and the snapping of a rein or the smallest obstacle in the way would have probably sent us all to kingdom come. Providence, however, who apparently keeps special angels to watch over reckless people, has always brought us safely home, and will, I hope, continue to do so; for it is an ugly thought to be dashed into little bits on a heap of stones, with a horse's grinding hoofs hammering your face. Mother has a basket carriage with two fat grey ponies, which are so far beneath papa's notice, that they enjoy a meed of peace no other animals in the stable possess, and behind them we youngsters have many a pleasant amble and comfortable confab.
"Are you girls coming down to tea this evening or to-morrow morning?" asks Jack, putting his head in at the door. "The governor is just coming up the carriage drive.