ONE:
FORE:The tents and stalls were blocked as usual round the central crest of pines. It was all much as it had been five years ago on the day of the Riot. There was the outer fringe of strange dwellingstents full of smoke and sprawling squalling children, tilt carts with soup-pots hanging from their axles over little fires, and[Pg 60] gorgeously painted caravans which stood out aristocratically amidst the prevalent sacking. There was a jangle of voicesthe soft Romany of the gipsies, the shriller cant of the pikers and half-breeds, the broad drawling Sussex of the natives. Head of all the Fair, and superintending the working of the crazy merry-go-round, was Gideon Teazel, a rock-like man, son, he said, of a lord and a woman of the Rosamescros or Hearnes. He stood six foot eight in his boots and could carry a heifer across his shoulders. His wife Aurora, a pure-bred gipsy, told fortunes, and was mixed up in more activities than would appear from her sleepy manner or her invariable position, pipe in mouth, on the steps of her husband's caravan. Gideon loved to display his devotion for her by grotesque endearments and elephantine caressesdue no doubt to the gaujo strain in him, for the true gipsies always treated their women in public as chattels or beasts of burden, though privately they were entirely under their thumbs.Calverley was a good horseman, and it was but a short space ere he was within a few yards of the messenger, and shouting to him to halt. The man stopped, and, turning in his saddle, surveyed with some surprise (which could be seen even in the duskiness of twilight) the bright colours that distinguished the garb of a pursuivant.
FORE:There was silence, in which a coal fell. She still stood with her arms outstretched; he knew that she was calling himas no woman had ever called himwith all that of herself which was in his heart, part of his own being.
FORE:"I once stayed on the Downs," said the girl in the embroidered frock, speaking dreamily, "and one twilight I seemed to hear elfin music on the hill. I tore off my shoes and let down my hair and I dancedI danced...."
FORE:The Tories were a little disconcertedthe toll-gate did not fit into their campaign. Tolls had always been unpopular in the neighbourhood, even though [Pg 180]Government-owned, and it was catastrophic that the enemy should suddenly have swooped down on the Colonel's private venture and rhymed it so effectively.Reuben's teeth were chattering.
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