Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such festivals. Luck would have it that[Pg 58] for the last two years there had been no official fiddler—old Abel Pinch having been seduced by a semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother honourably as chief musician.

He advertised him in the neighbourhood for some weeks beforehand, and gossip ran high. Condemnation of Backfield\'s ruthlessness in exploiting his brother was combined with a furtive admiration of his smartness as a business man. It was extraordinary how little he cared about "lowering himself," a vital matter with the other farmers of his position. Just as he had thought nothing of working his own farm instead of indulging in the dignity of hired labour, so he thought nothing of making money at Boarzell Fair with the gipsies and pikers.

Naomi no longer protested. For one thing Harry seemed to like his fiddling, and was quite overjoyed at the prospect of playing at the Fair. Strangely enough, he remembered the Fair and its jollities, though he had forgotten all weightier matters of life and love.

"Where shall I stand?—by the gipsies\' tent?—or right forrard by the stalls? I\'d like to stand by the stalls, and then maybe when I\'m not fiddling they\'ll give me sweeties."

"You must behave yourself," said Reuben, in the tones he would have used to a child—"you mustn\'t go vrothering people to give you sweeties."

"I\'ll give you some sweeties, Harry," said Naomi.

"Oh, will you?—Then I\'ll love you!"

Naomi turned away with a shudder, her eyes full of inexpressible pain.

Reuben looked after her as she went out of the room, then he took a couple of strides and caught her up in the passage.

"It\'s I who\'m t?aking you to the Fair, remember," he said, his hand on her arm.

"Oh, no ... I couldn\'t go to the Fair."

"Nonsense—you\'re coming wud me."

"Oh, Ben, don\'t make me go."

It was the cry of her weakness to his purpose.

"I shall m?ake you ... dear."

She flung herself from him, and ran upstairs. That night at supper she took no notice of him, talking garrulously all the time to Mrs. Backfield.

But she went to the Fair.

In the soft grey gown that the first of the cold demanded she walked with her arm through Reuben\'s up the Moor. Her bonnet was the colour of heather, tied with wide ribbons that accentuated the milkiness of her chin. Reuben wore his Sunday clothes—drab shorts and a sprigged waistcoat, and a wide-brimmed hat under which his face looked strangely handsome and dark. Harry shuffled along, clutching his brother\'s coat-sleeve to guide himself. Mrs. Backfield preferred to stay at home, and Reuben had not tried to make her come.

All Peasmarsh went to the Fair. It was a recognised holiday. All farm work—except the most barely necessary—was put aside, and the ploughman and dairymaid rollicked with their betters. The road across Boarzell was dark with them, coming from all quarters—Playden, Iden, Beckley, Northiam, Bodiam—Old Turk\'s Farm, Baron\'s Grange, Corkwood, Kitchenhour—even from Blackbrook and Ethnam on the Kentish border.

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 dwellings—tents 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 voices—the 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 caresses—due 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.

Reuben brought Naomi and Harry into the middle of the Fair. Many people stared at them. It was Harry\'s first public appearance since his illness, and one or two comments louder than the general hum came to Naomi\'s ears and made them pink.

Harry was soon established on the upturned cask beside the fighting booth which had always been the fiddler\'s place. He began to play at once—"Nice Young Maidens"—to all appearances quite indifferent to the jostle round him. Naomi could not help marvelling at Reuben, too—he was so cool, possessed and assured, so utterly without anything in the way of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Wonder was succeeded by wrath—how dare he be calm in the face of such terrible things? She tried to pull her hand out of his arm, but he held his elbow close to his side, and the little hand lay there like an imprisoned mouse.

"Let\'s go away," she whispered, half nervously and half angrily, "I hate standing here."

"I want to see how he\'s going to manage," said Reuben. "What\'ll he do when he comes to the end of this tune?"

"Oh, do let\'s go away."

He did not answer, but stood there imperturbable, till Harry, having successfully finished "Nice Young Maidens," started "The Woodpecker Tapping" without any ado.

"He\'s safe enough now—we may as well go and have a look round."

Naomi followed him out of the little crowd which had grouped round Harry, and they wandered into the Panorama tent to see the show. After having sat for half an hour on a crowded bench, in an atmosphere thick with foul tobacco and the smell of clothes long stored away—watchin............