The decent people kept their doors locked,their children at home,and their valuables in the family safe.No upper class child in Polchester so much as saw the outside of a gipsy van.The Dean's Ernest was accustomed to boast that he had once been given a ride by a gipsy on a donkey,when his nurse was not looking,but no one credited the story,and the details with which he supported it were feeble and unconvincing.The Polchester children in general were told that "they would be stolen by the gipsies if they weren't careful,"and,although some of them in extreme moments of rebellion and depression felt that the life of adventure thus offered to them,might,after all,be more agreeable than the dreary realism of their natural days,the warning may be said to have been effective.
No family in Polchester was guarded more carefully in this matter of the Pauper's Fair than the Cole family.Mr.Cole had an absolute horror of the fair.Sailors and gipsies were to him the sign and seal of utter damnation,and although he tried,as a Christian clergyman,to believe that they deserved pity because of the disadvantages under which they had from the first laboured,he confessed to his intimate friends that he saw very little hope for them either in this world or the next.Jeremy,Helen and Mary were,during Fair Week,kept severely within doors;their exercise had to be taken in the Cole garden,and the farthest that they poked their noses into the town was their visit to St.John's on Sunday morning.
Except on one famous occasion.The Fair Week of Jeremy's fifth year saw him writhing under a terrible attack of toothache,which became,after two agonised nights,such a torment and distress to the whole household that he had to be conveyed to the house of Mr.Pilter,who had his torture-chamber at No.3Market Square.It is true that Jeremy was conveyed thither in a cab,and that his pain and his darkened windows prevented him from seeing very much of the gay world;nevertheless,in spite of the Jampot,who guarded him like a dragon,he caught a glimpse of flags,a gleaming brass band and a Punch and Judy show,and he heard the trumpets and the drum,and the shouts of excited little boys,and the blowing of the Punch and Judy pipes,and he smelt roasting chestnuts,bad tobacco,and beer and gin.He returned,young as he was,and reduced to a corpse-like condition by the rough but kindly intentioned services of Mr.Pilter,with the picture of a hysterical,abandoned world clearly imprinted upon his brain.
"I want to go,"he said to the Jampot.
"You can't,"said she.
"I will when I'm six,"said he.
"You won't,"said she.
"I will when I'm seven,"said he.
"You won't,"said she.
"I will when I'm eight,"he answered.
"Oh,give over,do,Master Jeremy,"said she.And now he was eight,very nearly nine,and going to school in a fortnight.There seemed to be a touch of destiny about his prophecy.
II
He had no intention of disobedience.Had he been once definitely told by someone in authority that he was not to go to the fair he would not have dreamt of going.He had no intention of disobedience--but he had returned from the Cow Farm holiday in a strange condition of mind.
He had found there this summer more freedom than he had been ever allowed in his life before,and it had been freedom that had come,not so much from any change of rules,but rather from his own attitude to the family--simply he had wanted to do certain things,and he had done them and the family had stood aside.He began to be aware that he had only to push and things gave way--a dangerous knowledge,and its coming marks a period in one's life.
He seemed,too,during this summer,to have left his sisters definitely behind him and to stand much more alone than he had done before.The only person in his world whom he felt that he would like to know better was Uncle Samuel,and that argued,on his part,a certain tendency towards rebellion and individuality.He was no longer rude to Aunt 'Amy,although he hated her just as he had always done.She did not seem any longer a question that mattered.
His attitude to his whole family now was independent.
Indeed,he was,in reality,now beginning to live his independent life.He was perhaps very young to be sent off to school by himself,although in those days for a boy of eight to be plunged without any help but a friendly word of warning into the stormy seas of private school life was common enough--nevertheless,his father,conscious that the child's life had been hitherto spent almost entirely among women,sent him every morning during these last weeks at home down to the Curate of St.Martin's-in-the-Market to learn a few words of Latin,an easy sum or two,and the rudiments of spelling.This young curate,the Rev.Wilfred Somerset,recently of Emmanuel College,Cambridge,had but two ideas in his head--the noble game of cricket and the jolly qualities of Mr.Surtees's novels.He was stout and strong,red-faced,and thick in the leg,always smoking a largo black-looking pipe,and wearing trousers very short and tight.He did not strike Jeremy with fear,but he was,nevertheless,an influence.Jeremy,apparently,amused him intensely.He would roar with laughter at nothing at all,smack his thigh and shout,"Good for you,young 'un,"whatever that might mean,and Jeremy,gazing at him,at his pipe and his trousers,liking him rather,but not sufficiently in awe to be really impressed,would ask him questions that seemed to him perfectly simple and natural,but that,nevertheless,amused the Rev.Wilfred so fundamentally that he was unable to give them an intelligible answer.
Undoubtedly this encouraged Jeremy's independence.
He walked to and fro the curate's lodging by himself,and was able to observe many interesting things on the way.Sometimes,late in the afternoon,he would have some lesson that he must take to his master who,as he lodged at the bottom of Orange Street,was a very safe and steady distance from the Coles.
Of course Aunt Amy objected.
