TWO:There was no longer any fiddler at the Fair. Harry Backfield's successor had been a hurdy-gurdy which played dance music louder and more untiringly than any human arm could do. Dancing was still a vital part of the festivities, but it was more decorous than in the days when Reuben and Naomi had danced together to the tune of "Seth's House," or Robert and Bessie to "My Decided Decision." Only in the evening it became rowdy, when the sun had set and the mists had walled in the Show with nacreous battlements."Can't you let it alone, Reuben?wewe've been so happy these last months not worrying about it. Must we ever start again?"
TWO:Not that Rye elections had ever been much concerned with national events. Borough had always been a bigger word than country on those occasions. It was the question of the Harbour rather than the Ballot which had sent up Captain Curteis in 1832, while later contests had centred round the navigation of the Brede River, the new Sluice at Scott's Float, or the Landgate clock. Reuben, however, cared little for these petty town affairs. His chief concern was the restoration of the tax on wheat, and he also favoured the taxing of imported malt and hops. He hated and dreaded Gladstone's "free breakfast table," which he felt would mean the ruin of agriculture in England. He would like to concentrate country Toryism into an organised opposition of Free Trade, and his wounded pride found balm in the thought of founding a local agricultural party of which he would be the inspirer and head.
TWO:
TWO:Bessie was now thirty, and looked older, for she had lost a front tooth and her pretty hair had faded: but she was as confident of Robert's love as ever. He had[Pg 334] written to her by every mail, she told Caro, and they had both saved and scraped and waited and counted the days till they could consummate the love born in those fields eternally fixed in twilight by their memory. There had been no intercourse between Odiam and Eggs Hole, so, as Robert had never written to his family, Caro heard for the first time of the sheep-farm in Queensland and its success. He had done badly at first, Bessie said, what with the drought and many other things against him, but now he was well established, and she would be far better off and more comfortable as the felon's wife than she had ever been as the daughter of honest parents.