ONE: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."Tush, man!nonsense!" interrupted Turner, reddening with mingled shame and anger. "Let the bondman be freed, and the land properly parcelled out, and then we can talk about what kings there are to be besides Richard. But I'll tell you, Master Jack Straw, or whatever your name is, that if I cannot read and write like you, I will have a word in the matter as well as yourselfI will have all the lawyers hanged, for one thing: there is so much trickery in the law, that we shall never be sure of whatever is granted, while the men of law can have a crook in it."
TWO:Realf was about twenty-five, a tall, well-set-up young fellow, with certain elegancies about him. In business he was of a simple, open-temperament, genuinely proud of his farm, and na?ve enough to boast of its progress to Backfield himself.
TWO:Oakley, as Calverley ceased speaking, looked at him for a moment very earnestly, and an intelligence passed across his face, as if some new light had broken in upon him; but suddenly, with a sort of smile,Anne's politics were the most vigorous in the family.
TWO:However, the Squire's party began to feel their lack of numbers; they were growing tired, their arms swung less confidently, and then Lewnes' bottle was broken right up at the neck, cutting his hand. He shouted that he was bleeding to death, and frightened the others. Someone sent a stone into Alce's eye. Then he too made a terrible fuss, threw down his stick, and ran about bleeding among the workmen.There was no denying it. Boarzell had beaten Reuben in this their first battle. That coarse, shaggy, unfruitful land had refused to submit to husbandry. Backfield had not yet taken Leviathan as his servant. His defeat stimulated local wit.
THREE:Caro flushed with pleasurea light had kindled in her grey life, and she found herself looking forward to days of basking.
