Chapter VI: At the Fair

"For a Crowd is not Company."--_Bacon's Essays_.

The High Street of Carsham, generally so quiet and deserted, was crowded and noisy enough that day. The wide space in front of the old market-place was filled up with swinging boats and merry-go-rounds, and rows of booths ran down each side of the wide street next the pavement. A field between the street and the river was occupied by shows--a wild-beast show, a theatre, a shooting-gallery, and all the various amusements that attracted the country people who stood staring in groups, or wandered slowly in and out of one tent or another. Every hour the crowd went on slowly increasing, the noise and life of the fair strengthening. A band was playing in the street, and music was also going on in hot and stuffy dancing-saloons at the back of several public-houses. These were doing a fine trade.

Altogether it seemed that Carsham and its neighbourhood was determined to have a day of thorough enjoyment, to spend as much money as could be scraped together. It was an opportunity that only came once in three years, and people were determined to make the best of it. Whole families flowed in from quiet villages and lonely commons; old and young, on foot or on wheels, they kept on coming; and this would go on till late in the evening, till the fair, which had always a few London roughs mingled with its crowd, was neither a safe nor respectable place for quiet people.

But there was not much rowdyism to be seen in the afternoon, when Mary walked in from Markwood; the amusements in the street were harmless enough; the gay booths were crowded with women and children, many of whom she knew, busily buying all manner of rubbish. The crowd was dressed in its Sunday clothes, and only now and then some rough lads with their horse-play disturbed its generally quiet enjoyment. The scene was lively enough, and noisy enough; but the noise was harmless. Mary met with no pushing or rudeness of any kind as she made her way along the street, and her eyes were attracted by many sights that amused them; but she did not stop to look at anything or buy anything. She could not be happy till Lily's hand was in hers. Then she thought she would buy the child a fairing, and would insist on her coming home at once. They would be at home long before John was; and he could hardly be angry with his mother for letting the child go. Though the more Mary thought of that the more astonished she felt that Mrs. Randal should have done it. A particular person like her! it seemed unnatural.

Mary suddenly stood still in front of a toy-stall, at which she appeared to stare with the deepest interest. But in reality she saw nothing; it was a new thought that had stopped her. Was it possible that Lily had been left alone in the house for a few minutes, and had dressed herself and run away to join the other children? She wanted to go to the fair, Mary knew; she had been crying about it the day before. And it was very possible that, if she had done it, Mrs. Alfrick would not have taken the trouble to send her back. The fact of her wearing the locket seemed to make this a reasonable idea, for Mrs. Randal was even less likely to send the locket, the one means of identifying Lily, than to send the child herself.

"Well, she _is_ a naughty little thing!" said Mary to herself. "And John won't have her punished. Well, I do sometimes wish that child was back where she came from."

Here Mary was roused by the keeper of the toy-stall, who began bringing forward her best goods to tempt such a respectable-looking purchaser, and seemed a good deal injured when she shook her head and walked away.

She went on to the very end of the street, looking eagerly about among the women and children that crowded her path, but nowhere did she see the Alfrick children, or their mother, or Lily. They were not in the boats, or on the merry-go-rounds, they were not standing about listening to the band near the market-place, they were not to be seen among the ever-thickening crowd that made its way slowly along the line of booths. Mary began to feel lonely, as well as anxious. Some of the ruder people, the strangers, stared at her, and she felt that Carsham Fair was hardly the place for a girl of her age to be wandering about alone. Her presence there would not please John, she knew, any more than Lily's--and if he could see her there alone, he would certainly be angry. However, Mary had not time to think much of this. She must find Lily--that was her first work, her first duty; and then they would both turn their backs on Carsham Fair quickly enough--gladly enough too, as far as she was concerned, for she had seldom felt more anxious or more miserable.

She began to think that Mrs. Alfrick must have taken the children into one of the shows. Making her way slowly back down the street, towards the part of the town where these were, she now met a few neighbours from Markwood, who stared and grinned at the sight of her. Was this Miss Mary Alfrick, who generally treated common amusements with scorn? Mary stopped in spite of their looks, and asked if they had seen any of her people. "No." One woman had noticed Farmer Alfrick going into the Wheatsheaf Inn; but there was nobody else with him.

"Anything wrong at home, as you want him back in a hurry?" asked another.

"No, thank you," Mary answered civilly. "But they're all here, Mrs. Alfrick and the children and all--and I wanted to find them."

She went on down the street, instantly losing these acquaintances in the crowd.

"Her young man had ought to be with her," said one of the women; but then they stopped in front of one of those fascinating booths, and forgot all about Mary.

She stood about for some time at the gate of the field where the wild-beast show, the theatre, and other attractions were set up. It was not a nice place for waiting; there were a good many unpleasant-looking people about, and a little way down the lane there was an old and not very respectable public-house, much patronised at these times by the roughs and tramps who came from London. For some time Mary stood looking down the lane towards this house, which was actually hidden from her, however, by two great chestnut trees that had not yet lost the orange masses of their leaves. Music, though only of a barrel-organ, was going on merrily; there were shouts of laughter now and then, and sounds as of people dancing on the other side of the trees.

Mary saw and listened to all this without realising it much. She was trying to make up her mind to go inside one of these shows after another in search of Mrs. Alfrick and the children. It did occur to her that she might follow her father to the Wheatsheaf and ask for his help. But she shrank with a sort of pride and disgust from facing him and his companions there. He was likely enough to answer her rudely. And after all, the rest of the party could not be very far off; they must be somewhere in the fair. Mary tried to persuade herself that it would be all right--and still she was miserable.

The afternoon was closing in fast, too; it would soon begin to get dusk; she must have been standing about Carsham more than an hour already, and now another half-hour was soon wasted, while she waited about the entrance of the shows. She was just making up her mind to venture inside the wild-beast show--they might be there--though the roars and growls to be heard were more likely to frighten children than to attract them--when suddenly a crowd of people came pouring out of a large tent, the entrance of which was ornamented with a terrifying picture of an immense black man with an axe, and an announcement that The Black Giant, a drama in three acts, would be performed twice that day.

In another moment Mary had rushed among these people and seized her stepmother by the arm. Three or four children were clinging to her, but Lily was not among them; a moment's glance showed Mary that.

"Mother, where's Lily?" she cried. "You've left her in the tent! Come along back and fetch her. I expect they won't let me go in."

Mrs. Alfrick was flushed, tired, and extremely cross.

"Plague take the girl!" she exclaimed. "So you've come after all! You might as well have stopped away. Nothing but Lily, Lily, from morning till night--I'm out of patience, and no wonder. Lily ain't a baby in arms, and I've got my own children to think of first--and as for that John of yours as picked her up in the ditch, he'd better stop at home and look after her, and you may just go and tell him so."

Mary turned white. She held Mrs. Alfrick's arm fast, and drew her to one side, while the other people hurried on to the gate.

"Look here," she said in a low voice. "Tell me this moment--what have you done with that child?"

"She's a naughty girl, Lily is," protested Mrs. Alfrick, while the other children began to cry; they found no enjoyment in a quarrel between Mary and their mother, for Mary's crimes were usually visited on them. "I gave her buns and sweets just like my own--I told her to come along with them and we'd all enjoy ourselves together."

"Where is she?"

"I paid a penny for her to go into that there theatre along of us--and it's more than many would have done for a brat like her--and we hadn't been there a quarter of an hour when she begins to cry and say she's frightened, just because there was a few murders on the stage--like there always is, you know. Well, I couldn't have her making a disturbance in there--they'd have turned out the lot of us in no time--so I just sent her along out with Lizzie, and told 'em both they was to stop about the gate till we come. Lizzie's a good girl and does as she's bid. She was pleased to go out with Lily; you know what a fuss she always makes of her."

"But where are they now?"

"Do just stop your noise, Mary. Ain't I telling you? They're somewhere outside here, waiting for us. I won't deny as that performance was longer than I expected--but don't you worrit now. They're as right as they can be."

"I hope so," said Mary grimly. "But all I can say is, I've been waiting about here for you half-an-hour or more, and I've seen nothing of them."

"Oh, it was longer ago than half-an-hour," said Mrs. Alfrick. "They've got back to the stalls and the music. Lily wanted to stop by the music before."

"Lily ought never to have come here at all, that's where it is," said Mary. "You don't mean to tell me Mrs. Randal sent her?"

She would hardly have confessed it, but she was rather more at ease now. Lizzie Alfrick was a steady child of nine years old, the best of the family. She would indeed, with a better bringing up, have been a nice little girl; but Mrs. Alfrick's system of alternate spoiling and knocking about was not likely to improve any character.

Mary had no satisfactory answer to her question.

"Well, and if she did," said Mrs. Alfrick, "it's no business of yours, as I can see. You ain't married to John yet. When you are, take my word for it, you'll have a bigger dose of Lily than you care for. Him and his mother, they're both right down silly over that child."

Mary knew her stepmother too well to go on asking questions. After all, it did not much matter how Lily got there. The next thing was to find the two children, who had evidently strayed away and lost themselves in the fair. This was not an easy business, for the crowd had thickened very much since Mary first came, and the advancing dusk, and the lights which were beginning to glimmer everywhere, made it extremely difficult to find anybody.

Mary set out to make her way along that crowded street once more. It was becoming like a bad dream, this perpetual hurrying up and down through the noisy fair, her ears and brain bewildered by the sound of voices, of music, or the discordant shriek of penny trumpets. She pushed along through the people. There were plenty of children wedged in among those groups that surrounded the lighted booths, but nowhere could she find either of the children she was looking for. She soon, being active and not encumbered with clinging hands, had left Mrs. Alfrick and her family some distance behind, and was working her way desperately through those stationary crowds. Flushed with trouble and fatigue, no summer night could have seemed to her more exhausting. The heavy air of that street weighed on her as if it had been a close and suffocating room, though some of the people were shivering, and a cold little October wind was whistling along, shaking the tents and making the lights flicker wildly.

"It's going to rain," said a voice. "It always do rain on Carsham Fair."

Mary searched to the end of the street, and round the market-place, without success. Then she turned back, and after a little while met her stepmother and the children. Mrs. Alfrick was crying now, and telling one or two sympathisers in the crowd that she had lost her little girl, that Lizzie had been led away into mischief by the worst child in the village, a nasty good-for-nothing who had been picked up in a ditch.

"I've heard tell of that child," said one of the women near. "It was John Randal, the blacksmith over at Markwood, weren't it? He was a soft, not to send the child to the Union."

"I wish to goodness he had," said Mrs. Alfrick, with a deep sigh.

At that moment Mary pushed her way through the crowd to her stepmother's side.

"It's no good," she said. "I've looked in every corner. We must fetch father out of the Wheatsheaf and have a proper search made. There's bad characters about, and those children may have been stolen. We must go to the police."

"Fetch your father out of the Wheatsheaf! You may do it yourself, then!" cried Mrs. Alfrick, sobbing again, while several of the bystanders laughed.

Mary hesitated. She knew it was too true that her father, after a couple of hours at the Wheatsheaf, at fair-time too, was not likely to come out in a state to give any reasonable help. Every moment the curtain of dusk seemed to descend lower and lower above that flaring street; the shadows, the dark corners, the crowd that thickened perpetually--all made it harder from moment to moment to find what was lost. And yet--"They must be found!" said Mary to herself: though she wondered how long her brain would bear the bewilderment, the pushing, the noise and clamour in which this search had to be carried on.

If she could only see or speak to some respectable person with a grain of feeling and sense! But alas! as a rule, such persons were not to be met with at Carsham Fair.

As she looked round with distracted eyes, there was a sudden movement in the little crowd that surrounded them, and Lizzie Alfrick broke through and rushed to her mother, burying her face in her gown.

Mary's joyful exclamation was checked upon her lips. For the child was alone and crying bitterly; there was no sign of Lily; and then a terror seized on Mary, compared with which her former anxiety had been nothing. Now, for the first time, she had to think of John's treasure, John's Lily, really alone, deserted and lost in the fair.

For a minute the confusion was too great; Mrs. Alfrick's sobs and scoldings, Lizzie's screams, the loud chatter of the people standing by--Mary could do nothing in the midst of all this. But presently she took Lizzie's hand and pulled her away from her mother.

"There, stop that noise," she said impatiently. "Be a good girl and tell me where Lily is."

"I don't know," said Lizzie, looking solemnly up into her face. "We lost each other. We was dancing to the organ over there, and it got so dark, and a man brought a lantern, and then I couldn't see a bit; and I went dancing round the trees and come back again, and Lily was gone, and then I couldn't find mother; and I went back to the house and they drove me out and telled me not to come bothering there. I thought I was lost too."

"But why were you such naughty children as not to stop where mother told you till she came out? If you had, I should have seen you there," said Mary.

"We didn't go far off. Only as far as them big trees, Polly. We went and picked up chestnuts--and then there was a man playing the organ and some children dancing, and we came and danced too. There was a woman too, and she brought Lily a stick of candy and said she was the prettiest little girl she ever saw in her life. Lily gave me half."

"Who was the woman? Did she belong to the house down there--the Travellers' Joy?"

"I don't think so," Lizzie said vaguely. "I didn't see her when I went back."

Mary stood still and thought for a moment. Somehow, all her distraction and bewilderment were gone. In spite of all the deafening confusion, her head was now clear.

"We must go to the Travellers' Joy and inquire there," she said to Mrs. Alfrick.

"Go where you please," was the answer. "I ain't coming. Lily ain't my child, and I won't be plagued with her any longer. She's up to some mischief, I'll be bound. You'll find her dancing in front o' that organ and getting more sticks of candy."

Mary turned away, only saying--"If you won't come with me, take my advice and go home with the children. It's nearly dark now. Lizzie can come with me; she may be a help, and I'll take care of her."

"She shan't then," cried the mother. "When I've just lost her and found her again! I always did say you was the most selfish girl living."

"Very well. Stay with your mother."

Mary let the little girl's hand go, and in another moment was alone in the crowd.

Without much difficulty, now that she knew where she must go, she made her way to the end of the street, turning down past the meadow where the shows were. The crowd was not so thick here, but it was very unpleasant in the gathering dusk. Under the chestnut-trees it was nearly dark; no playing or dancing was going on there now, but the windows of the old inn beyond were lit up brilliantly, and a great noise of stamping and shouting was to be heard from within. Mary knew that it was not a place for a girl like herself, but without hesitation she went straight to the open door, and asked a rough-looking woman who was crossing the passage if she had seen a pretty little girl with fair hair. She was answered by a torrent of bad language that drove her away from the door, her face burning with indignation and horror.

For a long time she waited about, as near as she dared, watching everybody who went in or came out. Something in the woman's look and manner, though she seemed to be anything but sober, made her suspect that she had seen Lily, that she knew where she was.

Mary was almost in despair. She thought, as she moved restlessly round and round in the darkness under the great trees, for a time which seemed to her quite awful in its length and hopelessness, that there must be respectable people in Carsham who would help her if she could get hold of them--police if she knew where to find them--a clergyman's house, if she could venture to apply to a total stranger. Mary was a shy, reserved girl, and had lived all her life at lonely Markwood--but now she would have had courage to do anything, if she had only known what to do. In the meanwhile, it grew darker every moment; the autumn night, black and starless, was settling down on Carsham Fair.