“They’re like Hempie’s new ornaments,” thought Master Nathaniel.
In another booth there was a merry-go-round of silver horses and gilded chariots—both sadly tarnished. It was a primitive affair that moved not by machinery, but by the ceaseless trudging of a live pony—a patient, dingy little beast—tied to it with a rope. And the motion generated a thin, cracked music—tunes that had been popular in Lud-in-the-Mist when Master Nathaniel had been a little boy.
There was “Oh, you Little Charmer with your pretty Puce Bow,” there was “Old Daddy Popinjay fell down upon his Rump,” there was “Why did she cock her Pretty Blue Eye at the Lad with the Silver Buckles?”
But, except for one solitary little boy, the tarnished horses and chariots whirled round without riders; and the pert tunes sounded so thin and wan as to accentuate rather than destroy the silence and atmosphere of melancholy.
In a hopeless, resigned sort of way, the little boy was sobbing. It was as if he felt that he was doomed by some inexorable fate to whirl round forever and ever with the tarnished horses and chariots, the dingy, patient pony, and the old cracked tunes.
“It is not long,” said the invisible cicerone, “since that little boy was stolen from the mortals. He still can weep.”
Master Nathaniel felt a sudden tightening in his throat. Poor little boy! Poor little lonely boy! What was it he reminded him of? Something painful, and very near his heart.
Round and round trudged the pony, round and round went the hidden musical-box, grinding out its thin, blurred tunes.
Why did she cock her pretty blue eye
At the lad with the silver buckles,
When the penniless lad who was handsome and spry
Got nought but a rap on his knuckles?
These vulgar songs, though faded, were not really old. Nevertheless, to Master Nathaniel, they were the oldest songs in existence—sung by the Morning Stars when all the world was young. For they were freighted with his childhood, and brought the memory, or, rather, the tang, the scent, of the solemn innocent world of children, a world sans archness, sans humour, sans vulgarity, where they had sounded as pure and silvery as a shepherd’s pipe. Where the little charmer with her puce bow, and the scheming hussy who had cocked her blue eye had been own sisters to the pretty fantastic ladies of the nursery rhymes, like them walking always to the accompaniment of tinkling bells and living on frangipane and sillabubs of peaches and cream; and whose gestures were stylised and actions preposterous—nonsense actions that needed no explanation. While mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, falling in love—they were just pretty words like brightly-coloured beads, strung together without meaning.
As Master Nathaniel listened, he knew that other people would have heard other tunes—whatever tunes through the milkman’s whistle, or the cracked fiddle of a street musician, or the voices of young sparks returning from the tavern at midnight, the Morning Stars may have happened to sing in their own particular infancy.
Oh, you little charmer with your pretty puce bow,
I’ll tell mamma if you carry on so!
Round and round whirled the tarnished horses and chariots with their one pathetic little rider; round and round trudged the pony—the little dusty, prosaic pony.
Master Nathaniel rubbed his eyes and looked round; he felt as if after a dive he were slowly rising to the surface of the water. The fair seemed to be coming alive—the silence had changed into a low murmur. And now it was swelling into the mingled din of chattering voices, lowing cows, grunting pigs, blasts from tin trumpets, hoarse voices of cheap-jacks praising their wares—all the noises, in short, that one connects with an ordinary fair.
He sauntered away from the merry-go-round and mingled with the crowd. All the stall-keepers were doing a brisk trade, but, above all, the market gardeners—their stalls were simply thronged.
But, lo and behold! the fruit that they were selling was of the kind he had seen in the mysterious room of the Guildhall, and concealed inside the case of his grandfather’s clock—it was fairy fruit; but the knowledge brought no sense of moral condemnation.
Suddenly he realized that his throat was parched with thirst and that nothing would slake it but one of these translucent globes.
The wizened old woman who was selling them cried out to him coaxingly, “Three for a penny, sir! Or, for you, I’ll make it four for a penny—for the sake of your hazel eyes, lovey! You’ll find them as grateful as dew to the flowers—four for a penny, pretty master. Don’t say no!”
But he had the curious feeling that one sometimes has in dreams, namely, that he himself was inventing what was happening to him, and could make it end as he chose.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “I am telling myself one of Hempie’s old stories, about a youngest son who has been warned against eating anything offered to him by strangers, so, of course, I shall not touch it.”
So with a curt “No thank’ee, nothing doing today,” he contemptuously turned his back on the old woman and her fruit.
But whose was that shrill voice? Probably that of some cheapjack whose patter or whose wares, to judge from the closely-packed throng hiding him from view, had some particularly attractive quality. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and, his curiosity aroused, Master Nathaniel joined the crowd of spectators.
He could discern nothing but the top of a red head, but the patter was audible: “Now’s your chance, gentlemen! Beauty doesn’t keep, but rots like apples. Apple-shies! Four points if you hit her on the breast, six if you hit her on the mouth, and he who first gets twenty points wins the maid. Don’t fight shy of the apple-shies! Apples and beauty do not keep—there’s a worm in both. Step up, step up, gentlemen!”
Yes, he had heard that voice before. He began to shoulder his way
