ON the second morning after Heber and Catherine disturbed the sleeping house, Talgwynne was also shaken out of its accustomed quiet by its half-yearly horse-fair. But for the usual market this was the little town’s one explosion of business and pleasure; sheep and cattle changed hands every week within sound of the clock on the square church tower in larger or smaller quantities, but it was only in spring and autumn that mountain ponies, hackneys, and carthorses enlivened the place by their transitory presence.
On these occasions the west side of the town was by far its most cheerful point, [Pg 74]for the road sprawled out into the country, and, for a flat quarter of a mile, was set apart as a show-ground by those who had horses to sell. A rough fringe of grass on either side of the way was the rallying place of the solid, who came to buy; the idle, who came to look on; and the light-minded, who would assemble to jeer and to goad unskilful horsemen with taunts and advice. After mid-day the roadsides would be strewn with hats, wisps of straw, broken clay pipes and the persons of those who had already succumbed to the pleasures of the fair.
To Heber’s father, crippled by rheumatism and well on in years, this gathering was not a thing to be missed, for it was his one link with the world as he had known it all the days of his life. The stream on which he had plied in youth and manhood had taken an outward bend, as it does for the very aged, and had left him on that sad, isolated piece of shore which is the [Pg 75]last resting-place for their living feet. But Talgwynne fair could still give him the faces of a few old cronies and the wry pleasure he could still experience at the sight of younger men compulsorily parting company with their saddles.
He sat on a log, sheltered from the fresh wind by the hedge at his back, with Susannah, to whom both horses and riders were interesting, beside him. Though old Moorhouse was remarkable by reason of his stature, which years and rheumatism had only slightly disguised, and his niece, because of a vivid, indefinable something, which arrested both male and female eyes, the couple was too ordinary a sight to attract notice from regular haunters of the fair, and only a few strangers let their minds wander from business to glance at them. The interest of most people appeared to be centred in a prosperous-looking man whose face was unfamiliar to Susannah, as he loitered with a knot of farmers standing by [Pg 76]their gigs on the grass. So many glances followed him that she remarked on it to a lad who was watching him with a half-curious grin and an elbow which jogged the ribs of a neighbouring friend.
“That’s him—Charles Saunders,” replied the young fellow; “come to look for ’is wench, a’ s’pose. You be a bit behind the times, missus.”
The two friends went off into the victorious crow which is the yokel’s recognition of another’s discomfiture.
Susannah checked the exclamation on her tongue; there was hardly any one in the world at that moment who interested her so much, and she rose and pressed forward a little to get a better view of Charles, whom she had never seen. As she surveyed him she wavered between her sense of his inferiority to Heber as a masculine creature, and her surprise that Catherine should have attracted so important a suitor. She edged nearer to the group in which [Pg 77]he stood, but the passing and repassing of animals, and the varied sounds of the fair, prevented her from hearing anything that was said by himself or by his companions. Business was getting brisker as the sun climbed the sky, and it was evident that Saunders and his friends were waiting for a horse to be trotted out from the crowd choking the road at the entrance to the town.
She stood lost in contemplation of Catherine’s jilted bridegroom. So many things were surging in her mind that the shouts along the road were unheeded, and she only realised, when a hand pulled her back to the grass, that a horse was almost upon her.
Roars of laughter were gathering density, like a snowball on its career, and for an instant she imagined herself and her threatened mishap to be their cause. A wrathful flush was on her cheek and it was only on the beast’s return journey that the redoubled merriment undeceived her.
[Pg 78]
Every one was standing back to have a fuller view of the passing horseman. He was a long, elderly man, whose appearance and demeanour made the horse under him a mere adjunct to himself and commerce a secondary matter. The lightning trot that formed his charger’s chief qualification was of such incredible swiftness that he had gone by almost before the onlookers knew what had happened. In order that this should not degenerate into a canter, the rider had laid himself forward on the leggy creature’s neck, and was firmly grasping its ears, from between which his own face, crowned by a pot hat and framed in streaming whiskers, stared into futurity. Behind him, the bellying skirts of an old greatcoat flew high above tail and crupper and a gale of laughter ran alongside him as he went, hanging in his wake like rubbish in the draught of an express train.
Susannah had some humour, but it was [Pg 79]of that unreliable sort which flies from its owner at a personal touch, and not even the passage of such a figure across her vision could divert her eyes from Saunders. It did not escape her observation that, though he opened his mouth and shouted with the rest of the world, he shut it again quickly; and that, while his companions closed in on the road to get a last view of the horseman as he disappeared into the town, he alone kept his place. It was clear that he was pre-occupied; and the sullen uneasiness of his expression when he was separated from his friends told the woman who watched him something of his mind.
As the day went on, and horse after horse was led or ridden out for the benefit of the farmers, old Moorhouse’s stiff limbs were growing uneasy on his log and he summoned his niece and began to move homeward. Susannah was obliged to go with him, but she determined to return [Pg 80]when she had left him within safe distance of his own door; for she had spread his midday bread and cheese on the kitchen table before leaving the house, and there were possibilities waiting for her in Talgwynne of which she had not dreamed as she set out for the fair. By hook or by crook, she meant to have a word with Saunders.
Her uncle moved slowly, and the crowd made it so difficult for them to get on, that they were forced to take the most devious way to avoid it. Though she did not enter the house, it was almost an hour before she found herself in the town and once more in the middle of the throng. There was no sign of Saunders, and she guessed that he was still on the road; but she stayed where she was, keeping as much as possible in the background and shunning those acquaintances whom she saw. She told herself that he must return to fetch his horse, for she knew, by his splashed [Pg 81]leggings and the whip under his arm, that he had ridden to the fair. There would be a better chance of attracting his attention quietly in the hurly-burly than on the open road.
She was standing in the shadow of a doorway when at last she saw him and observed a greater geniality on his face. He was flushed, and his hat sat at a more cheerful angle; and though his assured and steady manner of threading the maze of people held him above all suspicion of being drunk, Susannah suspected that he had been bolstering his fallen spirits in the popular way. She edged again into the moving mass of humanity and soon found herself close to him. He seemed to be searching for some person, for it was nearly impossible to catch his eye. She plucked him boldly by the sleeve.
Saunders turned round at once. She was as completely unknown to him as he had been to her a few hours ago; but, thanks [Pg 82]to a couple of visits to the Hand of Friendship, his downhearted uneasiness had given way to a more venturesome outlook on the world. Though Susannah wore a plain black jacket and an unsuggestive hat, both of which had seen better days, there was in her appearance that demand for attention from the other sex which certain women carry with them wherever they go and however they are clothed. Her direct eyes challenged those of Charles, which now had a roving expression absent from them in the morning.
“Well, my dear,” said he easily.
“What’ll you give me for a bit o’ news?” asked Susannah, answering his look in kind. Her hand was still on his arm and she gave it a little shake.
Saunders smiled. He did not quite know what to say in reply, nor what turn he wished the situation to take; it seemed to have several possibilities.
“It’s good news, too,” continued she, [Pg 83]“and maybe I’ll give it you for nothin’. You’ve been used very bad, Mr. Saunders.”
Charles’s countenance changed. The certainty that he was a marked man had dogged him all day. He had come to Talgwynne very unwillingly, because his uncle, who wanted a horse, and whom he could not afford to disoblige, had sent him to the fair to look for something suitable. He had read in every face how completely his misfortunes were public property, though the Hand of Friendship had helped to put his humiliation from him for a little while. Every one he met knew how he had arrived at Pencoed on his wedding morning to find himself there on a fool’s errand. No living creature had seen Catherine go; and all that he or any one had been able to drag from Mrs. Job was the admission that she had heard a horse pass her cottage long after she was snug in bed. She had risen and stared into the darkness, but, seeing nothing, had returned to her rest. [Pg 84]As for the girl, she had bidden her good-night, leaving her safe in the barn, hours before.
Charles had cursed and stormed. Heber came to his mind even before he heard his detested name upon the lips of the best man, who spoke his suggestion boldly. But there was no clue, no trace; nothing but the marks of horse’s feet printed about Mrs. Job’s barn-door and crossing the yard, only to lose themselves on the hard turf of the mountain. While to every one possessed of the rudiments of good sense, these were proofs of the shepherd’s complicity, Heber was quietly at his business at the farm. The best man, whose curiosity, draped in the cloak of friendship for Saunders, urged him to the place, brought back this news. But there was no sign of Catherine.
The sting of wounded pride was so sharp on Charles that the idea of a search for the lost woman was far from him, and he [Pg 85]was loud in his resolve not to stir an inch in pursuit. Had he been able to injure Heber he would have done so willingly, but Catherine should go free. She had proved herself no fit wife for a man of his sort, and it was not for him to take her back at a gift—not now. His tongue moved with unclean freedom as he made known his opinion.
“Yes, you’ve been used shameful, but you’ll have the laugh o’ them yet, and I’ll help you to get it, if you’ll listen to me,” continued Susannah. “I can tell you that much. Come you out of the crowd a bit. We can’t speak private enough here.”
Charles looked round suspiciously, first on the elbowing mass and then on the unknown wo............