The walkers began to stream into the grounds soon after sunrise. Families from as far as Launcestan arrived in farm wagons, and strange-speaking shepherds with their fey-looking wives and wide-eyed little ones came riding shaggy ponies or behind them in high-wheeled carts from the wild wastes of Dartmoor. By noon the bright-eyed laughing throngs moving from one merriment to another numbered a good five thousand. Not one so far ranked among the gentry; the whole crowd could be lumped off with dreadful insolence and sacrilege as "The Great Unwashed." But I had forgotten of late that little children could be enchanting. My cold heart glowed again at sight of youth and maiden, graced by God, often made gawky and awkward by the supercilious gazings of their betters, but in this hour beautiful beyond words, walking hand in hand. All this was man. It was the earthly body of God.
I stayed out of sight as much as possible, hanging off the fringes of the crowds and in easy reach of Alan if he needed instruction. My happiness was as full as some remembered from long ago and in the beauty-haunted hours with Isabel, and often I had a far-away feeling of sharing it with Holgar Blackburn, gone somewhere beyond all the deserts and all the seas. Yet he remained part and parcel with every child who played, every parent who beamed. The mystery was deep and moving in my soul.
A clown doing tricks of legerdemain before a delighted throng caught sight of me away on the outskirts and, having not the slightest notion who I was, beckoned to me.
"Come up and join us, Mister Stork," he called jovially. "The gov'-nor asked me to find out how much bacon you've hid in your hat!"
"That's my secret, and I'll keep it," I shouted back,
"Come up unless you're a-feared," the clown persisted. "Ain't that a rabbit you've poached, wigglin' under your coat? Make way for him, friends. Why, blast me, I think he's Dick Turpin, the famous road knight!"
The bright-faced crowd parted obediently. It occurred to me to wave and walk away; then I remembered that I stood for Holgar Blackburn, and I had promised to make him a good showing in Tavistock.
But as I advanced, the laughing throng grew still. The clown's face fell as I neared him; then a little girl's voice rose clear and pure as the notes of a flute.
"Mama, is en a ogre?" she asked in cheerful curiosity.
I laughed at her; then the crowd shouted with laughter. It had hardly stilled when a young woman raised a shrill cr)'.
"Coo, 'tis Holgar Blackburn hisself!"
"Why, so 'tis," some deep-voiced countryman, a natural leader, broke forth in the breathless hush. "Folk, let's give en a cheerl"
They gave it with great vehemence and in the English fashion, and since they counted me one of them, the name they shouted at the end of the three hip, hip, hurrays was Holgar only. But a giant young farmer, in rollicking humor, was not content.
"Once more," he yelled, "and see that ye name en right!"
Again the cheer roared forth, to be heard a mile,
"Hip, hip, hurray,
Hip, hip, hurray.
Hip, hip, hurray,
OGRE!"
Afterward the people laughed loudly but nervously. I wished I could tell them that I perceived their delicate motive, that they had done a wonderfully considerate thing which most of their betters could not have conceived, that there was no danger of my misunderstanding their great sociability and philanthropy. Perhaps only the lowly—and a few of those so high that they need not always stand on guard—can be truly sociable. Look to these to learn good manners!
I could only laugh with them, wave my long arms, and walk away. Afterward I grinned over a curious sequence of names—Homer, Omar, Holgar, Ogre. Fate loves conceits of this sort, I thought; she is fond of puns and witticisms of all kinds. But very rarely does she complete a first-rate poem. So often her composition begins with a noble stanza, then falls apart.
The guardians of the workhouse arrived in a body. It was their duty, and they did it, and I grinned at their three-horned dilemma: their necessity of showing one another disapprobation of this sort of goings-on, their anxiety not to offend me, and an irrepressible human and boyish desire to share in the fun. They had not brought their wives or daughters; dash it all, there was a limit to what could be expected of them; and it was best that I understand this right from the start. It turned out, however, they were not properly supported in this virtuous stand. Not one of them was higher than a knight; while nothing less than an earl, with his countess and his children and two nurses and a footman, arrived presently in a coach, and the whole kaboodle ranged the grounds, eating free lunch and seeing the shows with every sign of delight. Before the afternoon was over, there was a definite sprinkling of nobility and gentry amid the throng.
One gentleman, a bluff sort with no nonsense about him, sought me out.
"A damned fine thing you're doing here, Mr. Blackburn, and I don't care who hears me say so," he told me.
"Thank you, thank you."
"I'm that Sir Thomas Wilson-Walch, whose name you may have heard—if you saw it in the public prints, it had B-a-r-t-period written after it. We can't keep our names out of the newspapers these days, and why should we try? After all, the common sort have a natural curiosity about our sort."
"Our" could have a flattering meaning in this case, but I decided not to stake on it.
"You're quite right, of course."
"There are some, Mr. Blackburn, who look down on men who've made their own way, but I'm not one of 'em. My hat's off to 'em, sir. What they lack in the little refinements, they make up in grit and pluck. I, for one, welcome you back to your native land."
"That's very good of you. Sir Thomas Wilson-Walch."
"Are you plarming to buy a seat here? A country seat, I mean."
"Not at present."
"What are you going to collect? Almost every man of means I know collects something—in the way of hobby, y'understand."
"I hadn't thought about it yet."
"It occurred to me you'd like to acquire a collection already made —save you a lot of trouble and time. Now I've made a collection of walking sticks and canes. I've every kind you could think of—sword canes, sticks from every country in the world, canes carried by kings and conquerors I paid a pretty penny for, I'll tell you that. For instance Richard III. He was an English king of three centuries and more ago, and a bit crippled. I have an oaken walking stick with a silver handle with his monogram on it plain as day. I dare say you've never heard of Tamerlane—the name means Timur the Lame—but he was as renowned in his day as Napoleon. I have his favorite crutch—ivory with a gold knob, with a dragon engraved on it. It happens my sons and daughters have taken other hobbies and I've no one to leave this priceless collection to, so I asked myself, why not sell it to Mr. Blackburn?"
"What price would you ask, Sir Thomas?"
"Now that's a joke, Blackburn—a man of your wealth asking the price of anything! Just say you want the collection, and there'll be no trouble about the price."
"Would it be under a thousand guineas?"
"Not much over that, I'm sure. Although you'd not believe it, one of my canes is made of rhinoceros hide and looks like amber. There's another—"
Suddenly the grim fun was over. I remembered a whip made of rhinoceros hide, known as the kurbash. It had repeatedly fallen with an awful sound when there came to the real Holgar Blackburn an impulse he could not resist.
"I'll take all you've said under advisement," I told the baronet. Quickly retreating, I left him flushed with anger.
No ghosts were made to rise and walk by this nincompoop; the momentary sharpness passed away; and having been shown a valuable sample of what was waiting for me, I could try to steer clear of the main. What told upon me far more was a glimpse I had of a young girl—about eighteen, I thought, in the company of a slightly younger girl, a boy of twelve or so whom I took to be the latter's brother, and a tall, erect elderly man, with a finely chiseled face, who I did not doubt belonged to the nobility. It was the girl's carriage that first caught my eyes—I could almost believe she had acquired it from carrying water jars on her head. On gazing at her idly, I thought warmly of Sophia. Then as I looked at her in growing pleasure and surprise, she reminded me of Isabel Gazelle.