Part 27 (1/2)

Rumour flies round a house quickly. In hall several people came up and asked Gordon if it was true. They looked at him curiously with an expression in which surprise and admiration were curiously blended. The old love of notoriety swept over Gordon once more; he felt frightfully bucked with himself. What a devil of a fellow he was, to be sure. He went round the studies in hall, proclaiming his audacity.

”I say, look here, old chap, you needn't tell anyone, but I am going out to Pack Monday Fair; it will be some rag!”

The sensation he caused was highly gratifying. By prayers all his friends and most of his acquaintances knew of it. Of course they would keep it secret. But Gordon knew well that by break next day it would be round the outhouses, and he looked forward to the number of questions he would get asked. To be the hero of an impending escapade was pleasant.

”I say, Davenport,” he said in his dormitory that evening, ”I am going out to the fair on Monday.”

Davenport said nothing, and showed no sign of surprise. Gordon was disappointed.

”Well, what do you think of it?” he said at last.

”That you are a sillier a.s.s than I thought you were,” said Davenport.

And as Gordon lay thinking over everything in the dark, he came to the conclusion that Davenport was not so very far wrong after all.

Cold and nervous, Gordon waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. A green.

There was the sound of feet on the stairs. It seemed to Gordon as if they were bound to wake the whole house. Rudd's figure was framed black in the doorway.

Silently they wormed their way through the window. The damp soil of a flower bed was cold under their feet; with his hand Rudd smoothed out the footprints.

They stole down the silent cloisters, echoing shadows leered at them.

The wall of the V. A green rose dark and sinister. At last breathless among the tombstones by the Abbey they slipped on their boots, turned up coat collars and drew their caps over their eyes.

A minute later the glaring lights of the booths in Cheap Street engulfed them. They were jostled in the crowd. It was, after all, only Hampstead Heath on a small scale.

”Walk up, walk up! All the fun of the fair! Buy a teazer! Buy a teazer!

Buy a teazer! Tickle the girls! Walk up! Try your luck at the darts, sir; now then, sir, come on!”

The confused roar was as music to Gordon's soul. He had the c.o.c.kney love of a fair. The children of London are still true to the coster legends of the Old Kent Road.

Gordon and Rudd did not stop long in Cheap Street. The real business was in the fair fields by Rogers's house. This was only the outskirts.

The next hour pa.s.sed in a dream. Lights flared, rifles snapped at fugitive ping-pong b.a.l.l.s leaping on cascades of water, swing-boats rose heavenwards, merry-go-rounds banged out rag-time choruses. Gordon let himself go. He and Rudd tried everything. After wasting half-a-crown on the cocoanuts, Rudd captured first go at the darts a wonderful vase decorated with the gilt legend, ”A Present from Fernhurst,” and Gordon at the rifle range won a beautiful china shepherdess which held for days the admiration of the School House, until pining perhaps for its lover, which by no outlay of darts could Gordon secure, it became dislodged from the bracket and fell in pieces on the floor, to be swept away by Arthur, the school _custos_, into the perpetual darkness of the dustbin.

Weary at last, the pair sought the shelter of a small cafe, where they luxuriously sipped lemonade. Faces arose out of the night, pa.s.sed by and faded out again. The sky was red with pleasure, the noise and shrieks grew louder and more insistent. There was a dance going on.

”I say, Rudd, do you dance?”

”No, not much.”

”Well, look here, I can, a bit; at any rate I am going to have a bit of fun over there. Let us go on our own for a bit. Meet me here at a quarter to four.”

”Right,” said Rudd, and continued sipping the lurid poison that called itself American cream soda, and was in reality merely a cheap illness.

Gordon walked in the direction of the dancing. The gra.s.s had been cut quite short in a circle, and to the time of a broken band the town dandies were whirling round, flushed with excitement and the close proximity of a female form. ”The Maenads and the Ba.s.sarids,” murmured Gordon to himself, and cursed his luck for not knowing any of the girls.

Disconsolately he wandered across to the Bijou Theatre, a tumble-down hut where a huge crowd was jostling and shouting.