Portrait of Elmbury by John Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

hours. My curiosity had to wait till then; and the story must wait too, until it falls into its proper place in this book. The only clue wechildren had was the word “railway train”; Old Nanny, whispering about Fred, had been heard to say “railway train.” This was very strange, for we had learned that the disappearance and disgrace of Clem, the clever one, the one who was “too clever by half” for the solid respectable family, was also connected somehow with trains. Trains, therefore, became associated in my young mind with mystery and adventure. They were magic carpets. They puffed conventionally enough out of Elmbury’s little station, but they carried you—whither, ah, whither?
Christmas Fair
    There was one day that fell in early December, more exciting than Christmas itself; the day of Christmas market. Always on this occasion my father’s firm provided sandwiches and drinks for all comers: dealers, smallholders, cowmen, shepherds, drovers. (The more substantial farmers were entertained to luncheon at the Swan.) Great were the preparations on the day before the market. Enormous joints sizzled in Old Cookie’s oven; baskets of loaves lay everywhere about the kitchen, huge pats of yellow butter, tongues, sausages, pasties. Maids were busy all day cutting sandwiches, which were piled on dishes and covered with napkins. There was an air of bustle and festivity all over the house; but, alas, the festive spirit coupled with the near approach of Christmas was too much for Old Cookie; when the last joint was roasted, she got drunk. Lachrymose, incoherent, completely plastered, she confronted my mother and was given the sack. Next morning, sick and repentant, she was re-engaged.
    Although the sale did not begin till half-past eleven, the first beasts began to pass our window as early as half-past nine. Thenceforward for two hours there passed down Elmbury High Street a procession such as might serve as a country counterpart of a Lord Mayor’s Show. But here were no city financiers whose riches were scraps of paper locked in safes—riches which might disappear to-morrow if somebody else juggled with his shares more cunningly. Here was solid wealth, the real wealth ofEngland, a sight that would have warmed old Cobbett’s heart to see: fat oxen, sleek and ponderous, white-faced Herefords curly haired between their straight horns, Shorthorns as rich-red as the fresh-turned loam, dark as the winter ploughland where the sweat stained their sides; flocks of sheep, broad and flat-backed so that the collies could run about on top of them, thick-woolled, black-faced Oxfords, whose multitudinous breaths in the frosty air made a mist which moved as their great flocks moved like rivers down the street; and huge fat waddling pigs, sows whose bellies had brought forth great litters and which now brushed the earth between their short legs, bacons, porkers, Large Whites, Large Blacks, Middle Whites, blue-mottled cross-breds, sandy Tamworths, and the ancient dappled breed of Gloster Spots.
    Here was the annual harvest of the great stock-fattening farms which lay in the rich valleys of the two rivers; here was a season’s consummation, the happy outcome of the marriage between English weather and English soil, delivered by the skill and patience of men whose grandfathers had owned their farms before them. To this end the turgid waters of last winter’s floods had left their rich alluvial deposit in the meadows, so that the spring grass sprang more greenly; to this end in Elmbury Ham in June, and in a thousand such great hayfields, sweaty men with pitchforks had built a village of sweet-smelling ricks; to this end swedes and turnips and mangel-wurzels, plump roots nearly as big as a football, had alternated in their proper rotations with golden corn and brown fallow on the slopes of the gentle hills which rose from the valleys. And now the purpose of all these labours was manifest. Down