"We shall—parlous close; and as an 'in-law' to Mrs. Huxam, Jacob, same as me, you go in a bit of fear, too, no doubt?"
"Not I."
"Well, you're older and powerfuller than me, of course. But she's got a weak spot, which you haven't found out and I have. Jeremy's her weak spot, thank God. She sees what a man he really is under his bad luck, and he'll never go scat really—not while she's above ground. She feels to Jeremy same as Mr. Huxam feels to your wife. And I dare say you've gained by that sometimes."
"I didn't know that Barlow Huxam is specially set on Margery," he answered.
"Oh, yes, he is," said Jane. "So they're both safe, and both will be snug sooner or late. Of course that don't matter to a rich man like you; but it's a comforting thought for me. Those the Lord loveth, He chasteneth—so Mrs. Huxam says; but anybody can weather a few storms if he knows he'll be safe in port sooner or late."
With this nautical simile, Jacob left Jane to continue her packing. And then, as he turned his horse's head for home, a sudden whim took him and—why he could not have explained to himself—he decided to go to Brent and look upon the fair. Thinking back in years to come, he dated a very perceptible increase of his soul's sickness from that day. It was a disease of an intermittent sort, masked sometimes by circumstance, drugged sometimes by the passage of events; but fitfully it progressed, punctuated by incidents; and from the day of the Pony Fair, it always seemed to the man that his ailment grew, until it blotted clean thinking and, by its progress, so weakened reason that the end came before its time, but not before he was sapped and riddled with the poison. He knew also, that but for the act of chance and the hazards of his well-protected life, the venom might have remained immune within his nature for ever. But the accidents of existence offered a seed bed, and the thing increased until a climax inexorable swept away the foundations of his ordered days and left him to the challenge of the ruins.
Cloud banks already ascended over the horizon southerly as the sun sank upon Ugborough Beacon; but weather could not now defeat the day, or lessen its triumph. A very successful fair had rewarded local effort. Prices were good and the ponies brought a harvest to their owners. Crowds wandered over the enclosures, and the last competition, for driving hacks, was in progress at four of the afternoon. Jeremy and his father were watching it, with Avis and Robert Elvin, who had sold his stock to satisfy himself. Then the boy and girl drifted away together and Robert entertained her at various stalls, where sweetmeats and trumpery were being sold. They listened to Cheap Jack, and presently Robert invited Avis to have her fortune told by a green-and-yellow parrokeet. He paid sixpence out of five shillings of his private savings, and an Italian woman set her little bird about its task. It plucked a grubby card, and Avis learned she would marry a dark, handsome man with plenty of money.
"I hope that will come true," said Robert.
"Now see your luck," urged Avis; but Bob was not going to spend another sixpence in this fashion.
"Your luck might be mine," he murmured, and Avis, who thought well of the youth, made no comment. She was sixteen now and Robert eighteen.