A vigil suggests sleeplessness, a watching through the night which precedes the day of the feast; and Mary observed the vigil more thoroughly than any nun. Plenty of girls were equally devout at the same time; keeping awake, not because they wanted to, but because excitement rendered sleep impossible. Thomasine observed the vigil, and even Boodles watched and wished the dark gone. It was a long night all over Dartmoor. Even Siberian Princetown was aroused; and those who were being punished for their sins had the additional mortification of knowing that they would be behind prison bars on the day when the greatest saint in the calendar according to the use of Dartmoor, the blatant and waddling St. Goose, was to be honoured by a special service of excursion trains and various instruments of music.
Dawn impelled every maid to glance at the chair beside her bed, to be sure that the pixies had not run away with her fair-clothes. Thomasine looked for her completed petticoat, Boodles for her boy's photograph, Mary for her umbrella. There had been no pixy-pranks, and the day came in with a promise of sunshine. There were no lie-a-beds that morning. Even Peter had been restless, and Grandfather possibly noticed that the little man had not snored so regularly as usual.
To the dweller in the wilds there is no getting away from fair-day, the great country holiday of the year. Those who would wish to abolish such festivals should remember that country-folk have few pleasures, and the fair is about the last, and is certainly one of the greatest, inducements to keep them on the land. To a large number it is the single outing of the year; a thing to talk about for months before and afterwards; the day of family reunion, when a girl expects to see her parents, the young man meets his brother, and the old folk keep associations going. The fair is to country-folk very much what Christmas is to the better classes. And as for the pleasures they are nothing like so lurid as have been represented. Individuals are vicious; a pleasure-seeking crowd is not. There is a vast deal of drunkenness, and this is by far the worst feature, and one which cannot be eliminated except by compulsory closing of all houses of refreshment, which would be only possible under a Saturnian régime. As evening approaches there is also much of that unpleasantness which is associated with drunkenness, and is described in police-reports as obscene language. The fair-ground is not the best place for highly respectable people. It is the dancing-place of the lower classes; and as such the fair is a success and practically harmless. The girls are out for fun, and when they see a good-looking young man are not above making advances; and the stranger who steps up and introduces himself is sure of a welcome on his face value. It is all free and natural. Nearly every one is the better, and very few are the worse, for the holiday. Liquor is the principal cause of what evils there are. Tavistock Goose Fair after dark is far more respectable than Hyde Park at midnight.
Peter and Mary set forth on their walk across the moor to Lydford station, both of them attired in the festive garments which had been last assumed for the concert, Mary's large right hand clutching the umbrella by its ribs, Peter smoking industriously. They made a bee-line for their destination, heedless of mossy bogs, which were fairly firm at that time of the year. There were no rocks to hinder them. It is a bald stretch of moor between St. Mary Tavy and Lydford. Mary was breathing furiously from sheer excitement and nervousness, being dreadfully afraid they would miss the train. There was the station "down under," not more than half-a-mile away, and the train was not due for an hour, but Mary continued on the double. She did not understand mathematics and timetables. Peter trudged behind in a state of phlegmatic calm, natural to an old traveller, who had been to Plymouth by the sea and to Winkleigh on the hill.
For some time they had the platform to themselves. Then the moor began to give forth its living: young men and maidens, old men and wives, all going a-fairing, some treating the matter irreverently with unmusical laughter, others regarding the occasion as meet for an austere countenance. Peter was among those who cackled, while Mary was on the side of the anxious. She had to remind herself continually that she was enjoying life, although she would much rather have been at home chasing Old Sal among the furze-bushes. When the signals fell, and the bell rang, and the station began to rumble as the train approached, she clutched Peter and suggested they should return home. "Don't ye get mazed," said Peter crossly. "Come along wi' I."
Mary endeavoured to do so, but lost her head entirely when the train drew up, and went on to behave very much like a dog at a fair. She lost sight of her brother, scurried up and down the platform looking for him, and became still more confused when the cry, "Take your seats, please," sounded in her ears. The guard, who was used to queer passengers, took her by the arm with the idea of putting her into a carriage, but Mary defended herself against his designs with her umbrella, and breaking loose endeavoured to join the engine-driver. Meeting with no encouragement there she turned back, and was seized by Peter, who told her plainly she was acting foolishly, and again commanded her to come along with him. Mary obeyed, and everything was going favourably, and they were just about to enter a compartment when the umbrella slipped oat of her nervous hand, bumped upon the edge of the platform, and slid beneath the train.
Mary resumed her normal condition at once, caring no longer for train, crowd, or fair, while the fear of travelling ceased to trouble when she perceived that the umbrella had departed from her. She stood upon the platform, and declared with an oath that the system of the railway should work no more until the umbrella had been restored to her hands. Time was of no account to Mary. She refused to enter the train without her umbrella; neither should the train proceed, for she would hold on to it. Peter upheld his sister. The umbrella was a family heirloom. The station-master and guard urged and blasphemed in vain. The homely epithets of the porter were received with contempt and the response, "Us bain't a-going. Us be going to bide."
Passengers in the adjoining compartment were perturbed, because it was rumoured among them that the poor woman had dropped a baby beneath the train, and they believed that the officials were contending that there was nothing in the regulations about ordinary humanity, and it was therefore their duty to let the child remain there. The guard and station-master became unpopular. The passengers were in no great hurry to proceed, as they were out for a day's enjoyment; and as for Mary, great was her lamentation for the lost umbrella.
"'Tis a little gal, name of Ella," explained a stout commoner with his head out of the window, for the benefit of others in the carriage.
"Sounded to me like Bella," replied his wife, differing from him merely as a matter of principle.