Memoirs of a Midget Part 19

"You mean Miss M. _recites_?" inquired Miss Bullace, leaning forward over her lap. "But how entrancing! It is we, then, who are birds of a feather. And how I should adore to hear a fellow-enthusiast. Now, won't you, Lady Pollacke, join your entreaties to mine? Just a _stanza_ or two!"

A chill crept through my bones. I had accepted Lady Pollacke's invitation, thinking my mere presence would be entertainment enough, and because I knew it was important to see life, and immensely important to see Mr Crimble. In actual fact it seemed I had hopped for a moment not _out_ of my cage, but merely, as f.a.n.n.y had said, into another compartment of it.

"But Mr Crimble and I were only talking," I managed to utter.

"Oh, now, but do! Delicious!" pleaded a trio of voices.

Their faces had suddenly become a little strained and unnatural. The threat of further persuasion lifted me almost automatically to my feet.

With hunted eyes fixed at last on a small marble bust with stooping head and winged brow that stood on a narrow table under the window, I recited the first thing that sprang to remembrance--an old poem my mother had taught me, _Tom o' Bedlam_.

"The moon's my constant mistress, And the lovely owl my marrow; The flaming drake, And the night-crow, make Me music to my sorrow.

I know more than Apollo; For oft when he lies sleeping, I behold the stars At mortal wars, And the rounded welkin weeping.

The moon embraces her shepherd, And the Queen of Love her warrior; While the first does horn The stars of the morn, And the next the heavenly farrier...."

Throughout these first three stanzas all went well. So rapt was my audience that I seemed to be breaking the silence of the seas beyond their furthest Hebrides. But at the first line of the fourth--at "With a heart"--my glance unfortunately wandered off from the unheeding face of the image and swam through the air, to be caught, as it were, like fly by spider, by Miss Bullace's dark, fixed gaze, that lay on me from under her flat hat.

"'With a heart,'" I began; and failed. Some ghost within had risen in rebellion, sealed my tongue. It seemed to my irrational heart that I had--how shall I say it?--betrayed my "stars," betrayed f.a.n.n.y, that she and they and I could never be of the same far, quiet company again. So the "furious fancies" were never shared. The blood ran out of my cheek; I stuck fast; and shook my head.

At which quite a little tempest of applause spent itself against the walls of Lady Pollacke's drawing-room, an applause reinforced by that of a little round old gentleman, who, unnoticed, had entered the room by a farther door, and was now advancing to greet his guest. He was promptly presented to me on the beast-skin, and with the gentlest courtesy begged me to continue.

"'With a heart,' now; 'with a heart ...'" he prompted me, "a most important organ, though less in use nowadays than when _I_ was a boy."

But it was in vain. Even if he had asked me only to whisper the rest of the poem into his long, pink ear, for his sake alone, I could not have done so. Moreover, Mr Crimble was still nodding his head at his mother in confirmation of his applause; and Miss Bullace was a.s.suring me that mine was a poem entirely unknown to her, that, "with a few little _excisions_," it should be instantly enshrined in her repertory--"though perhaps a little bizarre!" and that if I made trial of Lady Bovill Porter's _Bowershee_ method, my memory would never again play me false.

"The enunciation--am I not right, Sir Walter?--as distinct from the elocution--was flawless. And really, quite remarkable vocal power!"

Amidst these smiles and delights, and what with the bra.s.sy heat of the fire and the scent of the skin, I thought I should presently faint, and caught, as if at a straw, at the bust in the window.

"How lovely!" I cried, with pointing finger....

At that, silence fell, but only for a moment. Lady Pollacke managed to follow the unexpected allusion, and led me off for a closer inspection.

In the hushed course of our progress thither I caught out of the distance two quavering words uttered as if in expostulation, "apparent intelligence." It was Mrs Crimble addressing Sir Walter Pollacke.

"Cla.s.sical, you know," Lady Pollacke was sonorously informing me, as we stood together before the marble head. "Charming pose, don't you think?

Though, as we see, only a fragment--one of Sir Walter's little hobbies."

I looked up at the serene, winged, sightless face, and a whisper sounded on and on in my mind in its mute presence, "I know more than Apollo; I know more than Apollo." How strange that this mere deaf-and-dumbness should seem more real, more human even, than anything or any one else in Lady Pollacke's elegant drawing-room. But self-possession was creeping back. "Who," I asked, "_is_ he? And who sculped him?"

"Scalped him?" cried Lady Pollacke, poring down on me in dismay.

"Cut him out?"

"Ah, my dear young lady," said a quiet voice, "that I cannot tell you.

It is the head of Hypnos, Sleep, you know, the son of Night and brother of Death. One wing, as you see, has been broken away in preparation for this more active age, and yet ... only a replica, of course"; the voice trembled into richness, "but an exceedingly pleasant example. It gives me rare pleasure, rare pleasure," he stood softly rocking, hands under coat-tails, eyes drinking me in, "to--to have your companions.h.i.+p."

What pleasure his words gave _me_, I could not--can never--express. Then and there I was his slave for ever.

"Walter," murmured Lady Pollacke, as if fondly, smiling down on the rotund old gentleman, "you are a positive peac.o.c.k over your little toys; is he not, Mr Crimble? Did you ever hear of a _woman_ wasting her affections on the inanimate? Even a doll, I am told, is an infant in disguise."

But Mr Crimble had approached us not to discuss infants or woman, but to tell Lady Pollacke that her carriage was awaiting me.

"Then pity 'tis, 'tis true," cried she, as if in Miss Bullace's words.

"But _please_, Miss M., it must be the briefest of adieus. There are so many of my friends who would enjoy your company--and those delightful recitations. Walter, will you see that everything's quite--er--convenient?"

I am sure Lady Pollacke's was a flawless _savoir faire_, yet, when I held out my hand in farewell, her cheek crimsoned, it seemed, from some other cause than stooping. The crucial moment had arrived. If one private word was to be mine with Mr Crimble, it must be now or never. To my relief both gentlemen accompanied me out of the room, addressing their steps to mine. Urgency gave me initiative. I came to a standstill on the tesselated marble of the hall, and this time proffered my hand to Sir Walter. He stooped himself double over it; and I tried in vain to dismiss from remembrance a favourite reference of Pollie's to the guinea-pig held up by its tail.

I wonder now what Sir W. would have said of _me_ in _his_ autobiography: "And _there_ stood a flaxen spelican in the midst of the hearthrug; blus.h.i.+ng, poor tiny thing, over her little piece like some little bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss fresh from school." Something to that effect? I wonder still more who taught him so lovable a skill in handling that spelican?

"There; good-bye," said he, "and the blessing, my dear young lady, of a fellow fanatic."

He turned about and ascended the staircase. Except for the parlour-maid who was awaiting me in the porch, Mr Crimble and I were alone.

Chapter Twenty

"Mr Crimble," I whispered, "I have a message."

A tense excitement seized him. His face turned a dusky yellow. How curious it is to see others as they must sometimes see ourselves. Should _I_ have gasped like that, if Mr Crimble had been f.a.n.n.y's Mercury?

"A letter from Miss Bowater," I whispered, "and I am to say," the cadaverous face was close above me, its sombre melting eyes almost bulging behind their gla.s.ses, "I am to say that she is giving yours '_her earnest attention, let alone her prayers_.'"

I remember once, when Adam Waggett as a noisy little boy was playing in the garden at home, the string of his toy bow suddenly snapped: Mr Crimble drew back as straight and as swiftly as that. His eyes rained unanswerable questions. But the parlourmaid had turned to meet me, and the next moment she and I were side by side in Lady Pollacke's springy carriage _en route_ for my lodgings. I had given my message, but never for an instant had I antic.i.p.ated it would have so overwhelming an effect.

There must have been something inebriating in Lady Pollacke's tea. My mind was still simmering with excitement. And yet, during the whole of that journey, I spent not a moment on Mr Crimble's or f.a.n.n.y's affairs, or even on Brunswick House, but on the dreadful problem whether or not I ought to "tip" the parlourmaid, and if so, with how much. Where had I picked this enigma up? Possibly from some chance reference of my father's. It made me absent and hara.s.sed. I saw not a face or a flower; and even when the parlourmaid was actually waiting at my request in Mrs Bowater's pa.s.sage, I stood over my money-chest, still incapable of coming to a decision.

Instinct prevailed. Just as I could not bring myself to complete _Tom o'

Bedlam_ with Miss Bullace looking out of her eyes at me, so I could not bring myself to offer money to Lady Pollacke's nice prim parlourmaid.

Instead I hastily scrabbled up in tissue paper a large flat brooch--a bloodstone set in pinchbeck--a thing of no intrinsic value, alas, but precious to me because it had been the gift of an old servant of my mother's. I hastened out and lifting it over my head, pushed it into her hand.

Dear me, how ashamed of this impulsive action I felt when I had regained my solitude. Should I not now be the jest of the Pollacke kitchen and drawing-room alike?--for even in my anxiety to attain Mr Crimble's private ear, I had half-consciously noticed what a cascade of talk had gushed forth when Mr Crimble had closed the door of the latter behind him.

That evening I shared with Mrs Bowater my experiences at Brunswick House. So absorbed was I in my own affairs that I deliberately evaded any reference to hers. Yet her pallid face, seemingly an inch longer and many shades more austere these last two days, touched my heart.

"You won't think," I pleaded at last, "that I don't infinitely prefer being here, with you? Isn't it, Mrs Bowater, that you and I haven't quite so many things to _pretend_ about? It is easy thinking of others when there are only one or two of them. But whole drawing-roomsful!

While here; well, there is only just you and me."

"Why, miss," she replied, "as for pretending, the world's full of shadows, though substantial enough when it comes to close quarters. If we were all to look at things just bare in a manner of speaking, it would have to be the Garden of Eden over again. It can't be done. And it's just that that what's called the gentry know so well. We must make the best use of the mess we can."

I was tired. The thin, sweet air of spring, wafted in at my window after the precocious heat of the day, breathed a faint, reviving fragrance. A curious excitement was in me. Yet her words, or perhaps the tone of her voice, coloured my fancy with vague forebodings. I pushed aside my supper, slipped off my fine visiting clothes, and put on my dressing-gown. With lights extinguished, I drew the blind, and strove for a while to puzzle out life's riddle for myself. Not for the first or the last time did wandering wits cheat me of the goal, for presently in the quiet out of my thoughts, stole into my imagination the vision of that dreaming head my eyes had sheltered on.

"Hypnos," I sighed the word; and--another face, f.a.n.n.y's, seemed to melt into and mingle with the visionary features. Why, why, was my desperate thought, why needed _she_ allow the world to come to such close quarters? Why, with so many plausible reasons given in her letter for keeping poor Mr Crimble waiting, had she withheld the one that counted for most? And what was it? I knew in my heart that _that_ could not be "making the best use of the mess." Surely, if one just told only the truth, there wasn't anything else to tell. It had taken me some time to learn this lesson.