Memoirs of a Midget Part 53

So to this day I see my showman. His circus, I believe, continues to roam the English country-side, and by the mercy of heaven he will die in his bed, or, better still, in the bracken. But I suppose, like most of us, he was a slave to his own superst.i.tions, or perhaps it was my very littleness, combined with the memory of some old story he had heard as a boy, that intimidated him. His mouth opened; his whip shook; the grin of a wild beast swept over his face. But he said no more.

Yet his, none the less, was half the victory. Nothing on earth could now have dissuaded me from keeping my bargain. His words had bitterly frightened me. No one else should be "gowked" up there. I turned my back on him. He could go; I was ready.

But if I could be obstinate, so too could Mr Anon. And when at last our argument was over, I in sheer weariness had agreed to a compromise. It was that I should show myself; and he take my place in the circus. The showman's money was safe; that was all _he_ cared about. If "Humpty"

liked to petticoat himself up like a doxy and take my "turn" in the ring--why, it was a rank smelling robbery, but let him--let him. He bawled for the woman, flung a last curse at us, and withdrew.

We were alone--only the vacancy of the tent between us. Beyond the narrow slit I could see the merry jostling crowds, hoydens and hobbledehoys, with their penny squirts and pasteboard noses and tin trumpets. A strange luminousness bathed their faces and clothes, beautifying them with light and shadow, carpeting with its soft radiance the rough grey-green gra.s.s. The harvest moon was brightening. I went near to him and touched his sleeve. His lips contracted, his shoulder drew in from my touch.

"Listen," I pleaded. "One hour--that is all. That evening in Wanderslore--do you remember? All my troubles over. Yes, I know. I have brought you to this. But then we can talk. Then you shall forgive me."

He stretched out his hand. A shuffling step, a light were approaching. I fled back, s.n.a.t.c.hed up my bundle, and climbed up into the darkness behind my canvas curtain. The next moment gigantic shadows rushed furiously into hiding, the tent was swamped with the flaring of the naphtha-lamp which the gipsy-woman had come to hang to the tent-pole to light my last seance.

A few hasty minutes, and, stealing out, I bade Mr Anon look. All Angelique's fair hair had been tied into a bob and draped mantilla-fas.h.i.+on with a thick black veil. A black, coa.r.s.e fringe torn from the head of a doll which I had found in the bottom of my trunk, dangled over her forehead. Her eyebrows were angled up like a Chinaman's. Her cheeks were chalk-white, except for a dab of red on the bone, and she was dressed in a flounced gown, jet black and yellow, which I had cobbled up overnight and had padded out, bust, hips, and shoulders to nearly double my natural size. A spreading topaz brooch was on her breast, chains of beads and coral dangled to her waist, and a silk fan lay on her arm.

I swept him a curtsey. "I dreamt that I dwe-elt in mar-arble halls," I piped out in a quavering falsetto. The folly of taking things so solemnly. What was humanity but a dressed-up ape? Had not my fair saint, Isobel de Flores, painted her cheeks, and garlanded her hair? And all his answer was to clench his teeth. He turned away with a shudder.

The drum reverberated, the panpipes squealed. I signed to him to hide himself in the recess among my discarded clothes, out of sight of peeping eyes, and arranged my person on the satin and rabbit-skins.

The tent flap lifted and the mob pressed in. Stretching out in a queue like a serpent, I caught a glimpse in the pale saffron moonlight of the crowd beyond. The sixpences danced in the tray. Once more the flap descended; my audience stilled. I looked from one to the other, smiling, defiant.

"Why, Bob said she was a pale, pinched-up snippet of a thing with golden hair," whispered a slip of a girl to a smooth little woman at her side.

"Ay, my Goff! And a waist like a wedding-ring," responded a wide mouth in a large red face, peering over.

"Ah, lady," warbled the Signorina, "fair to-day and foul to-morrow.

'Believe what you are told,' clanked the bell in the churchyard.

Stuffing, my pretty; ask the goose!"

So went the Signorina's last little orgy. It would be a lie to profess that she, or rather some black hidden ghost in her, did not enjoy it. My monstrous disguise, that ferment of humanity, those owlish faces, the lurking shame, the danger, the poisonous excitement swept me clean out of myself. Anything to be free for a while from "pernickety" Miss M. But that, I suppose, is the experience of every gambler and wastrel and jezebel in the world, every one of his kind. One must not open the door too wide.

But this was not all. On other nights I had been alone. Now I was fervidly conscious of unseen, hungering eyes, watching every turn, and glance, and gesture. My dingy das was no longer in actuality. I lived in that one watcher's mind--in his imagination. And deep beneath this insane excitement lay a gentle, longing happiness. Oh, when this vile tinsel show was over, and these swarming faces had melted into thin air, and the moonlit empty night was ours, what would I not pour out for his peace and comfort. What grat.i.tude and tenderness for all that he had been to me, and done, and said. Why, we seemed never even to have spoken to each other--not self to self, and there was all the world to tell.

Hotter, ranker grew the fetid atmosphere. I could scarcely breathe in my monstrous mummery. But clearly, the showman was making a rich bargain of me, and rumour of a Midget that was golden as Aphrodite one night, and black as pitch the next, only thickened the swarm. At length--long expected--there came a pause. Yet another country urchin flat on his stomach in the gra.s.s, with head goggling up at me from the hem of the canvas, was dragged out, screeching and laughing, by his breeches. But I had caught the accents of a well-known voice, and, crouching, with head wrenched aside to listen, I heard the gipsy's whining reply.

My moment had come. A pulse began its tattoo in my head. To remain helplessly lying there was impossible. I thrust myself on to my feet and, drawing back a pace or two, stood hunched up on the crimson spread of satin beside my wooden bolster. The canvas lifted, and one by one, the little party of "gentry" stooped and filed in.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Mrs Monnerie had paid for elbow room. It was the last "Private View" in this world we were to share together. The sight of her capacious figure with its great bonnet and the broad, dark face beneath, now suddenly become strange and hostile, filled me with a vague sense of desolation.

Yet I know she has forgiven me. Had I not pocketed my "pretty little fastidiousness"?

What f.a.n.n.y had planned to do if Miss M., plain and simple, had occupied the Signorina's table I cannot even guess. For the spectacle of the squat, black, gloating guy she actually found there, she was utterly unprepared. It seemed, as I looked at her, that myself had fainted--had withdrawn out of my body--like the spirit in sleep. Or, maybe, not to be too nice about it, I merely "became" my disguise. With mind emptied of every thought, I sank into an almost lifeless stagnancy, and with a heavy settled stare out of my black and yellow, from under the coa.r.s.e fringe that brushed my brows, I met her eyes. Out of time and place, in a lightless, vacant solitude, we wrestled for mastery. At length the sneering, incredulous smile slowly faded from the pale, lovely face, leaving it twisted up as if after a nauseous draught of physic. Her gaze faltered, and fell. Her bosom rose; she coughed and turned away.

"Hideous! monstrous!" murmured Mrs Monnerie to the tall, expressionless figure that stood beside her. "The abject evil of the creature!"

Her dark, appraising glance travelled over me--feet, hands, body, lace-draped head. It swept across my eyes as if they were less significant than bits of china stuck in a cocoanut.

"No, Miss Bowater," she turned ma.s.sively round on her, "you were perfectly right, it seems. As usual--but a dangerous habit, my dear. My little ransoming scheme must wait a bit. Just as well, perhaps, that our patient's dainty nerves should have been spared this particular little initiation----. Could one have imagined it?"

Mr Padgwick-Steggall merely raised his eyebrows. "I shouldn't have cared to try," he drawled. And the lady beside him made a little mouth and laid her gloved hand on his arm.

"But, Madame is forgetting," whined the Signorina in a broken nosy English over her outspread fan, "Madame is forgetting. It's alive! Oh, truly!" and I clasped my arms even tighter across my padded chest, my body involuntarily rocking to and fro, though not with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Madame is forgetting nothing of the kind," retorted Mrs Monnerie heartily. "The princess is an angel--Angelique--adorable." She turned to the gipsy woman and slipped a coin into the claw-like fingers. "Well, good-night," she nodded at me. "We are perfectly satisfied."

"La, la, Madame," my stuttering voice called after her, the words leaping out from some old hiding-place in my mind. "_Je vous remercie, madame. Rien ne va plus.... Noir gagne!_"

Her ebony stick shook beneath her hand. "Unspeakable," she angrily e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, stumping her way out. "A positive outrage against humanity."

I shut my eyes, but the silent laughter that had once overtaken me in my bedroom at Mrs Bowater's scarcely sounded in my head. And Mrs Monnerie could more easily survive the little exchange than I. My body was dull and aching as if after a severe fall. The booth was filling for the last time.

Little life was left in the inert figure that faced this new a.s.sortment of her fellow-creatures: how strangely dissimilar one from another; how horrifyingly alike. A faint premonition bade me be on my guard. Under the wavering flame of the lamp, my glance moved slowly on from face to face, eye on to eye; and behind every one a watcher whom now I dared not wait to challenge. Empty or cynical, disgusted, malevolent, or blankly curious, they met me: none pitiful; none saddened or afflicted. On former nights---- Why had they grown so hostile? This, then, was to smother in the bog.

But one face there was known to me, and that known well. Hoping, perhaps, to take me unaware, or may it have been to s.n.a.t.c.h a secret word with me; f.a.n.n.y had slipped back into the tent again, and was now steadily regarding me from behind the throng. A throng so densely packed together that the canvas walls bulged behind them, and the tent-pole bent beneath the strain. Yet so much alone were she and I in that last infinite moment that we might have been whispering together after death.

And this time, suddenly overwhelmed with self-loathing, it was I who turned away.

When, stretching my cramped limbs, I drew back, exhausted and s.h.i.+vering, from the empty tent, I thought for an instant that the figure which sat crouching in the corner of the recess was asleep. But no: with head averted, sweat gleaming on his forehead, he rose to his feet. His consciousness had been my theatre in a degree past even my realization.

"Then, that is over," was all he said. "Now it is my turn."

The voice was flat and indifferent, but he could not conceal his disgust of what had pa.s.sed, nor his dread of what was to come. Why, I thought angrily once more as I looked at him, why did he exaggerate things like this? Even a drowning man can sink three times, and still cheat the water. What cared I?--the night was nearly over. We should have won release. Why consider it so deeply? But even while I pleaded with him to let me finish the wretched business--every savour of adventure and daring and romance gone from it now--I was conscious of the trussed-up monstrosity that confronted him. He could not endure even a glance at my painted face. I stepped back from him with a hidden grimace. Past even praying for, then. So be it.

I heard the nimble stepping of the pony's hoofs on the worn turf. A sullen malice smouldered in its reddish, luminous eyes. When I clutched at its bridle it jerked back its sensitive head as if teased with a gadfly. The gipsy daubed vermilion on my friend's sallow cheeks. She shook out the tarnished finery she had brought with her and hung it round the stooping shoulders. She plastered down his black hair above his eyes, and thrust a riding-whip into his hand.

"There, my fine pretty gentleman," she smirked at him. "King of the Carrots! I lay even your own mammie wouldn't know you now, not even if you tried it straddle-legs. Tug at the knot, lovey; it's fast, but it won't strangle you. As for you, you----!" she suddenly flamed at me, "all very fly and cunning, but if I'd had the fixing of it, you wouldn't have diddled me: not you. I know _your_ shop. Slick off double quick, I warn you, or you'll have the mob at your heels. Now then, master!"

She grasped at the bridle, slapped the tooth-bared sensitive muzzle with her hand. I drew back, cowed and speechless. The sour thought died in my mind--Better, perhaps, if we had missed each other on the road. The pony jerked and s.n.a.t.c.hed back its head.

He was gone, and now I was quite alone. What was there to fear? Only his contempt, his loathing of this last humiliation? But that, too, would soon be nothing but a memory. As always, the present would glide into the past. Yet a dreadful foreboding daunted me. Coa.r.s.e canvas, walls and roof, table, beaten gra.s.s, my very hands and clothes had become menacing and unreal. The lamp hissed and bubbled as if at any moment it would burst asunder. Alone, afraid, ashamed, in the foulness of the tent, I looked around me in the silence; and beyond, above--the Universe of night and s.p.a.ce. All my life but the feeble rustlings of a mouse in straw.

As I stripped off my miserable gewgaws I discovered myself talking into my solitude; weeping, beseeching, though eyes were dry and tongue silent. I scoured away the chalk and paint: and cleansed as far as possible my travel-stained clothes. From my bit of looking-gla.s.s a scared and s.h.i.+ning face looked out. "Oh, my dear," I whispered, but not to its reflection, "it is as clean now and for ever as I can make it." I tied up my bundle.

It was impossible to cheat away the moments any longer. I sat down and listened. A distant roar of welcome, like that of a wave breaking over a wreck, had been borne across as the band broke into its welcoming tune.

I saw the ring, its tall, lank-cheeked "master" in his white s.h.i.+rt and coat-tails, the lights, the sidling, squalling clown, and the slim, exquisite creature with its ungainly rider ambling on and on. Where sat f.a.n.n.y amidst that rabble? What were her thoughts? Was Mrs Monnerie already yawning over the low, beggarly scene? A few minutes now. I began to count. A scream, human or animal, rose faint and awful in the distance, and died away.

I climbed down the ladder and looked out of the tent. Far-spread the fields and wooded hills lay, as if in a swoon beneath the blazing moonlight. The scattered lamps on the slope shone dim as glow-worms.

Only a few figures loitered in the gleam of the side-shows, and so engrossed and still sat the watching mult.i.tude beneath the enormous mushroom of the tent, so thinly floated out its strains of music, that the hollow clucking of the stream over its pebbles beneath the wan-stoned bridge was audible. A few isolated stars glittered faintly in the heights of the sky. What was happening now? Why did he not hasten? I was ready: my life prepared. I could bear no more waiting. A whip cracked. The music ceased: silence. One moment now.

Again the whip cracked. And then, as if at a signal, a vast, protracted, unanimous bawl poured up into s.p.a.ce, a spout of sound, like a gigantic, invisible flower. "That wasn't applause. But, you know, that wasn't applause," I heard myself muttering. There can be no mistaking the sound of human mockery. There can be no mistaking that brutal wrench at the heart, under one's very ribs. I leapt round where I stood, in a kind of giddiness.

The shout died away. An indiscriminate clamour broke out--clapping of hands, beating of feet, whistling, hootings, booings, catcalls, and these all but drowned by cymbal, drum, trombone: "Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye." It was over. Unlike Mrs Monnerie, the mob was imperfectly satisfied. But all was well. The elephant, ma.s.sive, imperturbable--the sagacious elephant with the hurdy-gurdy, must now be swinging into the ring.

I ran out over the trampled gra.s.s to meet the approaching group--showman, gipsy, trembling, sweating pony. Its rider stooped forward on the saddle, clutching its pommel, as if afraid of falling. He pushed himself off, lurched unsteadily, lifted and let fall his arm in an attempt to stroke the milk-white snapping muzzle. The strings of his cloak were already broken. He edged from beneath it, and with his left hand clumsily brushed the dust and damp from his face.