Memoirs of a Midget

by de la Mare, Walter;

  ‘The danger was to keep her back,’ was the obscure reply. ‘We don’t always see eye to eye.’

  For an instant the dark, cavernous face above me was mated by that other of birdlike lightness and beauty. ‘Isn’t it funny?’ I observed, ‘I had made quite, quite a different picture of her.’

  ‘Looks are looks, and brains are brains; and between them you must tread very wary.’

  About eleven o’clock a solemn-looking young man of about thirty, with a large pair of reddish leather gloves in his hand, entered the room. For a moment he did not see my bedroom, then, remarking circumspectly in a cheerful, hollow voice, ‘So this is our patient,’ he bade me good-morning, and took a seat beside my bed. A deep blush mounted up into the fair, smooth-downed cheeks as he returned my scrutiny and asked me to exhibit my tongue. I put it out, and he blushed even deeper.

  ‘And the pulse, please,’ he murmured, rising. I drew back the crimson sleeve of Fanny’s jacket, and with extreme nicety he placed the tip of a square, icy forefinger on my wrist. Once more his fair-lashed eyelids began to blink. He extracted a fine gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, compared beat with beat, frowned, and turned to Mrs. Bowater.

  ‘You are not, I assume, aware of the – the young lady’s normal pulse?’

  ‘There being no cause before to consider it, I am not,’ Mrs. Bowater returned.

  ‘Any pain?’ said Dr. Phelps.

  ‘Headache’, replied Mrs. Bowater on my behalf, ‘and shoots in the limbs.’

  At that Dr. Phelps took a metal case out of his waistcoat, glanced at it, glanced at me, and put it back again. He leaned over so close to catch the whisper of my breathing that there seemed a danger of my losing myself in the labyrinth of his downy ear.

  ‘H’m, a little fever,’ he said musingly. ‘Have we any reason to suppose that we can have taken a chill?’

  The head on the pillow stirred gently to and fro, and I think its cheek was dyed with an even sprightlier red than had coloured his. After one or two further questions, and a low colloquy with Mrs. Bowater in the passage, Dr. Phelps withdrew, and his carriage rolled away.

  ‘A painstaking young man’, Mrs. Bowater summed him up in the doorway, ‘but not the kind I should choose to die under. You are to keep quiet and warm, miss; have plenty of light nourishment; and physic to follow. Which, except for the last mentioned, and that mainly water, one don’t have to ride in a carriage to know for one’s self.’

  But ‘peace and goodwill’: I liked Dr. Phelps, and felt so much better for his skill that before his wheels had rolled out of hearing I had leapt out of bed, dragged out the trunk that lay beneath it, and fetched out from it a treasured ivory box. On removal of the lid, this ingenious work disclosed an Oriental Temple, with a spreading tree, a pool, a long-legged bird, and a mountain. And all these exquisitely tinted in their natural colours. It had come from China, and had belonged to my mother’s brother, Andrew, who was an officer in the Navy and had died at sea. This I wrapped up in a square of silk and tied with a green thread. During the whole of his visit my head had been so hotly in chase of this one stratagem that it is a marvel Dr. Phelps had not deciphered it in my pulse.

  When Mrs. Bowater brought in my Christmas dinner – little but bread sauce and a sprig of holly! – I dipped in the spoon, and, as innocently as I knew how, inquired if her daughter would like to see some really fine sewing.

  The black eyes stood fast, then the ghost of a smile vanished over her features; ‘I’ll be bound she would, miss. I’ll give her your message.’ Alone again, I turned over on my pillow and laughed until tears all but came into my eyes.

  All that afternoon I waited on, the coals of fire that I had prepared for my enemy’s head the night before now ashes of penitence on my own. A dense smell of cooking pervaded the house; and it was not until the evening that Fanny Bowater appeared.

  She was dressed in a white muslin gown with a wreath of pale green leaves in her hair. ‘I am going to a party,’ she said, ‘so I can’t waste much time.’

  ‘Mrs. Bowater thought you would like to see some really beautiful needlework,’ I replied suavely.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘where is it?’

  ‘Won’t you come a little closer?’

  That figure, as nearly like the silver slip of the new moon as ever I have seen, seemed to float in my direction. I held my breath and looked up into the light, dwelling eyes. ‘It is this,’ I whispered, drawing my two hands down the bosom of her crimson dressing-jacket. ‘It is only, Thank you, I wanted to say.’

  In a flash her lips broke into a low clear laughter. ‘Why, that’s nothing. Really and truly I hate that kind of work; but mother often wrote of you; there was nothing better to do; and the smallness of the thing amused me.’

  I nodded humbly. ‘Yes, yes,’ I muttered, ‘Midget is as Midget wears. I know that. And – and here, Miss Bowater, is a little Christmas present from me.’

  Voraciously I watched her smooth face as she untied the thread. ‘A little ivory box!’ she exclaimed, pushing back the lid, ‘and a Buddhist temple, how very pretty. Thank you.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Bowater, and, do you see, in the corner there, a moon? She enchants you.’

  ‘So it is,’ she laughed, closing the box. ‘I was supposing,’ she went on solemnly, ‘that I had been put in the corner in positively everlasting disgrace.’

  ‘Please don’t say that,’ I entreated. ‘We may be friends, mayn’t we? I am better now.’

  Her eyes wandered over my bed, my wardrobe, and all my possessions. ‘But yes,’ she said, ‘of course’; and laughed again.

  ‘And you believe me?’

  ‘Believe you?’

  ‘That it was the stars? I thought Mrs. Bowater might be anxious if she knew. It was quite, quite safe, really; and I’m going to tell her.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she replied in a cold, small voice, ‘so you are still worrying about that. I – I envied you.’ With a glance over her shoulder, she leaned closer. ‘Next time you go,’ she breathed out to me, ‘we’ll go together.’

  My heart gave a furious leap; my lips closed tight. ‘I could tell you the names of some of the stars now,’ I said, in a last wrestle with conscience.

  ‘No, no,’ said Fanny Bowater, ‘it isn’t the stars I’m after. The first fine night we’ll go to the woods. You shall wait for me till everything is quiet. It will be good practice in practical astronomy.’ She watched my face, and began silently laughing as if she were reading my thoughts. ‘That’s a bargain, then. What is life, Miss M., but experience? And what is experience, but knowing thyself? And what’s knowing thyself but the very apex of wisdom? Anyhow it’s a good deal more interesting than the Prince of Denmark.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘And there’s still all but a full moon.’

  ‘Aha!’ said she. ‘But what a world with only one! Jupiter has scores, hasn’t he? Just think of his Love Lanes!’ She rose to her feet with a sigh of boredom, and smoothed out her skirts with her long, narrow hands. I stared at her beauty in amazement.

  ‘I hate these parties here,’ she said. ‘They are not worth while.’

  ‘You look lov – you look all right.’

  ‘H’m; but what’s that when there’s no one to see.’

  ‘But you see yourself. You live in it.’

  The reflected face in the glass, which, craning forward, I could just distinguish, knitted its placid brows. ‘Why, if that were enough, we should all be hermits. I rather think, you know, that God made man almost solely in the hope of his two-legged appreciation. But perhaps you disapprove of incense?’

  ‘Why should I, Miss Bowater? My Aunt Kitilda was a Catholic: and so was my mother’s family right back.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Miss Bowater. She kissed her hand to looking-glass and four-poster, flung me a last fervid smile, and was gone. And the little box I had given her lay on the table, beside my bed.

  I was aroused much later by the sound of voices drawing nearer. Instinctively I sat up
, my senses fastened on the sound like a vampire. The voices seemed to be in argument, then the footsteps ceased and clear on the night air came the words:

  ‘But you made me promise not to write. Oh, Fanny, and you have broken your own!’

  ‘Then you must confess’, was the cautious reply, ‘that I am consistent. As for the promises, you are quite, quite welcome to the pieces.’

  ‘You mean that?’ was the muffled retort.

  ‘That’, cried the other softly, ‘depends entirely on what you mean by “mean”. Please look happy! You’d soon grow old and uglier if there was only that scrap of moon to light your face.’

  ‘Oh, Fanny. Will you never be serious?’ – the misery in the words seemed to creep about in my own mind for shelter. They were answered by a sparkling gush of laughter, followed by a crisp, emphatic knock at the door. Fanny had returned from her party, and the eavesdropper buried her face in her pillow. So she enjoyed hurting people. And yet …

  Chapter Twelve

  The next afternoon Mrs. Bowater was out when Dr. Phelps made his call. It was Fanny who ushered him into the room. He felt my pulse again, held up the phial of medicine to the light, left unconsulted my tongue, and pronounced that ‘we are doing very nicely’. As indeed I was. While this professional inquiry was in progress Fanny stood silently watching us, then exclaimed that it was half-past four, and that I must have my tea. She was standing behind Dr. Phelps, and for a few seconds I watched with extreme interest but slow understanding a series of mute little movements of brows and lips which she was directing at me while he was jotting down a note in a leather pocket-book. At length I found myself repeating – as if at her dictation – a polite little invitation to him to take tea with me. The startled blue eyes lifted themselves above the pocket-book, the square, fair head was bowing a polite refusal, when, ‘But, of course, Dr. Phelps,’ Fanny broke in like one inspired, ‘how very thoughtless of me!’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Miss Bowater, but – ‘ cried Dr. Phelps, with a smooth uplifted hand, and almost statuesque in his pose. His refusal was too late. Miss Bowater had hastened from the room.

  His panic passed. He reseated himself, and remarking that it was a very cold afternoon, predicted that if the frost continued, skating might be expected. Conversation of this kind is apt so soon to faint away like a breeze in hot weather, that I kept wondering what to say next. Besides, whenever Dr. Phelps seemed impelled to look at me, he far more quickly looked away, and the sound of his voice suggested that he was uncertain if he was not all but talking to himself. To put him more at his ease I inquired boldly if he had many other midgets among his patients.

  The long lashes swept his cheek; he pondered awhile on my landlady’s window curtains. ‘As a matter of fact perhaps not,’ he replied at last, as if giving the result of a mathematical calculation.

  ‘I suppose, Dr. Phelps,’ I then inquired, ‘there might be more, at any time, might there not?’ Our glances this time met. He blinked.

  ‘My father and mother, I mean,’ I explained in some confusion, ‘were just of the com – of the ordinary size. And what I was wondering is, whether you yourself would be sorry – in quite a general way, of course – if you found your practice going down like that.’

  ‘Going down?’

  ‘I mean the patients coming smaller. I never had the opportunity of asking our own doctor, Dr. Grose. At Lyndsey, you know. Besides, I was a child then. Now, first of all, it is true, isn’t it, that giants are usually rather dull-witted people? So nobody would deliberately choose that kind of change. If, then, quality does vary with quantity, mightn’t there be an improvement in the other direction? You will think I am being extremely ego – egotistical. But one must take Jack’s side, mustn’t one? – even if one’s Jill?’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘The Giant Killer.’

  He looked at me curiously, and his finger and thumb once more strayed up towards the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his thermometer. But instead of taking it out, he coughed.

  ‘There is a norm – ‘ he began in a voice not quite his own.

  ‘Ah,’ I cried, interrupting him, and throwing up my hands, ‘there is indeed. But why, I ask myself, so vast a number of examples of it!’

  It was as if a voice within were prompting me. Perhaps the excitement of Fanny’s homecoming was partly to blame. ‘I sit at my window here and watch the passers-by. Norms, in mere size, Dr. Phelps, every one of them, if you allow for the few little defects in the – the moulding, you know. And just think what London must be like. Why, nobody can be noticeable, there.’

  ‘But surely,’ Dr. Phelps smiled indulgently, though his eyelashes seemed to be in the way, ‘surely variety is possible, without – er – excess. Indeed there must be variety in order to arrive at our norm, mustn’t there?’

  ‘You’d be astonished’, I assured him, ‘how slight the differences really are. A few inches or ounces; red or black or fawn; and age, and sex, of course; that’s all. Now, isn’t it true, Dr. Phelps, that almost any twenty women – unselected, you know – would weigh about a ton?’ And surely there’s no particular reason why just human shells should weigh as much as that. We are not lobsters. And yet, do you know, I have watched, and they really seem to enjoy being the same as one another. One would think they tried to be – manners and habits, knowledge and victuals, hats and boots, everything. And if on the outside, I suppose on the inside, too. What a mysterious thing it seems. All of them thinking pretty much the same: Norm Thoughts, you know; just five-foot-fivers. After all, one wouldn’t so much mind the monotonous packages, if the contents were different. “Forty feeding like one” – who said that? Now, truly, Dr. Phelps, don’t you feel – It would, of course, be very serious at first for their mothers and fathers if all the little human babies here came midgets, but it would be amusing, too, wouldn’t it? … And it isn’t quite my own idea, either.’

  Dr. Phelps cleared his throat, and looked at his watch. ‘But surely,’ he said, with a peculiar emphasis which I have noticed men are apt to make when my sex asks intelligent or unintelligent questions, ‘surely you and I are understanding one another. I try to make myself clear to you. So extremes can meet; at least I hope so.’ He gave me a charming little awkward bow. ‘Tell me, then, what is this peculiar difference you are so anxious about? You wouldn’t like a pygmy England, a pygmy Universe, now, would you, Miss M.?’

  It was a great pity. A pygmy England – the thought dazzled me. In a few minutes Dr. Phelps would perhaps have set all my doubts at rest. But at that moment Miss Bowater came in with the tea, and the talk took quite another turn. She just made it Fanny’s size. Even Dr. Phelps looked a great deal handsomer in her company. More sociable. Nor were we to remain ‘three’s none’. She had finished but one slice of toast over my fire, and inflamed but one cheek, when a more protracted but far less vigorous knock than Dr. Phelps’s on the door summoned her out of the room again. And a minute or two afterwards our tea-party became one of four, and its sexes (in number, at any rate) equally matched.

  By a happy coincidence, just as Good King Wenceslas had looked out on the Feast of Stephen, so Mr. Crimble, the curate-in-charge at St. Peter’s, had looked in. By his ‘Ah, Phelps!’ it was evident that our guests were well acquainted with one another; and Fanny and I were soon enjoying a tea enriched by the cream of local society. Mr. Crimble had mild dark eyes, gold spectacles, rather full red lips, and a voice that reminded me of raspberries. I think he had heard of me, for he was very attentive, and handled my small cup and saucer with remarkable, if rather conspicuous, ingenuity.

  Candles were lit. The talk soon became animated. From the weather of this Christmas we passed to the weather of last, to Dr. Phelps’s prospects of skating, and thence to the good old times, to Mr. Pickwick, to our respective childish beliefs in Santa Claus, stockings, and to credulous parents. Fanny repeated some of the naïve remarks made by her pupils, and Mr. Crimble capped them with a collection of biblical bons mots culled in his Su
nday School. I couldn’t glance fast enough from one to the other. Dr. Phelps steadily munched and watched Mr. Crimble. He in turn told us of a patient of his, a Mrs. Hall, who, poor old creature, was 101, and enjoyed nothing better than playing at ‘Old Soldier’ with a small grandson.

  ‘Literally, second childhood. Senile decay,’ he said, passing his cup.

  From Mrs. Hall we naturally turned to parochial affairs; and then Mr. Crimble, without more ado, bolted his mouthful of toast, in order to explain the inmost purpose of his visit.

  He was anxious to persuade Miss Bowater to sing at the annual Parish Concert, which was to be given on New Year’s Eve. Try as he might, he had been unable to persuade his vicar of the efficacy of Watch Night Services. So a concert was to be given instead. Now, would Miss Bowater, as ever, be ever so kind, and would I add my entreaties to his? As he looked at Fanny and I did too – with one of those odd turns of the mind, I was conscious that the peculiar leaning angle of his head was exactly the same as my own. Whereupon I glanced at Dr. Phelps, but he sat fair and foursquare, one feeding like forty. Fanny remaining hesitant, appeal was made to him. With almost more cordiality than Mr. Crimble appeared to relish, he agreed that the musical talent available was not so abundant as it might be, and he promised to take as many of the expensive tickets as Miss Bowater would sing songs.

  ‘I don’t pretend to be musical, not like you, Crimble. But I don’t mind a pleasant voice – in moderation; and I assure you, Miss Bowater, I am an excellent listener – given a fair chance, you know.’

  ‘But then,’ said Fanny, ‘so am I. I believe now really – and one can judge from one’s speaking voice, can’t one, Mr. Crimble? – I believe you sing yourself.’

  ‘Sing, Miss Bowater,’ interjected Mr. Crimble, tipping back his chair. “The wedding guest here beat his chest, for he heard the loud bassoon.” Now, conjuring tricks, eh, Phelps? With a stethoscope and a clinical thermometer; and I’ll hold the hat and make the omelette. It would bring down the house.’ – ‘It was his breast he beat; not his chest,’ I broke in.