Memoirs of a Midget

by de la Mare, Walter;

  I rose from my chair, walked away from my visitor, and peered through my muslin curtains at the green and shine and blue. A nursemaid was lagging along with a sleeping infant – its mild face to the sky – in a perambulator. A faint drift of dandelions showed in the stretching meadow. Kent’s blue hems lay calm; my thoughts drew far away.

  ‘Mr. Crimble,’ I cried in a low voice, ‘is she worth all our care for her?’

  ‘“Our” – “our”?’ he expostulated.

  ‘Mine, then. When I gave her, just to be friends, because – because I loved her, a little ivory box, nothing of any value, of course, but which I have loved and treasured since childhood, she left it without a thought. It’s in my wardrobe drawer – shall I show it to you? I say it was nothing in itself; but what I mean is that she just makes use of me, and with far less generosity than – than other people do. Her eyes, her voice, when she moves her hand, turns her head, looks back – oh, I know! But’, and I turned on him in the light, ‘does it mean anything? Let us just help her all we can, and – keep away.’

  It was a treachery past all forgiveness: I see that now. If only I had said: ‘Love on, love on! ask nothing.’ But I did not say it. A contempt of all this slow folly was in my brain that afternoon. Why couldn’t the black cowering creature take himself off? What concern of mine was his sick, sheepish look? What particle of a fig did he care for Me? Had he lifted a little finger when I myself bitterly needed it? I seemed to be struggling in a net of hatred.

  He raised himself in his chair, his spectacles still fixed on me; as if some foul insect had erected its blunt head at him.

  ‘Then you are against her too,’ he uttered, under his breath. ‘I might have known it, I might have known it. I am a lost man.’

  It was pitiful. ‘Lost fiddlesticks!’ I snapped back at him, with bared teeth. ‘I wouldn’t – I’ve never harmed a fly. Who, I should like to know, came to my help when …?’ But I choked down the words. Silence fell between us. The idiot clock chimed five. He turned his face away to conceal the aversion that had suddenly overwhelmed him at sight of me.

  ‘I see,’ he said, in a hollow, low voice, with his old wooden, artificial dignity. ‘There’s nothing more to say. I can only thank you, and be gone. I had not realized. You misjudge her. You haven’t the – How could it be expected? But there! thinking’s impossible.’

  How often had I seen my poor father in his last heavy days draw his hand across his eyes like that? Already my fickle mind was struggling to find words with which to retract, to explain away that venomous outbreak. But I let him go. The stooping, hatted figure hastened past my window; and I was never to see him again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Yet, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding companioned me that evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters:

  DEAR MR. CRIMBLE – I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly. Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn’t it? One we know hasn’t been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare’s lines about the beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day) – a creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil – I can’t help this sounding like hypocrisy – even though it is an extremely tiring exchange. I feel small enough just now, but would do anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely – M.M.

  My second letter was addressed to Fanny’s school, ‘c/o Miss Stebbings’:

  DEAR FANNY – He came again today and looks like a corpse. I can do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him; that I can’t, and won’t, go on being so doublefaced. I don’t call that being the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the other, however many birds it may kill. That’s the bravest thing to do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and killed – a wren. Well, there’s only one wren that I know of – your M.

  P.S. – I hope this doesn’t sound an angry letter. I thought only the other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are. And, of course, we are what we are, aren’t we, and cannot, I suppose, help acting like that? You can’t think how he looked, and talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can’t say what’s in mine. Every day there’s something else to dread. And all that I do seems only to make things worse. Do write! and, though, of course, it isn’t my affair, do have a ‘sagacious’ holiday, too.

  Mrs. Bowater almost squinted at my two small envelopes when she licked the stamps for me. ‘We can only hope’, was her one remark, ‘that when the secrets of all hearts are opened, they’ll excuse some of the letters we reach ourselves to write.’ But I did not ask her to explain.

  Lyme Regis was but a few days distant when, not for the first time since our meeting at Mrs. Bowater’s gatepost, I set off to meet Mr. Anon – this time to share with him my wonderful news. When showers drifted across the sun-shafted sky we took refuge under the shelter of the garden-house. As soon as the hot beams set the raindrops smouldering, so that every bush was hung with coloured lights, we returned to my smoking stone. And we watched a rainbow arch and fade in the windy blue.

  He was gloomy at first; grudged me, I think, every moment that was to be mine at Lyme Regis. So I tempted him into talking about the books he had read; and about his childhood – far from as happy as mine. It hurt me to hear him speak of his mother. Then I asked him small questions about that wonderful country he had told me of, which, whether it had any real existence or not, filled me with delight as he painted it in his imagination. He was doing his best to keep his word to me, and I to keep our talk from becoming personal.

  If I would trust myself to him, friend to friend – he suddenly broke out in a thick, low voice, when I least expected it – the whole world was open to us; and he knew the way.

  ‘What way?’ said I. ‘And how about poor Mrs. Bowater? How strange you are. Where do you live? May I know?’

  There was an old farmhouse, he told me, on the other side of the park, and near it a few cottages – at the far end of Loose Lane. He lodged in one of these. Against my wiser inclinations he persuaded me to set off thither at once and see the farm for myself.

  On the further side of Wanderslore, sprouting their pallid green frondlets like beads at the very tips of their black, were more yews than beeches. We loitered on, along the neglected bridle-path. Cuckoos were now in the woods, and we talked and talked, as if their voices alone were not seductive enough to enchant us onwards. Sometimes I spelled out incantations in the water; and sometimes I looked out happily across the wet, wayside flowers; and sometimes a robin flittered out to observe the intruders. How was it that human company so often made me uneasy and self-conscious, and nature’s always brought peace?

  ‘Now, you said’, I began again, ‘that they have a God, and that they are so simple He hasn’t a name. What did you mean by that? There can’t be one God for the common-sized, and one for – for me; now, can there? My mother never taught me that; and I have thought for myself.’ Indeed I had.

  ‘“God!”’ he cried; ‘why, what is all this?’

  All this at that moment was a clearing in the woods, softly shimmering with a misty, transparent green, in whose sunbeams a thousand flies darted and zigzagged like motes of light, and the year’s first butterflies fluttered and languished.

  ‘But if I speak,’ I said, ‘listen, now, my voice is just swallowed up. Out of just a something it faints into a nothing – dies. No, no’ (I suppose I was arguing only to draw him out), ‘all this cares no more for me than – than a looking-glass. Yet it is mine. Can you see Jesus Christ in these woods? Do you believe we are sinners and that He came to save us? I do. But I can see Him only as a little boy, you know, smiling, crystal, intangible; and yet I do not like children much.’

  He paused and stared at me fixedly. ‘My size
?’ he coughed.

  ‘Oh, size,’ I exclaimed, ‘how you harp on that!’ – as if I never had. ‘Did you not say yourself that the smaller the body is, the happier the ghost in it? Bodies, indeed!’

  He plunged on, hands in pockets, frowning, clumsy. And up there in the north-west a huge cloud poured its reflected lights on his strange face. Inwardly – with all my wits in a pleasant scatter – I laughed; and outwardly (all but) danced. Solemnly taking me at my word, and as if he were reading out of one of his dry old books, he began to tell me his views about religion, and about what we are, qualities, consciousness, ideas, and that kind of thing. As if you could be anything at any moment but just that moment’s whole self. At least, so it seemed then: I was happy. But since in his earnestness his voice became almost as false to itself as was Mr. Crimble’s when he had conversed with me about Hell, my eyes stole my ears from him, and only a few scattered sentences reached my mind.

  Nevertheless I enjoyed hearing him talk, and encouraged him with bits of questions and exclamations. Did he believe, perhaps, in the pagan gods? – Mars and all that? Was there, even at this very moment, cramped up among the moss and the roots, a crazy, brutal Pan in the woods? And those delicious Nymphs and Naiads! What would he do if one beckoned to him? – or Pan’s pipes began wheedling?

  ‘Nymphs!’ he grunted, ‘aren’t you –’

  ‘Oh,’ I cried, coming to a pause beside a holly tree so marvellously sparkling with waterdrops on every curved spine of it that it took my breath away: ‘let’s talk no more thoughts. They are only mice gnawing. I can hear them at night.’

  ‘You cannot sleep?’ he inquired, with so grave a concern that I laughed outright.

  ‘Sleep! with that Mr. Crimble on my nerves?’ I gave a little nod in my mind to my holly, and we went on.

  ‘Crimble?’ he repeated. His eyes, greenish at that moment, shot an angry glance at me from under their lids. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A friend, a friend,’ I replied, ‘and, poor man, as they say, in love. Calm yourself, Mr. Jealousy; not with me. I am three sizes too small. With Miss Bowater. But there,’ I went on, in dismay that mere vanity should have let this cat out of its bag, ‘that’s not my secret. We mustn’t talk of that either. What I really want to tell you is that we haven’t much time. I am going away. Let’s talk of Me. Oh, Mr. Anon, shall I ever be born again, and belong to my own world?’

  It seemed a kind of mournful serenity came over his face. ‘You say you are going away,’ he whispered, pointing with his finger, ‘and yet you expect me to talk about that.’

  We were come to the brink of a clear rain-puddle, perhaps three or four feet wide, in the moss-greened, stony path, and ‘that’ was the image of myself which lay on its surface against the far blue of the sky – the under-scarlet of my cape, my face, fair hair, eyes. I trembled a little. His own reflection troubled me more than he did himself.

  ‘Come,’ I said, laying a hand on his sleeve, ‘the time’s so short, and indeed I must see your house, you know: you have seen mine. Ah, but you should see Lyndsey and Chizzel Hill, and the stream in my father’s garden. I often hear that at night, Mr. Anon. I would like to have died a child, however long I must live.’

  But now the cloud had completely swallowed up the sun; a cold gust of wind swept hooting down on us, and I clung to his arm. We pushed on, emerged at last from the rusty gates, its eagles green and scaling, and came to the farm. But not in time. A cloud of hail had swirled down, beating on our heads and shoulders. It all but swept me up into the air. Catching hands, we breasted and edged on up the rough, miry lane towards a thatched barn, open on one side and roofing a red and blue wagon. Under this we scrambled, and tingling all over with the buffetings of the wind and the pelting of hailstones, I sat laughing and secure, watching, over my sodden skirts and shoes, the sweeping, pattering drifts paling the green.

  Around us in the short straw and dust stalked the farmer’s fowls, cackling, with red-eyed glances askew at our intrusion. Ducks were quacking. Doves flew in with whir of wing. I thought I should boil over with delight. And presently a sheep-dog, ears down and tail between its legs, slid round the beam of the barn door. Half in, half out, it stood bristling, eyes fixed, head thrust out. My companion drew himself up and with a large stone in his hand, edged, stooping and stealthily – and very much, I must confess, like the picture of a Fuegian I have seen in a book – between the gaudy wheels of the wagon, and faced the low-growling beast. I watched him, enthralled. For a moment or two he and the sheep-dog confronted each other without stirring. Then with one sharp bark, the animal flung back its head, and with whitened eye, turned and disappeared.

  ‘Oh, bravissimo!’ said I, mocking up at Mr. Anon from under my hood. ‘He was cowed, poor thing. I would have made friends with him.’

  We sat on in the sweet, dusty scent of the stormy air. The hail turned to rain. The wind rose higher. I began to be uneasy. So heavily streamed the water out of the clouds that walking back by the way we had come would be utterly impossible for me. What’s to be done now? I thought to myself. Yet the liquid song of the rain, the gurgling sighs and trumpetings of the wind entranced me; and I turned softly to glance at my stranger. He sat, chin on large-boned hands, his lank hair plastered on his hollow temples by the rain, his eyes glassy in profile.

  ‘I am glad of this,’ he muttered dreamily, as if in response to my scrutiny. ‘We are here.’

  A scatter of green leaf-sheaths from a hawthorn over against the barn was borne in by the wind.

  ‘I am glad too,’ I answered, ‘because when you are at peace, so I can be; for that marvellous land you tell me of is very far away. Why, who – ?’ But he broke in so earnestly that I was compelled to listen, confiding in me some queer wisdom he had dug up out of his books – of how I might approach nearer and nearer to the brink between life and reality, and see all things as they are, in truth, in their very selves. All things visible are only a veil, he said. A veil that withdraws itself when the mind is empty of all thoughts and desires, and the heart at one with itself. That is divine happiness, he said. And he told me, too, out of his far-fetched learning, a secret about myself.

  It was cold in the barn now. The fowls huddled close. Rain and wind ever and again drowned the low, alluring, far-away voice wandering on as if out of a trance. Dreams, maybe; yet I have learned since that one half of his tale is true; that at need even an afflicted spirit, winged for an instant with serenity, may leave the body and, perhaps, if lost in the enchantments beyond, never turn back. But I swore to keep his words secret between us. I had no will to say otherwise, and assured him of my trust in him.

  ‘My very dear,’ he said, softly touching my hand, but I could make no answer.

  He scrambled to his feet and peered down on me. ‘It is not my peace. All the days you are away …’ He gulped forlornly and turned away his head. ‘But that is what I mean. Just nothing, all this’ – he made a gesture with his hands as if giving himself up a captive to authority – ‘nothing but a sop to a dog.’

  Then stooping, he drew my cape around me, banked the loose hay at my feet and shoulders, smiled into my face, and bidding me wait in patience a while, but not sleep, was gone.

  The warmth and odour stole over my senses. I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but drugged with fatigue. With a fixed smile on my face (a smile betokening, as I believe now, little but feminine vanity and satisfaction after feeding on that strange heart), my thoughts went wandering. The sounds of skies and earth drowsed my senses, and I nodded off into a nap. The grinding of wheels awoke me. From a welter of dreams I gazed out through the opening of the barn at a little battered cart and a shaggy pony. And behold, on the chopped straw and hay beside me, lay stretched out, nose on paw, our enemy, the sheep-dog. He thumped a friendly tail at me, while he growled at my deliverer.

  Thoughtful Mr. Anon. He had not only fetched the pony-cart, but had brought me a bottle of hot milk and a few raisins. They warmed and revived me. A little light-witted after my slee
p in the hay, I clambered up with his help into the cart and tucked myself in as snugly as I could with my draggled petticoats and muddy shoes. So with myself screened well out of sight of prying eyes, we drove off.

  All this long while I had not given a thought to Mrs. Bowater. We stood before her at last in her oil-cloth passage, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Her oldest bonnet on her head, she was just about to set off to the police station. And instead of showing her gratitude that her anxieties on my account were over, Mrs. Bowater cast us the blackest of looks. Leaving Mr. Anon to make our peace with her, I ran off to change my clothes. As I emerged from my bedroom, he entered at the door, in an old trailing pilot coat many sizes too large for him, and I found to my astonishment that he and my landlady had become the best of friends. I marvelled. This little achievement of Mr. Anon’s made me like him – all of a burst – ten times as much, I believe, as he would have been contented that I should love him.

  Indeed the ‘high tea’ Mrs. Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest memories of my life. And yet – she had left the room for a moment to fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr. Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel – and looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her face, like that of a grown-up peeping into a child’s dolls’ house. So swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr. Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an Ishmael!

  Lyme Regis

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