Memoirs of a Midget

by de la Mare, Walter;

  Well, well, well; of one burden at least I can absolve Mrs. Monnerie – that of making me so sententious. Somehow or other, but ever more sluggishly, those few crowded summer months of my twentieth year wore away. It is more of a mercy than a curse, I suppose, that Time never stands still.

  Meanwhile two events occurred which, for the time being, sobered and alarmed me. A few days before I had actually planned to pay a second visit to Mrs. Bowater’s, the almost incredible news reached me that she was sailing for South America. It would hardly have surprised me more to hear that she was sailing for Sirius. She came to bid me good-bye. It was Mr. Bowater, she told me. She had been too confident of the ‘good nursing’. Far from mending in this world, his leg threatened ‘to carry him off into the next’. At these tidings Shame thrust out a very ugly head at me from her retreat. I had utterly forgotten the anxiety my poor old friend was in.

  She put on her spectacles with trembling fingers, and pushed her husband’s letter across to me. The handwriting was bold and thick, yet I fancied it looked a little weak in the loops:

  DEAR EMILY – The leg’s giving me the devil in this hole of a place. It looks as if I shouldn’t get through with it. I should be greatly obliged if you would come out to me. They’ll give you all the necessary information at the shipping office. Ask for Pullen. My love to Fanny. What’s she looking like now? I should like to see her before I go; but better say nothing about it. You’ve got about a month or three weeks, I should think; if that.

  I remain, your affec. husband,

  JOSEPH BOWATER

  ‘Easy enough in appearance,’ was Mrs. Bowater’s comment, as she folded up this stained and flimsy letter again, and stuffed it into her purse, ‘but it’s past even Mr. Bowater to control what can be read between the lines.’

  She looked at me dumbly; the skin seemed to hang more loosely on her face. In vain I tried to think of a comforting speech. The tune of Eternal Father, one of the hymns we used to sing on windy winter Sunday evenings together, had begun droning in my head. The thought, too, was worrying me, though I did not put it into words, that Mr. Bowater, far rather than in Buenos Ayres, would have preferred to find his last resting-place in Nero Deep or the Virgin’s Trough – those enormous pits of blue in the oceans which I myself had so often gloated on in his Atlas. We were old friends now, he and I. He was Fanny’s father. The very ferocity of his look had become a secret understanding between us. And now – at this very moment perhaps – he was dying. The jaunty ‘devil’ in his letter, I am afraid, affected me far more than Mrs. Bowater’s troubled face or even her courage.

  Without a moment’s hesitation she had made up her mind to face the Atlantic’s thousands of miles of wind and water to join the husband she had told me had long been ‘worse than’ dead. The very tone in which she uttered the word ‘steamer’ was even more lugubrious than the enormous, mocking hoot of a vessel that had once alarmed me out of the sea one still evening at Lyme Regis. It was a horrifying prospect, yet she just quietly said ‘steamer’, and looked at me over her spectacles.

  While she was away, the little house on Beechwood Hill, ‘bought, thank God, with my own money’, was to be shut up, but it was mine if I cared to return to it, and would ask a neighbour of hers, Mrs. Chantry, for the key. It would be Fanny’s if anything ‘happened’ to herself. So dismal was all this that Mrs. Bowater seemed already lost to me, and I twice an orphan. We talked on together in low, cautious voices. After a single sharp, cold glance at my visitor, Fleming had left us to ourselves over an enormous silver teapot. I grew so nervous at last, watching Mrs. Bowater’s slow glances of disapproval at her surroundings; her hot, tired face; and listening to her long-drawn sighs, that again and again I lost the thread of what she was saying, and could answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, only by instinct.

  What with an antiquated time-table, a mislaid railway ticket, and an impudent bus-conductor, her journey had been a trying experience. I discovered, too, that Mrs. Bowater disliked the West End. She had first knocked at No. 4 by mistake. Its butler had known nothing whatever at all about any Miss M., and Mrs. Bowater had been too considerate to specify my dimensions. She had then shared a few hot moments in the porch of No. 2 with a more fashionable visitor – to neither’s satisfaction. A manservant had admitted her to Mrs. Monnerie’s marble halls and ‘barefaced’ statuary, and had apparently thought the large parcel she carried in her arms should have been delivered in the area.

  She bore no resentment, though I myself felt a little uneasy. Life was like that, she seemed to imply, and she had been no party to it. There was no doubt a better world where things would be different – it was extraordinary what a number of conflicting sentiments she could convey in a pause or a shut of her mouth. Black and erect, she sat glooming over that alien teapot, sipping Mrs. Monnerie’s colourless China tea, firmly declining to grimace at its insipidity, until she had told me all there was to tell.

  At last, having gathered herself together, she exhorted me to write to that young Mr. Anon. ‘I see a fidelity one might almost say dog-like, miss, on that face, apart, as I have reasons for supposing, from a sufficiency in his pocket. Though, the Lord knows, you are young yet and seemingly in no need of a home.’

  Parcel, reticule, umbrella – she bent over me with closed eyes, and muttered shamefacedly that she had remembered me in her Will, ‘and may God bless you, miss, I’m sure’.

  I clutched the gloved hand in a sudden helpless paroxysm of grief and foreboding. ‘Oh, Mrs. Bowater, you forgive –’ I choked, and still no words would come.

  She was gone, past recall; and all the love and gratitude and remorse I had longed to express flooded up in me. Yet, stuck up there in my chair, my chief apprehension had been that Fleming might come in again, and cast yet another veiled sneering glance at my visitor.

  Peering between the gilded balusters, I watched my old friend droop away stiffly down the mild, lustrous staircase, bow to the man who opened the door for her, and emerge into the sunny emptiness.

  Maybe the thought had drifted across her mind that I had indeed been dipped in the dye-pot. But now – these many years afterwards – there is no more risk of misunderstanding. It is eight o’clock; the light is fading. Chizzel Hill glows green. I hear her feebling step on the stairs. She will peer at me over spectacles that now always straddle her nose. I must put my pen and papers away; and I, too, have made my Will.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Mrs. Bowater’s departure from England – and it seemed as if its very map in my mind had become dismally empty – was not my only anxiety. My solicitors had hitherto been prompt; their remittances almost monotonously identical in amount. But my quarterly allowance on Midsummer Day had been followed by a letter a week or two after her good-bye. It seemed to be in excellent English, and yet it was all but unintelligible to me. Every re-reading of it – the paper had apparently been dipped in water and dried – increased its obscurity and my alarm. I knew nothing about money matters, and the encyclopædia I consulted only made me more dejected and confused. I remembered with remorse my poor father’s last troubles. To answer the Harrises was impossible, and further study of their letter soon became unnecessary, for I had learned it by heart.

  The one thing certain was that Fanny’s wolf had begun scratching at my door! that my income was in imminent danger. I had long since squandered the greater part of what remained out of my savings (after Fanny had helped herself) on presents and fal-lals; merely, I am afraid, to show Mrs. Monnerie that I, too, could be extravagant. How much I owed her I could not even conjecture, and had not dared to inquire. To ask her counsel was equally impossible. She was almost as remote from me in this respect as Mrs. Bowater, now in the centre of the Atlantic. As for Fanny, I had returned her postal orders and had heard no more.

  For days and days gloom hung over me like a thundercloud. Wherever I went I was followed by the spectres of the Harrises. Then, for a time, as do all things, foreboding and anxiety gradually faded off. I plunged ba
ck into the cream-bowl with the deliberate intention of drowning trouble.

  Meanwhile, I had not forgotten Fanny’s ‘sinecure’. One mackerel-skied afternoon, Mrs. Monnerie and I and Susan were returning across the Park from an ‘At Home’ – ‘to meet Miss M.’ A small child of the house had richly entertained the company by howling with terror at sight of me, until he had been removed by his nurse. I bear him no grudge; he made a peg on which to hang Fanny’s proposal.

  ‘And what can Miss Bowater do? What are her qualifications?’ Mrs. Monnerie inquired pleasantly.

  ‘She is – dark and – pale,’ I replied, staring a little giddily out of the carriage at the sheep munching their way over the London grass.

  ‘Dark and pale?’ mused Mrs. Monnerie. ‘Well, that goes nearer the bone, perhaps, than medals and certificates and that sort of thing. Still, a rather Jane Eyreish kind of governess, eh, Susan?’

  Unfortunately I was acquainted with only one of the Miss Brontës, and that not Charlotte.

  ‘Miss Bowater is immensely clever, Mrs. Monnerie,’ I hurried on, ‘and extremely popular with – with the other mistresses, and that sort of thing. She’s not a bit what you might guess from what you might suppose.’

  ‘Which means, I gather,’ commented Mrs. Monnerie affably, ‘that Miss Bowater is the typical landlady’s daughter. A perfect angel in – or out of – the house, eh, Miss Innocent?’

  ‘No,’ said I, ‘I don’t think Miss Bowater is an angel. She is so interesting, so herselfish, you know. She simply couldn’t be happy at Miss Stebbings’s – the school where she’s teaching now. It’s not salary, Mrs. Monnerie, she is thinking of – just two nice children and their mother, that’s all.’

  This vindication of Fanny left me uncomfortably hot; I continued to gaze fixedly into the green distances of the park.

  Yet all was well. Mrs. Monnerie appeared to be satisfied with my testimonial. ‘You shall give me her address, little Binbin; and we’ll have a look at the young lady,’ she decided.

  Yet I was none too happy at my success. Those familiar old friends of mine – motives – began worrying me. Would the change be really good for Fanny? Would it – and I had better confess that this troubled me the most – would it be really good for me? I wanted to help her; I wanted also to show her off. And what a joy it would be if she should change into the Fanny of my dreams. On the other hand, supposing she didn’t. On the whole, I rather dreaded the thought of her appearance at No. 2.

  Susan followed me into my room. ‘Who is this Miss Bowater?’ she inquired, ‘besides, I mean, being your landlady’s daughter, and that kind of thing?’

  But my further little confidences failed to satisfy her.

  ‘But why is she so not an angel, then? Clever and lovely – it’s a rather unusual combination, you know. And yet’ – she reflectively smiled at me, all candour and gentleness – ‘well, not unique.’

  I ran away as fast as ever I could with so endearing a compliment – and tossed it back again over my shoulder: ‘You don’t mean, Susan, that you are not clever?’

  ‘I do, my dear; indeed I do. I am so stupid that unless things are as plain and open as the nose on my face, I feel like suffocating. I’m dreadfully out of the fashion – a horrible discredit to my sex. As for Miss Bowater, I was merely being odious, that was all. To be quite honest and hateful – I didn’t like the sound of her. And Aunt Alice is so easily carried away by any new scent. If a thing’s a novelty, or just good to look at, or what they call a work of art – why, the hunt’s up. There wouldn’t have been any use for the Serpent in her Eden. Mere things, of course, don’t matter much: except that they rather lumber up one’s rooms; and I prefer not to live in a museum. It’s when it comes to persons. Still, it isn’t as if Miss Bowater was coming here.’

  I remained silent, thinking this speech over. Had it, I speculated, ‘come to’ being a ‘person’ in my own case?

  ‘Did you meet any other interesting people there?’ Miss Monnerie went on, as if casually, turning off and on the while the little cluster of coloured electric globes that was on my table. ‘I mean besides Miss Bowater and that poor, dreadful – you know?’

  ‘No,’ I said bluntly, ‘not many.’

  ‘You don’t mind my asking all these questions? And just in exchange, you solemn thing, I’ll tell you a secret. It will be like shutting it up in the delightfullest, delicatest little rosebud of a box.’ In that instant’s pause, it was as if a dream had passed swiftly, entrancingly, across the grave, smiling face.

  ‘Look!’ she said, stooping low, and laying her slim left hand, palm downwards, across my table. I did look; and the first thing I noticed was how like herself that hand was, and how much less vigorous and formidable than Fanny’s. And then I caught her meaning.

  ‘Oh, Susan,’ I cried in a woeful voice, gazing at the smouldering stones ringing that long slim third finger, ‘wherever I turn, I hear that.’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Why, of love, I mean.’

  ‘But why, why?’ the narrow brows lifted in faint distress, ‘I am going to be ever so happy.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I know, I know. But why can’t you be happy alone?’

  She looked at me, and a faint red dusked the delicate cheek. ‘Not so happy. Not me, I mean.’

  ‘You do love him, then?’ the words jerked out.

  ‘Why, you strange thing, how curiously you speak to me. Of course I love him. I am going to marry him.’

  ‘But how do you know?’ I persisted. ‘Does it mean more to you – well – than the secret of everything? I mean, what comes when one is almost nothing? Does it make you more yourself, or just break you in two, or melt you away? – oh, like mist that is gone, and to every petal and blade of grass its drop of burning water?’

  A shade of dismay, almost of fear – the look a timid animal gives when startled – stole into her eyes. ‘You ask such odd questions! How can I answer them? I know this – I would rather die than not. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Oh,’ my voice fainted away – disappointment, darkness, ennui; ‘only that!’

  ‘But what do you mean? What are you saying? Have you been told all this? It disturbs me; your face is like –’

  ‘Yes! what is it like?’ I cried in distress, myself sinking back into myself, as if hiding in a lair.

  ‘I can’t say,’ she faltered. ‘I didn’t know –’

  We talked on. But though I tried to blur over and withdraw what I had said, she remained dissatisfied. A thin edge of formality had for the moment pushed in between us.

  That night I addressed a belated letter to Wanderslore, reproaching Mr. Anon for not writing to me, telling him of Mrs. Bowater’s voyage, and begging him to assure the garden-house and the fading summer flowers that they had not been deserted in my dreams.

  At a quarter to twelve one morning, soon after this, I was sitting with Mrs. Monnerie on a stool beneath Chakka’s cage, and Susan was just about to leave us – was actually smoothing on the thumb of her glove; when Marvell announced that a Miss Bowater had called. I turned cold all over and held my breath.

  ‘Ah,’ whispered Mrs. Monnerie, ‘your future Mrs. Rochester, my pet.’

  Every thought scuttled out of my head; my needle jerked and pricked my thumb. I gazed at the door. Never had I seen anything so untransparent. Then it opened; and – there was Fanny. She was in dark grey – a gown I had never seen before. A tight little hat was set demurely on her hair. In that first moment she had not noticed me, and I could steal a long, steady look at the still, light, vigilant eyes, drinking in at one steady draught their new surroundings. Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen in an artificial light. What wonder I had loved her. My hands went numb, and a sudden fatigue came over me.

  Then her quiet, travelling glance descended and hovered in secret colloquy with mine. She dropped me a little smiling, formal nod, moistened her lips, and composed herself for Mrs. Monnerie. And it was then I became conscious that Su
san had quietly slipped out of the room.

  It was a peculiar experience to listen to the catechism that followed. From the absorption of her attitude, the large, side-long head, the motionless hands, it was clear that Mrs. Monnerie found a good deal to interest her in the dark, attentive figure that stood before her. If Fanny had been Joan of Arc, she could not have had a more single-minded reception. Yet I was enjoying a duel: a duel not of wits, but of intuitions, between the sagacious, sardonic, watchful old lady, soaked in knowledge of humanity but, as far as I could discover, with extraordinarily small respect for it, and – Fanny. And it seemed to me that Fanny easily held her own; just by being herself, without revealing herself. Face, figure, voice; that was all. I could not take my eyes away. If only, I thought, my own ghost would keep as quiet and hidden as that in the presence of others.

  Perhaps I exaggerate. Love, living or dying, even if it is not blind, cannot, I suppose, focus objects very precisely. It sees only itself or disillusionment. Whether or not, the duel was interrupted. In the full light of the window, Fanny turned softly at the opening of the door. Marvell was announcing another caller. At his name my heart leapt up like William Wordsworth’s at the rainbow. It was Sir Walter Pollacke.

  ‘This is your visitor, Poppet,’ Mrs. Monnerie waggishly assured me; ‘you shall have half an hour’s tête-à-tête.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  So it was with a deep sigh – half of regret at being called away, and all of joy at the thought of seeing my old friend again – that I followed Marvell’s coat-tails over the threshold. With a silly, animal-like affection I brushed purposely against Fanny’s skirts as I passed her by; and even smirked in a kind of secret triumph at Percy Maudlen, who happened to be idling on the staircase as I hastened from room to room.

  The door of the library closed gently behind me, as if with a breath of peace. I paused – looked across. Sir Walter was standing at the further end of its high, daylit, solemn spaciousness. He was deep in contemplation of a white marble bust that graced the lofty chimney-piece – so rapt, indeed, that until I had walked up into the full stream of sunshine from a nearer window and had announced my approach with a cough, he did not notice my entrance. Then he flicked round with an exclamation of welcome.