Memoirs of a Midget

by de la Mare, Walter;

  One flash of eye to eye – we knew each other. She was the bird-eyed, ear-ringed gipsy of my railway journey with Pollie from Lyndsey to Beechwood. Even more hawklike, bonier, striding along now like a man in the dust and heat in her dingy coloured petticoats and great boots, with one steel-grey dart of remembrance, she swallowed me up, like flame a moth. Her mouth relaxed into a foxy smile while her gaze tightened on me. She turned herself about and shrilled out a strange word or two to someone who had gone before. A sudden alarm leapt up in me. In an instant I had whisked into hiding, and found myself, half-suffocated with excitement, peeping out of a bush in watch for what was to happen next.

  So swift had been my disappearance she seemed doubtful of her own senses. A cage of leopards, with a fair-skinned, gold-haired girl in white stockings lolling asleep on the chained-up tailboard, trundled by; and then my gipsy was joined by a thick-set, scowling man. His face was bold and square, and far more lowering than that of the famous pugilist, Mr. Sayers – to whose coloured portrait I had become almost romantically attached in the library at No. 2. This dangerous looking individual filled me with a tremulous excitement and admiration. If, as in a dream, my past seemed to have been waiting for that solitary elephant; then my future was all of a simmer with him.

  He drew his thick hand out of his stomach-pocket and scratched his cheek. The afternoon hung so quiet that I heard the rasp of his finger nail against his sprouting beard. He turned to mutter a sullen word or two at the woman beside him. Then, more civilly, and with a jerk of his squat thumb in my direction, he addressed himself to Adam. Adam listened, his red ears erect on either side of his hat. But his only answer was so violent a wag of his head that it seemed in danger of toppling off his body. Softly I laughed to myself. The woman yelped at him. The man bade her ferociously ‘shut her gob’. Adam clanged-to the gates. They moved on. Beast, cage, and men were vanished like a daydream. A fitful breeze rustled the dry elm-leaves. The swifts coursed on in the shade.

  When the last faint murmur had died away, I came out from behind my bush. ‘A country circus,’ I remarked unconcernedly. ‘What did the man want, Adam?’

  ‘That hairy cat frowned at Rosie,’ whispered the child, turning from me to catch at Adam’s coat-tails. ‘Not eat Rosie?’

  Adam bent himself double, and with an almost motherly tenderness stroked her bright red hair. He straightened himself up, spat modestly in the dust, and, with face still mottled by our recent experience, expressed the opinion that the man was ‘one of them low blackguards – excusing plain English, miss – who’d steal your chickens out of the very saucepan’. As for the woman – words failed him.

  I waited until his small, round eye had rolled back in my direction. ‘Yes, Adam,’ I said, ‘but what did he say? You mean she told him about me?’

  ‘Well, miss, to speak equal-like, that was about the size of it. The old liar said she had seen you before, that you were – well, there you are – a gold mine, a – a blessed gold mine. Her very words near-about.’ At that, in an insuppressible gush of happiness I laughed out with him, like a flageolet in a concourse of bassoons.

  ‘But he didn’t see me, Adam. I took good care of that.’

  ‘That’s just’, said Adam, with a tug at his black cravat, ‘what’s going to give the pair of them a mighty unpleasant afternoon.’

  I dismissed him, smiled at the whimpering greyhound, smiled at Rose, whose shyness at me had unaccountably whelmed over her again, and followed in Adam’s wake towards the house. But not to enter it. ‘A blessed’ – oh, most blessed ‘Gold Mine!’ The word so sang in me that the whole garden – espaliered wall, and bird, and flower – leapt into life and beauty before my eyes. Then my prayer (what prayer?) had been answered. I squared my shoulders, shuddered – a Lazarus come to life. Away I went, and seating myself in a sunny corner, a few paces from a hive of bees, plucked a nectarine, and surrendered myself to the intoxication of an idea. Not ‘Your Master is dead’, but ‘Your mistress is come to life again!’ I whispered to the bees. And if I had been wearing a scarlet garter I would have tied it round their skep.

  Money! Money! – a few even of my handfuls of that, and I was free. I would teach ‘them’ a lesson. I would redeem myself. Ah, if only I had had a fraction of Fanny’s courage, should I so long have remained wilting and festering at No. 2? The sweet, sharp juices of the clumsy fruit quenched my thirst. To and fro swept the bees along their airy highway. A spiked tree of late-blooming bugloss streamed its blue and purple into my eyes. A year ago, the very thought of exhibiting myself for filthy (or any kind of) lucre would have filled me with unspeakable shame. But what else had I been doing those long, dragging months? What had Miss M. hired herself out to be but a pot of caviare to the gourmets? Puffed up with conceit and complacency, I had been merely feeding on the world’s contempt sauced up as flattery. Nonsensical child.

  ‘Ah, I can make honey, too,’ I nodded at the bees; whereupon a wasp pounced out of nowhere upon my oozy fruit, and I thrust it away into the weeds. But how refreshing a draught is the thought of action, how comforting the first returning trickle of self-esteem. My body sank into motionlessness. The shadows lengthened. The August sun slid down the sky.

  Dusk was abroad in the colder garden, and the last bee home, when, with plans resolved on, I stretched my stiffened limbs and made my way into the house. Excellent augury – so easy had been my daily habits that no one had noticed my absence. Supper was awaiting me. I was ravenous. Up and down I stumped, gnawing my biscuit and sipping my sweet country milk. I had suddenly realized what the world meant to Fanny – an oyster for her sword. Somewhere I have read that every man of genius hides a woman in his breast. Well, perhaps in mine a man was now stirring – the man that had occupied my Aunt Kitilda’s skirts. It was high time.

  A moon just past its quarter was sinking in the heavens and silvering the jessamine at my window. My bosom swelled with longing at the breath of the slow night airs. Monk’s House – I, too, had my ghosts and would face them down, would vanquish fate with the very weapons it had forged for my discomfiture. In that sheltered half-light I stood myself before a down-tilted looking-glass. If I had been malshapen, limbless, contorted, I would have drowned myself in mud rather than feed man’s hunger for the monstrous and obscene. No, I was a beautiful thing, even if God had been idly at play, when He had shaped me, and had then flung away the mould; even if to Mrs. Monnerie I was nothing much better than a disreputable marionette. So I boasted myself. Percy’s Chartreuse had been mere whey compared with the fleeting glimpse of a tame circus elephant.

  I tossed out on to the floor the old Lyndsey finery which some homesick impulse had persuaded me to bring away in my trunk. Seated there with busy needle under the window, sewing in every gewgaw and scrap of tinsel and finery I could lay hands on, I prepared for the morrow. How happy I was. Bats in the dewy dusklight cast faint, flitting shadows on the casements. A large dark moth hawked to and fro above my head. It seemed I could spend eternity in this gentle ardent busyness. To think that God had given me what might have been so dreadful a thing as solitude, but which in reality, while my thoughts and fingers were thus placidly occupied, could be so sweet. When at length I leaned out on the cold sill, my work done, wrists and shoulders aching with fatigue, Croomham clock struck two. The moon was set. But there, as if in my own happy mind – away to the east shone Orion. Why, Sirius, then, must be in hiding under that quiet shoulder of the downs. A dwindling meteor silvered across space; I breathed a wish, shivered, and drew in.

  And there came that night a curious dream. I dreamt that I was a great soldier, and had won an enormous unparalleled battle. Glaring light streamed obliquely across a flat plain, humped and hummocked with the bodies of the dead lying in disorder. I was standing in arrogant reverie alone, a few paces distant – though leagues away in being – from a group of other officers, who were looking at me. And I suffered the streaming light to fall upon me, as I gazed into my joy and triumph with a kind of severe nonchalance
. But though my face under my three-cornered hat can have expressed only calmness and resolution, I knew in my heart that my thoughts were merely a thin wisp of smoke above the crater of a suppressed volcano. Lest I should be detected in this weakness, I turned out of the glare, and without premeditation, began to step lightly and abstractedly from huddling mound to mound. And, as these heaps of the dead increased in size in the gloom after the white western light was gone, so I diminished, until I was but a kind of infinitesimal will-o’-the wisp gliding from peak to peak of an infernal mausoleum of which every eye, though dead, was watching me. But there was one Eye …

  And that is all of the dream that I could remember. For then I awoke, looking into the dark. A pencil ray of moonlight was creeping across my bed. Peace unutterable. Over my drowsy eyes once more the clouds descended, and once more I fell asleep.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Next day, after a long lying-in-wait, I intercepted Adam Waggett and beckoned him into the shrubbery. First I questioned him. A bill of the circus, he told me, had already been left at the lodge. Its tents and booths and Aunt Sallies were even now being pitched in a meadow three or four miles distant and this side the neighbouring town. So far, so good. I told him my plan. He could do nothing but look at me like a fish, with his little black eyes, as I sat on a tree stump and marshalled my instructions.

  But my first crucial battle had been fought with Adam Waggett in the garden at Lyndsey. He had neither the courage nor even the cowardice to gainsay me. After a tedious siege of his sluggish wits, greed for the reward I promised him, the assurance that if we were discovered the guilt should rest on me, and maybe some soupçon of old sake’s sake won him over. The branches of the trees swayed and creaked above us in the sunshine; and at last, looking down on me with a wry face, Adam promised to do my bidding.

  Six had but just struck that evening when there came the rap of his knuckles on my bedroom door. He found me impatiently striding up and down in a scintillating bodice and skirts of scarlet, lemon, and silver – as gay and gaudy an object as the waxen Russian Princess I had seen in one of Mrs. Monnerie’s cabinets. My flaxen hair was plaited German-wise, and tied in two thumping pigtails with a green ribbon; I stood and looked at him. He fumblingly folded his hands in front of him as he stood and looked back at me. I was quivering like a flame in a lamp. And never have I been so much flattered as by the silly, stupefied stare on his face.

  How I was to be carried to the circus had been one of our most difficult problems. This cunning creature had routed out from some lumber room in the old house a capacious old cage – now rusty, but stout and solidly made – that must once have housed the aged Chakka.

  ‘There, miss,’ he whispered triumphantly; ‘that’s the ticket, and right to a hinch.’

  I confessed I winced at his ‘ticket’. But Adam had cushioned and padded it for me, and had hooded it over with a stout piece of sacking, leaving the ring free. Apart from our furtive preparations, evening quiet pervaded the house. The maids were out sweethearting, he explained. Mrs. French had retired as usual to her own sitting-room; Fortune seemed to be smiling upon me.

  ‘Then, Adam,’ I whispered, ‘the time has come. Jerk me as little as possible; and if questions are asked, you are taking the cage to be mended, you understand? And when we get there, see no one but the man or the woman who spoke to you at the gates.’

  ‘Well, miss, it’s a rum go,’ said Adam, eyeing me with a grotesque grimace of anxiety.

  I looked up at him from the floor of the cage. ‘The rummer the go is, Adam, the quicker we ought to be about it.’

  He lowered the wiry dome over my head; I bunched in my skirts; and with the twist of a few hooks I was secure. The faint squeak of his boots told me that he had stolen to the door to listen.

  ‘All serene,’ he whispered hoarsely through the sacking. I felt myself lifted up and up. We were on our way. Then, like flies, a cloud of misgivings settled upon my mind. As best I could I drove them away, and to give myself confidence began to count. A shrill false whistling broke the silence. Adam was approaching the lodge; a mocking screech of its gates, and we were through. After that, apart from the occasional beat of hoofs or shoes, a country ‘good-night’, or a husky cough of encouragement from Adam, I heard nothing more. The gloom deepened. The heat was oppressive; I became a little seasick, and pressing my mouth to a small slit between the bars, sucked in what fresh air I could.

  Midway on our journey Adam climbed over a stile to rest awhile, and, pushing back a corner of the sacking, he asked me how I did.

  ‘Fine, Adam,’ said I, panting. ‘We are getting along famously.’

  The fields were sweet and dusky. It was a clear evening, and refreshingly cool.

  ‘You may smoke a pipe, Adam, if you wish,’ I called softly. And while he puffed, and I listened to the chirping of a cricket, he told me of a young housemaid that was always chaffing and ridiculing him at No. 2. ‘It may be that she has taken a passing fancy to you,’ said I, looking up into the silent oak tree under which we were sitting. ‘On the other hand, you may deserve it. What is she like, Adam?’

  ‘Black eyebrows,’ said Adam. ‘Shows her teeth when she laughs. But that’s no reason why she should make a fool of a fellow.’

  ‘The real question is, is she a nice modest girl?’ said I, and my bangles jangled as I raised my hand to my hair. ‘Come, Adam, there’s no time to waste; are you ready?’

  He grunted, his mind still far away. ‘She’s a fair sneak,’ he said, rapping his pipe-bowl on a stone. And so, up and on.

  Time seemed to have ceased to be, in this jolting monotony, unbroken except by an occasional giddying swing of my universe as Adam transferred the cage from hand to hand. Swelteringly hot without, but a little cold within, I was startled by a faraway blare of music. I clutched tight the slender bars; the music ceased, and out of the quiet that followed rose the moaning roar of a wild beast.

  My tongue pressed itself against my teeth; the sacking trembled, and a faint luminousness began to creep through its hempen strands. Shouting and screaming, catcalls and laughter swelled near. And now by the medley of smells and voices, and the glint of naked lights floating in on me, I realized that we had reached our goal.

  Adam came to a standstill. ‘Where’s the boss?’ The tones were thick and muffled. A feeble smile swept over my face: I discovered I was holding my breath.

  A few paces now; the din distanced a little and the glare diminished. Then sounded another voice hoarse and violent, high above my head.

  The cage bumped to the ground. And I heard Adam cringingly explain: ‘I’ve got a bird here for you, mister.’

  ‘A bird,’ rang the jeer, ‘who wants your bloody bird? Be off.’

  ‘Ay, but it won’t be a bloody bird’, gasped Adam cajolingly, ‘when you’ve seen her pretty feathers.’

  At this, apparently, recollection of Adam’s face or voice returned to the showman. He remained silent while with palsied fingers Adam unlatched my bolts and bars. Bent almost double and half-stifled, I sat there in sight, my clothes spread brightly out about me. The cool air swirled in, and for a while my eyes dazzled at the bubbling blaze of a naphtha-lamp suspended from the pole of the tent above the criss-cross green-bladed grass at my feet. I lifted my head.

  There stood Adam, in his black tail-coat, rubbing his arm; and there the showman. Still to the tips of my fingers, I sat motionless, gazing up into the hard, high-boned, narrow-browed face with its small restless eyes voraciously taking me in. Fortunately the choked beating of my heart was too small a sound for his ear; and he was the first to withdraw from the encounter.

  ‘My God,’ he muttered, and spat into a corner of the canvas booth – with its one dripping lamp, its rough table and chair, and a few oddments of his trade.

  ‘And what, my handsome young lady,’ he went on in a low, carneying tone, and fidgeting with his hands, ‘what might be your little imbroglio?’

  In a gush, presence of mind returned to me, and fea
r passed away. I quietly listened to myself explaining without any concealment precisely what was my little imbroglio. He burst out laughing.

  ‘Stage-struck, eh? There’s a young lady now! Well, who’s to blame ’ee?’

  He asked me my age, my name, where I came from, if I could dance, sing, ride; and stared so roundly at me that I seemed to see my garish colours reflected in the metallic grey of his eyes.

  All this was on his side of the bargain. Now came mine. I folded tight my hands in my lap, glanced up at the flaming lamp. How much would he pay me?

  It was as if a shutter had descended over his face. ‘Drat me,’ said he, ‘when a young lady comes selling anything, she asks her price.’

  So I asked mine – fifteen guineas for four nights’ hire … To look at that human animal you might have supposed the actual guineas had lodged in his throat. It may be that Shylock’s was a more modest bargain. I cannot say.

  At first thought it had seemed to me a monstrous sum, but at that time I was ignorant of what a really fine midget fetched. It was but half my old quarterly allowance, with £2 over for Adam. I should need every penny of it. And I had not come selling my soul without having first decided on its value. The showman fumed and blustered. But I sat close on Chakka’s abandoned stage, perfectly still, making no answer; finding, moreover, in Adam an unexpected stronghold, for the wider gawked his frightened eyes at the showman’s noise and gesticulations, the more resolved I became. With a last dreadful oath, the showman all but kicked a hole in my cage.

  ‘Take me away, Adam,’ I cried quaveringly; ‘we are wasting this gentleman’s time.’