I smiled to myself, in spite of the cold tremors that were shaking me all over; with every nerve and sinew of his corpulent body he was coveting me; and with a curse he at last accepted my terms. I shrugged my shoulders, but still refused to stir a finger until our contract had been written down in black and white. Maybe some tiny lovebird of courage roosts beneath every human skull, maybe my mother’s fine French blood had rilled to the surface. However that may be, there could be no turning back.
He drew out a stump of pencil and a dirty envelope. ‘That, my fine cock,’ he said to Adam, as he wrote, ‘that’s a woman, and you make no mistake about it. To hell with your fine ladies.’
It remains, if not the most delicate, certainly one of the most substantial compliments I ever earned in my life.
‘That’s that,’ he pretended to groan, presenting me with his scrawl. ‘Ask a shark for a stamp, and if ruined I must be – ruined I am.’
I leapt to my feet, shook out my tumbled finery, smiled into his stooping face, and tucked the contract into my bodice. ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, ‘and I promise you shan’t be ruined if I can help it.’ Whereupon Adam became exceedingly merry, the danger now over.
Such are the facts concerning this little transaction, so far as I can recall them; yet I confess to being a little incredulous. Have I, perhaps, gilded my side of the bargaining? If so, I am sure my showman would be the last person to quarrel with me. I am inclined to think he had taken a fancy to me. Anyhow, I had won – what is, perhaps, even better – his respect. And though the pay came late, when it was no longer needed, and though it was the blackest money that ever touched my fingers, it came. And if anybody was the defaulter, it was I.
There was no time to lose. My gipsy woman was sent for from the shooting gallery. I shook hands with her; she shook hands with Adam, who was then told to go about his business and to return to the tent when the circus was over. The three of us, showman, woman, and I, conferred together, and with extreme cordiality agreed what should be my little part in the performance. The booth in which we had made our bargain was hastily prepared for my ‘reception’. Its table was to be my daïs. A loose flap of canvas was hung to one side of it to screen me off from prying eyes when I was not on show. My only dangerous rival, it appeared, was the Spotted Boy.
There followed a deafening pealing of panpipes, drumming of drum, and yelling of voices. In that monstrous din I was past thinking, just being; and I bridled to myself like a schoolgirl caught in a delicious naughtiness, to hear the fine things – the charms and marvels – which my showman was bawling about me. Then one by one, at first a little owlishly, the Great Public, at the charge of 6d. per adult and half price for children (or ‘full-growns under 3 foot’) were admitted to the presence of the ‘Signorina Donna Angélique, the Fairy Princess of Andalusia in Spain’. So at any rate declares the printed handbill.
In the attitude of Madame Recamier in the picture, I reclined on a lustrous spread of crimson satin and rabbit skin draped over a small lump of wood for bolster to give support to my elbow. And out of my paint and powder, from amid this oasis – and with repeated warnings ‘not to touch’ screamed by my gipsy – I met as pleasantly and steadily as I could the eyes of the grinning, smirking, awestruck faces – townsfolk and village folk, all agape and all sound Kentish stock.
‘That isn’t real, she’s a doll,’ lisped a crêpe-bonneted little girl who with skimpy legs dangling out of her petticoat had been hoisted up under her armpits for a clearer view. I let a little pause come, then turned my head on my hand and smiled, leaned over and eased my tinselled slippers. An audible sigh, sweet as incense, went up under the hollow of the booth. I looked on softly from face to face – another dream. Some captive beast mewed and brushed against the sides of a cage drawn up a yard or two from where I lay. The lamp poured flame and smoke. The canvas quietly flapped, and was still. Wild ramped the merry-go-round with its bells and hootings; and the panpipes sobbed their liquid decoy. The Signorina’s first reception was over.
News of her spread like wildfire. I could hear the showman bellowing at the press of people. His guineas were fructifying. And a peculiar rapturous gravity spread over me. When one’s very self is wrapt in the ordeal of the passing moment, is lost like that, out of time and space, it seems, well – another presence had stolen into my mind, had taken possession. I cannot explain. But in this, it may be, all men are equal, whatever their lot. So, I suppose, a flower breaks out of the bud, and butterflies put off the mask of the chrysalis, and rainbows mount the skies. But I must try not to rhapsodize. All I know is that even in that low self-surrender, some tiny spark of life in me could not be content to let my body remain a mere mute stock for the ignorant wonder of those curious eyes.
The actual impulse, however, came from a young woman who, when next the people had streamed in, chanced to be standing close beside me. She was a weak-looking thing, yet reminded me in a sorrowful fashion of Fanny. Caught back by her melancholy, empty eyes, I seemed to lose myself in their darkness; to realize that she, too, was in trouble. I craned up from my wooden bolster and whispered in her hair: ‘Patience, patience. There shall be a happy issue, my dear, out of all your afflictions.’
Only she herself and a weedy, sallow young man in her company could have heard these words. A glint of fright and desperation sprang into her large-pupilled eyes. But I smiled, and we exchanged kindness. She moistened her lips, turned from me, and clutching at the young man’s arm, edged her way out of the throng and vanished.
‘And what sort be this un?’ roared an ox-faced, red-haired man from the back. ‘This un’ hung on his shoulder, tiptoe, fair, young and blowsy.
‘She’ll coin you money,’ I cried pleasantly, ‘and spend it. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’
‘And him, and him? the toad!’ cried the girl half-angrily at the shout of merriment that had shaken the tent.
‘Why, pretty maid,’ piped I, ‘the nearer the wine the sweeter the cork; the plumper the pig the fatter the pork.’ The yell that followed was a better advertisement than drum or panpipes. The showman had discovered an oracle! For the next half-hour my booth was a mass of ‘Sixpennies’ – the squirming Threepennies were told to wait. It filled and emptied again and again like a black bottle in the Dog Days. And when the spirit moved me, I singled out a tell-tale face and told its fortune – not less shrewdly on the whole, I think, than Mrs. Ballard’s Book of Fate.
But it was a strangely exhausting experience. I was inexpressibly relieved when it was over; when the tent-flap descended for the last time, and I could rest from my labours, puffed up, no doubt, with far too rich a conceit of myself, but immeasurably grateful and happy. Comparative quiet descended on the meadows. From a neighbouring tent broke shattering bursts of music, clapping and thumping, the fretful growling of the beasts, the elephant’s trumpeting, the firing of guns, whoops, caterwauling, and the jangling of harness. The Grand Circus was in progress, and fantasy made a picture for me of every sound.
Presently my showman reappeared, leading in a pacing, smooth-skinned, cinnamon-and-milk-dappled pony, bridled and saddled with silver and scarlet, his silky mane daintily plaited, his tail a sweeping plume. He stood, I should guess, about half a hand higher than my childhood’s Mopsa – the prettiest pygmy creature, though obviously morose and unsettled in temper. I took a good long look at his pink Albino eye. But a knack once acquired is quickly recovered. I mounted him. The stirrup was adjusted, one of my German plaits was dandled over my shoulder, and after a leisurely turn or two in the open, I nodded that the highborn Angelique was ready.
The showman, leering avariciously at me out of his shifty eyes, led us on towards the huge ballooning tent, its pennon fluttering darkly against the stars. I believe if in that spirituous moment he had muttered ‘Fly with me, fairest!’ all cares forgotten, I’d have been gone. He held his peace.
The brass band within wrenched and blared into the tune of The Girl I Left behind Me. Chafing, pawing, sn
orting, my steed, with its rider, paused in the entry. Then with a last smirk of encouragement from the gipsy woman, the rein was loosed, I bowed my head, and the next moment, as if in a floating vat of light, I found myself cantering wellnigh soundlessly round the ring, its circumference thronged tier above tier in the smoke-laden air with ghost-white rings of faces.
I smiled fixedly, tossing my fingers. A piebald clown came wambling in to meet me, struck his hand on his foolish heart, and fell flat in the tan. Love at first sight. Over his prostrate body we ambled, the ill-tempered little beast naggling at its bit, and doing his utmost to unseat me. The music ceased. The cloud of witnesses loured. Come Night, come Nero, I didn’t care! Edging the furious little creature into the centre of the ring, I mastered him, wheeled him, in a series of obeisances – North, South, East, West. A hurricane – such as even Mr. Bowater can never have outridden – a hurricane of applause burst bounds and all but swept me out of the saddle. ‘Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye!’ sang cornet and trombone. With a toss, I swept my plaits starwards, brandished my whip at the faces, and galloped out into the night.
My début was over. I confess it – the very memory of it carries me away even now. And even now I would maintain that it was at least a little more successful than that other less professional début which poor Mr. Crimble and Lady Pollacke had left unacclaimed in Beechwood High Street.
Chapter Forty-Seven
My showman, his hard face sleek with sweat, insisted on counting out three huge plate-like crown pieces into my lap – for a douceur. I brushed them off on to the ground. ‘Only to clinch the bargain,’ he said. His teeth grinned at me as if he would gladly have swallowed me whole.
‘Pick up the money,’ said I coldly, determined once and for all to keep him in his place. ‘It’s early days yet.’ But when my back was turned, covetous Adam took charge of it.
While we trudged along homeward – for in the deserted night the cage was unnecessary, until I was too tired to go further – I listened to the coins clanking softly together in Adam’s pocket. It was an intoxicating lullaby. But such are the revulsions of success, for hours and hours that night I lay sleepless. Once I got up and put my hand in where the crowns were, to assure myself I was awake. But the dream which visited me – between the watches of remorse – I shall keep to myself.
With next day’s sun, the Signorina had become the talk of the countryside, and Adam’s vacant face must have stood him in good stead. She had been such ‘a draw’, he told me, that the showman had decided to stay two more nights on the same pitch: which was fortunate for us both. Especially as on the third afternoon heavy rain fell, converting the green field into a morass. With evening the clouds lifted, and a fulling moon glazed the puddles, and dimmed the glow-worm lamps. Impulse is a capricious master. I did my best, for even when intuition fails my sex, there’s obstinacy to fall back upon; but all that I had formerly achieved with ease had to be forced out of me that night with endless effort. The Oracle was unwilling. When a genteel yet foxy-looking man, with whiskers and a high stiff collar under his chin, sneakishly invited me to tell his fortune, and I replied that ‘Prudent chickens roost high’, the thrust was a little too deft. My audience was amused, but nobody laughed.
He seemed to be well known, and the green look he cast me proved that the truth is not always palatable or discreet. Unseduced by the lumps of sugar which I had pilfered for him my peevish mount jibbed and bucked and all but flung the Princess of Andalusia into the sodden ring. He succeeded in giving a painful wrench to her wrist, which doubled the applause.
A strange thing happened to me, too, that night. When for the second or third time the crowd was flocking in to view me, my eyes chanced to fall on a figure standing in the clouded light a little apart. He was dressed in a high-peaked hat and a long and seemingly brown cassock-like garment, with buttoned tunic and silver-buckled leather belt. Spurs were on his boots, a light whip in his hand. Aloof, his head a little bowed down, his face in profile, he stood there, framed in the opening, dusky, level-featured, deep-eyed – a Stranger.
What in me rushed as if on wings into his silent company? A passionate longing beyond words burned in me. I seemed to be carried away into a boundless wilderness – stunted trees, salt in the air, a low, enormous stretch of night sky, space; and this man, master of soul and solitude.
He never heeded me; raised not an eyelid to glance into my tent. If he had, what then? I was a nothing. When next, after the press of people, I looked, he was gone; I saw him no more. Yet the girlish remembrance remains, consoling this superannuated heart like a goblet of flowers in that secret chamber of the mind we call the imagination.
The fall from that giddy moment into this practical world was abrupt. Sulky, tired with the rain and the cumbersome cage and the showman’s insults, on our arrival at Monk’s House Adam was completely unnerved when he found our usual entry locked and bolted.
He gibbered at me like a mountebank in the windy moonlight, his conical head blotting out half the cloud-wracked sky. These gallivantings were as much as his place was worth. He would wring the showman’s neck. He had a nail in his shoe. He had been respectable all his life; and what was I going to do about it? A nice kettle of fish. Oh, yes, he had had ‘a lick or two of the old lady’s tongue’ already, and he didn’t want another. What’s more, there was the mealy-mouthed Marvell to reckon with.
Once free of the cage, I faced him and desired to know whether he would be happier if I wrote at once to Mrs. Monnerie and absolved him there and then. ‘Look at yourself in your own mind,’ I bade him. ‘What a sight is a coward!’ And I fixed him with none too friendly an eye under the moon.
His clumsiness in opening a window disturbed Mrs. French. She came to the head of the staircase and leaned over, while we crouched in a recess beneath. But while the beams of the candle she carried were too feeble to pierce the well of darkness between us, by twisting round my head I could see every movement and changing expression of the shape above me – the frilled, red-flannel dressing-gown, the shawl over her head, and her inflamed peering face surmounted with a ‘front’ of hair in pins. She was talking to herself in peculiar guttural mutterings. But soon, either because she was too sleepy or too indolent to search further, she withdrew again; and Adam and I were free to creep up the glooming shallow staircase into safety.
Last but not least, when I came to undress, I found that my grandfather’s little watch was gone. In a fever I tumbled my clothes over again and again. Then I sat down and in memory went over the events of the evening, and came at last to the thief. There was no doubt of him – a small-headed, puny man, who almost with tears in his eyes had besought me to give him one of my buttons to take home to his crippled little daughter. He had pressed close: my thoughts had been far away. I confess this loss unnerved me – a haggard face looked out of my glass. I scrambled into bed, and sought refuge as quickly as possible from these heart-burnings.
After such depressing experiences Adam’s resolution was at an even lower ebb next morning. We met together under the sunny whispering pine-trees. I wheedled, argued, adjured him in vain. Almost at my wits’ end at last, I solemnly warned him that if we failed the showman the following evening, he would assuredly have the law against us. ‘A pretty pair we shall look, Adam, standing up there in the dock – with the black cap and the wigs and the policemen and everything. And not a penny for our pains.’
He squinted at me in unfeigned alarm at this; the lump in his throat went up and down; and though possibly I had painted the picture in rather sombre colours, this settled the matter. I hope it taught Adam to fight shy ever afterwards of adventuresses. It certainly taught this adventuress that the mind may be ‘subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand’. I cast a look of hatred after the weak, silly man as he disappeared between the trees.
The circus, so the showman had warned me, was moving on that day to another market town, Whippington – six miles or so from its present pitch, though not more than four mi
les further away from Croomham. This would mean a long and wearisome trudge for us the next evening, as I found on consulting an immense map of Kent. Yet my heart sighed with delight at the discovery that, as the dove flies, we should be a full five miles nearer to Beechwood. If this little church on the map was St. Peter’s, and this faint shading the woody contour of the Hill, why, then, that square dot was Wanderslore. I sprawled over the outspread county with sublime content. My very ‘last appearance’ was at hand; liberty but a few hollow hours away.
It is true I had promised my showman to think over his invitation to me to ‘sign on’ as a permanent member of his troupe of clowns, acrobats, wild beasts, and monstrosities. He had engaged in return to pay me in full, ‘with a bit over’, at the close of the last performance. But I had merely laughed and nodded. Not that I was in any true sense ashamed of what I had done. Not ashamed.
But you cannot swallow your pride and your niceness without any discomfort. I was conscious of a hardening of the skin, of a grimness stealing over my mouth, and of a tendency to stare at the world rather more boldly than modesty should. At least, so it seemed. In reality it may have been that Life was merely scraping off the ‘cream’. Quite a wholesome experience.
On the practical side, all was well. Two pounds to Adam, which I had promised to make three if he earned it, would leave me with thirteen or twelve pounds odd, apart from my clumsy ‘douceur’. I thirsted for my wages. With that sum – two five-pound notes and say four half-sovereigns – sewn up, if possible, in my petticoat, I should once more be my own mistress; and I asked no more for the moment. The future must take care of itself. On one thing I was utterly resolved – never, never to return to Monk’s House, or to No. 2 – to that old squalid luxury, dissembling and humiliation.
No; my Monnerie days were over; even though it had taken a full pound of their servile honey to secrete this ounce of rebellious wax.
Memoirs of a Midget Page 39