Memoirs of a Midget

by de la Mare, Walter;

  When, stretching my cramped limbs, I drew back, exhausted and shivering, from the empty tent, I thought for an instant that the figure which sat crouching in the corner of the recess was asleep. But no: with head averted, sweat gleaming on his forehead, he rose to his feet. His consciousness had been my theatre in a degree past even my realization.

  ‘Then, that is over,’ was all he said. ‘Now it is my turn.’

  The voice was flat and indifferent, but he could not conceal his disgust of what had passed, nor his dread of what was to come. Why, I thought angrily once more as I looked at him, why did he exaggerate things like this? Even a drowning man can sink three times, and still cheat the water. What cared I? – the night was nearly over. We should have won release. Why consider it so deeply? But even while I pleaded with him to let me finish the wretched business – every savour of adventure and daring and romance gone from it now – I was conscious of the trussed-up monstrosity that confronted him. He could not endure even a glance at my painted face. I stepped back from him with a hidden grimace. Past even praying for, then. So be it.

  I heard the nimble stepping of the pony’s hoofs on the worn turf. A sullen malice smouldered in its reddish, luminous eyes. When I clutched at its bridle it jerked back its sensitive head as if teased with a gadfly. The gipsy daubed vermilion on my friend’s sallow cheeks. She shook out the tarnished finery she had brought with her and hung it round the stooping shoulders. She plastered down his black hair above his eyes, and thrust a riding-whip into his hand.

  ‘There, my fine pretty gentleman,’ she smirked at him. ‘King of the Carrots! I lay even your own mammie wouldn’t know you now, not even if you tried it straddle-legs. Tug at the knot, lovey; it’s fast, but it won’t strangle you. As for you, you –!’ she suddenly flamed at me, ‘all very fly and cunning, but if I’d had the fixing of it, you wouldn’t have diddled me: not you. I know your shop. Slick off double quick, I warn you, or you’ll have the mob at your heels. Now then, master!’

  She grasped at the bridle, slapped the tooth-bared sensitive muzzle with her hand. I drew back, cowed and speechless. The sour thought died in my mind – Better, perhaps, if we had missed each other on the road. The pony jerked and snatched back its head.

  He was gone, and now I was quite alone. What was there to fear? Only his contempt, his loathing of this last humiliation? But that, too, would soon be nothing but a memory. As always, the present would glide into the past. Yet a dreadful foreboding daunted me. Coarse canvas, walls and roof, table, beaten grass, my very hands and clothes had become menacing and unreal. The lamp hissed and bubbled as if at any moment it would burst asunder. Alone, afraid, ashamed, in the foulness of the tent, I looked around me in the silence; and beyond, above – the Universe of night and space. All my life but the feeble rustlings of a mouse in straw.

  As I stripped off my miserable gewgaws I discovered myself talking into my solitude, weeping, beseeching, though eyes were dry and tongue silent. I scoured away the chalk and paint: and cleansed as far as possible my travel-stained clothes. From my bit of looking-glass a scared and shining face looked out. ‘Oh, my dear,’ I whispered, but not to its reflection, ‘it is as clean now and for ever as I can make it.’ I tied up my bundle.

  It was impossible to cheat away the moments any longer. I sat down and listened. A distant roar of welcome, like that of a wave breaking over a wreck, had been borne across as the band broke into its welcoming tune. I saw the ring, its tall, lank-cheeked ‘master’ in his white shirt and coat-tails, the lights, the sidling, squalling clown, and the slim, exquisite creature with its ungainly rider ambling on and on. Where sat Fanny amidst that rabble? What were her thoughts? Was Mrs. Monnerie already yawning over the low, beggarly scene? A few minutes now. I began to count. A scream, human or animal, rose faint and awful in the distance, and died away.

  I climbed down the ladder and looked out of the tent. Far-spread the fields and wooded hills lay, as if in a swoon beneath the blazing moonlight. The scattered lamps on the slope shone dim as glow-worms. Only a few figures loitered in the gleam of the side-shows, and so engrossed and still sat the watching multitude beneath the enormous mushroom of the tent, so thinly floated out its strains of music, that the hollow clucking of the stream over its pebbles beneath the wanstoned bridge was audible. A few isolated stars glittered faintly in the heights of the sky. What was happening now? Why did he not hasten? I was ready: my life prepared. I could bear no more waiting. A whip cracked. The music ceased: silence. One moment now.

  Again the whip cracked. And then, as if at a signal, a vast, protracted, unanimous bawl poured up into space, a spout of sound, like a gigantic, invisible flower. ‘That wasn’t applause. But, you know, that wasn’t applause,’ I heard myself muttering. There can be no mistaking the sound of human mockery. There can be no mistaking that brutal wrench at the heart, under one’s very ribs. I leapt round where I stood, in a kind of giddiness.

  The shout died away. An indiscriminate clamour broke out – clapping of hands, beating of feet, whistling, hootings, booings, catcalls, and these all but drowned by cymbal, drum, trombone: ‘Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye.’ It was over. Unlike Mrs. Monnerie, the mob was imperfectly satisfied. But all was well. The elephant, massive, imperturbable – the sagacious elephant with the hurdy-gurdy, must now be swinging into the ring.

  I ran out over the trampled grass to meet the approaching group – showman, gipsy, trembling, sweating pony. Its rider stooped forward on the saddle, clutching its pommel, as if afraid of falling. He pushed himself off, lurched unsteadily, lifted and let fall his arm in an attempt to stroke the milk-white snapping muzzle. The strings of his cloak were already broken. He edged from beneath it, and with his left hand clumsily brushed the dust and damp from his face.

  ‘He hadn’t quite the knack of it,’ the showman was explaining. ‘Stirrup a morsel too short, maybe. All the strength, lady, and the ginger, by God, but not the knack, you understand. And we offered him a quieter little animal too. But what I say is, a bargain’s a bargain, that’s what I say. A bit dazed-like, sir, eh? My, you did come a cropper.’

  ‘Sst! are you hurt?’ I whispered.

  The head shook; his moon-washed face smiled at me.

  ‘Come now, come now,’ I implored him, tugging at his arm, ‘before the crowd …’

  He recoiled as if my touch had scalded him.

  ‘We go –’ I turned to the showman.

  Hands thrust under his leathern belt, he looked fixedly at me, and then at the woman. Her eyes glittered glassily back at him.

  ‘That’s it. The young lady knows best. He’s twisted his shoulder, lady, wrenched it; more weight than size, as you might say. She’ll know where to make her friend comfortable. Trust the ladies. Never you be afraid of that. Now, then, Mary, fetch up the gentleman’s cart.’

  The woman, with one wolfish glance into his face, obeyed.

  ‘There, sir! Is that easier? Push the rags in there behind his back. It’ll save the jolts. Lord love you, I wouldn’t split on the pair of you, not me. I know the old, old story. There, that’s it! Now then, your ladyship. No more weight in the hand than a mushroom! All serene, Mary. Home sweet home; that’s the tune, sir, ain’t it? Drive easy now: and off we go.’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Noiselessly turned the wheels in the grass. We were descending the hill. A jolt, and we were in the road. A hedgerow shut us out from the two shrouded watchers by the tent. The braying music fainted away; and apart from the trotting hoofs and the grinding of the wheels in the dust, the only sound I heard was an occasional lofty crackle in space, as a rocket – our last greeting from the circus – stooping on its fiery course, strewed its coloured stars into the moonlight. Then the rearing hillside shut us out.

  Speechlessly, from the floor of the cart, I watched the stooping figure above me. Ever and again, at any sudden lurch against a stone, he shrank down, then slowly lifted himself, turned his head and smiled.

  ‘That’s the tune, sir;
that’s the tune, sir.’ The words aimlessly repeated themselves in my brain, as if bringing me a message I could not grasp or understand. ‘What was I thinking about?’ a voice kept asking me. A strange, sluggish look dwelt in the dilated pupils under the drooping lids when the moonbeams struck in on us from between the branches. His right hand hung loosely down. I clasped it – stone cold.

  ‘Listen, tell me,’ I entreated, ‘you fell? I heard them calling and – and the clapping, what then?’ I could speak no louder, but he seemed scarcely able to hear me.

  ‘My shoulder,’ he answered thickly, as if the words came sluggishly and were half-strange to him. ‘I fell …Nothing: nothing. Only that I love you.’

  The breath sighed itself away. I leaned my cheek against the unanswering hand, and chafed it with mine. Where now? Where now?

  ‘We must keep awake,’ I called beguilingly into the slumbrous face, after a long silence, as if to a child. ‘Awake!’

  A sigh, as he smiled in answer, shook him from head to foot.

  ‘You are thirsty? What’s this on your coat? Look, there is a gate. I’ll creep through and get help.’ I scrambled up, endeavouring in vain to clutch at the reins.

  But no; his head stirred its no; the left hand still held them fast. ‘Only …wait.’

  Was it ‘wait’ – that last faint word? It fell into my mind like a leaf into a torrent, and before I could be sure of it, the sound was gone.

  Instinct, neither his nor mine, guided us on through the winding lanes, up hill and down, along the margin of sleeping wood and light-dappled stream, over a level crossing whose dew-rusted rails gleamed in the moon, then up once more, the retreating hillside hollowly echoing to every clap of hoof against stone. There was no strength or will left in me, only thoughts which in the dark within, between waking and sleeping, seemed like hovering flies to veer and dart – fantasies, fragments of dream, rather than thoughts.

  I realized how sorely he was hurt, yet not then in my stupidity and horror – or is it that I refused to confess it to myself? – that his hurt was mortal. Morning would come soon. I grasped tight the hand in mine. Then help. In this monotony and weariness of mind and body, the passing trees seemed to dance and gesticulate before my eyes. A torturing drowsiness crept over me which in vain, thrusting up my eyelids with my fingers, beating my senseless feet on the floor of the cart, I tried to dispel. Once, I remember, I rose and threw my cape over his shoulder. At last I must have slept.

  For the next thing I became conscious of was that the cart was at a standstill, and that the pony stood cropping the thyme-sweet turf by the wayside. I touched the cold dark hand. ‘Hush, my dear, we are here!’

  But I expected no answer. The head was sunken between the heavy shoulders; the pallid features were set in an empty stare. There wasn’t a sound in the whole world, far or near.

  ‘Oh, but you haven’t said a single word to me!’ It was the only speech in my mind – a reproach. It died on my lips; I drew away. What was this? – a dreadful fear plucked at my sleeve, fear of the company I was in, of a solitude never so much as tasted before. I leapt out of the cart, stood up in the dust, and in the creeping light stared about me.

  Every window of the creeper-hung cottage was shrouded, its gate latched. I struggled to climb the fence, to fling a stone through the casement. The moon shone glassily in the cold skies, but daybreak was in the east; I must wait till morning. With eyes fixed on the motionless head I sat down in the grass by the wayside. Ever and again, after solemnly turning to survey me, the pony dragged the cart on a foot or two under the willows, nibbling the dewy grass.

  Roused suddenly from stupor by the howling of a dog, I leapt up. Who called? Where was I? What had I forgotten? In renewed and dreadful recognition I looked vacantly around me. A strangeness had come. His company was mine no longer.

  Dawn brightened. The voice of a thrush pealed out of the orchard beyond the stone wall – wild and sweet as in Spring. I crouched on the ground, elbows and knees, and now kept steady watch upon those night-hung upper windows. At last a curtain was drawn aside. An invisible face within must have looked down upon us in the lane. The casement was unlatched and thrust open, and a grey, tousled head pushed out as if in alarm into the keen morning. At sight of it a violent hiccoughing seized me, so that when an old woman appeared at her door and hobbled out to the cart, I could not make myself understood. Her sleep-bleared, faded eyes surveyed me with horror and suspicion – as if in my smallness there I looked scarcely human. She shook her crooked fingers at me, to scare me off; then, stooping, put her head into the cart. I cried out, and ran.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The sun had burned for some hours in the heavens, when bleeding with thorns and on fire with nettles and stinking mayweed, I dragged myself out of the undergrowth into a low-lying corner of the desolate garden. Nearby lay a pool of water under an old ruinous wall, swept by the foliage of an ash. On a flat, shelving stone at its brink I knelt down, bathed my face, and drank.

  All that day I spent in the neighbourhood of the water, overhung with the colourless trumpets of convolvulus. Occasionally I edged on, but only to keep pace with the sun-beams, for I was deathly cold, and as soon as shadow drew over me, fits of shivering returned. For some hours I slept, but so shallowly that I heard my own voice gabbling in dreams.

  When I awoke, the western sky was an ocean of saffron and gold. Amidst its haze, stood up the distant clustered chimneys of Wanderslore: and I realized I must be in an outlying hollow of the park – farthest from Beechwood Hill. I sat up, bound back my hair, and, bathing my swollen feet in the dark, ice-cold water, I watched the splendour fade.

  While there was still light in the sky I set out for the cottage again, but soon found myself in such distress amongst the tangled weeds and grasses, which at every movement flung their stifling dust and seeds and pollen over me, that I was compelled to give up the attempt. With senseless tears dropping down my cheeks, I returned to the pool, and made my bed in the withered bracken.

  So passed the next day. When once more the cloudless heat of the sun had diminished, I made another attempt to press back by the way I had come, if only to look up at those windows again. But I was dazed and exhausted; lost my way; and, keeping watch until daybreak, I returned again to the pool. Sitting there I tried to control my misery, and be calm. ‘Wait, wait; I am coming,’ was my one inarticulate thought. Surely that other solitude must be the easier to bear. But it was in vain. He was dead; and I had killed him – pride, vanity, greed, obstinacy, lovelessness. Every flower and fading leaf bore witness against me.

  Now and again I quenched my thirst and rambled off a little way in search of a few fallen hazel nuts and blackberries, and attempted to ease the pain and distress I was in. But I knew in my heart that a few such days must see the last of me, and I had no other desire. Evening came with its faint stars. My mind at last seemed to empty itself of thought; and until dark fell, a self sat at the windows of my eyes gazing heedlessly out over that peace and beauty without consciousness even of grief and despair. Nocturnal creatures began to stir in weed and thicket; a thin mist to rise. For a while I kept watch until sense left me, and I slept.

  A waning misshapen moon hung over the garden when I awoke, my mind clear, still, empty. So empty that I might but just have re-entered the world after the lapse of ages. In this silvery hush of night, winged shapes were wheeling around and above me, piercing the air with mad, strident cries. With sight strangely sharpened and powerful, I gazed tranquilly up, and supposed for a while these birds were swallows. Idly I watched them, scarcely conscious whether they were real or creatures of the imagination.

  Darting, swooping in the mild blaze of the moonlight, with gaping beaks and whirring wings, they swept, wavered, tumbled above their motionless pastures; ghostly-fluttering, feathery-plumed moths their prey. At last, a continuous churring, like the noise of a rattle, near at hand, betrayed them, I lay in my solitude in the midst of a whirling flock of nightjars, few in number, bu
t beside themselves with joy, on the eve of their autumnal flight.

  I can only grope my way now through vague and baffling memories. Maybe it was the frenzied excitement of these madly happy birds that shed itself into my defenceless mind, after rousing me into the night I knew too well. With full, vigilant eyes I am standing again a few paces from the brink of the pool, looking up into a moonlit bush of deadly nightshade, its noxious flowering over, and hung with its black, gleaming, cherry-like fruit. I cannot recall having ever given a thought to this poisonous plant in Wanderslore during my waking hours, though in my old happy reconnoitrings of the garden I had sometimes chanced on the coral-red clusters of the woody nightshade – the bitter-sweet, and had afterwards seen it in blossom.

  It may be that only a part of my mind was fully awake, while the rest dreamed on. Yet, as I strive to return in imagination to that solitary hour, I am certain that a complete realization was mine of the power distilled into those alluring light-glossed berries; and, slave of my drowsy senses, I fixed gaze and appetite on them as though, from childhood up, they had been my one greed and desire. Even then, as if for proof that they were real, my eyes wandered: recognized, low in the west, glaring Altair amid the faint outspread wings of Aquila; pondered on the spark-like radiance struck out by the moonbeams from the fragments of tile that protruded here and there from the crumbling wall beyond the pool; and softly returned once more to the evil bush.

  Then, for an instant, I fancied that out of the nearer shadows a half-seen form had stolen up close behind me, and was watching me. Fancy or not, it caused me no fear. I turned about where I stood, and from this gentle eminence scanned the immense autumnal garden with its coursing nightbirds and distant motionless woods. No; I was alone; by my self; conscious only of an unfathomable quiet; and I stooped and took up one of the ripe fuits that had fallen to the ground. ‘Ah, ah!’ called a far-away voice within me. ‘Ah, ah! What are you at now?’ – a voice like none I had ever heard in the world until that moment. Yet I raised the fruit to my lips.